Tipping Point Community

“Mary and David have been invaluable partners over the past two years as I built Tipping Point’s in-house R+D function.

They never shied away from rolling up their sleeves and digging into the details with me as I developed a vision and operational model, hired a team, and launched projects. Once our R+D team was up and running, David provided one-on-one leadership coaching and also pinch hit as creative director across two projects with high visibility in Tipping Point.

They bring both broad and deep expertise across diverse sectors, resulting in a perspective that has elevated the quality of my team’s work and how we engage underserved communities.”

—Stephanie Lewis, R+D Director, Tipping Point Community

Google UX Community & Culture

“Ask The Sherwins ran an outstanding one-day workshop that had profound impact on Google UXers. Their insights and methods for how to run an effective design workshop (or mini-sprint) were tremendously valuable. They provided dozens of practical tips on how to identify the right design goals, techniques to meet them and how to select the appropriate participants to drive towards solutions. 

It’s incredible that David & Mary were able to deliver all this value in a single day, and is a testament to their ability to work with me ahead of time to sculpt a customized session to the specific needs of our company and UX process. I would highly recommend them to any creative team looking to get more out of their process and lift the quality of their overall output.”

—Ewen Syme, Design Manager, UXCC Design Talks

Eventbrite

“We partnered with David and Mary to dig into our creative briefing process at Eventbrite. The hope was to provide some L&D for our designers to be able to kickoff projects more successfully and ultimately produce better work. We did a full day workshop with both Product and Brand designers and the outcome was fantastic. The designers immediately felt like the material covered and the tools David and Mary provided were useful and highly applicable to the challenges they face.

David and Mary have been wonderful partners in the process and provided great value. We hope to be able to continue working with them in the future."

—David Scott, Creative Director, Eventbrite

Designlab

“David and Mary have been fantastic partners in helping support Designlab's growth over time. They bring a unique mix of academic depth and real-world operational experience to their projects, along with a deep network and an understanding of where the design world is headed. This blend serves them well in applying multiple perspectives to thoroughly analyze complex systems and solve for business goals with extreme clarity.

Their insights have been critical in informing how we approach product and curriculum strategy, and they're now our go-to resource when thinking through challenging problems. Highly recommend working with David and Mary if you get a chance!”

—Harish Venkatesan, CEO and Co-Founder, Designlab
 

UnCollege/Year On

“We brought David and Mary in to help us define our Gap Year curriculum, and they were instrumental in helping us develop a plan we could begin to execute on. 

Though we started without a clear objective or agenda, David and Mary were able to take very half baked ideas and coalesce them into a clear roadmap and priorities for our team to run with, in a very short time frame. The combination of David's design thinking approach to problem-solving and Mary's education and curriculum expertise allows them to tackle any education-related problem. In one short session together, they mapped out a new model and next steps for our team; something we had been spinning on for a while. 

We are excited to continue working with them as we dig deeper into our curriculum development and start to look at how we can integrate this new program into our company culture.” 

—Bridget McDonough, Chief Experience Officer, Year On

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design

“David and Mary have been coming to CIID to impart their knowledge on our Interaction Design Programme and Summer School for the past 6 years. They are very established in their own individual fields and by compounding their expertise as a duo, they act as a unique catalyst in the studio. 

Highly professional and engaging in their approach, they genuinely know how to enable creative people to use and advance their skills and motivation in a productive and meaningful way. 

Their ability to teach, communicate and impart knowledge inspires people to push themselves further than they imagined possible.”

—Alie Rose, Co-Founder and Head of Education, CIID

“Their class totally changed my mind about teamwork."

"These team­ survival/team ­nourishment skills will stay with me for life. I learned skills regarding team behaviors I never thought I could actually have formal command over… I'm confident that these skills will help me build better products and team relationships in the future.”

“David and Mary projected a fantastic energy and I genuinely gained soooooooo much from their stories, experiences, insights and humour.”

“In a utopian vision, I'd want every designer to become a master of the skills that come out of this course for their and others' sakes… 90% of the problems they mention are about team dynamics.­­ I feel that most design studios could use some of the Sherwin magic.”

—Graduate students at CIID after our Teambuilding class