About us
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 (debmrazek@gmail.com ).
Upcoming events
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Some Assembly Required: Shipping With AI
·OnlineOnlinePortland Design Thinkers are excited to announce our next event with James Sheak: Some Assembly Required: Shipping With AI
What does it actually feel like to build something with AI?
In this session, James Sheak shares the unfiltered story of what it's actually like to build and ship an app with no coding background. Not by learning to code, but by figuring out a workflow that worked for him.
Practical, personal, and a little scrappy. Just like the process itself.
About our Speaker:
James Sheak is a product design leader with 15+ years at companies like DoorDash, Meta, Amazon, and Chime. He runs a coaching practice helping designers and founders push past generic solutions and find real creative breakthroughs. On the side, he builds and ships his own apps, including HouseHop, an iOS tool born out of his own house-hunting frustration. He lives in the Bay Area and splits his time between coaching, building, and his work at Microsoft AI.***
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.
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