About DT Dojo

Helping make design thinking more accessible & actionable.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to teach, coach, and mentor thousands of people around the world in design thinking. As a teacher and facilitator, I’ve worked across a wide range of cultural contexts, in many different industries, at all levels of organizations, and with a vast variety of departments & teams.

What stands out to me is that there’s a nearly universal recognition that we’re in a moment of profound change and transformation globally (this was true before the emergence of GenAI and is even more true now!). And, most folks see this as an opportunity (and responsibility) to take a more rigorous and human-centered approach to renewing our organizations & institutions and reimagining how we all live & work. I find this exciting and compelling.

Yet, I’ve come to realize that to help inspire and equip even more people around the world to actively participate in and creatively contribute to this time of profound change, a significantly more scalable way to teach and learn design thinking is needed. Moreover, with the design thinking movement fast-maturing, new learning paths are required to help aspiring innovators grow beyond learning design thinking fundamentals (in workshops & in classrooms) to applying design thinking successfully in real-world situations.

This is ultimately why I’ve started Design Thinking Dojo (or “DT Dojo”) — to help make design thinking more easily accessible and actionable, and to offer a way to develop the skills and experience needed to confidently apply design thinking at work and in life.

I look forward to learning with you!
— John Kembel

Taking a different approach.

After more than 25 years of experience practicing, leading, and teaching design thinking, I’ve learned that while workshops and classes are great ways to get a taste of the “design process”, a different approach is required if you’re serious about deepening your practice as a design thinker.

I believe it’s more accurate to think about learning design thinking as you might think about learning yoga, or playing a musical instrument, or becoming a chef. These are all life-long practices that require as much skill and experience as they do knowledge.

Indeed, to get beyond an intellectual understanding of design thinking, it’s all about strengthening your “creative muscles” and developing the skills of a design thinker — to sketch like a design thinker, to work like a design thinker, and to talk like a design thinker.

So, think of DT Dojo as a place you can go to get the “training” (more like a fitness program than an academic class) and the experience you need to more confidently and successfully apply design thinking in an increasingly wide range of situations.

All of DT Dojo’s learning experiences have been carefully crafted to offer new ways to learn design thinking that are:

• Accessible & actionable — by anyone, anywhere, anytime

• Over time vs. all at once — more like workouts than workshops

• Self-led & expert-guided — master-level instruction that you can engage at your own pace

• Pragmatic + principled — mixing a bias toward action with a mindfulness of practice

• Skills-based — to help you develop confidence through hands-on experience

I’d encourage you to learn more about “The Dojo Way” and explore available DT Dojo learning experiences.

Supporting equitable access.

My hope is to help make access to design thinking not only easier, but also more equitable.

So, for every purchase, a portion of the proceeds will go to a DT Dojo “scholarship fund” to help make these courses available to others who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them.

If you have any questions about our scholarship or sponsorship programs, please reach out!

Sponsors: If you would like to help support more equitable access to DT Dojo courses, please contact me directly (you can purchase a gift code to give away yourself or become a scholarship sponsor).

Sharing more than 25 years of design thinking experience.

As a serial entrepreneur (in Silicon Valley & Boulder) and design thinking educator (founding faculty at the Stanford d.school & d.global), I have been teaching, practicing, and leading design thinking in startups, in global-scale businesses, and in education for over 25 years (here’s my formal bio and my LinkedIn profile for more detail).

Perhaps not surprisingly, I’m weaving together my design thinking expertise and my entrepreneurial experience to create DT Dojo. If you’re curious to learn more about the hybrid “micro-preneur” + “designful startup” approach I’m using, check out my “Dojo Design Log” entries to get a glimpse into my process. And if you might be interested in participating in my empathy-prototype-test design cycles (to share your insights & feedback), please reach out!

My hope is that DT Dojo will become the place where, if you’re serious about deepening you're practice as a design thinker, you can find a community of like-minded pioneers to learn with and coaches to learn from. Moreover, I hope that you will find as much inspiration and encouragement here as you do knowledge and skill. Good luck on your learning journey!