Videoconference: “The most popular design thinking strategy is BS” with Tricia Wang

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How Might We (HMW) is a commonly accepted design thinking practice for framing a problem in space exploration, usually within a codified “design sprint” framework. However, there are risks and limitations that can undermine its value. Join us for a candid, provocative discussion with Tricia Wang, who wrote a searing yet insightful piece recently in Fast Company that challenges the value of the HMW practice, while offering alternatives to help us transcend its issues.

About Tricia

Tricia Wang is a tech ethnographer obsessed with designing equity into systems. Part data geek, part designer, and part community organizer, her belief that technology must serve humanity is the thread across her work from the public to the private sector. She is the co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm working with Fortune 500 companies and tech startups from Spotify to P&G and Google. Most recently, she co-founded CRADL, Crypto Research and Design Lab based out of The World Economic Forum. Areas of focus in her work:  Web3, inclusive design, data literacy, internet access, personhood, and anonymity.

She is a frequent conference keynoter, a pioneer in bringing the human voice to data science with what she calls Thick Data, which she describes in her TED talk. She is a leading authority on digital transformation, building data teams, customer experience, and economy of personal data.  Her most recent work is on the importance of hyperlocal forms of interaction and control of personal data.  Her work has been featured in Quartz, New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Techcrunch, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Slate, Wired, The Guardian and Fast Company.

Her tech career started with selling some of the first texting and mobile phones services to researching the rise of social networks in Web 2.0 and to now advocating for Web 3.0 to deliver social impact through crypto and blockchain enabled technologies. Her focus on tech has always been in adoption amongst marginalized communities from the US to China to South America.

She advises start-ups and nonprofits that are working at the intersection community and technology. She is an advisor to Decentral Labs at the University of Lisbon and several crypto and blockchain startups. She is a fellow at Geo Tech Atlantic Council, an affiliate at Data & Society, and has served as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Data Council. She was also a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a Fulbright Fellow and National Science Foundation Fellow.

During the pandemic, she co-founded Last Mile, a volunteer-led organization supporting communities most impacted by COVID-19. They were featured in the New Yorker for delivering over 1 million masks around the USA. Last Mile also launched COVID Straight Talk, a public health campaign to increase awareness of COVID as an airborne disease and to accelerate policies for workplace indoor ventilation.

She optimizes her life to be spent working with exceptionally caring people, dancing, eating, hanging with her dog Elle, and her grandma. She holds Perú, Oaxaca, and Malmö close to her heart. Tricia’s life philosophy is that you have to go to the edge to discover the center. Follow her on twitter, instagram (@triciawang), or at www.triciawang.com.