Big Skills describe something that outwardly seems like an impressive singular act but is actually made up of many small ones, sometimes done modestly. Knowing what these might be for you can take small things and make them grow. It’s tempting to want to find the one big skill that will set you apart. But …
The proliferation of ‘tips and tricks’ for boosting change-making and innovation efforts obscures the craft and commitment that transformation requires. Visit sites like Medium, search YouTube, or scroll through your Twitter feed and you’ll find endless sources of tips and tricks to innovate, transform, or learn. Tips and tricks work for formatting files with software. …
Evaluation is not a word that fits easily into design practice, but when it does, it lays bare what it achieves. Every designer needs to understand evaluation. Not every designer needs to know how to do it, but they need to know evaluative thinking. Without it, designers are set to fulfill what Charles Eames once …
If design is everywhere humans are and shapes our interactions in the built environment, which dictates how we interact with the world around us should it not be considered important enough to be a part of public health? I recently picked up a copy of the architecturally-inspired Arcade Magazine because of its theme on Science, …
Design Thinking Foundations, is focusing on a synthesis of the literature and interviews with leading professionals from different fields within design, branding, media, and business. Our stake is less in the name design thinking, but more to determine what it is, how it is practiced, and what value it brings in an empirical and theoretically robust manner. Through research we hope to answer the question about whether design thinking is alive and well or simply the walking undead.
Designers seek to put their best forward in their creations, but sometimes it is the dark rather than the light that provides an impetus for good design. Carl Jung’s look into our darker nature might provide a means of understanding the lighter side of what we produce. My work and related inquiry into design has …
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.
In John Maeda’s 5th Law of Simplicity, he states that simplicity and complexity need each other. While true, the challenge that more complexity adds is evident in that there is simply more complexity. Another look at the relationship between simplicity and complexity.
