Designer · Founder · Engineer

I helped pioneer Design Sprints and Service Design globally.

Lead UX Engineer at Meta Reality Labs, co-founder of a stealth AI startup, and author of six books, including The Service Startup, the first to introduce a Design Sprint approach.

“Tenny is one of those exceptional talents with exceptional coding skills combined with outstanding design.”
Bob Whitehead, co-founder of Activision
2014First book to introduce a Design Sprint approach, two years before Google's Sprint
5,000+Design Sprint School alumni, at companies like Apple, Oracle, Cisco and Dell
6 booksIn English, Japanese and Portuguese, with DTBR 2.0 in progress
NN/g recognitionMy research methodology, the CSD Matrix, is featured and adopted by the Nielsen Norman Group.

Meta Reality LabsCiscoLiveworkBayerMicrosoftAdobe(Macromedia)

01 /thinking

How designers stay essential, human and indispensable in an AI-accelerated world.

Blog · Keep the Poetry

Think, see and feel.

Design is a cognitive layer added to your “think, see and feel” system. Practice it and it trains your nervous system, changing the way you see and perceive. It becomes who you are.

Latest · Jul 30, 2026 — Model over-confidence perception is a Design problem.

Read /thinking →
Illustration: a head full of gears beside people walking along a timeline

/Thinking.

“Charles and Ray Eames, the iconic American designers and filmmakers, created more than 125 films together.

“Design is a cognitive layer that gets added to your ‘think, see and feel’ system. If you practice it, it trains your nervous system. It changes the way you see and perceive. It becomes you. It has to. You bring it to everything. You can’t avoid it. It’s who you are. If you understand it this way, you will never ask anyone, ‘Have you moved on from Design?’ That question makes no sense whatsoever. Design is not the medium. It’s not the material you pick off the shelf to work with. It is who you are.”

Tenny Pinheiro

02 Work

Leading design in Silicon Valley and globally.

Lead UX Engineer01 / 07

Meta Reality Labs

Part of the Meta AI Glasses team. Coding and crafting high-fidelity prototypes, and improving the Design System to push the boundaries on rich, intuitive user interfaces.

#UX Engineer #UX Designer #iOS Engineering

Ray-Ban Meta glasses
Co-founder02 / 07

Kinds lab

We are creating a private and alignable digital self (Ghost) that rides agent shells, anchoring agents to act on your behalf and represent who you are.

The Prismatic Self™ is a private, user-owned schema of who a person is, built from many collected signals and kept on the person's own domain. It evolves with the person, while staying explainable and alignable for agents.

#UX #ML AI Research #Agentic Design Engineering

kindslab.ai ↗
Prismatic Self interface
Head of Design · Partner03 / 07

Livework

In 2009 I joined as a partner director, heading the Design team in Brazil from research to implementation, with a focus on enterprise transformation and product development. Over a hundred projects, including full digital transformation of fortune 500 and enterprise clients.

#Director #Head of Design

liveworkstudio.com ↗
Livework website: We align organisations to the creation of value for customers
Head of Sprint Acceleration04 / 07

Cisco

I designed the processes, structure and frameworks, and led the internal acceleration program (vision, strategy, research, roadmap and metrics) for Cisco in Silicon Valley, with a global rollout.

Enterprise transformation. Led, trained and mentored over 100 product managers, engineers and designers on applying Design Thinking across product acceleration cycles.

cisco.com ↗
Learnby DesignBuildby AgileMeasureby Lean AnalyticsEXPANDCONNECTDESIGNTIME MACHINECOHERENCEIDEATIONMVSLEARN by DesignMEASURE by Lean AnalyticsBUILD by Agile
Head of Product05 / 07

NYX A.I. (Web3)

A presence protocol built on a proprietary AI and hard science. Soul NFTs (E.I.) can have vast utility; we started by experimenting with introductions based on who people are, not how they look.

#Product design #Head of Design

nyxsoul ↗
NYX A.I. soul visual
Head of Design06 / 07

Bayer CropScience

Responsible for 36 global, large-scale tech products and over 80 direct and dotted-line reports. End-to-end delivery of the pipeline that transformed how Bayer CropScience interacts with farmers and clients around the globe, a major digital transformation run with the HQ in Germany and rolled out globally.

#Head of Design #Digital transformation

Bayer AG office in Basel, Switzerland
Head of Design07 / 07

LR Group

Lived and worked in Angola for two years, spearheading design and software engineering for the LR Group. Led a team of designers and engineers on service experiences for the public and private sectors, including as Head of Design (portal experiences) for the telecom Movicel, launching twelve online services to the general public for the first time.

#Head of Design

lr-group.com ↗
LR Group work in Angola

03 Books

Six books in English, Japanese and Portuguese. The seventh is being written.

New book · In development

Design Thinking Brasil 2.0
Sprint com IA

Fifteen years after the first DTBR, I return to Design Thinking through the door AI opened. Empathy, collaboration and experimentation for AI-converted teams: sprints that fit in a day, with part of the work done by AI and the decisions in the hands of the people who know the problem.

AI speed, people at the center.

EmpathyAI-amplified research, synthesis in hours, synthetic users to rehearse before the field.
CollaborationPeople and AI agents in the same ideation. Who generates, who reviews, who decides.
ExperimentationPrototypes generated, tested and discarded the same day. One-day sprints.

Author · Tenny PinheiroStatus · In developmentLaunch · TBAPortuguese

designthinkingbrasil.com.br ↗
Design Thinking Brasil cover
2011 · PT · Elsevier · with Luis Alt

Design Thinking Brasil

The first Design Thinking book officially published in Brazil, and the one that started the movement there. Foreword by Kerry Bodine, Forrester Research.

★ 4.5 / 5 · 235 reviews on Amazon.com.br

The Service Startup, Japanese edition by HayakawaThe Service Startup cover
2014 · EN / JP / PT

The Service Startup

Service Design meets Lean Startup. The first publication to introduce a sprint format for Design Thinking projects, two years before Google Ventures' Sprint. Its MVS model is used by Cisco and GE.

Breaking free from The Lean Startup religion cover
2015 · EN

Breaking free from The Lean Startup religion

The Service Designer Manifesto: why you shouldn't use only Lean Startup to create and accelerate businesses, and how the human-centric power of Service Design completes it.

Sprint Master's Guide cover
2017 · EN · Design Sprint School curriculum

Sprint Master's Guide

The complete step-by-step guide to planning and running service-driven Design Sprints with the MVS (Minimum Valuable Service) methodology.

Jornadas de Ruptura cover
PT

Jornadas de Ruptura

How Silicon Valley's maker culture is changing the way we learn, use and remember everyday things.

The GV Model Guide cover
EN · Design Sprint School curriculum

The GV Model Guide

The complete step-by-step guide to planning and running Design Sprints with the Google Ventures model.

Bringing Design Thinking to Brazil, and sprints to the world

  1. 2009Adapted IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit for Brazil.
  2. 2010Wrote the preface to Tim Brown's Change by Design. Created Brazil's first Design Thinking course, at ESPM.
  3. 2011Design Thinking Brasil, the country's first Design Thinking book.
  4. 2012Founded EISE, the first program teaching Design Thinking in Agile sprints.
  5. 2014The Service Startup: the first published accelerated design methodology, two years before Google's Sprint.
  6. 2017Design Sprint School, San Francisco. 5,000+ alumni worldwide.
  7. 2026DTBR 2.0, Sprint com IA, in development.

04 Education & research

Teaching the method, and creating the research tools behind it.

Edu · Non-profit · 202601 / 06

First Steps: Sprint with AI

A self-paced, not-for-profit bootcamp that helps designers keep their jobs in the agentic revolution and find their voices inside AI-first organizations.

Practical AI acceleration without the token bloat, the slop or the blind automation. Our “triple A” approach: actionable same-day AI-powered sprints, analog human-in-the-loop decisions, and accessible AI workflows on the LLMs you already use.

designsprintschool.com ↗
First Steps: Sprint with AI website
Founder · Edu · 201702 / 06

Design Sprint School

Launched in San Francisco in 2017 to teach founders, designers and engineers the Service Design Sprint, a framework I developed two years before Google launched Sprint. A top-3 online design school on Switch-up for four years, with 5,000+ alumni at companies like Apple, Oracle, Cisco and Dell.

This original program was retired to make room for the not-for-profit First Steps: Sprint with AI.

dsprintschool.com ↗
Design Sprint School website
Collaboration03 / 06

IDEO (HCD)

Proud to have collaborated on the HCD Toolkit with my colleagues at IDEO, regarded as the spark of the Design Thinking revolution in the late 2000s.

Launched in 2009, the toolkit was a first-of-its-kind guide to how and why human-centered design can impact the social sector. Designers, entrepreneurs and social innovators downloaded over 150,000 copies.

ideo.com ↗
IDEO HCD toolkit
Research method04 / 06

UX-ML Researcher · Kinds

A recap of the global research behind the first iteration of Kinds, focused on match-making inferences, from 2019. I led and designed it end to end, with user research in Japan, Europe, South America and the US.

The prototypes are dated, but it's a real glimpse of Kinds' product development journey.

#UX Research

Research log ↗
Kinds research log
Method recognition05 / 06

CSD Matrix (NN/g)

NN/g, the institute that coined the term User Experience, featured a research method I created in its recommended frameworks collection and made it part of its research methodologies certificate.

Like “form follows function”, design tools should fit the task at hand. No silver bullets. The CSD Matrix is one I keep finding useful across projects and realities.

Watch on NN/g ↗
CSD Matrix video on NN/g
Research method06 / 06

U.S.E. Global Report

Research director and methodology creator. U.S.E. was a global usability study with 69k+ consumers mapping user experience across five continents, turning journeys into KPIs for measurable service performance across industries.

The 2015 report gauged consumers' perception of UX core principles and innovation capabilities.

#UX Research #Head of UX Research #Methodology creation

usereport ↗
U.S.E. Global Report

05 Founder @ edu.tech

Schools, labs and communities that treat Service Design as a teachable superpower.

Founder · Edu01 / 03

The School for Service Innovation (EISE)

The vision was a Bauhaus for Service Design, with a curriculum that moved beyond it into the arts and cognitive sciences, and the first program to teach Design Thinking in Agile sprints. EISE kick-started Brazil's Service Innovation ecosystem; today over 70% of the people working in Service Design there are connected to the school.

The School for Service Innovation (EISE)
Founder02 / 03

Hivelab.co

Product acceleration through product design processes run within Design Sprint timeframes. Over 35 products accelerated for Cisco in Silicon Valley and across the globe.

Clients: Softbank · Cisco · Magic · GE · Microsoft · Metlife

Hivelab website
Founder · Community03 / 03

SprintMaster.co

A community of Design Sprint Masters fostering change across the globe, one sprint at a time, with a presence on several continents and still growing.

I believe the future of Service Design lies in treating it as a teachable superpower, not an academic discipline.

SprintMaster community

06 Design + code

Concepts and apps I designed and built myself, from idea to prototype to App Store.

Concept design01 / 10

Vinyl

Designed from idea to prototype during a hackathon in San Francisco. Machine learning runs a deep roots-and-influences analysis on an album of your choice: hit spin and Vinyl traces what shaped the artist while recording it, suggesting albums by inheritance rather than “people are also listening to this”.

#UX Design #UX Research

View on Dribbble ↗
Vinyl app concept
Concept design02 / 10

The Brief (NFX)

The Brief is a tool founders use when pitching VCs. This prototype reboot keeps the original brand and turns the old website into a web app that hosts founders' services, actively helping them build quality content for VCs instead of just collecting it.

#UX Design #UX Research

View on Behance ↗
The Brief by NFX redesign
Design + code03 / 10

Corky

A minimalistic wine store app I designed and coded for a local San Francisco wine store. Apple Pay checkout, machine-learning label recognition like Vivino, custom-designed views, a stateless singleton architecture, Core Data and GCD queues. Two weeks from concept to launch.

#UX Research #UX Design #Software engineering

Code on GitHub ↗
Corky wine store app screens
Design + code04 / 10

Angeo.me

Lets people chime in and “angel” you while you commute, bridging local shops and commuting routes. Someone you trust, far away, can see you walking by and buy you a coffee at that exact place and moment.

#Product Development #UX Research and Design #iOS Engineering

Angeo.me app screens
Design + code05 / 10

Jung: A Social Game

An AI friend that helps you meet people and make friends at the social spaces you love. An experimental app with an RPG-like chat dialog where users interface with the AI; the board represents the social space. This project evolved into Kinds.

#Vision #UX Research #UX Design #Visual Design #iOS Engineering

Jung social game board
Design + code06 / 10

Piper, the Weather Cat

What started as a joke between friends became a weather app: a one-screen SpriteKit app where a cat dresses for the weather, with weather elements animated around it. Under the hood, a forecasting system built on singletons turns OpenWeather data into scenes full of particle effects.

#Vision #UX Research #UX Design #iOS Engineering

Piper the Weather Cat app screens
Design + code07 / 10

Spheres

Local shops and entities broadcast promotions and utility messages to people commuting through a geofence. A bakery announces a fresh batch, a coffee shop offers slow-hour coupons, the police broadcast a warning. A real-time complement to Yelp, connecting people and local services.

#Vision #UX Research #UX Design #iOS Engineering

Spheres app screens
Design + code08 / 10

Firecoins App

Companion to the live-action immersive game Firewalk. Players rack up firecoins, released whenever they cross a gate or win a challenge, in a week-long simulation of the ups and downs of Silicon Valley startup life.

#UX Research #UX Design #iOS Engineering

Firecoins app screens
Design + code09 / 10

Me.Mo App

A listener, like a man-in-the-middle, that taps the communication channels it's allowed to and spontaneously compiles memory dumps from people's experiences and exchanges online, consumable through user and SaaS interfaces.

Me.Mo app
Design + code10 / 10

INSPRD

Connect to the specific content you choose from the social profiles you follow. You don't follow people, only the things they do that really inspire you.

INSPRD app
“One of those exceptional talents with exceptional coding skills combined with creative design. As a team player he was well liked and energetic too.”
Bob Whitehead
Co-founder, Activision
“Tenny's approach to Service Design taps into an inexhaustible source of creativity and innovation. His book, The Service Startup, is a trusty roadmap that founders will long keep by their side.”
Jamer Hunt
Dean of Design, Parsons, The New School
“Tenny has a design and UX background which I believe makes him an even better iOS developer. It takes a deep understanding and great creativity to design UI elements from scratch instead of using frameworks like UIKit.”
S. Blades
Senior Engineer, PayPal
“To work with Tenny is to ride the road of disruption. Whether you are designing experiences, services or processes, you will find a clear path to service innovation.”
Jolivan Lopes
Head of Innovation, Bradesco