“Yes, we can!” – A Better World by Design

A first of its kind conference hosted by students of RISD + Brown University, and for students and professionals from industrial design, graphic design, social sectors, international development, architects, entrepreneurs and educators and this is well represented in this slide presented by Steve Daniels.

In true ‘entersectional’ spirit, these students of design, organized a conference for intersectional dialogue on design for social good, where designers asked social entrepreneurs how they could help in their cause and educators from various disciplines discussed the possibility of collaborating on special projects. “I always tell students that if you cannot afford to go to a conference, then organize one and bring the participants to you”, said Denise DeLuca in awe of the conference. In doing so, these students gained goodwill and developed networks with professionals in this industry space. Brilliant!!

In the spirit of this country’s recent political triumph, the Master of Ceremonies opened the event with the “yes, we can” pitch. YES, designers can have a social-good impact; YES, collaborations bring out the best results and change for good and YES, this student collaboration put on a good conference. The conference had a good energy and a high level of passion. It was as if the recent political change had given everyone a new voice. Voices of Cameroon Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, Bernard Amadei of Engineers without Borders and Clarice Odhiambo of Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions (ACESS) were loud and passionate.

Personally, this is how I felt about the conference and I’ll borrow Jerry Seinfeld’s sarcasm to express this as clearly as I can. If you are an analytical person like me, either an engineer or a business person, you would feel like you’ve walked through a “design wash” sort of like a car wash. Imagine watching your car going through each cleaning cycle only you’re the car and the cleaning cycles are instead these awesome presentation slides, flashy computer graphics and vivid story-telling, all being controlled by a series of mac books and mac pros. Towards the end of all the brain-cleansing process you feel that “yes, you can” be a designer too or even better you might feel like you’re a designer already. The risk of going through such a design wash is when you attempt to make such cool presentation slides with awesome moving graphics. I tried it in my class yesterday. At the end of it I realized that in the process of delivering nice looking slides, I missed out on making my point! So people, stay away from designers!! (just kidding)

Talk about design having a social impact! Just being among these self-proclaimed creative thinkers where the free space of unconnected neurons in their brain is a commodity more valuable than my combined engineering and business degrees is a freeing experience and can as well be a reason for frustration. How one draws inspiration from this, is their own challenge? For me it was both. It was especially challenging since most of the language of design was alien terminology to me, which I had to quickly learn in order to make meaningful conversations. So, without further adieu, and in anticipation of a report I might be asked to write from one of my professors, here are the conference highlights for me. I feel that the conference can be placed into three buckets or better yet themes: Acupuncture, Design Thinking, and Open-source.

Acupuncture does for you what it does to a society’s social fabric - cures by creating small and accumulative ripple effect through the entire system. The following were the acupuncture points from the event.
• Architecture for Humanity (http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/about)
• African passion, check out Claricie’s vision and voice for change in Africa, an opportunity for GSSE students (http://www.cusgsse.org/) to build on the third leg of her mission i.e. to develop successful enterprises (http://acess.engineeringafrica.org/vision.php)
• “… birth of an idea is a phone call away”, Cameroon Sinclair
• “…. change .. only through … creating business activity”, Paul Polak
• Design Matters, a UN-registered non-profit housed at the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, California that has a program specifically dedicated to social entrepreneurship
• 9/11 graphic novel (http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/features/2006/08/911/911.pdf)

Design Thinking was the buzz word throughout the conference. Every designer I met or that presented talked about the importance of change in the role of designers in the development process of social projects. They talked of moving from being involved at the backend of the project to being involved at the frontend instead.

• Strategic process, a new change in designer’s involvement in any project• IDEO + Bruce Mao, were definitely the big stars of this event and sort of the lead voice in this direction
• World Bike (http://www.worldbike.org/)
• “design process starts once it is handed off”, Emily Pilloton, the director of Project H Design (http://www.projecthdesign.com/)
• “… use children to re-confirm statements made by adults”, Cameroon Sinclair’s pitch for another important strategy when designing
• Humantific, an interesting tool that profiles people for their creative process thinking, I guess a Myers Brigg’s test for designers (http://www.humantific.com/)
• Mushroom wall panels, Greensulate formula (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1637012,00.html)

Open-source – speakers at the conference were proponents for open-source software and ideas as the next revolution in computing in order to affect social change.

• “What happens when you leave”, a comment by Ross Evans
• Design competition from Architecture for Humanity (http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/challenge2009)
• Frontline SMS (http://www.frontlinesms.com/who/) developed by Ken Banks, uses the widespread use of cell phones in the developing world to let NGOs have a two-way interaction with their clients
• Ushahidi, a Kenyan phrase that means “testimony” is a platform created so that people can report news as it happens through the internet portal or even by SMS’ing (http://legacy.ushahidi.com/)
• “Customers, not consumers”, Niti Bhan requesting the change in reference to people at the lower economic bracket


I request the readers who were part of the conference to add their observations to this post.