About us
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) is a diverse community of 10,000+ members. We've been meeting monthly since 2015 to explore the world of design thinking as a human-centred design and living systems approach to innovation and solving complex problems – to help create positive outcomes for people, our planet, and business. We're one of the top design thinking meetups globally.
The vision for the SydDT meetup from the get go was to build a connected community and ecosystem of people from a diverse range of design and business practices, industries, contexts, and roles… to learn and share. To get exposed to what others are doing and see what's possible.
We’re proud to see this in our community – our members are experience designers, researchers, service designers, startup founders, product people, consultants, academics, anthropologists, architects, software engineers, project managers, medicos, engineers, and many other roles.
We keep it pretty casual with plenty of time for networking before jumping into talks, panels, and workshops on a broad range of topics - with a healthy Q&A that often turns into a group discussion. You can read a bit about the history and journey of our community and events here.
New members are welcome! If you’re not already a member, feel free to join our community. Each meetup audience is curated to a degree to make sure we have a mix of new people, as well as the committed regulars.
We’d love to hear from you if you’re keen to speak – or if there’s someone you think we should invite to speak.
Thanks
Ben Pecotich, Kylie Mageropoulos, Kate Linton & Lucas Mara
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) Organising Team
Upcoming events
5
- A$10.00
SydDT #128: When Does Design Become Strategic?
Atlassian (level 6), 341 George Street, Sydney, AUMost designers want to be more strategic.
But what does that actually mean?
Is strategic design about working on bigger problems? Influencing executives? Creating visions and roadmaps? Driving transformation?
Or are we confusing good design with strategic design?
Join a panel of experienced strategic design leaders as we explore one of the most debated questions in our profession:
What makes design strategic?Each speaker will share a short lightning talk before we open up a panel discussion and audience conversation.
We'll explore:
- What strategic design is
- What it isn't and common misconceptions and traps
- How strategic design differs from other design disciplines
- Where strategic design is heading
- How designers can increase their strategic influence and impact
Expect diverse perspectives, thoughtful discussions and practical insights for designers at every stage of their career.
SPEAKERS
DR LEANNE SOBEL
Dr Leanne Sobel is a strategic designer, researcher and educator. Her PhD research explored the role of design in strategy, and her work focuses on applying design practices, systems thinking and participatory approaches to complex organisational challenges.
With experience spanning consulting, academia and industry, Leanne is a leading voice in the evolving field of strategic design.JAIMES NEL
Jaimes is Founder of Path Ventures, a Sydney-based consultancy helping organisations connect strategy to action through design-led approaches. With more than 20 years of experience spanning service design, digital transformation and organisational change, Jaimes has worked with organisations including the NHS, BBC, GOV.UK, Westpac, ING and TAL. His work focuses on helping organisations "play the long game" by using strategic design to navigate complexity and deliver lasting change.PAUL MERRELL
Paul is a design leader and strategist with extensive experience applying service design and human-centred approaches to organisational transformation. Currently with Allianz Australia, Paul works at the intersection of customer experience, business strategy and change, helping organisations navigate complexity and deliver meaningful outcomes.
His work is grounded in the belief that meaningful change happens when strategy connects with the realities of people, systems and delivery.FOURTH SPEAKER TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON
TBCEVENT SPONSORS
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38 attendees
Past events
127
