Design thinking training cost in the Philippines: length and group size

On-Off Group

October 2026

Design thinking training cost in the Philippines is driven by four things: how many days you run, how many people are in the room, how many facilitators that group size needs, and whether the work uses a live problem from your business or a generic case study.

This is for the person who has to put design thinking training on a budget line and defend it to their boss. You need a figure, a date range, a headcount and an answer when your boss asks what comes back from it.

We have run these sessions for Philippine banks and insurers since 2015. Here is what makes a quote go up or down, how long each format takes, and what you need ready before anyone books a room.

No fixed price here, because the quote depends on your headcount and how many days you run. What follows is how to work out which end of the range you are in before you ask.

What the quote is actually made of

When finance asks why one proposal is double another, it usually comes down to how many days in the room, how many people, and how many facilitators.

Four things move it:

Days in the room. Three hours, one day, two days. Longer sessions also need more preparation before anyone turns up.
Number of participants. More people means more tables, more materials, more facilitators.
Working on a real problem of yours. That means pre-work: reading your customer journey maps, talking to the process owner, sometimes recruiting customers for the test.
Certification or not. A certificate adds assessment and admin after the session.

Venue, food and printing usually sit on your side of the budget, not the trainer's. Worth checking which proposal includes them, because two quotes that look far apart are sometimes the same number with the catering moved. Our custom workshop pricing, length and what you need to prepare page sets out how we scope a session, so you can see which of those four things you are changing.

How long it takes

People often buy three hours and expect a pilot at the end of it. Or they buy five days when the team only needs to understand the method well enough to follow it.

Rough guide:

Three hours. Everyone leaves knowing what the method is and roughly what a team does in the room. Good before a bigger programme. Not enough to change anything.
One day. A team works through one problem end to end, quickly, and produces a rough concept.
Two days. Same, with time to put the concept in front of a few real users and change it.
Five days. At that length it is a design sprint rather than training, and you get a tested concept out of it.

If you are not sure which of those you are buying, what is design thinking and what a team does in the room describes the actual exercises, and what is a design sprint and what you have at the end of it covers the five day version.

Calendar time is longer than delivery time. Assume two to three weeks between agreeing the scope and running the session, more if we need to talk to your customers first.

Group size, and why it changes the price

Design thinking is done at tables of five or six people. Group size is counted in tables, so everything else follows from that.

Up to about 24 people works well with one lead facilitator and support. Above that, you either add facilitators or run the same session twice with two groups on different dates. Both cost more, and running two dates spreads the training over weeks, so your pilot starts later.

Smaller is often better value. Twelve people from one product area who go back to the same customer journey will do more with it than a big mixed group who never meet again. If the process owner and someone from branch operations are at the same table, the arguments get settled there, not over email the following week. Design thinking training for bank teams from different departments explains how we set those tables up.

What you need to bring

The sessions that stall are the ones where nobody brought a real problem. The group practises on a made up example, enjoys the day, and nothing changes on Monday.

Bring:

One live problem with a name on it. Onboarding turnaround time. Claims paperwork. A drop-off point in a customer journey you already know about.
The person who owns that process, in the room for the whole session.
Whatever customer evidence exists already, even if it is messy. Call centre complaints count.
Access to a handful of real customers or branch staff for the testing part, if the format includes testing.

That last one is the thing most often missed. Booking real customers for the testing session takes chasing, and it has to start before the workshop, not during it.

The number that gets the training approved again next year

Attendance and a good feedback score tell you people showed up, but that's it. When your boss asks in six months whether it worked, you need one number that existed before the session.

So write one down first. Turnaround time on the onboarding flow. Completion rate on the application form. Number of calls to the branch about the same step. One number, measured the week before, measured again after the pilot ships.

On a series of five day design sprints with a large insurer, customer-facing web journeys that previously took six months or more to get live were designed and tested with customers in two weeks and live in four. That is 26 weeks down to 4. Completion rates on the new journeys rose 80 percent and the old drop-off points went away. Those figures exist because the client measured the old journey first. Without a number from before, there is nothing to compare the new journey to.

What to do this week

Pick one live problem, with an owner, that the training will work on.
Write down one number for that problem as it stands today, and where it came from.
Decide the format: three hours to teach the language, one or two days to get a tested concept.
Count the people and divide by six. That tells you tables, facilitators and whether you need two dates.
Check who is booking the customers or branch staff for the testing session, and start that now.

Questions people ask

How long does design thinking training take?
Formats run from a three hour introduction to a two day workshop, with five days being a design sprint rather than training. A three hour session teaches the language; two days lets a team run through a problem and test something with users.

How many people should be in one session?
Work in tables of five or six. Up to about 24 people is comfortable with one lead facilitator and support; beyond that you either add facilitators or run two cohorts, and both change the price.

What do we need to prepare before the workshop?
One live problem with an owner in the room, whatever customer evidence you already have, and access to a few real customers or branch staff for testing. Without those, teams practise on a made up case and nothing lands on Monday.

How do we prove the training worked?
Pick one number before the session, such as turnaround time or completion rate on a customer journey, write it down, then measure the same number after the pilot ships. Attendance and feedback scores only tell you people showed up.

On-Off Group trains teams, tests products with real customers, finds where a transformation has stalled and builds what gets it moving, for banks, insurers and enterprises in the Philippines, since 2015. How we help with design thinking.