What we’re about
PDT is a community of creative problem solvers advancing human-centered design literacy through high-quality events, lively conversation, and practice-based development.
We're made up of all kinds of people: practitioners who use human-centered design methods and mindsets every day, designers and researchers, design strategists, Agile scrum leaders, urban planners, and many more who use or appreciate Design Thinking.
One way to define design thinking is that it is a mindset, approach, and set of tools and techniques for problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design. Design thinking is different from other innovation and ideation processes in that it’s solution-based and user-centric rather than problem-based. This means it focuses on the solution to a problem instead of the problem itself. Design thinking is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity, and rationality to meet human needs and drive business success.
Typically, we meet monthly, mostly virtually, and occasionally in person. Our monthly meetings, announced through MeetUp, may be webinar-style, or interactive and focus on some topic of interest to our community.
But we're about more than just meetup events.
You can find information about our upcoming events as well as links to recordings of past events on our website [PortlandDesignThinkers.com](portlanddesignthinkers.com).
We have an active, private Slack workspace – it is a thriving online discussion space for all things design thinking. Please join us there --[ https://bit.ly/2JuQ2V6](https://bit.ly/2JuQ2V6).
We also have a private LinkedIn group. Please join us there as well – https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13997019/.
PDT is a volunteer-run organization. We rely on sponsors and donations to help us offset these costs. If you or your organization is interested in sponsorship opportunities, please contact Deb Mrazek (dmrazek@curiate.co ).
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Developing a Recipe for ResearchLink visible for attendees
Portland Design Thinkers are thrilled to welcome Kate Tetreault of America's Test Kitchen to talk with us about Developing a Recipe for Research:
Research and testing are built into our DNA at America's Test Kitchen. Our test cooks research, develop, and analyze recipes in our state-of-the-art kitchen, then pass them along to our panel of 70,000 home cooks to pressure test in real kitchens. In the lab next door, our Reviews Team conducts comprehensive (and unbiased) research and testing to determine which ingredients and equipment are worth home cooks’ time, effort, and money.
As a Product Design team, we wanted our user testing and research platforms to match these rigorous standards. In this session, I’ll share our scrappy journey to ‘Food for Thought’ – our co-design panel of home cooks.
About our Speaker:
Kate Tetreault leads the Product Design Team at America’s Test Kitchen. She lives in the Boston area with her partner and two cats, voraciously consuming TV mysteries and gluten-free snacks in her spare time.***
Community Survey: Help shape PDT's future by sharing your ideas and support in our quick community survey. Your input directly strengthens our events and programming! https://tinyurl.com/34vyzaek
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If you have any questions or would like to connect with other members of PDT, join our Slack community.PDT is a volunteer-run Oregon nonprofit organization, and as you can imagine, organizing events can be expensive. We rely on sponsors and donations to help us offset these costs. If you would like to help, we accept donations through Venmo @PortlandDesignThinkers.
