Sydney Design Thinking, Sydney (2026)

17/08/2026

𝗦𝘆𝗱𝗗𝗧 #𝟭𝟯𝟬: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗮 𝗣𝗶𝗹𝗮𝘄𝗮 & 𝗪𝗮𝗶 𝗬𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲 𝗞𝘄𝗼𝗸. 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟬 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 @ 𝟲𝗽𝗺

Designers spend years learning how to shape products, services, and experiences.

But some of the most important design work happens live, in the room – facilitating conversations, building trust, navigating uncertainty, and helping people feel safe enough to contribute honestly.

We’re lucky to have Pamela Pilawa and Wai Yin Vicente Kwok joining us for our September SydDT meetup to explore what designers can learn from performance, physical theatre, and immersive experience design…

Great facilitators don’t just run workshops. They shape emotion, attention, participation, atmosphere, and human connection in real time.

Because workshops, co-design sessions, and facilitation environments are experiences… we can intentionally design the conditions for the experience we hope to create with our participants.

This session isn’t about becoming performers. It’s about learning from experts whose craft depends on understanding people in the moment…

Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome! Grab your ticket now… https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-130-performance-skills-of-great-designers

This event is brought to you by Thoughtworks, Shapeshifters, The Growth Habit, and Dynamic4.

12/08/2026

𝗦𝘆𝗱𝗗𝗧 #𝟭𝟮𝟵: 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹. 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟯 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 @ 𝟲𝗽𝗺
For Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT), this month we’re having some casual drinks at The Rook. No formalities or talks, just a good chance to connect with the community and welcome new people. New friends and old.

Free to attend… and just pay for your own drinks and food at the bar. We’ve booked a space for about 40.

Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome! Grab your ticket now… https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-129-community-social

See you there 😃

30/07/2026

We had a very full house for Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) #128 last week as we explored a deceptively simple question… When does design become strategic?

We were lucky to have Leanne Sobel, Jaimes Nel, Lize Wordsworth, Paul Merrell, and Laura Kostanski share five different but connected perspectives.

Leanne grounded the conversation in her research into the different roles design can play in strategy. Her framing of strategy as knowledge and capability was a useful reminder that strategy isn’t just imagining a desired future. It’s also having the power and ability to make it real.

Jaimes focused on the unknown. His provocation was that the need for strategy disappears when everything is within our control. Strategic design isn’t about executing a fixed plan against a fixed world. It’s about coordinating people and work towards an intent while the context, risks, and possibilities keep changing.

Paul explored how strategic designers zoom between an artefact, an interaction, a service, an organisation, and the wider systems they sit within.

Lize brought that into the practical reality of organisations – creating shared objects, language, and data that help people see value differently and turn strategic intent into action.

Laura shared some important progress in making design visible as a profession. Australia now has a dedicated Design Professionals minor group in the new Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, and the 2026 Census will be the first Census coded under it.

So, if you are a designer, write your actual discipline and keep “designer” in your occupation on Census Night… Tuesday, 11 August. The tasks you describe matter too. Check out the Write DESIGNER campaign for the details. https://www.design.org.au/write-designer

The conversation kept coming back to intent, outcomes, uncertainty, and influence.

Strategic design is a practice of working across perspectives, asking better questions, making possibilities tangible, and helping people navigate complexity towards meaningful change.

Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a fun night. Couldn’t make it or just want to relive it? Watch it now. https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-128-when-does-design-become-strategic

Thanks to Li Wang who did the awesome graphic recording this month. This initiative is a collaboration with Shapeshifters. SydDT is a friendly environment for people to practice their live graphic recording skills.

A shout out and thanks to Bex Haar for another great write-up with her reflections and key takeaways.

A massive thanks to Frankie Balfour from Atlassian, Alan Chen and Diana Ayoub from Shapeshifters, and Dynamic4 for making it all happen. And Lucas Mara for being the lead organiser for this one.

25/06/2026

𝗦𝘆𝗱𝗗𝗧 #𝟭𝟮𝟴: 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰? 𝗪𝗲𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟮𝟮 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 @ 𝟲𝗽𝗺

Most designers want to be more strategic.

But what does that actually mean?

Is strategic design about working on bigger problems? Influencing executives? Creating visions and roadmaps? Driving transformation?

Or are we confusing good design with strategic design?

Join us for our July Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) meetup where a panel of experienced strategic design leaders will explore one of the most debated questions in our profession: what makes design strategic?

We’re lucky to have Leanne Sobel, Jaimes Nel, Paul Merrell, and Lize Wordsworth sharing their insights with short lightning talks before we open up a panel discussion and audience conversation.

We’ll explore:
• What strategic design is
• What it isn’t – with common misconceptions and traps
• How strategic design differs from other design disciplines
• Where strategic design is heading
• How designers can increase their strategic influence and impact

Expect diverse perspectives, thoughtful discussions, and practical insights for designers at every stage of their career.

For the SydDT regulars, yes we’re doing this one on a Wednesday!

Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome! Grab your ticket now... https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-128-when-does-design-become-strategic

This event is brought to you by Atlassian, Shapeshifters, and Dynamic4.

17/06/2026

For our 11th birthday Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) event on Thursday, we came back to a question that’s been sitting under so many of our recent conversations…

How do we keep people, customers, judgement, creativity, and trust at the centre as AI becomes part of more of what we design and do?

We were lucky to have Riley Coleman, Kristin de la Fuente, Alex Zinoviev share thoughtful, practical, and very human perspectives on AI in the real world – with Tarra van Amerongen guiding the panel conversation.

A few ideas stuck with me.

Riley’s point that the pause is where the value is. In a world pushing hard towards speed and automation, the moments where we take the time to pause, question, judge, make sense of what’s happening and then decide… are not inefficiency. They create the space for expertise, ethics, creativity, and care to show up.

Kristin’s framing of trust as a relationship, not just an interface pattern. The important design work in agentic systems is not always on the screen. It’s in the delegation logic, the checkpoints, the recovery paths, the guardrails, and the way trust and confidence are earnt over time.

The panel conversation kept coming back to a simple distinction… done is not the same as valuable.

AI can help us move faster, but if we’re building the wrong thing, solving the wrong problem, or removing human judgement that makes the work meaningful – faster doesn’t bring more value.

A fitting 11th birthday conversation for SydDT.

It looped back to our first meetup in 2015 where we debated the singularity and SydDT #2: Future of Work with Michelle Williams and Brian Lim where we explored the question - should we race against the machines, or run with them?

The tech has changed a lot. The pace is different. The stakes feel different. But the deeper question hasn’t changed much at all… how do we use design to help people solve problems that matter?

Thanks to everyone who made it such a fun night. Couldn’t make it or just want to relive it? https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-127-the-human-loop-keeping-the-customer-at-the-core-of-ai

A huge thanks to Riley, Kristin, Alex, and Tarra for such a generous and thoughtful conversation… and to Kristin for sharing her birthday with us.

Thanks to Resham Agrawal who did the awesome graphic recording this month. This initiative is a collaboration with Shapeshifters. SydDT is a friendly environment for people to practice their live graphic recording skills.

A shout out to Bex Haar for another great write-up with her reflections.

A massive thanks to Thoughtworks, GenAI Lab, Alan Chen and Diana Ayoub from Shapeshifters, and Dynamic4 for making it all happen. And Kate Linton for being the lead organiser for this one.

Finally, thanks to the whole SydDT community for 11 awesome years. Plenty to come 😃

24/05/2026

We celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) at Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) #126 last Tuesday night. We were lucky to have a great lineup of speakers with Kate Jenkins and Kath Hamilton from Remarkable and Pawel Wodkowski from Atlassian‘s accessibility team.

Kath Hamilton led an insightful fireside chat with Max Burt OAM from WheelEasy and Carolyn Mee from Sound Scouts. All three are alumni of Remarkable’s Accelerator program.

We also heard from a few of the disability tech startup founders in the current Remarkable Launcher cohort… Josh Aarons from Squidly, Mark Gibbs and Nadine Dundas from Visitex, and Kathleen Nicholls from Safe Ride.

So many great insights and so many ways to get involved. Here are some ways…
• The Remarkable Launcher 2026 Showcase is on 12pm Tuesday, 26 May. It’s free and online. Register now! https://events.humanitix.com/remarkable-launcher-2026-showcase
• Check out and support Squidly, Visitex, Safe Ride, Sound Scouts, WheelEasy and all the other great disability tech startups
• Give Pawel’s a11y.md a go to bake in some accessibility standards into your prototyping https://github.com/pwodkowski/a11y-md
• Keep talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion – not just during GAAD but in our daily practice

Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a fun night. Couldn’t make it or just want to relive it? Watch it now... https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-126-global-accessibility-awareness-day-2026

Thanks to Ben Crothers from Bright Pilots for his awesome sketchnoting this month... and a shout out and thanks to Bex Haar for another great write-up with her reflections and key takeaways.

A massive thanks to Pawel Wodkowski from Atlassian, Kath Hamilton & Kate Jenkins from Remarkable Tech, and Dynamic4 for making it all happen.

Our next meetup is SydDT #127: The Human Loop – Keeping the Customer at the Core of AI on Thursday, 11 June with Tarra van Amerongen, Alex Zinoviev, Riley Coleman, and Kristin de la Fuente sharing their observations and insights… brought to you by Thoughtworks, GenAI Lab, and Dynamic4. Grab your ticket! https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-127-the-human-loop-keeping-the-customer-at-the-core-of-ai

21/05/2026

𝗦𝘆𝗱𝗗𝗧 #𝟭𝟮𝟳: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 – 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜. 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟭 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 @ 𝟲𝗽𝗺
As AI rapidly accelerates product delivery, it’s easier than ever to ship features that look impressive but fail to solve real customer problems.

For Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT)’s 11th birthday celebration, we’re collaborating with our friends from GenAI Lab to bring together a panel of design and product leaders to discuss how to balance the sheer speed of AI with genuine, human-centered design.

We’re lucky to have Tarra van Amerongen, Alex Zinoviev, Riley Coleman, and Kristin de la Fuente sharing their observations and insights.

They’ll cut through the hype to explore how user research needs to adapt for generative AI models, how to design for trust and transparency, and how the designer’s role is shifting from pixel-pusher to system orchestrator.

There might even be cupcakes 😃

Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome! Be quick and grab your ticket before it sells out... https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-127-the-human-loop-keeping-the-customer-at-the-core-of-ai

This event is brought to you by Thoughtworks and Dynamic4.

13/05/2026

𝗦𝘆𝗱𝗗𝗧 #𝟭𝟮𝟲: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗗𝗮𝘆. 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟵 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 @ 𝟲𝗽𝗺
We’re stoked to be collaborating with Remarkable Disability Tech Accelerator and Atlassian to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) this year.

We’re lucky to have an amazing lineup of speakers – and this is a great opportunity to meet and hear from people working directly on inclusive and accessible solutions.

We’ll have short talks by Kate Jenkins & Kath Hamilton from Remarkable and Pawel Wodkowski from Atlassian‘s accessibility team… with some founders from the current Remarkable Launcher cohort sharing their story/pitch.

Kath Hamilton will then host a fireside chat/panel with Max Burt OAM from WheelEasy and Carolyn Mee from Sound Scouts… all three are alumni of Remarkable’s Accelerator program.

The purpose of GAAD is to “get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities/impairments”.

GAAD is on 21 May, so we’re celebrating a couple of days early… and for SydDT regulars, yes we’re doing this on a Tuesday!

Remarkable’s mission is to “empower disability tech innovators by providing the training, capital, and networks they need to create a future that is accessible, equitable and inclusive for all”. Accessibility is also core to Atlassian’s mission – to unleash the potential of every team.

Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community. New members are welcome! Be quick and grab your ticket before it sells out... https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-126-global-accessibility-awareness-day-2026

This event is brought to you by Atlassian, Remarkable, and Dynamic4.

16/04/2026

We were lucky to have Gordon Burnett taking us through prototyping at the right fidelity at Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) #125 last week. His core theme was about finding the “just right” fidelity.

As he said... prototyping is not just about making something, it’s about answering the right questions at the right time…
• Low-fidelity: “Do we need this?”
• Mid-fidelity: “How should it work?”
• High-fidelity: “How will it work and how will we build it?”

Gordon is Design Lead – Health Prototyping at eHealth NSW, so he was able to share why prototyping really matters in complex and safety-critical environments. Inclusive design and accessibility are non-negotiable core practices – as it really needs to be for all of us.

They use prototyping for almost everything: workspace layouts, clinical workflows, policies, digital systems, paper artefacts, equipment, devices, and even kitchens and pathology labs.

Prototyping is a learning strategy, not a deliverable – low, medium, and high fidelities each answer different questions, and skipping steps (especially by jumping straight into AI) risks missing critical insights.

There was so much gold in what Gordon shared… from mindset and approach through to practical methods. Designing and building something, worth hearing from him directly.

Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a fun night. Couldn’t make it or just want to relive it? Watch it now. https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-125-from-assumption-to-evidence-prototyping-right-fidelity-gordon-burnett

Thanks to Ibrahim Iftikhar who did the awesome graphic recording this month. This initiative is a collaboration with Shapeshifters and their Think Visual! meetup community. SydDT is a friendly environment for people to practice their live graphic recording skills.

A massive thanks to Gordon Burnett for sharing his experience... to Sasha Pometko and Frankie Balfour from Atlassian, Alan Chen and Diana Ayoub from Shapeshifters, and Dynamic4 for making it all happen. And Lucas Mara for being the lead organiser for this one.

Details for our May meetup... coming soon.

31/03/2026

We were lucky to have Emma Carter and Catherine Fitzpatrick share their experience building positive change in our workplaces and society at SydDT #124 on 12 March – and a panel led by Kate Ingram exploring this year’s IWD theme… Balance the Scales.

Emma took us through what it actually takes to elevate design inside organisations. Not just the theory. The reality.

Design maturity ladders tell you where you are – but not how to get there. So she and Diana Adorno built one that does. Eight dimensions, six levels, with descriptions of what each actually looks like inside an organisation.

Catherine shared her story as a bank exec discovering that abusive messages were being hidden in bank payment descriptions – one-cent transactions used as a weapon. Her team analysed 11 million transactions over three months and found 8,000 serious threats.

They mapped 51 design interventions, built a data dictionary to block harmful language in real time, and shared their methodology with every other bank in Australia. Since 2019, banks have collectively blocked more than a million abusive messages.

Kate Ingram led the panel, bringing her lens from KPMG’s design practice and government work. The conversation covered how to talk about design without using the word design, the power of equity impact assessments applied to financial products, and the data organisations already have but don’t use.

An evening celebrating the achievements of women in design.

Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a fun night. Couldn’t make it or just want to relive it? Watch it now. https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-124-building-positive-change-in-our-workplaces-society

We did this one as Design Connection #7… another in our design megameetup series with our friends from the CCX and EUX meetups.

Morteza brought his sketchnoting magic to the medium of a used pizza box for this one. Love your work mate 😃

A shout out and thanks to Bex Haar for another great write-up with her reflections and key takeaways.

A massive thanks to Adam Faulkner from blueegg and Enterprise UX (EUX), Susan Wolfe from Leapfrog Studio, Kate Linton, Lucas Mara from SydDT, Kevin Wilkins from CCX, and Ben Pecotich from Dynamic4 and SydDT for making it all happen.

Our next meetup is SydDT #125: From Assumption to Evidence: Prototyping at the Right Fidelity with Gordon Burnett on Thursday, 9 April… brought to you by Atlassian, Shapeshifters, and Dynamic4. Grab your ticket! https://dynamic4.com/ideas/syddt-125-from-assumption-to-evidence-prototyping-right-fidelity-gordon-burnett

Sydney Design Thinking

17/08/2026

12/08/2026

30/07/2026

25/06/2026

17/06/2026

24/05/2026

21/05/2026

13/05/2026

16/04/2026

31/03/2026

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