In 2022, the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA) set out to celebrate Design Thinking coming of age, as well as the discipline’s global expansion.
In September, the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam celebrated its 15-year anniversary with its Design Thinking ImpAct Conference – with students, alumni, project partners, friends, and family attending the two-day conference, along with more than 50 speakers.
All celebrations culminated with the third d.confestival – a Design Thinking conference-meets-festival hosted at the newly built HPI d-school building (funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation), home to the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town in October.
Over the course of three days, the d.confestival brought together a boisterous mix of change-makers from business, government, education, and social development to celebrate the success of Design Thinking globally and explore its potential for dialing up Africa’s creative potential to solve complex problems across the continent.
There were two big celebratory moments at the d.confestival: firstly, the GDTA celebrated its five-year anniversary of connecting the international Design Thinking community with members and delegates who attended.
Secondly, and with what was an African celebration of note, the official opening of the HPI d-school building was a momentous occasion as over 400 guests attended, explored the building and event experiences, and danced the night away to local talent, a night to remember. The building was officially launched by Prof Dr. Hasso Plattner and Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, UCT’s Vice-Chancellor, who unveiled the building naming plaque before the dancing began on 13 October.
On the last day of the d.confestival, it wrapped up with the announcement of the winning teams for the Global Design Thinking Challenge (a four-week hybrid challenge) to innovate and create solutions for the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal. As part of this Challenge, learners had the opportunity to create global impact.
Our speakers:
Prof. Uli Weinberg, GDTA President and Director at the HPI School of Design Thinking, Jenni van Niekerk, Program Curator d.confestival, Dr. Claudia Nicolai, Academic Director at the HPI School of Design Thinking, and Sherif Osman, Program Lead at the HPI School of Design Thinking.
In this session, Dr. Assaf Krebs, Dr. Yigal David, and Daniel Altman of GDTA member institution Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art talked about: “Intermediate spaces – Two perspectives on engineering, design, Design Thinking, and life itself. From Sound Engineering to Human Surfaces”.
Design Thinking has been reshaping the minds of many students and professionals globally for the past 20 years and is fast becoming the winning mindset that drives innovation and solutions to complex problems of our time. The mindset has seen major support from academia and professional networks with some great expansion over the years.
The GDTA Spotlight session on March 23rd, 2023 was about “Art thinking and design thinking in University College Cork: An innovation ‘marriage’ made in heaven.”
In this session, Jeanne Liedtka, United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia – Darden School of Business, discussed her upcoming book “Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey”.
In our talk on February 20th, 2024 four educators from SNS Insitutions Coimbatore, India shared their insights on Design Thinking in education starting with K12 to PhD in several streams. SNS had recently crossed 25yr mark with nearly 14K + student fraternity and nearly 37k+ alma mater. The Design Thinking Framework is applied to improve the quality of teaching methodologies to increase student engagement. For this to come true, one measure introduced is 3P Culture: Purpose, Process, People.
At our GDTA Spotlight session on July 29th, Hoda Mostafa and Reham Niazi from the The American University in Cairo as well as Richard Perez, Phuthehi Masilo and Lucille Roberts from the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at UCT talked about “Building a global virtual d-school: Co-creation and collaboration”.
The last online session took place on November 21st, 2023, at 3:00 p.m. (CET). We welcomed our speaker, Can Güvenir, Design Manager and lecturer at Yaşar University.
In a discussion with GDTA President Uli Weinberg, Ricardo Ruffo and Reinaldo Campos from Echos Innovation Lab in Brazil shared how they are creating online Design Thinking learning experiences between Australia and Brazil.
How passion, collaboration, and persistence turned an idea into a thriving business. Born from one of the first cohorts of the D-School Potsdam, Dark Horse defied the odds to become a sustainable business venture.
On June 27th, 2023 we welcomed Vindhya Umapathy, Design Thinking Lead at CMR University (Bangalore, India). She spoke on the topic of “Fostering Design Thinking Mindsets amongst University Students“.
Join us for a free session of the GDTA Spotlight on Tuesday, June 18th at 9.00 am SAST / 7.00am GMT for “Connecting the African Design Thinking Community: An Emergent Learning Network” with Jenni van Niekerk!
At our GDTA Spotlight session on December 14th, Prof. Dr. André Bresges, Executive Director of the Institute for Physics Didactics at the University of Cologne talked about “Teach to Start Up”.
The D-School Potsdam is stepping into a new chapter! With a fresh brand identity and an updated teaching structure, they continue to push the boundaries of Design Thinking education. At the GDTA Spotlight: “Crafting Tomorrow”, Monika Frech, co-head of the academic program team shared
The Global Design Thinking Alliance, in collaboration with the IEEE Standards Association and Vienna University of Economics and Business, invited you to the GDTA Spotlight Special Edition “Value-Based Engineering in Design Thinking,” which took place on March 10th, 2022, from 9:00-11:30 am (EST) / 3:00-5:30 pm (CET) via Zoom.
On Tuesday, May 21st we held a free interactive 60-minute session with Maria Stashenko & her team form Design Thinking Center Asia. After a brief introduction everyone played a round of their game live online:
At our GDTA Spotlight session on October 21th, Joann Halpern guided us through a “Designing Your Life” workshop, which has been adapted from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book on this subject.