It's been awhile since I Wordled

We are looking forward to this.
Hosted by Debbie Millman.

Dinner with a side of design

This is design research at its finest. Or pretty darn close. Polar Design, a firm in Barcelona, worked on this Eurocities project back in 2002 but I think this concept could be an amazing way to link design practice and process to industries or communities who may not yet know of its value in navigating the complexities we are faced with in our world.

Imagine inviting some of your city officials to an amazing dinner. The table cloth, instead of being a mere accessory to beautify the event, becomes a place to actively dialogue with those around you. While you eat, you are visualizing the conversations presented to you on the table cloth.

Could this be a new alternative to local democratic exchange? If Obama can have a state dinner, could the local community do the same and address issues over a meal? We may not have a presidential budget but each community will have vendors who would likely benefit from the opportunity to be included in such an undertaking.

Lucy Orta has pursued this idea as an artist with her 70x7 Meal Acts. What if this was the new way that policies were introduced and discussed? And what if, instead of having a town hall meeting to address new by-laws, you invited a few members of the community to also join in at this table? Maybe it becomes the way that new ideas get introduced in order to test their validity and acceptance?

The designed table cloth offers a creative conduit to exchange activity, food and conversation around any topic. This activity could allow for new ideas to emerge when considering how to collectively work toward a common future. By treating complexity with a measure of comradery, perhaps we can see each other and the problems differently.

Editor's note: Since posting this idea to Twitter and sharing it with a couple Design Week 2010 friends, it seems we have some interest in making this a reality!

Update: Three dinners occurred during Design Week Vancouver. We have since had requests to host this event in various locations. We're very encouraged by the positive feedback we received and enjoyed putting on an event that included good food, good people and good conversation. Watch for updates!

Just playing along with my own ABCs. What's your alphabetic site list?

A ace hotel
B blogger
C core77
D design 21
E ecuad.ca
F flickr
G good
H hello health
I ideo
J join red
K kcrw
L linked in
M mocoloco
N nokia india
O objectified
P pa press
Q quaker oats
R raise the cloud
S something's hiding in here
T tablet hotels
U urban outfitters
V vitamin daily
W wendy macnaughton
X xanga
Y yahoo
Z zack arias

How the internet sees me?

Personas from MIT's Social Media Group. Apparently, I got someone else's illegal behavior included in my algorithmic process. Click on each image for a closer look. The top reflects my name being processed and the bottom reveals the outcome.

Diffusion Shareables (eBooks & StoryCubes) caught my attention today. They are playful digital/paper hybrids. They combine the tactile pleasures of tangible objects with the simplicity and reach of sharing digital media. Diffusion inspires and enables public authoring and cultures of listening – creating and sharing knowledge, stories, ideas and experiences. 

Great design tool (lo-tech and easy to create) and can act:

• as a brainstorming tool to help people share ideas in workshops, conferences and creative labs
• as an evaluation tool to build up multi layered and multi faceted responses to an event (conference, workshop, performance etc.)
• as mnemonic devices helping participants recall activities and outcomes of workshops and mentoring sessions
• in school projects to help students collaborate on group work, enhance negotiation and debating skills and develop tactile and spatial construction skills
• in community projects for intergenerational work – helping people see each others’ perspectives on shared issues
• with young children: make your own alphabet and number cubes or create StoryCubes with photos of friends and family to assist recognition and memory skills
• for storytelling games – where each participant adds elements to their cube and take turns in telling a story with them
• for storyboarding: to help organise storylines for writing, animations or films
• for urban gaming: use StoryCubes as props in urban game scenarios

Rumour has it that Story Cubes are currently awaiting their digitized realization (in the form of approval from the App Store).

Manifest This.

In light of a few of my posts this week – where I questioned if people really understand sustainable consumption, asked if visualization could offer a more valuable evaluation of literacy and imagined what design education would look like in the future – I found this information interesting and even, hopeful. While there have been many manifestos over the years, there is something significant when a mission statement gets presented a) outside of your own discipline and b) on a global scale. For some reason, perhaps naïve, it makes me believe it might have some stick. Here is an excerpt originally posted on Brian Collins' site, (which has now seemingly disappeared and I'm not sure why?):

The Global Agenda Council on Design is committed to applying design thinking to analyzing systemic problems, and to inventing and delivering creative solutions. We have identified six design principles, which should help us – and our fellow Global Agenda Councils – to develop new ideas and strategies to address the problems facing us all.

• Clarity: Complex problems require simple, clear and honest solutions.
• Inspiration: Successful solutions will move people by satisfying their needs, giving meaning to their lives, and raising their hopes and expectations.
• Transformation: Exceptional problems demand exceptional solutions that may be radical and even disruptive.
• Participation: Effective solutions will be collaborative, inclusive and developed with the people who will use them.
• Context: No solution should be developed or delivered in isolation but should recognize its context in terms of time, place and culture.
• Sustainability: Every solution needs to be robust, responsible and designed with regard to its long-term impact on the environment and society.
Based on our discussions with fellow councils we have developed three proposals for projects intended to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s mission of improving the state of the world:

Universal symbols to encourage sustainable consumption – Many consumers wish to behave more responsibly but are unsure as to how to do so. We propose to develop an internationally-recognized set of symbols – one to indicate the water footprint of a product and its packaging; the other to indicate their combined carbon footprint. This simple system will also encourage more consumers to follow suit in future and companies to behave more responsibly.
Design thinking within education – As design thinking is an invaluable tool to help us to think and act creatively, we propose to introduce it as a core subject on the K-12 curriculum all over the world. By providing students with a methodology for understanding global challenges and giving them the means with which to conceive and develop solutions, this would be a simple but effective way of nurturing a new generation of instinctive lateral thinkers and problem solvers.
Lifecycle-adjusted value system – This looks at the cost of existence including utilization and decomissioning costs. By visualizing and revealing these costs to society, this offers a new way of measuring value. It strives to convert a debt-focused society into an asset-focused society by changing the valuation system. It is a paradigm shift so that one generation creates assets for the next generation instead of debts.

Action plan, anyone?
Having attended a few conferences while in Rwanda, which looked at ways to respond to all sorts of development: urban infrastructure, environmental management and science/technology (to name a few), I was introduced to a popular question: What is your action plan? (which always sounded so lovely when said with force by my colleagues there: "Ack-shun Plahn").

In light of this mission statement, I am curious to see how the design community can and will act on this ideas. I know there has been much in the works to get to this stage. But how will we individually and collectively respond to this blueprint? What forms will it take? Grassroots? Corporate? Others?

I love to be inspired by grand ideas. I'm fairly sure I procure such notions on a daily basis – Just ask my friends! I am realizing more and more that what keeps me inspired is not the declaration of the hopeful future; rather it is the witness of tangible actions, which often seem to be inconsequential or perhaps even, dare I say, failures, that allow me to live into the declarations. In saying this, I suppose I'm suggesting that while I look forward to a collective action plan from the design community, I am also required to filter this into my own paradigm and act on it accordingly.

Visually Literate

While my current research focus is on design for health care, I can't shake the thoughts I'm having  about technology and literacy (which I suppose aren't completely unrelated). When I first started my design training, I was given an assignment to create a newspaper ad that would present a concept of the how the rate of HIV/AIDS in Africa would lead to increased deaths, which would have a direct affect on the next generation's acquisition of knowledge. I take note of this piece simply because the quote suggests that these statistics will arrive by 2010. That's coming up soon, right?



I also recall my participation in a science and technology conference in Rwanda (and how the research activities of the participants could impact the economy of the country). What was notable to me during this experience was how many of the researchers did not have a backed up copy of their work that could shared (because it had been typed once on a typewriter). In this case, how does their knowledge get passed on and/or developed further? If there are hidden innovations, how can we learn about them?

---

This article caught my attention this week because it speaks to how we value literacy in this media age. How this gets measured is a whole other conversation but I'm left wondering how media literacy applies to those who might still be waiting for the media to show up? I continue to hear about technological advances in the urban space but am getting more excited to see how this gets translated to those who dwell in a rural context. There are innovations waiting to abound but how do they get realized, shared or built upon?

---

What would it look like if we allowed people to create a visual business plan instead of a textual one? What if presenting an evaluation to a potential funder meant creating a video? Or a book of sketches? What if a farmer, looking for remedies to a low crop yield, received all his information visually?  On a mobile device?

If text hinders someone from moving forward economically or otherwise, are we limiting the innovators who have ideas but can't write them down?

These are lofty questions at this point. I'm not completely sure what to do with them, except get them on a page and consider how their adolescent qualities might mature. If you have thoughts or ideas to contribute to my ramblings, I'd love to hear them. Or better yet, see them.
Image source

Perfect. Desktop wallpaper from Veer. Click on image to see it larger.

Last year I wrote a wee book that posed the idea that Barbie should become the poster child for the "green movement." While I think we're well beyond some of our naive ideas about the word "green," I was reminded that many continue to be overwhelmed by the shift in conversation — and are left wondering how to uncover the truth in this message of a more sustainable future. Here's an excerpt:

And so, this is why I have been toying with (pun intended) how Barbie (a fake plastic pop icon) might speak to the issue of changing to a greener life. If the switch to green continues to be about how we respond to the external qualities of our life (and not the deeper roots of our existence), maybe Barbie could justify our wayward ways. In her 50-year history, Barbie has represented many things. She is both traditional and controversial. She has responded to various cultural realities by turning herself into an animal-loving anthropocentric or a calculator-carrying corporate maven. Last year, a Muslim Barbie was developed to allow for a new era of doll based on the values and traditions of the Muslim culture. If this culture wanted a doll to reflect its values with alternative external apparel, could Barbie speak to the ideologies of green similarly? Are we suggesting that what you add to the outside reflects what is really going on inside?

Do you agree? Do you think people continue to be overwhelmed or have we navigated a reasonable path at this point?

If you want to read more, here's where to get your hands on it: I Am Not A Plastic Bag

Drawing: A Fundamental Instrument to Understand Reality

After using drawing as part of my design process in Rwanda, I have taken a great interest in its role as a means for communication in low-literacy communities (and how this might affect the way mobile systems are designed and implemented). Beyond that, I am also keen on how it can help us access other cognitive levels in the complexities of daily experience.

This short video (via BoingBoing) about Milton Glaser highlights how drawing can play a role in looking at things more carefully and encourage a consciousness about what we see. He also suggests that it need not be "accurate" in order to have benefit. To me, this becomes extremely interesting when we are seeking to understand complex issues in our world.



If "drawing is thinking" then we have a broader capacity for understanding these complexities as we move beyond a typical read of them. Statistics and texts offer one dimension of this information. And while this is valid, it is often postured as the most reliable way of understanding complexity (especially when said complexity incorporates unknown cross-cultural or demographic details). Visualizing this information seems to allow for a broader read and allows for new possibilities to interpret what we see. When we are dealing with complex issues, like those I witnessed in Rwanda, I believe that we need other ways of seeing if we are to find ways of addressing new solutions.

Could drawing help us show this information in a more accessible way? Could this activity make something like the MDGs more understandable to those who are being evaluated by their success or failure? I don't presume to have all the answers but I can see that there is room to expand:

The impact of communication can be jeopardized by not having accurate information about the needs of the counterparts and by the reliability of available tools. Experience in monitoring and evaluating the impact of communication initiatives is comparatively weak, leading to the re-use of formats and campaigns regardless of their effectiveness in improving conditions of marginalized groups. Paola Pagliani, The MDGs as a Communication Tool for Development

Map source

Tweet Translations: The Number 25

After my talk at Practivism II last night, a few people tweeted this quote so I wanted to clarify its source and some of my thoughts around it for those who weren't able to attend.

If you haven't had good conversations, with your eyes open, with at least twenty-five poor people before you start designing, don't bother.

This quote comes from Paul Polak's book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. It contains an amazing amount of information for a designer who has interest in designing with rural communities. In one section, Polak suggests there are some basic principles when designing for the “other 90%.” The former quote represents one of them.


The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%. (Polak)

His recommended design principles put the poor customer at the centre of the design process in order to develop the most sustainable offerings. To know your customer, you need to talk to your customer. I'm not sure why he suggests that it should be twenty-five people. I don't know that it's a magical number but I'll assume that talking to more people will help overcome the large assumptions that can surface after only talking to one or two. It may take more time but this is a much better option; otherwise, we have the potential to waste a lot of money and time on a product or service that won't actually be useful or successful.

At my talk last night, I suggested that if we are to design appropriately at this time in history, it shouldn't matter what demographic we are working with - talking with and including people in the process will be a key to the quality of deliverables we produce. My work in Rwanda forced me to consider how to have these good conversations when language was not shared. I highlighted how this diversity of language and culture we exist in requires us to think creatively about the best ways to design and deliver appropriate solutions in this very global world.

If you're interested in more, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum has presented a wonderful exhibit on what this type of design could look like.

Stanford Social Innovation Review recently published an article by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt of IDEO. The whole article highlights the many ways that design thinking and process are being applied to complex global problems. You can download it for free here.

This quote is from the article and describes my adaptation of the HCD toolkit:

Earlier this year, Kara Pecknold, a student at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, took an internship with a women’s cooperative in Rwanda. Her task was to develop a Web site to connect rural Rwandan weavers with the world. Pecknold soon discovered that the weavers had little or no access to computers and the Internet. Rather than ask them to maintain a Web site, she reframed the brief, broadening it to ask what services could be provided to the community to help them improve their livelihoods. Pecknold used various design thinking techniques, drawing partly from her training and partly from Ideo’s Human Centered Design toolkit, to understand the women’s aspirations.

Because Pecknold didn’t speak the women’s language, she asked them to document their lives and aspirations with a camera and draw pictures that expressed what success looked like in their community. Through these activities, the women were able to see for themselves what was important and valuable, rather than having an outsider make those assumptions for them. During the project, Pecknold also provided each participant with the equivalent of a day’s wages (500 francs, or roughly $1) to see what each person did with the money. Doing this gave her further insight into the people’s lives and aspirations. Meanwhile, the women found that a mere 500 francs a day could be a significant, lifechanging sum. This visualization process helped both Pecknold and the women prioritize their planning for the community.

I talked to a radio reporter today. She'd learned that I was going to be speaking at Practivism II. In the course of our conversation the words, "human-centered design" came up and she didn't understand what it meant so I attempted to explain it to her from my perspective. In light of this chat, I'm curious to know how others might define it (especially to someone outside of design)?

I came across this image in Wendy Macnaughton's work and it acts as a great visual reminder that while there are things we can't know, don't know, possibly fear or suspect, we have the chance to imagine what could be. So perhaps I'd draw a circle around it all and suggest that this is "the place where designers live everyday."

View image larger

I suppose my thoughts have been heightened by reading a few books and watching a few TED talks that are focused on the role of design and how it is shifting/has shifted. Last month, I devoured Tim Brown's book on a flight to New York and I'm about to ingest some Glimmer.

Another manifesto has surfaced and of late, I'm particularly drawn to #3, #7, #9 and #10 because they remind me I'm not crazy:

1. A designer does not have the luxury of cynicism.

2. It is easier to react than to create.

3. You must keep moving away from what you know.

4. A designer’s gotta have the guts to be truthful at all times.

5. People don’t fund problems, they fund solutions.

6. Many believe the world just is. Designers believe we can make the world be.

7. It can be helpful to think about an idea from a point of view that makes no sense.

8. Through the act of making things, we discover ideas.

9. When you’re totally unqualified for a job, that’s when you do your best work.

10. The goal is to be an expert coming out, not going in.

11. To bring about real change, you have to kiss a lot of frogs.

12. When the world isn’t working well, you have the makings of a great design project.

Processing these statements leads me to consider the idea of how this shift will be addressed in education. Equipping the next generation of designers is a concept that gets me really excited! I would love to see what could happen when a group of design students worked collaboratively with students from other disciplines on current wicked problems. I know some schools are already moving in this direction (and I look forward to hearing some ideas from Nathan Shedroff's talk at Practivism II) but I can see how there is room for more. I hope to explore some of the possibilities in a course I'm preparing to teach in the spring.

In the meantime, I'm trying to live in the space between what I may not yet understand and that which I can imagine. Here (or after September 14, 2009, according to Wendy Macnaugton), life gets interesting. View image larger

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
--Goethe

To arrive at the point that you don't know, you must take the road that you don't know.
--St John of the Cross

Think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him.
--Ghandi

In searching out the truth, be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it.
--Heraclitus

Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
--Robert F. Kennedy

Our inventions are likely to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
--Henry David Thoreau

I just returned from a ten day trip to New York and San Francisco. One of the highlights was being able to visit the Cooper Hewitt and see the Design USA: Contemporary Innovation and Design for a Living World exhibitions.

During this experience, while visiting Jonathan Ives' work for Apple, I overheard these two women bantering about the problems they were having with their interactive tool: the iTouch program designed by 2x4 that would help them to interact with the exhibit.


In her thick New York accent, Marge calls out,"Blanche! It's not working! It's broken."

Notably, their frustrations were not quiet musings in the corner. With headphones on, they were talking quite loudly in the midst of a large group of museum-goers. One women, who was just as unfamiliar with the iTouch, attempted to assist. I walked over, seeing the irritation on other people's faces, and attempted to offer my two bits. I tried to demonstrate how the interface worked (at one point, the screen was completely black) and eventually saw them move along with some measure of ease.

There are multiple layers to this experience: from human to environmental to technological. Did it matter that these women were seemingly disruptive? Should the museum be quiet? Or is interactivity meant to be a bit disruptive? How else could interactivity create conversations with people? Was this disruption actually a way to connect the human quality of the museum experience? Did the technology that was intended to assist create a profitable distraction? Could it be more communal and less individual?

As you can imagine, the list of questions could go on.

I don't know these women so I didn't want to intrude on their museum experience anymore than I already had. But I would be curious talk with the "Marge's and Blanche's" to uncover their ideas about an "interactive museum experience" to see what might have surfaced. Maybe they would have suggested improvements to the current and familiar system or maybe their ideas could push it in a new direction that wasn't expected?

Ironically, after this trip to New York, I headed over to California to participate in the ACM Creativity and Cognition conference. The Berkeley Art Museum hosted a diverse group of individuals who were focused on creativity research. The final keynote was Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, who is best known for his work on creativity and flow. During the 3 days of conferencing, I also heard from a group at Queen Mary University of London who are looking into democratizing technology for marginalized communities. Specifically, they have worked with elderly individuals who often find themselves outside of the "third wave." The presentation revealed their research and demonstrated the power in accessing the voices of those who are least connected with technology. It would seem someone is talking to the Marge's and Blanche's of this world - and inviting them to participate in the process.

What does design thinking look like?

I just got back from the IDSA conference in Miami. I've never been to one before so I can only compare it to other conferences I've attended. And on many levels, it follows a similar model of other organizations: workshops, keynotes and vendors all hosted at a fancy hotel or venue.

I tracked the Twitter feeds to find out what others were thinking about this event in real time. Since I'm not a member of the IDSA, I knew no one upon arrival. As I was going to present during a breakout session on the last day, I wanted to see if anyone had 140 characters that could help me understand this diverse group of people. Notably, there weren't many tweeters compared to some other events I've tracked but I was able to gain some perspective. Regardless, what continued to emerge throughout the event was the hope that design could change the world in ways it hadn't before.

Various other voices have weighed in on the experience. I would suggest that these thoughts are completely valid but tend to suggest the notion that the IDSA might not be able offer what these times demand. I'm not here to reject their ideas or the IDSA but I will say that one notable moment occurred during the conference that seemed to represent "design thinking" at its finest.


(image from Tim Brown's new book Change By Design)

A group of students led an impromptu session to ask the question, "What would your ideal conference experience be?" I told a fellow attendee, "That is where the ideas will come from at this conference. You want to find out the pulse for the future? Go there." Don't get me wrong. Everyone contributed many layers of value. I attended great sessions with amazing content and conversation. I was grateful to have people participate in my session for that matter (especially at 9am on Saturday morning!).

But for me, the student "charrette" and their final presentation offered an envisioned future that I believe we are meant to investigate as "design thinkers." And in my opinion, our thinking is best reflected when accompanied by some sort of design doing (if it is to make an impact). The student's approach acted as a microcosm of the topics covered during this event. We talk a lot about this notion but their actions represent what we are meant to be striving for in this process: they sought to engage a group, be user-centered, collect data and then present scenarios to the audience. And they did it all in a rapid prototyping fashion. With a healthy dose of humor. Brilliant.

I'm sure I could offer many event improvement suggestions. As designers, I think it's in our blood to figure out better ways to do everything. But I want to affirm that the students led the way through their innovative approach to evaluating the future of this type of conference. And to me, that is what design thinking looks like in real time. It becomes a testament to how our discipline can model ideas in the midst of our own learning. And gives us a chance to practice before we begin to approach these "wicked problems" filled with complexity.

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that P&G actually initiated this impromptu session. So credit to them for creating a means to dialogue about improving this event. See comments for more details.

Human-Centered Evaluation

Some folks led a session at SoCap09 that I wish I could have been sitting in on. Twitter allows you to catch a glimpse of the topics but I would have loved to hear the dialogue beyond the 140 characters.

Two people I follow on Twitter were on this panel: Aaron Sklar & Tatyana Mamut (both work at Ideo and are connected to designing for social impact).

Here's the description:
Social investors and social entrepreneurs have been struggling for years to align on the right tools for measuring new-to-the world offerings. These offerings often take years to show results and many initiatives run the risk of stalling or failing due to lack of demonstrated progress. In addition, the evaluation of new solutions is often uncharted territory in terms of how to measure and what to measure. In this session aimed at funders and social entrepreneurs, Ideo, Jd Power and associates and Keystone will share their frameworks and experiences for creating a strategic measurement portfolio based on human centered measurement and evaluation methodologies. In the workshop portion of the session, participants will break into teams and create a human centered evaluation strategy to meet their current measurement challenges. Participants are invited to come with an evaluation challenge of a new-to-the-world initiative that they would like to work on in the workshop. The session is part of a collaboration between Ideo and Good magazine to advance dialogue about evaluation in the social sector.

Twitter began feeding these 5 principles for making change happen:
1. Put people at the center of evaluation
2. Take a systemic view
3. Navigate uncertainty
4. Zoom out to a portfolio view
5. Measure what you care about

Having pursued a focus on human-centered design in my graduate studies, I can relate to the struggle to adequately evaluate. There are so many factors that play into this! Notably, this becomes difficult when you are seeking to access evaluations from those who don't share the same language but who could benefit from your offering. Professor Ranjan at NID has a great diagram that reinforces how to keep people at the center of the evaluation by constantly revisiting the community at all stages of design. His diagram infers being present to these individuals: "You have to get your hands dirty on the ground to be able to really understand your customers' needs." (Lucky Gunasekara)

What Ranjan's diagram can't address is how you should interpret the feedback you receive in order to establish some sort of metric. It likely presumes that a conversation has occurred that will allow you to move onto next stages of evaluation. To me, this presents another reason why meaning and metrics are worth investigating. I continue to return to Jacqueline Novogratz's words in The Blue Sweater where she assesses how social programs have often created a culture of charity that don't empower people to say what they really mean. How can we access what people really think when money (or lack thereof) might affect their decision? Check the Twitter feeds under #socap09.ideo for much more on this. The diversity of discussion is worth perusing.

I'm definitely not a pro in the area of social innovation and/or its measurement. I am keen to grow in it because of the witnessed frustrations of ineffective offerings. I don't want to suggest simplistic ideas on such a far-reaching topic either; my limited experience continues to remind me that the number one principle suggested in this session is the one which will define the remainder on the list. Organizations like the ones included on this panel are asking good questions in order to link us to the broader topics of democracy, transparency and governance (for the sake of those who aren't physically present to lend their voices to their own social innovation but who are the beneficiaries of these discussions on some level).

But that's another blog entry altogether.

For more on this discussion, check out the Innovation in Evaluation forum.

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.