• Design Your Future

    This 20-40 hour self-study SEEN OER helps students learn and apply design thinking, entrepreneurial methods, mindsets and positive psychology to identify opportunities, explore possibilities, overcome challenges and take purposeful action in shaping their careers and lives.

  • This course is designed to integrate with modules from any subject discipline or degree program that includes career or personal development components. This OER covers topics including the nature of change, the future of work, self-understanding, professional identity and personal brand, character, social capital, networking, personal growth, creativity, co-creating value and finding PERMA (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievement).

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    Chapter 1: Intro to Design Your Future
    • Change and the Future of Work
    • Revolutionary New Entrepreneurial Search-Based Methods
    • Jobs vs a Career
    • Everyone’s Entrepreneurial Future
    • Entrepreneurship and Employability
    • What is an Entrepreneurial Mindset and Personal Empowerment
    • About the Author
    • Quotes from Former Students
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    Chapter 2: Intro to Design Thinking
    • Design Thinking Methods
    • Design Thinking and the Double Diamond
    • Thinking Like a Designer
    • Exercise #1: Design Your Morning
    • Good Design Takes Time
    • Build Your Design Team
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    Chapter 3: Start Where You Are
    • Bird-in-the-Hand Principle
    • Character, Human and Social Capital
    • Self-Analysis (Personality Traits vs Social Cognitive Perspective)
    • Self-Analysis Tools
    • Exercise #2: Self-Analysis, Journal and Activity Log
    • Introduction to Self-Awareness through Mindfulness and Meditation
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    Chapter 4: Self-Understanding, Professional Identity and Personal Brand
    • Self-Understanding, Professional Identity and Personal Brand
    • Self-Understanding and the Ikigai Framework
    • Convergent Tool: AEIOU
    • Convergent Tool: Customer Profile Canvas (CPC)
    • Exercise #3: Professional Identity and Personal Brand
    • Proactivity, Agency and Internal Locus of Control
    • Your Life Story
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    Chapter 5: Business Model You and the Purpose Statement
    • Exercise #4: The Wheel of Life
    • Business Model Canvas (BMC)
    • Business Model You (BMYou)
    • Focus on Proactivity, Bias Toward Action and Self-Direction
    • Exercise #5: Business Model You & The Purpose Statement
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    Chapter 6: Human and Social Capital
    • The Power of the Mind and Finding Your Niche
    • Human Capital
    • Focus on Growth Mindset
    • Social Capital
    • Focus on User-Centricity, Empathy and Active Listening Communication Skills
    • How to Network
    • Exercise #6: Networking Event
    • Communication Skills for Creating a Pitch
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    Chapter 7: Customer Discovery
    • Exercise #7: Make Progress on Challenges and Validate Purpose
    • Building Empathy with Customer Interviewing
    • Define Your Customer Personas and Customer Profile Canvas (CPC)
    • Focus on Creativity Tools and Techniques for Design Thinking
    • Iteration and Making Progress
    • Professional Communication, Presentations and Report Writing
    • In-Class Public Speaking
    • Communication Support for Public Speaking
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    Chapter 8: Character, Self-Leadership and Trustworthiness
    • What is Character?
    • Beliefs (Self-View and Worldview)
    • Attitudes and Values (Focus on Resiliency)
    • Intent (Goal-Setting)
    • Self-Leadership (System 1 vs System 2)
    • Fuelling Your Spirit with Positive Beliefs, Attitudes and Values (Art)
    • Building Character to Promote Happiness & Well-Being (PERMA)
    • Exercise #8: Self-Reflection
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    Chapter 9: Making Progress
    • Making Progress on Your Design Challenges
    • Exercise #9: The Odyssey Plan
    • Prototyping and Testing Your Future
    • Goal-Setting Using Planning and Effectual Search Methods
    • Time Management
    • Forming Habits
    • Goal-Setting and Happiness
    • Trustworthiness and Character
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    Chapter 10: Mindset and Happiness
    • Why Learn about Happiness?
    • Anxiety, Depression and Cognitive Distortions
    • CBT - Overcoming Negative Thoughts and Emotions (from -8 to +1)
    • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
    • Positive Psychology - Building Positive Beliefs and PERMA (from +1 to +9)
    • Building a Positive Entrepreneurial Mindset to Achieve PERMA
    • Focus on Self-Leadership
    • Exercise #10: Writing Your Own Positive Self-Talk Statements
    • Summary of Mindset and Happiness
    • Final Thoughts and Best Wishes

  • Design Your Future is an Open Educational Resource (OER) created for Scottish college and university students who are navigating an increasingly uncertain, fast-changing world of work.

    Entrepreneurial education isn't just about starting a new business, freelance, side hustle or community change-making project; it's about enabling every learner to spot opportunities, create value and make a difference. Design Your Future treats design thinking, entrepreneurship and positive psychology as core life capabilities - helping students across all disciplines make sense of complexity, explore possible futures, and take purposeful action in shaping their careers, happiness and well-being. It's about helping all students prepare for, and look forward to, meeting the challenges arising in the Future of Work.  

    The course invites learners to reflect on their values, strengths, interests, and aspirations while developing practical tools for navigating ambiguity, change, and opportunity. Through structured exercises and reflective prompts, students practise design thinking, opportunity spotting, experimentation, reframing setbacks, building networks, and designing multiple possible career pathways rather than relying on a single fixed plan.

    The emphasis is on agency: encouraging learners to see themselves not as passive recipients of labour-market forces, but as active designers of their own professional and personal lives who can explore, adapt, learn what works, and co-create value in diverse contexts.

    Built to scale across Scotland’s colleges and universities, Design Your Future supports educators in embedding entrepreneurial mindset development within diverse programmes of study, co-curricular activities, and institution-wide initiatives. Its flexible, bite-sized format allows the resource to be integrated into existing modules and programmes, ensuring students across all subjects, levels, and backgrounds can inclusively and accessibly gain exposure to entrepreneurial methods and mindsets to help them flourish in the Future of Work.

    This course contributes to Scotland’s ambition to cultivate curious, creative, motivated, adaptable, empathetic, confident and resilient graduates who are prepared for a lifetime of learning, innovation, and societal contribution.

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