ABWxD

[Flavia Gnecco]

This is the third year of A Better World by Design and the momentum has certainly picked up. Sold out seats, better swag, live streaming of the conference and more high caliber speakers from around the world. Brown and RISD students from many disciplines orchestrate the conference to start conversations beyond the walls of the classroom about the messy problems that concern them today. Topics covered include the usual suspects of climate change, health, food and social issues but are tackled from all perspectives – science, art, engineering, architecture, technology, industrial design, social science, graphic design, etc. If anything, the interdisciplinary nature of the conference makes it abundantly clear that “design” is a process which breaks the standard mode of operation to solve problems with a human centered final solution, no matter what field you are working in.

Attending just one day of the conference was a great way to recharge and engage with like-minded thinkers and tinkerers. The following is a summary of my Saturday at the conference:

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, founder of a transport, traffic and urban design consultancy in the UK, discussed the benefits of designing traffic solutions that rely on human instinct to avoid dangerous situations. The idea suggests that by removing the typical signals and defined safety spaces for pedestrians on the road (ie painted white lines), we activate the brain and increase our awareness of the surroundings rather than train ourselves to simply stay within the lines.

Robert Fabricant, Senior VP of Creative at frog design, and lead partner in Project Masiluleke, gave a general, feel good talk on design as the engine for social change listing a top ten list of things to do/not do to get the good projects going. But, in true proof of our contemporary days, during the Q&A session a bold member of the audience stepped up with a web mobile device and said, “I am on the frog web site right now….I see high end golf clubs, ovens, personal TVs, ….where is the social change you just spoke about?”. The question received a round of applause from the audience who knows all too well about the reality of time and money placed on design projects for non-profit social/environmental change. But Fabricant was ready with an answer to suggest that the projects frog take on aim to engage and motivate the end user, trying to use what they learn and know to create change, be it for profit or non-profit. This created a nice conversation buzz for the rest of the day.

Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture2030 gave a compelling talk on the importance of using design to drastically reduce CO2 emissions through architecture, and suggested that both Brown and RISD commit to making environmentally smart solutions a required part of every design studio.

Damon Rich, from the Center of Urban Pedagogy in New York spoke about the exhibits and initiatives they use to engage and educate the public about issues affecting their lives. These forms of education can be anything from YouTube videos, posters, community gatherings or large exhibits. One of the most recent projects aims to educate people in public housing about the system they belong to and brings to light topics that tend to go unspoken or are reserved for small circles of conversation. He concluded with the message of “design and planning as a practice of liberation.”


Dawn Danby, from Autocad spoke about how her Industrial Design training and environmental interests lead her to redevelop Autocad software to include sustainability/energy consumption issues into the programming so that engineers and designers alike can find ways to measure the long term impact of their ideas.

The panel discussion on Healthcare Systems included Paul Meyer the founder of Text4Baby, Jennifer Maer of IDEO who worked on Bedsider , Scott Stropkay of ESSENTIAL and Kendra Shimmell of Adaptive Path. All of them pointed to the importance of focusing on patient needs in designing healthcare systems, which unfortunately, is revolutionary thinking.

The Keynote panel was fascinating and spoke about future of products, energy, automobiles and buildings. Saul Kaplan, of the Business Innovation Factory reminded us that business models today no longer follow the formula that we expect them to and that we need to work more on delivering and capturing the ideas we create. Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, Why the Future of Business is Sharing spoke about the upcoming shift in a mindset not to own, but have access to products and suggested that one day, generations will be “access native” much in the way today’s children are “digital natives”. Peter Light from Bloom Energy spoke about making clean energy into livable realities. Aliza Peleg from Better Place provided hope for changing the entire system of how could power our vehicles in the future. Ed Mazria made a second appearance discussing how the current commercial real-estate crisis is forcing us to reconsider buildings as key parts of the economic and environmental structure of our country. Together, each panelist shed light on a direction for the future pointing out not just the problems but the solutions that are finally coming to life.

I’m already looking forward to next year!