December 31, 2011

Writer and “optimistic doomer”, John Thackara is always good value. Here, he chats about the crisis (and opportunities) facing the design industry with Rob Huisman of the Association of Dutch Designers. I particularly liked his breakdown/definition of social innovation, a phrase that has become so ubiquitous as to become meaningless:

  1. Use design skills to address social problems such as obesity, crime, looking after older people.

  2. Develop services with a social need, such as ride-sharing or health applications on iphone. These services are social rather than commercial.

  3. Create a new kind of society in which we get food, shelter, move around, look after our children in different, less costly ways.

Thackara confesses on multiple occasions that he hasn’t quite figured out the economics of this type of work for designers, which is clearly an issue. But he’s also clear on one point: designers can’t wait for people to come to them. See the work you want to do, he advises, and go and offer your services, explaining to would-be clients what you bring to the table and why they should bother to have you around. Right on.

[Story via Adrian Shaughnessy.]

9:18am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxE2wEnG
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(Notes: 9)
  
Filed under: John Thackara social innovation urban design design thinking regional innovation health design apps society social design 
November 17, 2011
Really extraordinary scenes here in New York, as Occupy Wall Street protesters gather and mobilize around the city. It’s amazing to see the enormous surge of activity and support, while I for one am still baffled that city officials seemed to think that evicting Zuccotti Park protesters in the middle of the night wouldn’t provoke any kind of response. (Maybe they did and this is all part of the plan; but at the moment, public opinion sure isn’t with Mayor Bloomberg or the NYPD; the action seems to have invigorated and encouraged rather than dampened or halted.) Alexis Madrigal wrote an excellent piece in The Atlantic breaking down the meaning of #OWS, while longtime Radiohead artist, Stanley Donwood released this high resolution image as a free download for people to use as they like. He wrote: As the mendacity of the One Per Cent continues, here is a small tool which you may download, blow up, paste, copy, pass on, and do whatever with. I’m not sure where the quote is from; I saw it on a poster at Occupy Sheffield last week, where they thought that the words were possibly from a former Prime Minister of Canada. [Link via Mara Carlyle.]

Really extraordinary scenes here in New York, as Occupy Wall Street protesters gather and mobilize around the city. It’s amazing to see the enormous surge of activity and support, while I for one am still baffled that city officials seemed to think that evicting Zuccotti Park protesters in the middle of the night wouldn’t provoke any kind of response. (Maybe they did and this is all part of the plan; but at the moment, public opinion sure isn’t with Mayor Bloomberg or the NYPD; the action seems to have invigorated and encouraged rather than dampened or halted.) Alexis Madrigal wrote an excellent piece in The Atlantic breaking down the meaning of #OWS, while longtime Radiohead artist, Stanley Donwood released this high resolution image as a free download for people to use as they like. He wrote:

As the mendacity of the One Per Cent continues, here is a small tool which you may download, blow up, paste, copy, pass on, and do whatever with. I’m not sure where the quote is from; I saw it on a poster at Occupy Sheffield last week, where they thought that the words were possibly from a former Prime Minister of Canada.

[Link via Mara Carlyle.]

6:35pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxC3VKOL
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Filed under: Occupy Wall Street Zuccotti Park protest design Stanley Donwood social design 
October 28, 2011

Design With the Other 90%: Cities has opened at the United Nations, and NYT’s new architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, declared it a hit. In Rescued By Design, he goes through a number of the socially minded projects on display and writes approvingly of a design movement he describes as looking to provide “economical, smart solutions to address the problems of the world’s poorest people.” Included in his review, a project to clean up the Bang Bua Canal in Bangkok, where thousands of families had lived in stilt houses above polluted flood water. Architects redesigned the community (see the before and after pictures, above.) Given the floods that are devastating Thailand and, particularly, Bangkok, it’d be interesting to know how this project is currently faring… Thoughts are with all the residents of the region.

[Photos (c) ACHR. Design With The Other 90%: Cities runs at the United Nations in New York through January 9, 2012.]

11:49am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxBDK3mD
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(Notes: 21)
  
Filed under: Design with the Other 90% Cooper Hewitt exhibition social design social innovation architecture design 
August 31, 2011

A great project from two RCA students, looking at design and dementia, and exploring how it might be possible to rethink dining and bedroom environments in care homes. This video really shows the depth and insight that a design-based approach can bring to seemingly intractable problems. Alissa Walker has a nice write up of the project over at Fast Company Design, while details of the full research project can be found at the site for the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, which specializes in taking on this type of initiative, and where one of these students, Gregor Timlin, currently works as a senior associate.

9:14am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dx8zk1GV
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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Helen Hamlyn design design thinking social design 
August 30, 2011
"

Facebook’s longstanding demand that its users should only have one identity is either a toweringly arrogant willingness to harm people’s social experience in service to doctrine; or it is a miniature figleaf covering a huge, throbbing passion for making it easier to sell our identities to advertisers.

Google has adopted the Facebook doctrine at the very moment in which the figleaf slipped, when people all over the world are noticing that remaking ancient patterns of social interaction to conform to advertising-driven dogma exposes you to everything from humiliation at school to torture in the cells of a Middle Eastern despot. There could be no stupider moment for Google to subscribe to the gospel of Zuckerberg, and there is no better time for Google to show us an alternative.

"

—

I don’t know that I necessarily agree with Cory Doctorow’s view that “the first duty of social software is to improve its users’ social experience.” Not to sound too cynical, but isn’t it more likely that, while users will doubtless be trumpeted as being front and center of any social product, the first duty of such software is in fact to fulfill its creators’ ambitions? But Doctorow’s thunderous piece, Google Plus Forces Us to Discuss Identity, the conclusion of which is above, is an important read on the hot button issue of our time.

(Story via Dan Gillmor.)

5:48pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dx8yESX_
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(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: Google Google Plus Cory Doctorow Facebook social networks social design privacy identity