Review of "Innovation of Product and Services: MIT's Approach to Design Thinking" - Emeritus Institute of Management

I finished this course in October and thought of penning down my views on the program here for benefit of others wanting to take this program.

With "Design Thinking" getting adopted by organizations world over, it is becoming important to acquire and learn Design Thinking skills. Programs like the one from Emeritus promise to deliver this skill from the one of the best colleges in business -- MIT. The course is spread over 2 months of self study, assignments, group projects and very practical for a working professional.

Things I liked:

• Excellent course material -- especially the videos from Prof Steve Eppinger. The course content has a great mix of theoretical constructs, case studies, examples and suggestions on how to apply design thinking for both products & services.
• The duration is great for a working professional. The assignments give you a way to keep track of how you are progressing.
• Group project, where you work with fellow batch-mates and apply design thinking principles. Almost all of whom you would have not met before.

Things I wish could be better:

• Small batch size. We had close to 500+ participants. Impacts quality of interactions.
• Involvement of Prof Steve Eppinger. The course is advertised as professor being the faculty. However, he is not involved -- apart from the videos. The facilitators are other folks from Emeritus who are more like course administrators.
• Group discussions / Webinars to have value. They became like admin/support sessions around problem solving. Again, with large batch the effectiveness was lost.
• Assignment evaluation: It seems this was done by research associates and these were all over. Biggest grouse from fellow batch-mates and me. Issues from same "canned responses" to all participants (irrespective of answer) to lack of meaningful feedback on what can be improved. This is a BIG LET down. One didn't gain anything from evaluator feedback.
• Access to resources after the course. The course material is accessible only during the course + two months after. The summary that is available is not enough. One will forget the course material and if one needs to refer it back, then no way to do so.
• Collaboration using Slack: Emeritus had a slack group for all of us but was deleted without notice and all of a sudden. All of our discussions, work, rich knowledge etc got lost without a trace. very unprofessional.

Summary: Take this course for the excellent course material (videos from Prof Steve Eppinger) & assignments. Rest you will have to manage on your own.

Also, the course has more focus on the steps / process for creation of new products & services. "Design Thinking" as a methodology and the depth / focus on the same is a bit less.