If you counted design as one of the subjects you were taught at some point between kindergarten and your senior year of high school, consider yourself very lucky. Like most people, I didn't receive a design education until I got to college. But thanks to a generous sponsorship from Target, the Cooper-Hewitt is bringing hands-on design to NYC students in grades K-12.
The program gets kids to think about design as an active part of their daily lives, to understand that design is all around them, that their shoes, their binders and their Metro cards have all been designed. There are design challenges tailor-made for each grade level, so while kindergartners are trying to figure out how to transport apples up a hill, 8th grades are working on how to keep a premature baby warm and safe in a rural village without electricity. These challenges aim to teach students how the design process is a creative method of problem solving that can be applied in almost any situation - a factor teachers are hoping will help with standardized testing.
How many times have you been all set to buy the latest Apple gadget only to be told by a friend to wait—an updated version is scheduled to come out soon and any day now the phone in your pocket will just be one generation closer to obsolescence, your top-of-the-line iPad sadly out of date? Maybe I'm just airing my personal grievances here, but for those reminiscing about a simpler time, there's an oasis of traditional, time-honored craftsmanship in a Charleston, SC jail built over two hundred years ago, back before Steve Jobs was even a glimmer in his great-great-great-great grandfather's eye.
It's The American College of Building Arts, the only school in the United States to combine a four-year liberal arts education with specialized training in pre-Industrial trades—and the only school to boast 100% job placement. Granted, the average class size is less than twenty, but I expect that to increase with the ever-growing resurgence of the hand-made.
Students can major in Architectural Stone, Carpentry, Forged Architectural Ironwork, Plaster Working, Preservation Masonry or Timber Framing. They receive hands-on training within the school itself, which ACBA's president, General Colby M. Broadwater III (how's that for distinguished?) calls a "living laboratory." The campus was originally a jail built in 1802 with the help of Robert Mills, whom many consider the first all-American trained architect, and who later went on to design the Washington Monument. The building doesn't look like it's been updated in a while, but it acts as a canvas, providing students with an immediate source through which to practice what they learn—right on the classroom walls.
If you want to receive a formal design education, the obvious choices are to enroll in a four-year undergrad program or a two- to three-year graduate program. But there is an alternative, at least for those of you living in the American Northeast: The Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont.
The nonprofit school teaches certificate courses, workshops, and tutorials in both design and construction ranging from one day to a full semester in length, with courses of multi-week lengths in between. In addition to traditional woodworking and furniture building, students can also pursue courses in sustainable building, energy efficiency and ecosystems. And Yestermorrow's backbone of design/build courses are hands-on, striving to "demystify the worlds of architecture and carpentry by putting sketching tools and hammers in hand."
That hands-on approach, and the clear marriage between design and craft, is built into the school's ethos:
Our curriculum is specifically designed to demystify the designing and building processes using hands-on, experiential learning to teach students the art and wisdom of good design and the skill and savvy of enduring craftsmanship as a single, integrated process.
"If there is a descendent of the Bauhaus today, it might be the Yestermorrow Design/Build School," Archinect writes, pointing out (see the link) two Yestermorrow professors with a direct educational lineage back to Walter Gropius. Weimar might be gone, but Warren carries on.
Applications are now open for the Summer Workshop of the new MFA Products of Design program. Held at the beautiful Domaine de Boisbuchet in Southwestern France, this year's workshop will run for 10 days, inviting participants to immerse themselves in the evolving field of product design.
The Products of Design Summer Program in France offers hands-on, collaborative experience and instruction in rapid sketching, materials investigation, prototyping, iteration, narrative creation and environmental stewardship. In addition to work completed during the days, participants will enjoy opportunities to sight see, socialize with designers from around the world, and attend lectures in the evenings.
The program invites applicants from various backgrounds: design professionals, students (in at least senior standing at an art & design college), or graduate students in any field. Faculty will be MFA Products of Design chair Allan Chochinov and faculty Emilie Baltz.
Products of Design Summer Program in France
June 17-27, 2012
Domaine de Boisbuchet, Southwestern France
Tuition: $2,500 (includes room & board)
Applications due: February 10, 2012
(I know this is a lot of text, folks, but there's also a must-see video down at the bottom.)
Apple's press presentation this morning, held at the Guggenheim in New York City, began by revealing some depressing statistics about American education: On average only 70% of U.S. high school students graduate, down to 60% in urban areas. (That's not much higher than one out of two, for chrissakes.) Compared with other countries, in rankings of math, reading and science, the U.S. is a lot closer to being at the bottom of the list than the top. And in a video presentation following these slides, schoolteachers across America rattled off a litany of things hobbling their efforts: Overcrowded classrooms. Crumbling facilities. Disinterested students. "We need to find out what's wrong," concluded one on-screen teacher, "and fix it."
"We want to help," concluded Phil Schiller, Apple's Marketing SVP, from the stage. While Apple obviously can't do anything about overcrowded classrooms or poor-quality facilities, the area they've chosen to focus on is student engagement, getting kids interested in the subject matter.
Schiller went on to explain that the iPad is the number one item on your average teen's wish list. And the device is a perfect replacement—a superior replacement—for the textbooks every student currently totes around (as if, it was pointed out, we were still living in the 1950s).
Enter iBooks 2, Apple's new app that ports textbooks onto the popular tablet. From a simple physical standpoint, it's an obvious improvement: A single 1.3-pound device versus 10 or 20 pounds of books. But from an interactive standpoint, as demonstrated at the presentation, it is leagues better than a static textbook printed on dead trees. In addition to containing all of your textbooks in one place, it offers a degree of interactivity invaluable in a field like education. Text, images, video, sound, and 3D models that you can rotate in space suddenly present biology or history in a way you could not perceive before. The material, as displayed in the demo, appears alive. You touch the iPad's screen and things respond. You manipulate, zoom in and out, investigate.
But aside from the fancy multimedia capabilities, the textbooks still contain those boring old blocks of text and raw data. Apple has monkeyed with this too by applying some clever tricks, some familiar, some not. If you don't know a word, touch it and the definition pops up. When you highlight words or passages with your finger, you can choose to annotate the passage with a note you type in. The software then compiles these passages into a list and even automatically converts them into flashcards—designed to look like index cards, naturally—that you can flip through in preparation for a test. (There's even a shuffle feature.)
I have to point out here that all of these are things I simply witnessed on-screen, and I am essentially parroting facts that were provided to me and relaying what you would have seen if you were at the presentation a few hours ago. But Apple has provided Core77 with a test iPad loaded up with the textbook software, and after I've played around with it for a while, I'll be able to write a more in-depth review detailing how the actual usage goes but you can see the video after the jump.
One Laptop Per Child and manufacturing partner Marvell have announced their new XO-3, a ruggedized tablet meant to withstand the rigors of both vigorous children and the developing nations in which they'll be used. I'm digging both the integrated rubber border and the peelable elastomer screen cover, which flips around to cling to the back of the machine when it's in use.
Chief designer Yves Behar has released a design statement on the project:
After 6 years of design development with Nicholas Negroponte and the non-profit organization he founded, One Laptop Per Child, I am incredibly excited to share the next generation XO-3 tablet. More than 2.4 million children in 25 countries received the original XO Laptop, and these kids have been our inspiration to create the next generation of this educational tool.
One Laptop Per Child is a technology story about how to provide low-cost educational tools to millions of children. For those children, and for us, it is also a creative story about how to design specifically for young students. Every decision made by the OLPC engineering team and the design team at fuseproject has been about adapting technology to children's needs at a cost that makes the tablet affordable for developing countries.
The first impression of the XO-3 is its extreme simplicity. The focus is on the screen, while the surrounding green rubber border provides a safe tactile grip for children's hands. The back surface has a bumpy texture and integrates a rear-facing camera. The connectors, power switch and speakers are arranged on the bottom edge, facing the user.
The XO-3 tablet uses similar ruggedizing strategies as the original XO laptop: rubber protection, anti-scratch grip textures, and robust construction. The XO-3 goes takes this protection further by creating an elastomer removable cover, which is flipped from screen cover to back cover. The cover's arced front surface allows access to ports and buttons, and shields them during transportation to further preserve the hardware. Additionally, the solar cover option can house a solar panel combined with internal batteries for outdoor or indoor charging.
Our approach has been to minimize complexity, while delivering a high quality, and a heightened touch feel. There is playfulness in the way one can adapt the cover to different needs, while each design detail and material is chosen to deliver maximum value.
-Yves Behar, fuseproject founder and OLPC Chief Designer
By the bye, this does not mean OLPC will be abandoning their titular product; this March they'll begin shipping their XO 1.75 laptop to places like Uruguay and Nicaragua, with 75,000 units already ordered.
PENSOLE Footwear Design Academy is pleased to introduce: Saturday School. Register today for your chance to win a Core77 scholarship!
PENSOLE Saturday School (PS2) is an innovative 11-week footwear design class that teaches students the knowledge needed to become a professional footwear designer.
At PS2, students will experience our rigorous "learn by doing" curriculum, where students are assigned projects to develop from idea, to final concept while working in a team environment.
2012 Winter PS2 class theme is the SOLE of Oregon. During this class, each student will be assigned a different Oregon footwear brand to design a new concept for, with the goal of showcasing why you are the future of footwear.
Usually when it comes to talking about graffiti art, it's a moral discussion about property rights or freedom of expression. In the case of the Little Lotus Project, it's definitely a moral cause, but of a different nature entirely: bringing creativity to impoverished children a world away. The Project sends street artists to paint murals on schools in the Thai/Burma border region where Burmese refugee and migrant families have made a new life.
In 2010, four artists from New Zealand traveled to the region to paint murals. Through SpinningTop, a charity that "gives balance to vulnerable children," seven international street artists traveled to the region this month to continue the artistic endeavor and to engage the children in fun and educational art projects. Read more about the most recent project and trip here.
For those of you thinking about applying, the new MFA Products of Design priority application deadline is coming up on January 15th. The progressive new program, launched at SVA and chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov, is casting a wide net:
We are looking for all kinds of applicants for the MFA program: the highly-skilled, seeking more meaningful applications; the deeply-knowledgeable, looking for greater scale and impact; the passionate, looking for more rigor and process; and of course the iconoclastic, looking for a home.
A: We've had great interest from working designers, a few years out of school and looking for more meaning in what they do with their acquired skills. Designers at this stage are often disillusioned by pumping out toxic garbage, but they haven't given up on their belief in the power of design. These kinds of people are precious, because they've got the skills in place, and they've got the passion to put them to more meaningful use. They just need a nurturing, challenging place to discover new opportunities in the world of design, and to really dig deep into what they uniquely have to contribute.ļ»æ Here I'd say, "We want you back."
We are also looking for extraordinarily creative individuals who actually should be in design. The skill sets and vocabularies required of a design person are rapidly changing, and there are now many many places for creative people to contribute to the enterprise of design. We are looking for people with deep, comprehensive skills in a couple particular areas, and who hunger for ways to integrate those skills into something bigger. That's the thing--we're in the business of training people to become great designers--sure. But we're also in the business of empowering creative, strategic, and fearless people to do great things in the world of design. Designers crave influence from the edges, so we welcome people with excellent chops in something vital, who are intensely curious about making a difference and who are enamored of the fact that design deals in scale; that a single action can multiply out to great effect.
(Some nice special effects: The Design Research class will be taught at IDEO; the Material Futures class at Material ConneXion; total pro faculty with deep industry connections; heart of NYC.) Apply Page is here.
When we got to our "Have any advice for design students?" question, all of the creatives we interviewed at Autodesk University 2011 had great, and very distinct, answers. Saul Griffith discussed the importance of creating your own design tools. Daniel Simon talked about
altering your perspective of the environment around you. And here both Jeff McGrew and Jillian Northrup of Because We Can each give great suggestions on learning how You Can, too.
Where is design going? It's a question that designers regularly wrestle with, speculating on the shifting terrain and geographies of the field. Globally, we consume products manufactured at little to no cost in developing countries without question—but what will it mean when things are not just "Made In India" but designed there?
A recent trip to India gave us a glimpse of what this brave new world might look like as the country celebrated the inauguration of DSK Supinfocom design school in Pune, India, about 3 hours outside of Mumbai. The school is the result of a partnership between the Indian developer and entrepreneur D.S. Kulkarni, the French design school Supinfocom and the French Institute Chamber of Commerce and Industry. As I sat in Kulkarni's palatial garden, away from the din of the city, the founder of the 23-year-old French institution, Philippe Delvigne explained the heart of Supinfocom's education philosophy: "Designers for business."
With this context, it makes sense for an Indian entrepreneur to invest in a design school. DSK is investing in the longterm business of Indian innovation in the areas of industrial design, animation and gaming, the three areas of specialized study offered at DSK Supinfocom and the first international programs of its kind offered in India. Unlike other design schools, industry partnerships are at the core of the Supinfocom's 5-year intensive curriculum—all classes are taught by practicing designers, masterclass opportunities with industry leaders in granular fields like color and materials in transportation design, and graduation requirements including 6-months of interning experience.
If you couldn't make it to their on-campus Information Session/Open House last month, the new MFA Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts invites you to attend their first-ever Virtual Open House on Monday, December 19th at 7pm.
You will have the chance to meet Department Chair (and Core77 Editor in Chief) Allan Chochinov and select faculty members including Emilie Baltz, Richard Tyson and Helen Walters, get an overview of the MFA Products of Design program, ask questions and have them answered in real time.
An open discussion and Q&A session, the Virtual Open House will feature a brief talk on the philosophy and structure of the program, reflections on the current state of design and design education, and a detailed overview of the curriculum and faculty. We'll also delve into student life, the Visible Futures Lab making space, and career and networking opportunities. No question is too big or too small; we hope that you will join us and learn more about the program as we accept our first round of applications!
SVA MFA Products of Design
Virtual Open House
Monday, December 19 at 7pm
At Autodesk University 2011, we asked Saul Griffith about his educational background and got a presumably truncated answer—the guy seems to have more degrees than a protractor—and queried him on Theory vs. Making Stuff in education. Following that, he allowed us to cajole him into giving some advice for the current generation of design students. The forward-thinking Griffith then raised an excellent point about the tools designers use, how to produce things that are truly unique, and why now is a great time to be making stuff. Have a listen:
Frank Lau, co-founder of Gunner Training and a resident in plastic surgery at Harvard, recently gave a lecture about his philosophy behind medical school education and what the future of education should look like.
Lau described his own course of medical study as a "sisyphean cycle" of having to relearn material dozens of times, often forgetting information immediately after applying it. "A lot of the time I knew what I was doing," quipped Lau, "but sometimes I maybe forgot...so be careful out there!"
Lau continued to elucidate four main challenges to medical education:
1. Teaching Patient Shortages
2. Teacher Shortages
3. Conflicting Institution Systems
4. Financial Problems
Lau ran through proposed solutions, including national medical curriculums, simulations, standardized patients, and the adoption of competency-based education. The latter has students "sit in the classroom just long enough to show you know the material." The individualized system allows brighter students and hard workers to move through the material at a quicker pace than those who need extra help.
The most serious issue, though, is that often students move through medical school absorbing "critical knowledge" just long enough to perform well on tests. Retaining this knowledge, however, is another story entirely. A 2009 study of Basic Life Support (BLS) skills at prestigious Johns Hopkins of 70 pediatrics residents showed that two-thirds failed to start CPR in a timely manner, while the vast majority made errors during defibrillation. When the most highly trained doctors cannot perform skills anyone can learn at their local YMCA—well, then there must be a serious problem with the education system.
"There are a lot of sub-optimal fixes" to this problem, said Lau. "Every few years you hear about some technology revolutionizing education." But this is not the appropriate solution. "What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology," said Lau quoting Steve Jobs from an interview over a decade ago. "No amount of technology will make a dent."
With the stage set, Lau proferred his own set of principles which formed the basis of his Gunner Training business:
A year ago, Aart van Bezooyen and Paula Raché decided to embark on a unique project focusing on sustainability in materials and design. Instead of the usual desk research they started planning a creative journey around the world. After a lot of thinking and pinpointing countries to visit, it was time to get an around-the-world ticket and to start writing friends and colleagues for local contacts and country information.
When we arrived in Bali, Indonesia the cab driver asked us how long we are going to stay. Four weeks we said and he burst out laughing. "What are you going to do here for four weeks?", he asked. We did not really understand his amazement. After two weeks, the server at our favorite restaurant even had to ask us whether we had business in Bali. Contrary to what locals assumed, by the end of our four weeks we got used to the mind changing way of life on Bali and were sad to leave this beautiful island.
Hello Tourist
Indonesia is the first Asian country we visited ever. During the first days in the city of Ubud we were busy getting used to the street vendors and the chorus that followed us on the street. "What are you doing today?" "You need transport?" "You want a massage? Maybe tomorrow?" "Discount for you—good morning price for good luck..!" No matter whether you are a designer, teacher, nurse or plumber, on Bali visitors are all the same—tourists! With its swarms of street sellers and desperate taxi drivers we realized that a garden café that is both lovely and quiet is a unique proposition in Ubud. From the local newspapers we learned that the Ubud area is experiencing a growth in Eat-Pray-Love tourism, referring to the book and subsequent movie where Julia Roberts visits Bali to "find herself." We didn't see this movie but this is what we found.
Invisible technology meets tangible crafts
Daily Pet
During our stay in Bali we continued our list with animal sightings, or what we called, our "daily pet." Living in bamboo huts is a different thing than our compact flat in Hamburg. Unlike doors and walls, the bamboo huts are semi-open structures that allow for natural cooling. Of course, these structures that allow air to go flow through the huts also give animals free reign, and we experienced a lot of night activity. One of the first friends we met was a frog that lived in our first accommodation. After we put out the frog the first night, he (or she?) was back on the same spot the next day.
One of our first roommates in our bamboo hut
Getting to know more animals such as birds, snails, butterflies, dragonflies, spiders, bats, and the common house gecko in our hut we learned that these animals were there long before us and didn't disturb us. Even better, after two weeks we were entertained with their daily bug catching activities and it felt like we were all living together. Honestly, it took time to appreciate these "pets" but this respect for animals and closeness with nature felt like a very harmonic and sustainable lifestyle.
Green School
One of our main goals on Bali was to visit the Green School which received a lot of attention when founder John Hardy presented a TEDx talk about "My Green School Dream" in 2010. Since then, the school has been overwhelmed with both students and teachers who want to go green which is both a blessing and a curse. After a short tour by Ben Macrory we enjoyed the "Wizard of Oz" theatre night in the midst of proud pupils and even more proud parents. The theater show was fun but the school building is amazing. The Green School is currently the largest bamboo structure in the world.
A quick shot from the backyard during Ben's (fast forward) Green School tour
Beam Summer Camp in Strafford, NH is an 8-week program for aspiring builders, architects, designers, and DIY-ers aged 7-17. Each year the camp "commissions unique large-scale collaborative" designs for projects that are built by the campers over the course of the summer. Previous years' projects have included rolling machines, floating contraptions, aerial installations, and tree houses. Beam Camp is actively seeking proposals for next summer's project, with a deadline of December 31st. Let your imaginations run wild!
During my third semester of college over twenty years ago, I was studying the wrong major at the wrong art school. I remember having a conversation with a professor, explaining my frustrations with a particular assignment and explaining what it was I wanted to do, when she said "Hmm, sounds like you should be studying industrial design instead." I remember thinking What the hell is "industrial design?"
"Sounds great," I said, after she finished explaining what it was. "I'll change majors, I'm in."
"We don't offer that program here," she said. Shortly thereafter I left the school and never went back. Four years later I had a B.I.D. from Pratt (where I met two ne'er-do-wells who would become the founders of Core77).
When did you realize industrial design was the discipline for you? That's what the IDSA wants to know as part of a research inquiry to teach design education. Take the survey here (and while you're at it, share in the comments too).
This is the first in a 4-part series from Cameron Tonkinwise, sharing learnings from a two-year project from the New School's Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab. Amplifying Creative Communities, works to research, promote and amplify community-based solutions for sustainability.
The United States is proud of its commitment to competitive markets as efficient ways of organizing society. But as we all know—from every time we catch a flight, or go to the doctor, or try to negotiate a new wireless or wifi contract—the United States is far from efficient, let alone filled with elegant human-centered experiences. This is especially the case in larger-scale or infrastructure-related contexts, like much of city-life.
This is also not a new complaint about the United States. King C. Gillette, before and after designing a way of shaving that required less skill (but that could only be affordable if disposable), was fed up with the inefficiencies that he felt arose from competition. The response he worked on tirelessly throughout the end of the 19th Century into the first decades of the 20th Century, pitching the idea to President Roosevelt and Henry Ford as well as the general public, was the establishment of a People's World Corporation, a single company that would build the one metropolis needed to house the entire US population in identical towers of serviced apartments near its hydro-electric power-source, Niagara Falls.
King C. Gillette's World Corporation
Perhaps our current problem is that we live in failed attempts to realize Gillette's ambiguous utopian designs. Our cities comprise dense apartments poorly serviced by pseudo-monopolies. And perhaps this is why our current faith seems to be now on the opposite kind of design: not the modernist total design, but evolutionarily aggregated micro-designs.
For example, consider the number of attempts to 'crowd-source' city redesign just this year in New York City alone:
A. is for Amplifying Creative CommunitiesA Rockefeller Foundation funded 2-year project of the Parsons DESIS Lab [of which I am contributing researcher] exploring sustainable social innovations by communities around New York City, and how design could make those innovations more robust and more widely adopted.
B. is for By the City/For the City A competition and festival produced by the Institute for Urban Design (also in part funded by Rockefeller Foundation) that solicited public ideas for improving public space in New York City.
C. is for Change by Us A platform initially developed for the Bloomberg Administration in New York City by Local Projects, resourced by CEOs for Cities and the Rockefeller Foundation (the contemporary heirs to Gillette's social vision?) that allows citizens to identify urban betterment needs that the platform then connects with appropriate government agencies and community groups.
These are, in addition to already existing platforms for co-re-designing cities, such as ioby.org (crowd resourcing platform for environmental improvement projects [I am on their Board]), kickstarter (here's their page on urban redesign projects put together by the World Resources Institute), and openideo.com.
Stepping back to overview all this, it would appear that our urban problem is not lack of ideas. In a way that King C. Gillette would recognize, there is almost frustrating redundancy in not only what people think should be done, but places in which they can express these desires. The issue is rather how to realize all these ideas, or even just some of the good ones.
Compared to the first year of the Amplifying Creative Communities project, which took place in the Lower East Side, this second year's exhibition pays more attention to the stories of individuals who are fighting to materialize their innovations in Northwest Brooklyn (neighborhoods that include Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick). As Lara Penin, Assistant Professor of Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons the New School for Design and Co-curator of the exhibition and its workshops this November, notes, the narratives of heroically creative people, if you can find and capture them, are inspirational, and more appropriate to the United States' approach to social innovation.
What emerges from these stories is a rich picture of what it means to attempt change in dense urban contexts. They provide lessons for what a networked approach to social change demands, as opposed to Gillette's total designs and the competitive market's nondesigns:
There's not much room /
There's always space somewhere
There are lots of different kinds of cities, with different horizontal and vertical scales and densities, and within each of those cities are lots of different kinds of conditions. But in cities like New York, the number of people keen to be there means that nearly every square foot is programmed, usually with something expensive enough to deliver a growing return on investment to the owner. Further, what is there is invariably set in concrete, either literally, or, in the case of property rights, metaphorically. This means that urban change is difficult. Since there is no room to add onto the existing systems or structures, the task is one of 'unbuilding cities' (to use the nice title of a book), which is very difficult.
How cool would it be to have the title of "swarm robotics pioneer" on your business card? Rice University's professor James McLurkin just happens to be one of a handful of people who can stake this claim. He recently shared details of the R-One Robot kit, a low-cost multi-robot systems platform that is, "advanced enough for multirobot research, robust enough for undergraduate and graduate education and cheap enough for K-12 outreach." The project began shortly after he arrived at Rice in 2009 and came out of his own frustrations of using the same group of robots in his classroom for nearly 8 years. The original group of $2000 robots were in dire need of replacements, but the cost was prohibitive.
McLurkin's R-One currently costs about $200 and he has plans to open-source the design, "so that schools and researchers can work with it and adapt it to their needs."
Luke Williams addresses Prediction vs. Provocation. Reporting and Images by Ciara Taylor
The speakers at the Design Research Conference, held in Chicago recently, explored a variety of topics relevant to design researchers. An underlying theme of their presentations, relevant to design professionals in general, was change. More specifically, the designer or design researcher's roles and responsibilities in the process of enacting change, and the resources they can utilize to advocate change in their organizations. Key talks highlighting these themes were given by Luke Williams, Todd Cherkasky, Ilya Prokopoff, and Peter Mortensen and Joyce Chen.
Luke Williams, a Fellow at frog design, gave a talk surrounding Reflections from the World of Consulting: Techniques for Inspiring Change. Williams challenged designers and design researchers to be agents of disruptive change in their organizations. He began with an illustrative example contrasting prediction with provocation, interposing an image of "the happiest guy on the Internet", according to Williams, with an image of Marion Crane, the protagonist from Psycho. Williams uses these images to show attendees what the client's reaction should be when designers introduce disruptive change. He reminds the audience that it is the designer's responsibility to provoke. It's the designer's role to discover insight and areas of opportunity for their clients. In service of this responsibility, he gave attendees a five- stage process for disruptive thinking: craft a disruptive hypothesis, uncover a disruptive market opportunity, ideate, shape a solution and make a pitch.
While Williams spoke about the role of the designer or design researcher, other speakers touched on their responsibilities. In his talk, Tactics for Collaboration in the Age of Analytics, Todd Cherkasky, Global Lead of Research and Insights at SapientNitro, suggests that designers and design researchers have a responsibility to educate. He presented four tactics to consider: talk about the services we provide as designer, not the methods we use; use tools that encourage collaboration across disciplines; build an asset library; and audit your organization's ability to deliver a cohesive customer experience. To elaborate on a few of these tactics, Cherkasky suggests reframing the way designers talk about their work by being specific about the services they provide versus the methods used, such as field studies, research photography, and user interviews. He recommends creating a journey or opportunity map as tools that can be consistently understood across disciplines. He also stresses that a designer's asset library should consist of patterns and user insight.
In October 2010, the Winterhouse Institute brought together 13 representatives of undergraduate or graduate institutions who taught social design in isolated courses or built programs around this area for a special symposium on design education and social change. The goal was to share insights, strategies and concerns about a discipline that has experienced dramatic growth in recent years, yet remains, in its teaching, research and community-oriented practices, inchoate if not chaotic. It was agreed that the first symposium's participants formed the kernel of a valuable network, and that any subsequent meeting should increase the number of attendees while drilling down on several dominant themes.
Ten months later, the Winterhouse Second Symposium on Design Education and Social Change was convened. This symposium's 28 participants included seven members from the charter event; the chairs of two new graduate programs in social design; the co-founder of an international NGO; a leader of K-12 design education; an emeritus dean of architecture who is building a consortium of international design schools focused on social urbanism; two administrators of grant programs for design and social change projects; key educators at institutions or programs that had not been represented at the first symposium; a design journalist specializing in business innovation; and the headmaster, dean of faculty and summer portals director at the Hotchkiss School.
The themes that carried over from the previous event and served as a springboard for conversation were:
Charting new academic social-design programs and initiatives
Forming partnerships between educational institutions, foundations and NGOs
Establishing metrics for the efficacy of social design programs
Navigating educational requirements and goals while contributing to social welfare
Exploiting media platforms for disseminating information about social design
Defining social design
Outlining opportunities for meeting and collaboration
The new MFA Products of Design program at SVA will hold it's first Information Session/ Open House next Saturday, November 5th. Chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov, participants will have the opportunity to meet over 20 faculty (including Bill Moggridge, Julie Lasky, Ingrid Fetell, Steven Heller and a host of others), chat with other prospective students, eat some great food and get a solid preview of the curriculum. Here are the details:
Please join us for our inaugural Information Session. The MFA in Products of Design is an immersive, two-year graduate program that prepares exceptional practitioners across various disciplines for leadership in the shifting terrain of design. We educate heads, hearts and hands to reinvent systems and catalyze positive change through the business of making.
Students gain fluency in the three fields crucial to the future of design: Making—from the handmade to digital fabrication; Structures—business, research, systems, strategy, user experience and interaction; and Narratives—including video storytelling, history and point of view. Through project-based work that engages emerging science and materials, social cooperation and public life, students develop the skills and fluency to create positive consequence. They emerge with the confidence, experience and professional networks to fill senior positions at top design firms and progressive organizations, to create ingenious enterprises of their own, and to become lifelong advocates for the power of design.
Check out all the goings on at the department goings on at the site.
RSVP for the Open House/Information Session event here.
Also don't forget to check out the faculty video profiles that have been going live this past week, including faculty members Helen Walters, Andrew Dent, Sigi Moeslinger, John Zapolski, and Ayse Birsel. A brief compilation video is below:
The Design Research Conference kicked off at IIT in Chicago with five half-day workshops. Conference attendees had the option to choose one of the following courses: Building Confidence in Design Sketching, Improv as a Tool for Prototyping, Research Photography, What4: Frame Stretching and Groundhog Day. Although I was able to see a portion of each, I spent most of my time in the Research Photography workshop hosted by Ben McAllister and Amber Lindholm of frog's Austin, Texas branch. This workshop promised to be interactive and dynamic, taking participants outside the classroom to apply the techniques learned in the workshop to the world around them.
Ben and Amber touched on the fundamentals of photography in research. This included tips on the interaction between the researcher and the user. More specifically, how to obtain permission to take someone's photo without losing the moment as well as the importance of keeping the camera visible so that you do not make your subject feel scared or dehumanized. A variety of techniques were also discussed such as photos as research data and, using photos to elicit stories or provoke thought. They also reviewed more technical photography topics, and made suggestions as to what type of lens to use, aperture settings, exposure, flash, and composition. Some key tips worth highlighting are: use a 50mm lens, do not rely on flash, utilize natural light and rely on your aperture and exposure to capture a great photo.
Remember the Bento Book amalgamation of mobile devices designed by Rene Lee? We've been eagerly watching the onetime RISD ID student's website since last July, when he scored a coveted internship with Apple's Human Interface Team. Unsurprisingly he's kept mum about what he's worked on at Cupertino, but a glance at Lee's well-designed website reveals a strong Apple influence in more ways than one.
If you're curious about SVA's new MFA in Products of Design (chaired by Core77's Allan Chochinov), there may be no better way to get a sense of what it has to offer than listening to its faculty.
The department has just unleashed a slew of faculty video profiles, wherein leading thinkers and practitioners talk about the state of design, the mandates of design education, their hopes and dreams for their courses and what they're most excited about in the enterprise of design.
Click above for a preview, but right now the site's got full videos of Sigi Moeslinger, Amy Whitacker, Helen Walters, Richard Tyson, Ayse Birsel, Allan Chochinov, Jason Severs, Michael Chung, Ingrid Fetell, Bart Haney, Julie Lasky, Andrew Schloss, Sinclair Smith, Becky Stern and Brian Chui. Hit the Faculty Page to view them; more will be coming online over the next couple weeks.
Also don't forget to RSVP to the Information Session/Open House on Saturday November 5th. Over 20 faculty will be in attendance for you to meet—so you can ask them you're own questions!
This British video produced by the trifecta of the Seymourpowell Design & Innovation Consultants, the Design & Technology Association and the James Dyson Foundation lines up a series of UK design heavyweights: Paul Smith, Ian Callum, James Dyson and more, all explaining the clear value of design education to Britain's future economic success. Design education engages children, creates jobs, improves companies' bottom lines, and strengthens the country as a whole, to say nothing of the benefits to end users of owning well-designed products.
The points in the video are all well-made, perfectly articulated and obviously sensible. So why do they have such an uphill battle to fight? Because while they are arguing for the education of children in the video, the video itself is designed to educate a far more difficult creature: The British politicians responsible for education policies.
DESIGN MIAMI 2011
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2011
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2011
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2011
Invisible technology meets tangible crafts
One of our first roommates in our bamboo hut
A quick shot from the backyard during Ben's (fast forward) Green School tour
This is the first in a 4-part series from Cameron Tonkinwise, sharing learnings from a two-year project from the New School's Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab. 
King C. Gillette's World Corporation
Luke Williams addresses Prediction vs. Provocation. 
Reporting and Images by Ciara Taylor
