Designing the Future of Work (Coursera)

What new, disruptive technologies are on the horizon? How will jobs change? What challenges will employers and employees face? How can the design process help businesses and employees to create innovative solutions to overcome such challenges?

The course is a collaboration between UNSW Sydney Art & Design and AMP Amplify, AMP's innovation and ideas program. It brings together leading business and design thinking to help answer these questions, and investigates design strategies that businesses, employees and designers can adopt to find new opportunity in such a rapidly changing professional landscape.

What You Will Learn

The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry relevant learning opportunity. You will have access to current theory, industry examples and expert advice from leaders in the field. This course will help you to:

• Recognise how the integration of design approaches are shaping technology and business practices, and how these changes bring immense possibility and uncertainty to the future of work

• Analyse important skills and attributes that designers, employees, and businesses need to be successful in a speculative, technologically enhanced future

• Understand the importance of unique human attributes in increasingly automated workplaces

• Evaluate challenging issues related to potential change in processes, people and automation that might impact the future of your own employment or business

• Plot your own possible, probable, and preferable trajectories, and synthesise a design strategy to maximise your ability to adapt, grow, and realise opportunities in your own work future.

Syllabus

Week 1

What is the Future of Work?

This week we will explain the scope, focus and assessment of the course, and introduce you to your instructor and the industry experts who have contributed to the content. The trajectory of technological disruption in the workplace will also be discussed, as well as explaining what impact these changes may have on your own professional context. We will explore some practical frameworks to help you analyse and forecast possible work futures, and discuss the importance of embracing the challenges they present.

Week 2

The Importance of Being Human in a World of Automation

This week's content discusses what unique qualities make us human, and how these will become increasingly important in the workplace of the future where automation and artificial intelligence may begin to take over more routine tasks. Strategies for understanding how to develop effective human-machine relationships based upon types of tasks in your job are explored.

Week 3

Designing the Future of Work

This week's content explores the principles of design thinking, and explains how you can use this technique to better understand the challenges your work faces due to technological disruption, how to better predict where the future will take you, and how to devise a strategy to ensure that you are in control of your own work future.

Week 4

Industry and Academic Expert Video Profiles

Watch video profiles of the industry and academic experts who have contributed their insights and wisdom to this course. Get to know who they are, where they work, and what they do.