Certified Design Thinking Specialist

Who this is for

• You run it without a design background

  Product, processes, innovation or experience. You were asked to facilitate and need a defensible criterion for deciding when to stop researching, what to prototype and when to close. This is where too much immersion and too little testing does the most damage.

• You take part and need to recognise what is happening

  Business, legal, operations or technology, called into a session. You need to know what is expected of you at each stage, why criticism is suspended during ideation and why the prototype is not the deliverable.

• You sponsor it and answer for the result

  You authorised the investment and need to judge whether the work is producing learning or merely activity. You need to know what is due at the end of each stage and which evidence tells a run process apart from a series of meetings.

What you take with you

• A permanent verification code

  Anyone confirms your credential at pmcert.org/verify, without having to ask you for anything.

• Approval that does not expire

  A credential you earned does not lapse, asks for no annual renewal and charges no subscription.

• LinkedIn and a public profile

  Add it to your licenses and certifications section, or share the link to your profile.

• A certificate with your score by domain

  In PDF, showing how you performed in each area assessed.

What you need to know

Seven domains, drawn at random from a bank written for this exam. Read each one and see where you stand.

• Fundamentals and mindset

  What holds the approach up before any tool: centring on the user, failing early and cheaply, and the pair diverge and converge as the rhythm of the process. Also the conditions in which it is not the right instrument, and the problem better settled by deciding than by experimenting.

• Framing the challenge

  Turning a vague request into a workable challenge: separating the problem from the solution that came embedded in the request, bounding the user, agreeing what is known and what is assumed, and stating from the start what would end the work.

• Immersion and research

  Choosing the method by the question to answer, and not by cost or familiarity. Running an interview without leading the answer, telling what the user does apart from what they say they do, and recognising the moment when collecting more stopped adding anything.

• Synthesis and definition

  The passage from raw data to a defined problem: turning a volume of notes into a few findings that narrow the solution, building a profile that settles a decision rather than describing demographics, and writing the definition without naming the solution.

• Ideation and co-creation

  Deliberate generation of alternatives and disciplined convergence: a stated rule and criticism suspended during production, a selection criterion written before seeing the proposals, and recognising when the session produced apparent rather than real variety.

• Prototyping

  The minimum representation that answers one doubt: choosing fidelity by the doubt to be resolved and not by the expectations of the audience, prototyping services and processes and not only interfaces, and stating beforehand what the prototype does not represent.

• Testing, decision and implementation

  Writing the criterion for refutation before the test, including the range that means discarding. Running the session without defending the prototype, telling observed behaviour apart from stated preference, and deciding between iterating, implementing and closing.