In this episode, we chat to Warwick Vlantis from Umuzi, a digital technology focused not for profit training organization. Their passion is to ensure that the unemployed youth are skilled and ready for the workplace, and that they are connected to the possible opportunities available to them.

We talk about design thinking and education extensively. Umuzi is a design led organisation, and design thinking principles are used to ensure that the courses they offer are designed with the users in mind (the users are right there every day) but they also teach the trainees the principles and mindsets of design thinking through the courses they offer.

As with many of our previous episodes we talk about the importance of putting the humans your are designing for, first, and we look at how this is being taught. We also look at the various processes and models available, and how these are applied in corporates, but also how the processes and models that are taught, are changed and implemented to fit the organisation it is being implemented in. Design thinking is after all about evolving and making things better.

Warwick touches on the challenges that COVID posed to them as a business, and how they pivoted, using design thinking to see these challenges as opportunities instead and are now seeing the positive outcomes thereof.