Experience Design Thinking: Solve Real Challenges, Achieve Real Results
Transform your team’s approach to innovation. Our Design Thinking workshops provide interactive, hands-on formats that equip your teams with the mindset and tools to tackle genuine business challenges. Learn the methodology, apply the principles, and create tangible outcomes with expert facilitation available across Europe.
We offer a range of in-company training and facilitated workshops designed to meet your specific goals. Whether you need a deep dive into the full process or a short, inspirational sprint, our formats deliver practical skills and immediate business impact.
Our Design Thinking Workshop Formats
Design Thinking Sprints (0.5–1 Day)
These short, focused sessions are designed to spark creativity, introduce fresh perspectives, and cultivate a customer-centric culture within your team.
- Ideal for: Inspiring new ideas and creating team alignment.
- Flexible Delivery: Available on-site at your company or delivered online.
- Enhanced Impact: Often combined with a keynote on Design Thinking to set the stage.
Outcome: A shared understanding of challenges, a burst of fresh perspectives, and renewed momentum for your innovation projects.
Concept Sprints (3–4 Days)
An intensive, end-to-end format for teams ready to move beyond ideas and create validated, tangible results.
- Comprehensive: We guide you from initial challenge framing all the way to concept validation.
- Customer-Focused: A strong emphasis on understanding customer needs and ensuring business viability.
- Action-Oriented: The goal is to produce a concrete asset for your business.
Outcome: A validated concept supported by a tangible prototype or MVP, ready for user testing or the next stage of implementation.
Meet Your Dynamic Workshop Facilitator: Vivian Acquah
Your workshop will be led by Vivian Acquah, a dedicated Inclusion Strategist, Workshop Facilitator and Certified Cultural Intelligence (CQ) Facilitator.
With a passion for amplifying effective collaboration, Vivian brings a vibrant, multi-faceted approach to facilitation that goes beyond standard training. She blends the strategic depth of inclusion work with the engaging power of design thinking to help participants with moving the needle. .
- Inclusive Excellence: As a seasoned strategist, Vivian has guided numerous organisations in dismantling barriers and building bridges. She specialises in Cultural Intelligence (CQ), helping teams navigate cross-cultural complexities with empathy and effectiveness.
- Creative Methodology: Leveraging her background as a creative storyteller, Vivian transforms dry corporate sessions into compelling narratives. She uses storytelling techniques to make complex concepts accessible, relatable, and memorable.
- Action-Oriented Impact: Vivian is known for moving beyond awareness to action. Her sessions are designed to leave participants with practical tools and a “walking the talk” mindset, ensuring that inclusion becomes a daily practice rather than a theoretical concept.
Vivian’s dynamic facilitation style ensures that your team not only understands the theory for effective collaboration but feels empowered and inspired to drive meaningful change from within.
Ready to Build Your Team’s Innovation Muscle?
Let’s discuss your unique challenges and find the perfect workshop format for your organisation. We deliver practical, focused, and outcome-driven sessions in-company, online, or in a hybrid format across Europe, United States, in Dutch or in English.
Get in touch today to find the right solution for your team.
Hire Vivian Acquah CDE® to speak at your next event
or hire her for workshops!
Vivian is a great speaker who knows how to inspire an audience and convey a powerful message in a safe environment.
Vivian is available for virtual keynotes, events, summits, workshops, roundtable discussions, webinars and podcast interviews.
She knows how to inspire managers, inclusion professionals, HR professionals, L&D professionals and decision makers who want to do better when it comes to strengthening inclusion & employee sustainability.
Warning: it is important to share that Vivian Acquah CDE® may sometimes talk about food during a presentation or a lecture, a few times during this talk. Please have your (healthy) snacks ready. Vivian Acquah cannot be held responsible for any (unhealthy) cravings.
Inclusion Training/ Workshops
FAQ Design Thinking
What is Design Thinking, and why should our team care about it?
Design Thinking is an interactive, hands-on approach that helps teams tackle genuine business challenges creatively. Rather than relying on guesswork, it provides a structured methodology to understand real problems and develop innovative solutions.
Design Thinking equips your team with both the mindset and practical tools needed for innovation. The main benefit is that it transforms how your team approaches problems; moving from assumptions to customer-centred, evidence-based solutions. When implemented properly, Design Thinking delivers immediate business impact and creates a culture where fresh perspectives thrive.
Elevate your team’s performance with Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
How does Design Thinking improve team collaboration?
Design Thinking creates structured opportunities for teams to work together meaningfully. It brings diverse departments and skill sets together, breaking down organisational silos. The process builds shared vocabulary and common understanding through collaborative activities like empathy mapping and brainstorming. Importantly,
Design Thinking creates psychological safety; team members feel comfortable sharing unconventional ideas without fear of judgment because the methodology explicitly encourages wild ideas during ideation. This collaborative culture leads to better solutions and increased employee engagement.
Elevate your team’s performance with Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
What is psychological safety, and why does it matter in Design Thinking?
Psychological safety means team members feel secure sharing ideas, asking questions, and taking interpersonal risks without fear of embarrassment or punishment. It’s essential for design thinking because innovation requires people to suggest unconventional, even “silly” ideas.
When psychological safety is absent, team members stay silent and creativity dies. Leaders create psychological safety by modeling vulnerability, treating failure as learning, and ensuring all voices are heard equally.
Teams with high psychological safety perform better, innovate faster, and experience lower conflict.
Elevate your team’s performance with Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
What's the difference between Design Thinking and traditional problem-solving?
Traditional problem-solving often jumps straight to solutions based on assumptions, whereas design thinking begins with deep user research. Design Thinking encourages diverse perspectives and creative brainstorming without judgment, which fosters better collaboration. The iterative testing approach reduces costly mistakes later.
Traditional methods are typically linear and solution-focused; Design Thinking is non-linear and human-centered, emphasising understanding user needs before developing solutions. This fundamental shift means you’re solving the right problem, not just a perceived one.
Elevate your team’s performance with a Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
How does Vivian's facilitation style support our team?
Vivian’s dynamic facilitation ensures your team understands the design thinking theory while feeling genuinely empowered and inspired. She doesn’t simply teach the methodology; she guides teams to drive meaningful change from within. Her approach combines expert knowledge with an empowering style that builds confidence in your team’s ability to innovate.
This is particularly valuable for teams new to design thinking, as it creates psychological safety for creative thinking. Your team will leave not only understanding the process but also inspired to apply design thinking independently to future challenges.
Elevate your team’s performance with a Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
What outcomes can we expect from a Concept Sprint?
A Concept Sprint produces tangible, validated results; not just ideas. You’ll exit with a concrete business asset, typically a prototype or minimum viable product (MVP), backed by customer insights and evidence of feasibility.
The process ensures your concept is customer-focused and commercially viable before moving forward. You’ll have validated whether your solution actually addresses customer needs and whether it’s viable for your business.
This validated concept is then ready for user testing or the next stage of implementation, significantly reducing risk and wasted resources.
Elevate your team’s performance with a Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
How does a Design Thinking Sprint spark team alignment?
Design Thinking Sprints create alignment by bringing your entire team together around a shared challenge. The interactive format encourages diverse perspectives and collaborative problem-solving, ensuring everyone understands the challenge from multiple angles.
Through structured activities and guided facilitation, team members develop a common language and shared understanding. This burst of fresh perspectives renews momentum for innovation projects and breaks down departmental silos. The result is a unified team with renewed energy, aligned goals, and commitment to solving real business challenges together.
Elevate your team’s performance with a Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!
What's the difference between Design Thinking and traditional problem-solving?
Traditional problem-solving often jumps straight to solutions based on assumptions, whereas Design Thinking begins with deep user research.
Design Thinking encourages diverse perspectives and creative brainstorming without judgment, which fosters better collaboration. The iterative testing approach reduces costly mistakes later.
Traditional methods are typically linear and solution-focused; Design Thinking is non-linear and human-centred, emphasising understanding user needs before developing solutions. This fundamental shift means you’re solving the right problem, not just a perceived one.
Elevate your team’s performance with a Design Thinking session provided by Vivian Acquah!