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What we’re about
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) is a diverse community of 9,000+ 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 (4+)
See all- SydDT #102: Get seen and get your best ideas built, with skills you already haveThinkPlace Sydney, Surry HillsA$10.00
Design is missing a trick. Instead of patting each other on the back in our creative echo chamber, we need to shout out from the rooftops what difference we can make. The secret? Use our empathy skills to understand and speak to what business cares about. Think it's selling out? It's the difference between your idea being built or shelved to collect dust.
Get Seen, Get Prioritised And Get Your Best Ideas Built - With The Skills You Already Have
We’ve all been there: poured everything into a project we believed in. Felt deeply the experience of those we interviewed, and developed the perfect solution that would meet the needs of real people in an elegant way. But nothing happened. You shared it with your client or your boss — and while they nodded, nothing came of it.
Your project — which deserved to see the light of day — has been shelved, possibly forever. So how do we stop this from happening next time?
In this Talk, Atlassian’s Tarra will prove that we already have the answer. We can use our curiosity and empathy skills to understand and speak to what our stakeholders really care about. Because once we reframe the benefit of our idea, we’ll find much greater success.
Tarra will give real-world examples that showcase how we can translate our ideas and create results we never imagined possible. You don’t have to sell out to triumph over those who care about the bottom line — but you do need some real talk about how to get your idea built.
Our Speaker - Tarra Van Amerongen
Tarra van Amerongen - Dutch name, Canadian accent, builder of design teams in Sydney. Starting in business, Tarra fell in love with design and has made translating why "design should power business" her life's work. She has led design teams at CommBank, BCGDV, Fjord, ustwo and Atlassian.-
Tarra van Amerongen from Atlassian Design will join us fresh from her closing keynote at The Design Conference. We are so lucky to have one of industry design leaders share her insights from her ten years in the design industry.
Event Sponsors
ThinkPlace - SydDT #103/Design Connection: Operationalising Great Work Cultures with Dan SzucThoughtworks, SydneyA$10.00
RSVPs ARE OPEN BUT NOT ON THIS PAGE. BUY YOUR TICKET HERE!
We're lucky to have Dan Szuc from Make Meaningful Work visiting from Hong Kong to introduce CultureOps™ - a methodology that transforms organisational culture from an abstract concept into a tangible, actionable strategy.
Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design community. New members are welcome!
CultureOps™ focuses on "Moments that Matter," empowering individuals, teams and organisations to maximise their impact on culture by inserting meaning into pivotal “Moments that Matter” that explicitly shape engaging cultures at work.
Dan will present how CultureOps™ helps to:
- Define Critical “Moments that Matter" - Identify pivotal instances that shape culture
- Convert problems in “Moments that Matter” - Create measurable practices that drive tangible results
- Sustain Healthy Cultures - Optimise projects measured by SPARKLE: evaluating Supportiveness, Proactivity, Respect, Kindness, Listening, and Engagement
SPEAKER
Dan Szuc
Co-founder, Make Meaningful Work
Dan is a co-founder and principal at Apogee and co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, as well as the co-founder of UX Hong Kong. He has been involved in the UX field for over 30 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for over 25 years.Dan has lectured about user-centered design globally. He has co-authored three books including Global UX with Whitney Quesenbery, the Usability Kit with Gerry Gaffney and Make Meaningful Work with Josephine Wong.
DESIGN CONNECTION
Design Connection #2 is another in our design megameetup series.Design Connection is a collective of three Sydney design meetups... Ben Pecotich from Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT), Adam Faulkner from Enterprise UX (EUX), and Kevin Wilkins from Creative Customer Experience (CCX), with Susan Wolfe and Vera Chan being the backbone of Design Connection 😃
EVENT SPONSORS
This event is brought to you by Thoughtworks, Sh8peshifters, Leapfrog Studio, and Dynamic4. - SydDT #104: World Inclusion DayThoughtworks, SydneyA$10.00
Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design community. New members are welcome!
More details closer to the date...
EVENT SPONSORS
A huge thanks to our sponsors for this event... Thoughtworks for hosting and Dynamic4. - SydDT #105: Meetup @ SXSW SydneySydney CBD, NSW
We're stoked SydDT is part of the SXSW Sydney 2024 program. Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design community. You need to be a SXSW Sydney badge holder to attend this event.
This will be a casual and interactive meetup for anyone interested in design thinking.
More details coming when our timeslot and venue are announced.
SPEAKER/FACILITATOR
Ben Pecotich
Design & Innovation Director/Founder at Dynamic4
Ben is a designer, coach, and founder of Dynamic4 – a social enterprise and B Corp focused on leadership, design, and innovation for happier communities.He coaches, trains, and works alongside leaders to solve problems that matter in more empathic and innovative ways – to create great outcomes for people and our planet while being financially successful and increasing wellbeing – to help accelerate the transition to more regenerative ways of living and doing business.
Over the past 30+ years, Ben has led, designed, and delivered strategic change in financial services working in Australia, NZ, the UK, and Europe. He’s focused on taking a human-centred design and living systems approach to bring together strategy, design, and tech. During this time he’s also been a founder of over 20 startups/social enterprises.
Ben's also the author of Solve Problems That Matter: Design, Build & Launch Your Social Enterprise Idea and co-founder of the Sydney Design Thinking meetup.
Sydney Design Thinking
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) is a diverse community of 9,000+ members. We’ve been meeting monthly since 2015 to explore the world of design thinking as a human-centred design 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. You can watch some of our meetups here.
SydDT is all about helping build a connected community 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 be inspired. New members are welcome!
EVENT SPONSOR
Hosted by SXSW Sydney and sponsored by Dynamic4.