Podcast

Great minds design think alike

What does Design Thinking actually mean?
Design, here, means designing solutions to problems (not the visual, graphic or artistic design we usually associate it with).
Thinking is having the right mindset for coming up with creative solutions.

As it turns out, the emphasis is more on doing than thinking.

Clearly, there’s some unpacking to do, and that’s what the Tenaka podcast, Great Minds Design Think Alike, is all about. In snack-sized, 30-minute chunks, Stuart McDougall, an owner of Tenaka, talks to industry minds about how it is possible to innovate, disrupt and really make lives better by adopting these principles:

– Keep the humans you are trying to help at the centre of your process –
– Think less, do more –
– Fail early and often to learn and improve –

Episode 7 Julia Makhubela

Humans can no longer be seen as resources, if they are expected to give their all!

In this episode we talk to Julia Makhubela – a consultant from 54twentyfour who is passionate about disrupting human resources. She uses human-centred design to create employee experiences that are inclusive: it’s about how we can be different together.

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Episode 6 Iain Bryant

The world needs to change, and design thinking can do that

In this episode we speak to Iain Bryant from Future by Design, discussing the importance of innovation, listening and understanding customers points of view, as well as the context of design thinking in Africa to the rest of the world, and our unique challenges.

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Episode 5 Madelein Taljaard

How rapid prototype building and testing helps us design think software development

Madelein Taljaard, Experience Design Director for the payroll mid-market sector at Sage Global, talks about the challenges and solutions of creating globally diverse software development teams with a human-centred mindset and culture to design and develop tools based on real user data.

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Episode 4 Herman Singh

Find the one problem everyone has, and you will create unicorns

In this episode, we speak to Herman Singh from Future Advisory about innovation, creativity through adversity and his experience of product successes and failures. He talks about how innovation thrives on adversity and how that is helping build businesses in South Africa.

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Episode 3 Jen Sutherland

How might we convince corporate SA about the value of design thinking?

Jen is a design thinker and innovator with a background in IT and software development. In this episode we discuss how corporates miss opportunities for growth because of a reluctance to embrace the ‘non-traditional’ design thinking approach to problem solving.

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Episode 2 Ulrich Meyer-Höllings

It always starts with who I’m designing for

Ulrich has an intense passion for design thinking and chats to us via a Zoom call for this episode. He is an experience designer at McKinsey and is the founder of Leftfield Lab. He shares his perspective on how creatives need to be more collaborative in working to solve problems, and the need to accept creatives in the strategy decision making process.

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Episode 1 Vikee Rayner

What is design thinking, anyway?

This being our first Great Minds Design Think Alike podcast, we thought it was important to talk about design thinking in everyday language – no jargon. And if there is jargon, we explain it. We encourage you to come back to this podcast whenever you feel a bit lost in the sometimes complex and always exciting world of design thinking.

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