One function that COVID has not managed to derail is the annual Design Thinking USA conference held in Austin, Texas. 2021 will be its third consecutive year of bringing together both academic and professional proponents of better ways of doing things.
The idea behind Design Thinking is not to design things but to imagine better ways of designing things and of executing the ideas once they have been imagined. It is also about the propagation of the best new practices and theories into the wider design community.
As a result, the concept becomes self-perpetuating since last year’s ideas are now brought back to this year’s conference and examined in the light of wide practical application in the real world. Re-examination leads to further improvement and honing of the original concept. This mass of brain power and practical experience on a single subject leads to astonishing advancements in very short periods of time.