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.
Ricardo Ruffo – Global CEO and founder at Echos
Ricardo Ruffo is a born entrepreneur, educator, speaker and explorer. He is the founder and global CEO of Echos, an independent innovation lab driven by design and its business units: School of Design Thinking, helping to shape the next generation of innovators in 3 countries, Echos – Innovation Projects and Echos – Ventures. Naturally curious, love gets ideas flying off the paper. He always tries to see things from different angles to enact better futures. In his free time, spend exploring uninhabited places around the world surfing..
Reinaldo Campos – Partner & Head of Learning Experiences at Echos
Partner at Echos, where he has been Head of Learning Experiences since 2015, Reinaldo participated in several teams as a consultant and instructor in innovation and training projects with corporate clients in the media, health, finance, education and civil construction, among others. Among the main projects is the Google News Initiative Design Accelerator with media and communication companies in Asia-Pacific.
At our GDTA Spotlight session on May 23rd, 2023, we welcomed Guido Caicedo, Executive Director of i3lab, Dr. Sharon Guamán-Quintanilla, Academic Coordinator, and Isabel Alcívar, Lecturer and Design Thinking Facilitator. They discussed about “Turning freshmen into DThinkers.”
In our session held via zoom on Mai 12th, 2022 at 3:00 pm (CEST) / 09:00 am (EDT), we welcomed our speaker Mugendi K. M’Rithaa, Professor of Industrial Design at Machakos University. Mugendi talked about “Empathy and Community: Human-Centered Design in Afrika”
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.
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.
“Design Thinking is not Enough” – Design thinking has taught a generation of innovators to empathize, ideate, prototype, and test. It has reshaped classrooms, organizations, and how we talk about change. And yet despite decades of user-centered design, we are still failing to meaningfully shift many of the systems we care most about. In this provocative presentation, Agnes Kwek shares the reasons why “great ideas” fail to scale and pilots don’t stick. Drawing on her own experiences of large-scale systems transformation in the public sector, she reframes design thinking as a powerful but incomplete tool. Complex challenges are not user problems; they are system problems. Agnes will share how to design with systems rather than against them. This talk challenges participants to expand their role from problem-solvers to system-shapers. Design thinking set the direction. Systems thinking shows us how to get there. Agnes has over 20 years of career in the Singapore Administrative Service, with a focus on large-scale system transformation. As CEO and founder of MindTheSystem, she has trained over 800 senior executives in managing complex systems. She is based in Paris.
Michael Lewrick, bestselling author of The Design Thinking Playbook and AI and Innovation, leads an inspiring session exploring how Artificial Intelligence is transforming Design Thinking practices worldwide.
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 an exclusive GDTA Spotlight session featuring Andrey Khusid, founder and CEO of Miro! Discover the inspiring journey behind Miro’s creation, the pivotal role of Design Thinking in its development, and the founder’s unique philosophy that shaped the intelligent canvas model. Andrey will share insights on Miro’s latest AI features and his vision for the platform’s future. Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leader who has transformed collaborative workspaces worldwide.
In our session held via zoom on March 10th. 2022, from 9:00 – 11:30 am (EST) / 3:00 – 5:30 pm (CET) via Zoom, we collaborated with the IEEE Standards Association and Vienna University of Economics and Businesss to talk about “Value-Based Engineering in Design Thinking”. For more information about the event, agenda and speakers please visit the GDTA Spotlight Special website. […]
On September 12th, 2023 we welcomed our speakers Jessica Menold, Associate Professor in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and also Dr. Matt Parkinson, Professor of Engineering Design and Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University.
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 the GDTA PowWow on April 30th, 2021 Claudio Dell’Era, Associate Professor in Design Strategy and Director of the Observatory “Design Thinking for Business” of the School of Management at Politecnico di Milano talked about “Transformations in Design Thinking: from Creative Ideating to Critical Reframing“.
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Co-Founder of Prezi, shared how a personal challenge sparked a global storytelling revolution. Discover the magic of spatial visual storytelling, AI’s role in transforming presentations, and the impact of LLMs on visual thinking.
In a discussion with GDTA President Uli Weinberg, Richard Perez, Founding Director of the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking (d-school) at the University of Cape Town, and Faculty Members Luke Doman and Mark Jackson talked about how they adapted their programs during Covid-19, using technology that is accessible for all students, and shared their vision for the future of the d-school at UCT.
On April 30th, 2024 Prof. Jeanne Liedtka from University of Virginia shared the insight from her most recent book, The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide, co-authored with Natalie Foley, David Kester and Elziabeth Chen, published in February, 2024.
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.