Join AMA New Orleans and local design thinking professionals, Antonio Alonzo and John Alexander, to learn how to systematically bring innovation into your work with design thinking.

Design thinking offers techniques to overcome challenges like a designer. Design thinking allows teams to brainstorm and try out their ideas in a fluid environment after establishing a well-articulated goal. Product designers, tech firms, business incubators, and social entrepreneurs have all found design thinking to be an incredibly valuable tool for a variety of problems they face today.

In this workshop, participants will learn:

• The design thinking framework, terms of trade
• How to get insights from a user or audience and design for that user
• Methods for brainstorming and using creative confidence
• Articulating a clear and useful design challenge and design brief
• Critical making, bodystorming, and prototyping methods
• Testing and iterating prototypes, user testing

Participants will gain a clear understanding of how to bring design thinking and innovation into their own projects.

Bios
Antonio Alonzo is an organizational designer and social entrepreneur. He received training in design thinking from the StartingBloc Institute, Taylor Center for Design Thinking, and Middlebury Institute of International Studies. In 2016, Antonio led a team of four founders through a design thinking challenge and launched Dig Easy, a nonprofit that organizes neighborhood-scale composting projects and food waste education programs. Antonio today works with Fund 17 as their Program Director, where he regularly trains staff to use design thinking to support early-stage entrepreneurs in the 17 wards of New Orleans.

John Harris Alexander is a Systems Designer and Environmental Changemaker. He has been trained by the Climate Reality Corps, Taylor Center for Design Thinking, Changemaker Institute, and Tulane University. John has led professionals, graduate students, and undergraduate students through multiple Fast 48 Design Thinking trainings at the Taylor Center and has also worked with many incubators in New Orleans. John today is a student at Tulane University where he works as a contractor for the Taylor Center and as the Director of Sustainability for the Student Government attempting to incorporate human-centered design and innovation into as many facets of the university as possible.

*Lunch will be included with registration.