What we’re about
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
10
- A$10.00
SydDT #123: From Conflict to Co-creation with Authenticity
Sydney, 27 - 33 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney 2010 Australia, AUWe're lucky to have Sarah Stokes and Shari Elle kicking off SydDT for 2026 with a workshop on moving from conflict to co-creation... how to structuring hard conversations with nonviolent communication.
This will be a practical workshop-style session on using authentic communication methods to navigate conflict and the difficult situations we face as designers. Things like saying no to a feature request, receiving pushback on design implementation, and the age-old speed vs quality conversations.
In the workshop you'll get to use a simple, repeatable process for turning difficult conversations into opportunities for deeper connection and collective problem-solving.
Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome!
SPEAKERS
Sarah Stokes
Design Leader, Atlassian
Sarah is a Design Leader at Atlassian with over 20 years of experience in digital and service design. She’s spent her career building design teams, coaching people to do their best work, and facilitating the kind of strategic thinking that leads to products customers actually love.
As a qualified coach, she’s genuinely invested in helping both individuals and teams grow. Sarah leads teams focused on creating products and services that make a real difference for the people who use them.
Shari Elle
Founder, The Communication Group
Shari Elle works with purpose-driven leaders who know their real edge is navigating human friction while creating better futures.
Founder of The Living Work and a globally recognised expert in leadership and human relationships, she helps leaders stay grounded, relational, and effective in moments of tension.
With 25+ years experience, Shari has supported over 10,000 people and organisations including CSIRO, CommBank, PwC, and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment to turn conflict into clarity and co-creation.
Co-founder of Nonviolent Communication in Australia, she integrates NVC with contemporary leadership and design practice.
EVENT SPONSORS
This event is brought to you by Atlassian, Sh8peshifters, and Dynamic4.
We take photos and record our events for documentation and promo purposes. Just let us know if you prefer not to be featured.10 attendees
Past events
122
