Design, creativity, and design thinking
This month’s Harvard Business Review is focusing on failure, showcasing a concept that was once avoided at all costs. But is this new lexicon of success by failure really helpful? The global design firm IDEO has a mantra that caught my attention when it was first shown to me many years ago. Fail often to […]
Failure Fetishism and the Language of Success Read More »
Empathy and compassion involve using your heart. Critical inquiry about empathy means using your brain to see the concept more clearly in terms of its purpose. Having the courage to put these into practice in a professional realm and the optimistic hope that we can do this to make things better for everyone is not just a fantasy, but a possibility. In doing so, we can make these real, important concepts more meaningful in a real sense, not in some marketing, feel-good speak that we have now. By being much more authentic, we’ll also help build the credibility of these methods and ideas beyond design and beyond health.
Building Empathy and Other Odd Concepts Read More »
Bringing design and health promotion closer together has the potential to do women and everyone better by considering the locations — social and physical — in which sex influences health and wellbeing and consciously designing situations that improve it. As we celebrate this International Women’s Day, it is worth considering ways to make sex and gender more conscious in our work and how we might design for both at a foundational level.
Design for Sex, Gender and Health (Celebrating International Women’s Day) Read More »
Complex problems like chronic disease, health inequity, access to health care, civic engagement, global migration, and food security are ones that require a diverse set of perspectives, abductive (design) thinking, systems perspectives and ways to bring them all together. Design is a way to do that. Health promotion, rather than health care is the focus that will get us from treating problems to developing solutions.
Design and Health Promotion Read More »
Applying developmental design may get us past the inevitable square-peg-round-hole problem that many evaluators, program planners and policy makers find themselves in as they seek to get greater value from their programs and demand more return on their investments. Evaluation and research is sought as the means to do it and with programs designed for evolution from the start, perhaps we won’t be surprised when the metaphorical ice sheets start to fall apart (as seen above) and see it as a developmental step to a new reality.
Developmental Design and Human Services Read More »
The language of design is geared towards birthing products and services, but rarely about their sustainability and life over time. What else might move the dialogue from studio to ecosystem?
Designing for Innovation: The Role of Time and Space Read More »
Knowledge translation models, such as the widely cited one conceived of by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, are both process and outcome oriented; ideal for designers. KT is a designed process and the more it is approached through the lens of design thinking, the greater likelihood we’ll get a system that reflects its intentions better than what we currently have.
Design and Science: An Opportunity for Knowledge Translation and Exchange?? Read More »
Social media, like all human activities, involves designed interactions in a complex environment. How we design for this space is as much about the social as it is the media.
Complexity, Interaction Design and Social Media Read More »
Drawing connections between our bodies and our behaviour reveals systems thinking in new ways that can lend themselves to contemplating greater ways to consider the relationship between design and its consequences on human health.
Behaviour and Bodies, Systems and Design Read More »
Sigmund Freud believed examination of life was useful for making people better at work and love. Designers are hired for the former, but have opportunities to contribute to the latter in ways that might be better for society than anything cupid has to offer.
Design + Love = Change Read More »
