Human-Centered Insights Certificate

Use design research methods to uncover unmet customer needs

The Human-Centered Insights certificate combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to design research to help you illuminate new and unexpected customer insights. In Insights for Innovation, you’ll learn how to develop empathy for your customers by better understanding their social, emotional, and behavioral needs through interview, observation, and immersion techniques. In Innovating with Data, you’ll learn the data-side of design research, including how to spot patterns, uncover opportunities and surface the human stories reflected in your data. Together, these two courses will give you a comprehensive approach to user insights, enabling you to dive beneath the obvious and unlock opportunities to build products, services, and systems that address the real needs of your customers.

 

Bonus: Receive our exclusive Guide to Communicating Data Insights & Visualizations upon completion of the certificate.

Certificate Program Outcomes
  • Become customer-centric in your approach to innovation and problem solving.
  • Make connections and spot opportunities that others miss by applying design research tools and techniques.
  • Build better products, services, and systems by surfacing and developing empathy for unmet customer pain points.
  • Make your insights more memorable and inspiring by crafting compelling narratives and data visualizations.
Skills You’ll Gain
Design Research Customer Insights Problem Framing Data Visualization Storytelling with Data Data Interpretation Empathy Interviewing Customer Research
Format 2 Online Cohort Courses
Duration 2-3 Months*
Time 4+ Hours/Week
Download Syllabus Download Syllabus
Download Syllabus
*Enroll in any January cohort course or certificate to get FREE access to our new AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series ($250 value). Add to your cart to redeem.

Certificate Program Overview

Courses can be taken in any order

  1. 1 Take Insights for Innovation

    Learn to use insights to turn customer needs into human-centered solutions
    Cohort Course 5 Weeks
    Regular price
    $799
    Sale price
    $799
    Unit price
    per 
  2. 2 Take Innovating with Data

    New
    Understand the human behavior behind the data
    Cohort Course 5 Weeks
    Regular price
    $799
    Sale price
    $799
    Unit price
    per 


  1. 3 Receive and Share Your Certificate

    After completing the two courses, you’ll receive your Human-Centered Insights Certificate of completion via email as a downloadable PDF within 1-2 weeks of completing the final required course. Certificates are configured for uploading and sharing on LinkedIn.

    Your IDEO U Certificate in Human-Centered Insights

Commonly Asked Questions

Learn more about program details in our FAQs

Certificate Program Requirements

Frequently Asked Questions

We offer three types of courses: self-paced courses, cohort courses, and certificate programs. Certificate programs consist of multiple courses and typically take 3-6 months to complete. They are in-depth learning experiences designed to grow your skills and broaden your professional impact. Once you complete all required courses, you will be awarded a certificate of completion.

All of our certificate programs are fully online and flexible, so you can take them from any time zone, anywhere in the world. For cohort courses, the course teaching team will host scheduled virtual community conversations, which are optional. Times will be announced during the first week of the course and are set to accommodate as many time zones as possible.

If you take all required courses in a certificate, you will receive the certificate. There is no deadline for the completion of the courses, and you do not have to purchase all required courses at the same time to be eligible for a certificate.

While you can enroll in multiple courses at the same time, we strongly advise that you do so only if you are able to commit to a minimum of 5 hours per week for each course (for example, 10 hours per week for 2 courses) to ensure the most valuable learning experience. If that does not feel feasible, we recommend taking the courses separately and reviewing upcoming course dates on our course calendar.

While courses can be taken in any order, we recommend you take them in the order that they are listed above in the Certificate Program Overview.

We offer a discount when you enroll in multiple courses at the same time through some of our certificate programs, including Foundations in Design ThinkingBusiness InnovationHuman-Centered Strategy, and Communicating for Impact

You can also enter your email address at the bottom of this page in order to receive updates on future offers or possible discounts. 

Absolutely! We have had many teams go through our courses together. For those taking our courses as a team, we provide a number of additional benefits:

1. A Team Learning Guide, developed to provide your team with resources to facilitate offline discussions that complement the in-course experience.

2. A Manage Learners function, which provides visibility into your team's progress within the course.

3. The ability to create a private Learning Circle, which is a closed space for discussion on the learning platform specifically for your team.

For more information, visit our Team Learning page.

You can purchase a certificate by enrolling in all the courses associated with that certificate. Required courses are listed in the Certificate Program Overview section above. When you click enroll in each cohort course, you will proceed to our checkout page, where you can select your desired cohort date for each course.

Payment options include credit card, PayPal, or Shop Pay. For US customers, we also offer installment plans at checkout if you use the Shop Pay method of payment.We typically are not able to accommodate bank transfer or invoicing. However, if your order includes 10 seats or more, please contact hello@ideou.com and our team will be happy to review your request

Yes. Since you work in such complex systems, this certificate will be beneficial in helping you create change or navigate change within the system you’re working in. Though some of the frameworks and thinking in these courses are rooted in business, they’re still highly applicable to anyone who wants to create change or lead others through change. The case studies, terms, and examples were designed to help different individuals see themselves and their organizations in the work.

The IDEO U Learning Experience

See

Our courses engage you through stories, expertise, and humor. Each lesson has a series of 3-5 minute videos that explain the why, what, and how of a specific topic. Plus we bring everything to life through case studies from around the globe.

Reflect

Our learning experiences have a variety of reflective activities to help you make the connections to your specific work challenges. Reflection is one of the most effective ways to deepen your professional impact.

Try

In order to develop new skills, you need to try them out through repeated practice and exposure to new contexts. Our courses provide opportunities to try out new behaviors online and through real-world projects.

Share

Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others—which is the foundation of our cohort experience. It’s through sharing and discussing with qualified teaching leads and a global peer network that you build greater understanding.

See

Our courses engage you through stories, expertise, and humor. Each lesson has a series of 3-5 minute videos that explain the why, what, and how of a specific topic. Plus we bring everything to life through case studies from around the globe.

Try

In order to develop new skills, you need to try them out through repeated practice and exposure to new contexts. Our courses provide opportunities to try out new behaviors online and through real-world projects.

Reflect

Our learning experiences have a variety of reflective activities to help you make the connections to your specific work challenges. Reflection is one of the most effective ways to deepen your professional impact.

Share

Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others—which is the foundation of our cohort experience. It’s through sharing and discussing with qualified teaching leads and a global peer network that you build greater understanding.