The Standard · Strategy and Leadership
Design Thinking
Applies design thinking with AI for research, ideation and prototyping, with users at the centre.
You use AI to understand people, define underlying needs, generate options, prototype concepts, and prepare user research sessions. You use AI to reveal patterns and alternatives, but it can flatten voices, invent needs, or favour one idea.
The exam for Design Thinking is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Design Thinking, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the assistant to uncover overlooked needs, alternatives, and research questions beyond your initial design direction.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the users, purpose, evidence, constraints, and required form and contents of the design work.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the assistant's research or concepts into a usable need statement, prototype, or research plan with your judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check the assistant's user insights, prioritisation, and research findings against source voices and evidence before choosing direction.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep identifiable user stories, sensitive research details, and unsafe design requests out of the assistant's brief and outputs.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which research, ideation, and prototyping steps the assistant handles, while people retain user contact and high-stakes choices.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A human-need statement from anonymised interview findings and observed user behaviour.
- 02
A low-fidelity prototype from a prioritised concept and a question for user research.
- 03
A research plan and feedback synthesis from prototype goals and qualitative responses.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in design thinking. They briefed the assistant with user evidence, caught invented needs, and delivered a tested prototype.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Design Thinking
- Who it is for
- Designers, product managers, service developers, policy professionals, educators, and operations managers who create solutions for people.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Project Planning
Plans projects with AI and stress-tests the schedule, dependencies and risks.
Practice only
- Agile Teams
Runs agile work with AI in the loop and the team in charge.
- Change Management
Leads change with AI-assisted analysis and communication and keeps the human case central.
- Event Planning
Plans events with AI and verifies logistics, budgets and commitments.
- Strategic Thinking
Thinks strategically with AI as a challenger and reaches conclusions they can defend.
- Innovation
Uses AI to generate and test ideas and judges which are worth pursuing.
- Decision Making
Makes decisions with AI-assisted analysis and knows when the analysis cannot be trusted.
- Stakeholder Management
Manages stakeholders with AI-assisted mapping and communication that stays accurate and discreet.
Everything in Strategy and Leadership, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Design Thinking covers this skill. No book is required to pass.