Other links:
Other links:
What if you could “design” your future? Thanks to the seminal work done at Stanford, you can!
What’s your passion? To “follow your passion”, you must first find your passion. What are your goals? What’s your story? Discover and envision your multiple exciting futures. What’s holding you back? — We call these ‘limiting beliefs’. Transform your limiting beliefs into limitless possibilities. How can creative confidence help build your way forward? Ideate and innovate like Elon Musk (or at least get started)!
Building Your Life by Design is an experiential course, based on the proven and celebrated Designing Your Life (DYL) framework engineered at Stanford University. The “Designing Your Life” framework has evolved through rigorous research at Stanford’s Design Your Life Lab (d.life) offering programs, and conducting research that applies Design Thinking’s innovation principles to life, education, and career challenges. Over 300 universities have adopted the programme including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Northwestern, among others.
The course will equip you with a holistic skillset and a proactive mindset to design and build your future with clarity by using the design thinking process at its core. You will be empowered to prepare for life’s uncertainties and ready yourself to move forward in a world full of ambiguity and change.
The “Designing Your Life” framework uses design thinking as the scaffolding of Life Design and draws on the tenets of Behavioural Science, Positive Psychology and Philosophy to help you design your future. The framework will enable you to gain agency and be constructive, productive and effective about finding and designing your life and career.
Through a series of exercises, interventions and reflections, you will go through Discovering (your past), Designing (your present), Dreaming (your possible futures) and ending with Doing (taking actions to make things happen). You will envision three distinct Odyssey plans as your hands-on capstone project, which will help you think about your future with clarity. With these skills, you will be equipped to move closer to your visions/ goals/ passions….but more importantly, discover newer ones. So going forward you are always building your way forward, based on who you are, what you want, and having the tools to make it real.
Where do you want to go? Are you ready to get started?
Enroll Now Existing User? Log In
An extensive amount of research has shown that the youth of today, more often than not, feel uncertain about their future. This uncertainty can be navigated through a creative and generative approach towards designing your life and vocation.
This course is for any such young student— For any and every student looking to approach and think about their future more intentionally and practically. The course will benefit students looking to gain clarity regarding their future aspirations and those currently facing any stress about their way forward in life.
Prerequisites: High proficiency in written & spoken English. You will be required to submit your latest mark sheet in the application form.
By the end of the programme, you will:
| Week | Lecture Module | Project Module |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Design thinking & the life design framework. Discovering yourself & Overcoming limiting beliefs
Fostering empathy, and embracing personal expression, reflect on your purpose and cultivate a critical and innovative mindset aligned with your true selves, paving the way for holistic growth and self-realization. Overcoming limiting beliefs and “reframing” them to get unstuck.
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Self-exploration: Personal narrative development and overcoming limiting beliefs
Engage in self-exploration and own narrative development by addressing aspects like self-awareness, social influences, and identity formation.
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| Week 2 | Designing your past: Designing your today by unpacking Energy
In the “Designing” stage, use design thinking principles to identify activities that induce your flow states, chart your energy levels, and discover your natural interests.
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Designing your past: Flow, balance and engagement
Explore ways to balance your daily life, allocating time and energy to various aspects. Additionally, experiment with different learning methods to find what energizes you the most beyond academics.
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| Week 3 | Dreaming of the future: Envisioning your possible futures and designing your tomorrow
In the “Dreaming” stage, acknowledge the boundless potential of futures, but also understand the importance of flexibility and resilience, while charting the same. Embrace the idea of growing in multifarious ways, as you define your dreams and craft your Odysseys.
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Dreaming of the future: My 3 odysseys
Refine the “Odyssey Plans” to bring focus on the possibilities for “what’s next” 3-5 years from now to thrive in whatever you choose to do.
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| Week 4 | Doing, doing and doing: Prototyping ideas with skillful ideation techniques
In the “Doing” stage, students collaborate and come up with numerous ideas on how to “prototype” and test to take ideas to reality. Prototype behaviors, ideation, and designs for things that you can do and try yourself.
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Bias for action: Bringing ideas to reality with action.
Craft a Designer’s Action Plan – employ design thinking to generate ideas, involve others, iterate, and weave storytelling into the process to bring your vision to life.
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| Week 5 | Counselling:
Get a chance to ask questions to the faculty and the mentor and get their answers and perspective. You are encouraged to ask questions to the faculty around the following aspects:
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Mentoring:
You are encouraged to ask questions to the mentor around the following aspects:
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What’s an adventure you seek? What are you excited about when you think about your future? During the course, Students will envision 3 distinct Odysseys they see unfolding in their future.
Imagine that you could be anyone you wanted to be/ do anything you wanted to do and be anywhere you wanted to be. Imagine a life without constraints, responsibilities, current goals, and the expectations we and others have of each other.
Making social change, touching the lives of others, helping the less fortunate, caring about animals or the planet…making the world a little bit better because of you is greatly gratifying and satisfying. What is a story you want to tell yourself, and others, including colleges, and view yourself in a more positive light.
What stream we choose to pursue, what topics we take up, and which “kind” of college or institution we go to will have a large bearing on our lives going forward. Imagine the next five years as a stepping stone to “what you want to do and become” as you grow up.
“Looking back 5 Years” Video
Imagining one of these 3 ‘paper prototypes’ come to life, students will create a video “Looking Back 5 Years” to share the story based on one of their Odyssey Plans becoming a reality! Sharing their challenges, achievements and personal milestones, using storytelling to show how they felt as it unfolded.
*Students will present their videos at the end of the course
Case Studies
The case study discusses Nokia’s significant decline in market share in the cell phone space and highlights the limited mindset while approaching “innovation”. Looking at the example of the Nokia innovation strategy, you will grasp the role of increasing solution spaces by implementing “Creative Problem Solving” and “Reframing the problem statement”.
The case study discusses how a focus on design and leveraging design can reshape expectations. Uber’s rise exemplifies the power of design and innovation in transforming areas in life. By reimagining transportation and thinking in a “human-centred” way, it disrupted the market, providing a more flexible, efficient alternative.
The case study discusses GE’s approach and innovative thinking towards designing an MRI scanner for children and their implementation of the Design Thinking process. Their success in designing an enhanced experience for children speaks to the added value thinking “design” can bring about.
Navyug Mohnot is the CEO of QAI, a trans-national Process Improvement consulting organisation, and the Founder and CEO of QGLUE, a consulting, coaching, and training company helping enterprises and individuals adopt and embrace the “design-led way”.
He is a Stanford trained “Designing Your Life” educator for universities, a course based on Stanford University’s most popular elective for over a decade and a half. He is a visiting faculty at Ashoka University, bringing the course to India for the first time. Navyug is also a certified Leadership Coach from Harvard University. He has spoken at several conferences around the world and is a TEDx speaker (“Manifesting Desires, Embracing Contradictions”).
Navyug did his B.Tech from IIT Delhi and is the recipient of “Outstanding Contribution to National Development” from the IIT Delhi Alumni Association. He pursued a Fellowship for a PhD program in USA and dropped out to pursue his dream of coming back to contribute to the globalization of the Indian IT Industry.
He sits on the Boards of several companies, is a mentor and coach to several start-ups and is also an angel investor. He runs a film club, is a meditator, and aspires to direct a full-length film someday. Active with TiE and NASSCOM, he was Co-Chair for TiECon 2015, Asia’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs. He is on the Board of the Gunjan Foundation, and BeSingular, an ed-tech venture focussed on exponential technologies.
Grading, Assessments, Certification and much more
Ashoka Horizons Achievers Programme offers a certificate on satisfactory completion of the course.
Class participation will be assessed based on your active engagement in live sessions, contributions to discussion forums, and involvement in Teaching Fellow-led activities.
Achieve More…with Horizons:
*Subject to discretion of the faculty
This programme is administered through an online platform. Students are expected to have a foundational understanding of computer usage, including but not limited to sending emails and conducting Internet searches. Consistent access to the Internet and a computer that aligns with the recommended minimum specifications are also requisite for participation in the programme.
Have a question about Ashoka Horizons Achievers Programme? Write to us on horizons@ashoka.edu.in
Krittika Bhattacharjee
Assistant Professor of Academic Writing, Ashoka University
Ph.D. University of Edinburgh
Schedule:
May 17, 2025 (Saturday) – June 14, 2025 (Saturday)*
Naincy Catherine
Writing Pedagogy Expert
M.Phil. (Sociology), Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
Schedule:
May 17, 2025 (Saturday) – June 14, 2025 (Saturday)*
Dr Brainerd Prince
Associate Professor, Plaksha University
PhD, Middlesex University
Schedule:
May 17, 2025 (Saturday) – June 14, 2025 (Saturday)*
