Index: Design to Improve Life

While the Bambulance didn't win in its category, the team is grateful to be in the company of such amazing designs that truly do seek to improve life. I watched the ceremony and was encouraged to see so much attention brought to the ways design can and will improve the way we (and others) live. I was also encouraged to learn how much Index: does beyond the awards to actively engage the community with its objectives.

2009 Finalists

2009 Index:Award Winners

Bambulance Project

As a designer who cares about how my skills might be used for those on the margins, you can imagine how delighted I was to find an organization in my own backyard that wants to do the same! Design For Development is dedicated to using the design process as a problem-solving tool to address issues in poverty-stricken areas of the world.

In 2007, DFD and a few interns from ECUAD developed a project to improve healthcare access in underserved communities by designing a safe, affordable and sustainable means of medical transportation. The Bambulance is a bicycle–pulled emergency medical transport device created in response to the lack of safe, affordable and sustainable healthcare transportation in underserved communities in the developing world. It was designed by: Philippa Mennell (Canada) Chris Ryan (Canada) Niki Dun (Canada) and Philippe Schlesser (Luxembourg).



With the aim of saving lives by improving emergency transit times for communities where motorized transport is unavailable or inappropriate, the Bambulance is a cost-efficient and sustainable trailer and stretcher combination, pared down to essential materials. Composed almost entirely of bamboo, bicycle inner tube, and reused trucking tarp, the Bambulance is designed to be affordable to community members, utilizing local materials and trade skills in its construction.

Inspired by skin-on-frame building techniques, the chassis frame and stretcher are fabricated using simple hand tools and craft processes, making the parts easy to assemble and disassemble for repair and replacement. Bamboo – an underutilized locally available resource in Western Kenya and other African regions - is inexpensive, sustainable, lightweight and strong.

With the initial design taking place under the guidance of the Design For Development Society and in consultation with Kenyan partners and healthcare providers, the Bambulance will first be manufactured and piloted in western Kenya.

Prototypes are currently in production. Pilot project scheduled for early 2010.

The exciting news? The Bambulance is a finalist for the Index:Award Design To Improve Life!

Process Video:


Manufactured/Produced by: Pilot project manufacturing by the Community Transformers and Women’s Equality Empowerment Project, Nairobi, Kenya.

Additional credits:
Project concept, development and implementation: Design for Development Society
Project assistance and student interns: Emily Carr University

Feeling vs. Knowing

An honor

I have a huge amount of respect for IDEO's work (as I've mentioned in a few blog posts) and I'm truly honored to have part of my research included in the new version of their Human-Centered Design Toolkit. This resource has offered me some great insights and I highly recommend it to any designer. As a bonus, it is open-source and completely free!

From their site:
Human-Centered Design is a process used for decades to create new solutions for companies and organizations. Human-Centered Design can help you enhance the lives of people. This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear people's needs in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

The Toolkit is divided into four sections:
The Introduction will give an overview of HCD and help you understand how it might be used alongside other methods.

The Hear guide will help your design team prepare for fieldwork and understand how to collect stories that will serve as insight and inspiration. Designing meaningful and innovative solutions that serve your customers begins with gaining deep empathy for their needs, hopes and aspirations for the future. The Hear booklet will equip the team with methodologies and tips for engaging people in their own contexts to delve beneath the surface.

The Field Guide and Aspirations cards are a complement to the Hear guide; these are the tools your team will take with them in order to conduct research.

The Create guide will help your team work together in a workshop format to translate what you heard from people into frameworks, opportunities, solutions, and prototypes. During this phase, you will move from concrete to more abstract thinking in identifying themes and opportunities and back to the concrete with solutions and prototypes.

The Deliver guide will help catapult the top ideas you have created toward implementation. The realization of solution includes rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment, and implementation panning. The activities offered in this phase are meant to complement your organization's existing implementation processes and may prompt adaptations to the way solutions are typically rolled out.

If you want a printed version, they are also available for purchase.

A Design Case Study: Adaptable, Scalable, Affordable

For Print Only wrote about this stamped version of a business card. The designer was esteemed for his excellent registration. I concur.

But I also love how this speaks to designs being hand-crafted and how this encourages reduced waste while also offering a transferable tool that is accessible to non-designers.

This idea was reflected in what I attempted to allow for a logo design to be usable and beneficial for a cooperative of weavers in Rwanda who had no access to typical print tools. By translating their logo onto a rubber stamp, they are now able to manage a visual identity that will allow them to improve market presence for their weaving business.



As design has a role to play in democracy and good governance, I see this concept as an example of how accessible design tools can encourage dignity and ownership for the next billion.

Design and Democracy

I watch this video footage of the Design Awards (that is available for download on the White House website) and am proud of the accomplishments of those who have gone before me. To see design honored in such a stately affair makes you feel like you are a part of something larger. I found Michelle Obama's speech to be slightly stuck on the science and art pairing but appreciated that she identified the idea that "great designers pursue a mission."

It is also notable that we get to witness events like this: a sign of the transparency of information. And made possible by a government-related event that celebrates those who help make this information flow freely.

Innovation through design presentation at Future Trends Forum

In this presentation in Madrid, Jocelyn Wyatt gives a great overview about how design can be used when approaching social sector complexities. She highlights IDEO's five principles that I find helpful in understanding the process of this type of thinking:

1) Design puts people first
2) Design thinking starts small and starts now
3) Design balances the eco-system
4) Design experiments to learn
5) Design thrives in constraints

(And at about the 13 minute mark, Jocelyn comments on my adaptation of their toolkit where I used a camera for self-documentation.)

When I grow up, I want to be a design researcher

I'm grateful for a new opportunity. Or perhaps an ongoing opportunity.

I get to keep being a design researcher.

Over the next four months I'll be working alongside my advisor, Maria Lantin, to develop an analysis that will help focus future project opportunities for this funding at ECUAD. Specifically, we are considering how the application of digital media and design can contribute to developments in the DTES.

(click on this chart by IDEO to see it larger)

Some key words for us in this process? Repeatable, scalable, sustainable, transferable, adaptable and technological.

I'll keep you posted on any pertinent news (and we'll likely be creating a blog-like space to exchange ideas and process).

SMS Rapid Prototyping

This research by Google, that employs rapid prototyping, is something I wish I could have explored more thoroughly in my own process. The main question I ask in watching it:

How can these ideas be translated when literacy/language may be an issue? What if someone can't text in English or can't even text in their native language?

Regardless, this is a fundamental work toward applications that become relevant in these contexts. I think of people who live remotely and have a far distance to go to see a doctor. This could drastically improve the way people deal with medical issues, not to mention understanding weather and agricultural issues.

And I have little grin surfacing as I recall using those MTN minute cards in Rwanda.

Back to Morris?

What do you think about this quote?

To understand the language of design, we also need to understand how the designer has evolved as a professional. Ever since design emerged as a distinct activity, closely linked to the development of the industrial system towards the end of the eighteenth century, designers have lurched from seeing themselves as social reformers, idealists, profoundly out of sympathy with their times, like William Morris in nineteenth-century England, to become the charismatic snake-oil salesman led by Raymond Loewy in mid-twentieth-century America. Morris hated the machine age, and tried to find a way to re-create the tradition of the hand crafted object.

-From The Language of Things by Deyan Sudjic

Are we, like Morris, in a place of rejection of the pains our industrial age has inflicted? DIY replaces expert, handmade becomes the new high-end and what was seemingly mechanized is less appealing compared to the seemingly organic. How has (must) the designer changed his or her role? Are we in a design reformation or is it actually a revolution?

How do you view your role as a designer? Reformer, idealist, salesman or ?

An interview with the author

A great article on human-centered design (that hosts a wee quote from my work with the kit in Rwanda).

Design is a Life Skill, Not Just Style

I think this footage speaks for itself.

You know how NBC has those little vignettes that bring attention to critical social issues? I'm a firm believer that design can assist in addressing some of these issues so consider this post to be my own version of "the more you know."

"Design education is not keeping pace with the growing demand for new design professionals able to operate in a range of service-based environments.

Our paper, Social Animals: tomorrow’s designers in today's world by Sophia Parker, argues that design education is still largely hinged on industrial principles. Students need to be equipped with a broader range of research and communication skills, alongside their more traditional design skills, and encouraged to think more laterally about the sites and spaces where these could be used. The report outlines six challenges for design educators."

These challenges are titled:
1. Developing actionable insights
2. Doing co-design ethically
3. Making things real
4. Seeing the bigger picture
5. Selling the idea
6. Finding problems as well as solutions

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The RSA encourages public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues. Their projects generate new models for tackling the social challenges of today and their work is supported by a 27,000 strong Fellowship - achievers and influencers from every field with a real commitment to progressive social change.

"Design Thinking on the other hand deals with exploring the problem space and the basic needs, resulting in solutions nobody has ever thought of before...To be done well, design research demands that everyone involved be prepared to grapple diligently with ambiguity and nuance. It asks us to bring creative energy to the synthesis of confusing and conflicting information."
-Jane Fulton Suri

I have an opportunity to pursue some design research that links the academy with industry. In this process, it is fascinating to see how others view its place and need. Suri offers a perspective that resonates with me.

Design Research and Radical Innovation

MAA Design? Check.

Larger or More

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Come join the conversation.

ThinkPublic is an award-winning agency focused on using design to improve service experiences in the public sector. We achieve this by working with service providers and the general public to gain understanding of how their services and experiences could be improved. Our dynamic and creative company has worked with the NHS, education, Local Government and the Third Sector.

Governance, baby

Since I've been doing research on governance and how design can play a role in promoting the good use of it, I find this incredibly interesting. The internet allows for a different kind of information exchange that is now being affected by the voice of the users. It's like we're learning as we go about the "rights and responsibilities" that go along with being a part of this internet village. Now if information graphics could simply the text for those who speak a different language...that'd be cool.

Opening Night

Grad 09

27 Letters

27 Letters

It's really happening

Design is the problem

I've just glanced through this but I can see how Design Is The Problem will be a superb resource for designers (and anyone interested in the complex nature of sustainability).

Feedback from the field

Lama talked with the women some more and asked some further questions I was curious about. These two were interesting to me:

5. Did you learn anything new from this experience?
We learned the importance of planning our budget and saw that in fact, there was a lot of things that can be done using 500 francs a day.

6. Are you using the bag for anything now? If so, what?
They use the bag to carry the Bible to church on Sunday.

Design With A Conscience

This surfaced in the interweb chain. This was a great conference I attended a year ago. It has definitely been a part of shaping my graduate work. And if you watch closely, you might just spot me and some other cool "Vancouverins" in the mix.

Co-Design 101