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 »
Design employs the language of problem solving and features a great deal of tools that encourage participation in solution generation, yet what problems get solved and what solutions are generated for whom are, too often, left untouched.
Design and Social Justice Read More »
Clowning might seem either silly or scary to some, but the art of non-verbal communication is just that: an art. And like art, it opens the door to myriad interpretations, but also to greater empathy and that only benefits design.
Clowning Around For Better Empathy and Design Read More »
Politics provides a great analogy for why systems thinking and design fit together and how effective “design” and systems thinking work so closely together. It’s time that our politicians and policy makers start considering the role of design and systems thinking a little more and Egypt provides a great example of what happens when those areas come together.
Systems Thinking and Design: A Case for Egypt? Read More »
Literacy has many forms and art is one of the ways in which these forms come together and present some of the best opportunities for engaging diversity in complex social systems.
Art / Design / Science / Literacy Read More »
By paying attention — being mindful — of what you’re doing and how it is working, you can start to build a longer-term strategy or pattern of activity that moves you along to where you want to go. It also prevents you from the let down at having not achieved your goals, but setting yourself up for success rather than failure. These kinds of strategies address the complexity of human lives and provide a useful replacement for New Year’s Resolutions.
A Complex View of New Year’s Resolutions Read More »
Complex systems require the kind of deep attention that science brings, the spirit of engagement and problem solving that designers offer, and a space to bring them together. With their focus on reductionist science and the lack of embrace of design, universities haven’t been the home to this kind of thinking. But things can change because, after all, this is a complex dynamic system we’re talking about.
Embracing Complexity / Science Read More »
Many academics are so far removed from the real world that we’ve left little reason for the public to WANT to engage us. But the downside is that we’ve taken many of the methods and tools that we’ve honed over centuries and do produce some good data and synthesis with us. Designers need us to help them step up their game as much as we need designers to help behavioural scientists step up theirs.
Design & Behavioural Science: It’s Time Read More »
What a design-oriented approach to evaluation does is greatly enhance the participant’s sense of the whole, what the needs and desires and fears both parties are dealing with, not just the executive or rational elements. More importantly, this strategy looks at how these different components might interact by simulating a condition in which they might play out.
Design Thinking & Evaluation Read More »
