Portland Design Thinkers is excited to announce an evening with Todd Harple - From Silos to Synergy: An Anthropologist's Journey in Bridging Methodologies for Collaborative Design

Over the course of two decades, Todd has adapted his toolkit of methods to suit the audiences, challenges, resources, and desired outcomes of specific projects. With experience and time, he moved from rejecting Design Thinking to embracing it, to relegating elements of it to a part of a multi- (or anti-disciplinary) collaborative toolkit. This talk will illustrate with examples from Todd's work in consumer electronics, fashion, fitness, health and sports how his approach to collaborative design has evolved.

Join Portland Design Thinkers for an evening with Tony Salvador discussing: Catalytic Factor Analysis.

Many (most?) of our design-research methods are designed for point-problems that demand point solutions. All good. But not so good when those methods are applied to complex problems.

Catalytic Factor Analysis is a method designed to address complex sociotechnical challenges through a structured conversation with the crowd. This technique specifically creates a means for both characterizing wicked socio-technical problems and identifying the focus areas to transform the system toward a resolution. The result is the ability to focus resources – state, civil, and institutional, political, entrepreneurial, and educational – on those catalytic factors to transform the system. I will use several examples from recent work to illustrate the method.

Join us for a student-led presentation by the University of Oregon’s Senior Product Design Research class. The online event will reveal the results of a collaboration between PDT’s Advisors (Deb Mrazek, John Furukawa, Colin Bay, and Herman D’Hooge) and the UO students.

The students engaged in a research sprint with their PDT Advisors to uncover valuable insights about PDT’s member community and ecosystem. Over five days, students practiced primary and secondary research, including interviews with members. The four student teams will present their findings to the PDT community for feedback.

Each team will present its research findings to the PDT online community via Zoom on Monday, January 30th, from 4 pm-5 pm PST.

Portland Design Thinkers is happy to announce an evening with Dan Self and the Science of Storytelling: How the Brain Fires on Story.

100,000 years of human reliance on story has rewired the human brain to think in story terms and story structure to make sense and create meaning out of events and others’ actions.

Meaning…Cells that fire together wire together. And, this evolutionary predisposition is reinforced by the dominant use of story throughout childhood.

So what does this mean for all of us? How can we use this knowledge to create memorable stories? And how can we use our predisposition to turn everything that enters through sensory input into story for engagement?

About Dan Self: Story first. Story always. I've spent most of my working life or what is known as "a career" thinking about, studying, and uncovering the importance of story.

And in the pursuit of discovering the importance of story, I've explored many different job paths that have revealed some important aspects of the brain on story.

Bottom line? I'm not a neurologist, but I've played one on TV, and that's my story and I'm sticking with it.