UPCOMING EVENTS
THURS · May, 23rd · 5:30 pm Pacific
The power of Design and strategic foresight
An exploration of the combined power of Design and Strategic Foresight in practice: why and how to apply human-centric research, creativity, and long-term mindset to strategic business problem-solving.
Join us for an enlightening evening as Lucy Ziegler shares her expertise, providing invaluable insights and practical strategies to enhance your approach to tackling challenges.
PAST EVENTS
THURS · April 18th, 2024
Herding the cats with Service blueprinting
In any human experience-centered program, bringing vision to optimized execution requires continuous cross-functional alignment and collaboration, which often falls apart! Nan will discuss how she has used Service Blueprinting as a key framework to drive alignment in complex organizations.
You will learn how UX and Service Design are complementary, the difference between journey mapping and service blueprinting, and why it is important to take a systems view to be a successful design professional.
THURS · March 28th, 2024
Surprises & SPeed bumps when practicing design thinking
As a design-thinker, you might often find yourself collaborating with individuals who may not fully understand the value of your approach. How do you effectively advocate for design thinking and demonstrate its impact on your projects and organization? Learn from seasoned experts on how to thrive (or survive) in a dynamic, multi-function workplace. Whether you're an experienced pro or just starting out, bring your questions and gain valuable strategies to adapt, innovate, and lead.
THURS · Feb 22nd, 2024
How neighborhoods become marvelous
Beginning in the 1970's with the titanic struggle and eventual victory to create Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portlanders have been attracting the attention of the world. Our efforts to retrofit our city to make it the most liveable of all, and then the most sustainable of all, has made us an urban case study rivaled by few others.
Yet, while we remain leading placemakers in the minds of many, it may be that the most important work has not yet been done, right where we live.
THURS · Jan 11th, 2024
AI joins the team: integrating ai into research
Explore the dynamic relationship between the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework and AI in research with renowned industry expert Jim Kalbach. Investigate the pivotal role of AI tools, including ChatGPT, in refining target jobs, generating comprehensive job maps, and swiftly grasping unfamiliar fields. AI can improve efficiency but also learn from Jim about the importance of understanding its limitations.
THURS · Dec 21st, 2023
Personal Brand Sprint
Focus on your brand, defining the path of your choosing. This session will be focused on personal brand, but can easily be done for a small business or start-up. In this hands-on session, Heather will lead you in the method she has used as a Design Strategist for Reverence Global digital media firm and as an independent consultant.
You'll walk away with:
· clear goals · outlined target audiences · keys to your niche · your secret sauce defined
THURS · Nov 30th, 2023
Can we design a warning system for democracy?
Individual changes gradually add up to something bigger; but in a multivariate world, how are we assessing and communicating gradual evolution of the big picture, and are we instilling urgency and direction with our storytelling?
In the 50’s, The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists unveiled the Doomsday Clock to galvanize attention to the threat of nuclear war; more recently they’ve attempted to alert people against other existential threats like climate change.
The US has seen troubling developments in politics and society, leading to concern across a political spectrum that we are either heading toward authoritarianism or already in it. We’ll explore the challenge of designing a “Doomsday Clock” for democracy.
THURS · Oct 12th, 2023
Turning Empathy into Action – This Is How Digital Products Attain True Success
Turning empathy into action in digital product experiences is crucial for creating products that resonate with users, provide value, and foster positive relationships between users and businesses. It not only leads to better user satisfaction but also contributes to the success and reputation of the product and the company behind it. In this talk, Damon will cover why it is so important, various methods to achieve it, how to measure it, and how to ensure it is continually improved.
THURS · Sept 7th, 2023
Virtual Improv Shenanigans for Design Thinkers
Ignite your design thinking with a twist of spontaneity in a "Virtual Improv Shenanigans for Design Thinkers" session. Join us for an electrifying online experience where creativity meets unpredictability. Led by seasoned improvisor and consultant, Kat Kojic of Hello Gorgeous, this session blends laughter and innovative challenges to enhance your adaptability, ideation, and collaboration skills. Get ready to break free from the ordinary, improvise with fellow designers, and fuel your imagination in unexpected ways!
THURS · Aug 10th, 2023
In-person rooftop happy hour
Portland Design Thinkers are thrilled to announce another Rooftop Happy Hour! Join us for lively conversation, networking, and real, live, face-to-face time with your fellow Design Thinkers!
THURS · July 20th, 2023
Sketchnoting 101: visual thinking for design thinkers
Sketchnoting isn't art. It's communication.
Accessible, visual communication focused on clarity and transferring of knowledge quickly and efficiently. It’s a skill that can benefit everyone and brings joy to those who see and create sketchnotes. As Design Thinkers, we often have to communicate how and why this seemingly "unorthodox" method of problem-solving is so effective. Visual thinking can help win over your audience and get their buy-in sooner and with more dedication to the process. So grab a paper and pen and join this hands-on session to get started sketchnoting and learn how visual thinking can benefit your communication, work, and overall life (for real!).
TUES · July 11th, 2023
New rules for work
An experimental meeting designed to test how a meeting’s location and technology impact meeting results.
By participating in this experiment, you can help answer questions about when groups should meet in person and how to have the best possible meeting experience no matter where you might be. You may also experience new meeting techniques and technology that you can use in your work.
THURS · June 22nd, 2023
From Silos to synergy
Design Thinking as we know it today is largely a product of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Championed by Stanford’s d.school and with significant contributions and commoditization from design firms, Design Thinking became popular as a way to apply a design approach to business and innovation. It was in this milieu in 2006 that I began working at Intel as an Anthropologist.
Over the course of two decades, Todd has adapted his own toolkit of methods to suit the audiences, challenges, resources, and desired outcomes of specific projects. With experience and time, he has moved from rejecting Design Thinking to embracing it, to relegating elements of it to a part of a multi- (or anti-disciplinary) collaborative toolkit. This talk will illustrate with examples from his work in consumer electronics, fashion, fitness, health and sports how my approach to collaborative design has evolved.
THURS · May 18th, 2023
in-person event: Meet your fellow Pdt’ers
Portland Design Thinkers’ first in-person event of the year. A great evening of interesting conversation, fun networking games, light nibbles and drinks!
THURS · April 27, 2023
Lessons From the Trenches of Teaching & Consulting on Design Thinking
Mary Sherwin has been teaching the ins and outs of product design and design thinking at the graduate level for over 10 years, from California College of the Arts to Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design to Pacific Northwest College of Art and everywhere in between. In this talk, she’ll go over what her students have appreciated most over the years: stronger and better ways to use tried-and-true design thinking tools. Did you ever really get taught how to brainstorm? What about timeboxing? Event cycles within journey maps?
THURS · March 23, 2023
Growing Design ethics
Charles has been designing, inventing and making in a variety of industries across North America. He's led a wide array of efforts, from online learning to AR/VR museums to digital banking perks, for clients including BMW, Pillsbury, the government of British Columbia and Televisa. Among other current projects, he's growing a design ethics community group in one of the country's largest UX design studios, at U.S. Bank.
This talk will discuss the intersection of design, ethics, and four related topics: behavioral science, data science, personalization at scale, and inclusive design - And what this has to do with making sandwiches.
THURS · Feb 23, 2023
the Science of Storytelling: How the Brain Fires on Story.
100,000 years of human reliance on story has rewired the human brain to think in story terms and story structure to make sense and create meaning out of events and others’ actions.
Meaning…Cells that fire together wire together.
And, this evolutionary predisposition is reinforced by the dominant use of story throughout childhood.
So what does this mean for all of us? How can we use this knowledge to create memorable stories? And how can we use our predisposition to turn everything that enters through sensory input into story for engagement?
MON · Jan 30, 2023
Cultivating Collaboration
Join us for a student-led presentation by the University of Oregon’s Senior Product Design Research class. The online event will reveal the results of a collaboration between PDT’s Advisors (Deb Mrazek, John Furukawa, Colin Bay, and Herman D’Hooge) and the UO students.
The students engaged in a research sprint with their PDT Advisors to uncover valuable insights about PDT’s member community and ecosystem. Over five days, students practiced primary and secondary research, including interviews with members. The four student teams will present their findings to the PDT community for feedback.
THURS · Jan. 26, 2023
Catalytic Factor Analysis:
A New Method for Addressing Wicked Problems
Many (most?) of our design-research methods are designed for point-problems that demand point solutions. All good. But not so good when those methods are applied to complex problems.
Catalytic Factor Analysis is a method designed to address complex sociotechnical challenges through a structured conversation with the crowd. This technique specifically creates a means for both characterizing wicked socio-technical problems and identifying the focus areas to transform the system toward a resolution. The result is the ability to focus resources – state, civil, and institutional, political, entrepreneurial, and educational – on those catalytic factors to transform the system. I will use several examples from recent work to illustrate the method.
THURS · Dec. 1, 2022
Are you job ready?
Jobs associated with design and design thinking have been increasingly attractive to people wanting to make a career change, but there is so much information out there knowing what steps to take can be difficult. Are you exploring a career change or thinking about making some shifts within your current role? Are you looking for inspiration and guidance from other people on similar journeys? Are you job-ready? Join the conversation and bring your questions!
Joined by industry experts with years of experience hiring for tech:
Andréa LeGare: Formerly Intel HR, H Management Consulting
John Furukawa: Fresh Consulting Managing Director
Jonathon Hensley: Co-founder and CEO of Emerge Interactive
Deb Mrazek: Co-founder of Curiate
THURS · Nov. 17, 2022
Herman d’hooge: what do prototypes prototype?
There is a saying at IDEO: “If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a prototype is worth 10,000 meetings.” Prototyping is an inseparable element of Design Thinking; both as mindset and as practice. It’s the Design Doing sibling of Design Thinking. While it’s impossible to overstate the power and importance of prototyping throughout the design process, it remains one of the most underutilized, misunderstood, and often misused parts of the process.
This talk explores a range of prototyping-related topics:
What do prototypes really prototype?
Who are they for and how should they be used?
What kinds of prototypes are most useful at what stages in the design & development process or throughout the customer journey?
Practical tips on how to embed prototyping into your team’s or organization’s everyday way of working.
And adding the presenter’s quote: “The road to product success is paved with prototypes.”
THURS · Oct. 13, 2022
Leo frishberg: Shifts in the workplace
COVID and the global pandemic’s impact on working norms continue to raise questions about the nature of work and the “new normal.”
How much time should employees be “in the office?” What is the impact of a fully remote workforce on an organization’s productivity, innovation and culture? By shifting work to our homes, how do organizations address employee safety, equity, access and privilege?
These are just some of the questions athenahealth (the second largest electronic health records company in the US) raised in its “Future of Work” strategic initiative.
In this talk, Frishberg offers a case study of athena’s design thinking and experimental approach to addressing these (and other) questions. Not limiting its lens to technological fixes, the athena Workplace Experience (athenaWE) taskforce embraced architecture, DEI, and cultural values, in addition to technology, to explore the future of work landscape of opportunity. Frishberg will share unsettling, surprising and unconventional insights gleaned from the athenaWE taskforce’s work that likely have universal appeal.
THURS · Sept. 15, 2022
An evening of Q & A with Kristina Halvorson
Bring your questions about Content Strategy, Information Architecture, UX Writing, and more for a fun evening with great company and conversation!
About our Speaker:
Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the most important voices in content strategy. Her seminal book Content Strategy for the Web is credited with sparking the recognition of content strategy as a critical field of practice. Kristina is the CEO and founder of Brain Traffic, a content strategy services firm. She is also the executive producer of the Confab and Button conferences, and the host of The Content Strategy Podcast. Kristina lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with two amazing teenagers and a very good dog.
THURS · Aug. 25, 2022
In-person rooftop happy hour
PDT is thrilled to announce our first in-person event since 2020!
Join us for lively conversation, networking, and real, live, face-to-face time with your fellow Design Thinkers!
Extra special thanks to Fresh Consulting, Concrete, and Curiate for making this event possible!!
THURS · July 21, 2022
POST-APOCALYPTIC USER RESEARCH
After a sudden wrenching change to remote-only research and 2 years of sanding down the painful burrs, we've all learned a few things. It's time to think again about where in-person research is superior but also where our research practice should lean permanently to the remote side of the boat after the pandemic is over.
THURS · June 30, 2022
birds of a feather
Share your experiences, learn something new, and connect with others in the Portland Design Thinkers Community!
Join your choice of virtual breakout rooms and spend time with fellow PDTers on a special topic of interest.
THURS · June 9, 2022
Forget WCAG, Here Are Some Common Ways You’re Leaving People Out & How to Remedy
Accessibility basics to help designers better understand accessibility as a person-first design opportunity versus a compliance task at the end of a product build. The goal of this talk is to empower others to feel more confident in creating a better accessible product, to be able to better think through all user needs, as well as where and how to change existing design practices without the intimidation of complex language and guidelines.
THURS · May 19, 2022
Envisioning the future to empower Action
…or how to make Comic Books for the US Army
We will explore how to use applied futures methodologies to not only envision a range
of possible and potential futures but how to turn these into actionable tools to change
the future...like comic books!
THURS · Apr. 28, 2022
Durable Design: Leveraging Foresight for Multiple Scenarios.
Design Thinking and Futures methods have increasingly aligned. How can you leverage proven foresight practices to inspire present-day design for future people, communities, and ecologies?
THURS · July 15, 2021
Designing a Better Remote Workshop Platform with 'Butter'
Cheska Teresa, Chief Growth Officer for Butter, wIll talk to us about their mission to empower facilitators to host even better online workshops than in the physical world, and how the COVID pandemic jump-started their plans. We’ll have a chance to play around with Butter — and even more, provide some feedback on cool new concepts that Butter has in development!
THURS · June 17, 2021
Spring Hackathon Part II: Service Blueprinting Portland's Vaccination Experience
Part II: We’ll dig into the Byzantine backstage machinations that make it all possible with a Service Blueprint. Whether you were with us on May 6 or not doesn't matter. We'll have a crack at deconstructing one of the most ambitious municipal projects the City and State have ever mounted: the vaccination of nearly 400,000 people at the Oregon Convention Center and select drive-up sites.
THURS · June 3, 2021
Infusing Design Thinking to Raise Organizational Design Maturity at MURAL
Showing, not telling is a great storytelling principle, but it’s also great for proving the value of a human-centered design process. In the spirit of showing not telling, we’ll get to see one of the ways MURAL lives and breathes design thinking on June 3rd through a hands-on workshop to brainstorm ways to raise organizational design maturity.
THURS · May 20, 2021
George Aye on Design Ethics: What Happens When We Reach Peak Craft?
Weaknesses baked into our discipline (that have been present from the start) are readily exposed when designers enter complex social issues and treat them like any other human-centered innovation challenge. The lack of a moral framework, let alone a set of ethical guidelines, put designers at great risk of doing more harm than good.
THURS · May 6, 2021
SPRING HACKATHON PART I: JOURNEY MAPPING PORTLAND’S VACCINATION EXPERIENCE
Whether you approach it as Journey Mapping, Service Blueprinting, Experience Diagramming, or something else, visualizing the people, props, and policies of an end-user’s experience is a powerful tool in our innovation arsenal. Knowing how to use this accessible method to capture user experiences, their emotions, and reveal opportunities for creating more intuitive, useful, and delightful experiences is critical for today’s design practitioners. The rise of the experience economy — and of customer expectations — has made this skill indispensable for any forward-thinking business.
With a monumental Covid-19 vaccination effort currently underway on an unheard-of scale across Portland, the state and the country, it seems a great opportunity to bring our communities together to noodle over an experience nearly all of us will have notched at some point this spring and summer. And given the speed and scale at which these operations have been organized, it seems likely they’ll be rich with opportunities for improvement. What better way to dig into the mechanics, and the benefits, of mapping, blueprinting and diagramming with our communities?
More reading from the Portland Mercury here:
Oregon’s Largest Vaccination Site is a Logistical Masterpiece. We Take You Inside.
https://bit.ly/3vrPuoo
THURS · APR 8, 2021
Method Deep Dive: Concept Poster [Hands-On]
In order to pitch a great idea to your colleagues, it can help to think like advertising genuis William Bernbach, who said, “Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.” An effective Concept Poster is a powerful method for promoting an idea and rallying support for its development. It's also a great way to take the seed of a good idea and quickly collaborate with a team to bring that idea to life — to make it feel real. A good concept poster lands somewhere short of a full storyboard; it's got everything needed to convey the breadth of an idea and its implementation in a single page, long before we get to the detailed 50-slide design brief. Perfect for creating buy-in, or for soliciting quick feedback.
THURS · MAR 25, 2021
WHEN MINDFULNESS MEETS DESIGN THINKING
In March 2020 Dharani Perera took a sabbatical from her work in Singapore as a Senior Design Strategist at Grab (Southeast Asia's powerhouse version of Uber or Lyft) and moved to Bali to embark on her own ‘Eat Pray Love’ journey. At the time she took what she thought was a break from her role as a human-centered designer and went deeper into mindful healing practices such as meditation, yoga and breathwork.
As her journey unfolded, however, Dharani started to see unmistakable connections between mindfulness and the human-centered design practice — in particular mindful listening and mindful observation.
“Mindful listening and observation means giving purposeful and full attention to the people and the environment without judgment,” Perera says. "So, too, does human centered design."
In a human-centered design practice, building deep empathy for our users and stakeholders is critical for the success of the products and services we eventually build. But the empathy we employ is grounded in the mindset with which we approach it. In Dharani's journey, she found regular practice of mindfulness modalities such as meditation, yoga and dance deepened this mindset
LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/dharani-perera
