Have you heard someone say, “You need code skills to get a Tech job“? What if I tell you that fundamental soft skills can get you into TECH?
Product innovation and management are two “No-code” tech careers in HIGH DEMAND GLOBALLY!
Here are five design thinking skills a person looking to launch a career in product innovation should know.
1. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a core skill for anyone interested in design thinking. This is because design thinking requires the practitioner to empathize with the end user and understand their dreams, goals, desires, and challenges on an intimate, personal level. Without the willingness to empathize, none of the other phases in the design thinking process can be completed.
2. Consensus Building
In the early phases of the design thinking process, all team members must reach a consensus on the challenge being addressed. Who’s the ideal buyer or end user of the product or solution? What’s the problem being solved for? How will you define success? Without agreement around these questions, the entire process can break down and be stalled by inaction.
3. User Research
User research is understanding a product or service’s end users to understand better the problems they face, their goals, and the unique criteria they’ll use to identify a solution. Through user research, you can begin to empathize with your end user, define and frame the problem, and ideate.
4. Journey Mapping
Journey mapping is charting your target customer or end user’s journey as they choose a solution to their problem. What are they seeing, feeling, and thinking?
A journey map typically has three stages:
Awareness of a problem or need
Consideration of possible solutions
Deciding how best to proceed
5. Brainstorming
In the ideation phase of design thinking, your primary task is to take all the information you’ve gathered through user research, journey mapping, and empathizing and use it to think of possible solutions to your end user’s problem. Having the ability to brainstorm potential solutions in a free and creative way is vital.
The next question now will be how to get these skills.
The digital world we are in now has made knowledge accessible even in the corners of our homes. We have many online schools that teach the skill. A good example is the Skilled For Work Academy by I-Train Africa. If you are asking, “What is Skilled For Work”? SKILLED FOR WORK is a finishing school for literate youths and women starting their careers or transitioning who hope to gain 21st-century, in-demand workplace skills to become globally employable. This school built for literate Africans has just one aim. To ensure the sustainable development goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) is met by 2030.
Apart from the 5 design thinking skills mentioned in the 2024 LinkedIn article published by the founder of I-Train Africa, Aderinsola Adio-Adepoju (PhD), what other skill is also essential for a Product Innovation and Management career?
As Written By I-Train Africa