After a long while, thoughts on design thinking

Today is the first day of Spring break, a time when I can relax a bit after what has been a very intense semester so far. I just realized I haven't posted anything in a long time (May 30, 2009 to be more precise). So much happened since then... over the summer I traveled to South Africa with Global Studio, and also to Kenya with UHartford, Brown University and U. of Rhode Island teams (and had a brief visit to Amsterdam!). Then for the Christmas holidays, I visited Argentina, reunited with family and long time friends. And after a short day of layover in CT, I packed my bag to go on my second implementation trip to India. And then classes began and I have barely had time to process all these experiences.

So, today I am relaxing. And what do I do to relax? Listen to music, watch TED videos and read articles (doesn't seem to be much different of what I regularly do! –except of course, not teaching). In any case, my mind is in a different synchrony now, as I'm trying to slow down.

But of course, the workaholic in me is always thinking about stuff, and as I watched videos on TED.com I found an inspiring talk by Tim Brown (the CEO of the "innovation and design" firm IDEO) urging designers to think big:

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects – even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory "design thinking.

Brown talks about engagement of everyone involved in the design process (participatory design). Also he explains how design thinking is related to learning by doing, and paying attention to users' needs.

Just yesterday I was finishing a grant application for an engaged learning fellowship. I tried my best to summarize how I see design, and how I envision to apply the outcome of the grant research to my course "Design Global Change." I wish I had watched Brown's talk earlier as it summarizes how I would hope my students will see design thinking after going through this DGC course.

At least I know I am in the right track!

Global Studio Johannesburg 2009

In about 3 weeks I'm going to Africa! Last Sunday May 24th, I was accepted to participate as a Global Studio project associate, to work on a UN Millennium Development Goals program in the Diepsloot slum of Johannesburg :-))))

This video shows the project in 2007, same place where I will be collaborating beginning June 26-July 21. And this map shows the location of Diepsloot.

This is a great interdisciplinary project. I'm super excited about this opportunity and I'm thankful to the coordinators for choosing me among many qualified candidates.

Exhibition Design at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

On Friday, March 27th, from 4:30-6:30pm, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is having a public reception honoring my senior design students, who worked last fall semester 2008 on the reinterpretation of Stowe’s visitor center.

“Enlivening the Past: Exhibition Design as Storytelling” is an investigation of alternative ways the visitor might experience Stowe’s Hartford home created by University of Hartford students under the direction of Professors Natacha Poggio and Lauren Cook. Students were challenged to incorporate senses beyond sight and explore new methods to bring the story of Stowe’s life alive.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Visitor Center is located at 77 Forest Street, Hartford, CT 06105.

The exhibit runs until April 30th, 2009.

CLIMATE WARS: Because we've always needed reasons to kill each other

Posted by John McGrath @ Grist.

Canada's public broadcaster, CBC, has just finished airing the three-part series Climate Wars, based on the Gwynne Dyer book of the same name.

As if we didn't have enough "to worry about in a melting world, there's the sad fact that we'll have more reasons to kill each other over dwindling water and food supplies. When you consider that the 20th century was bloody enough as economic and industrial opportunities were expanding, the 21st century is looking mighty depressing if you believe that wars can start over resource scarcity."

Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters -- the United States, China and India -- were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered -- all of them controversial.

Climate Wars - Part One January 19, 2008

Climate Wars - Part Two January 28, 2008

Climate Wars - Part Three February 2, 2009

............

NHNE's Climate Change Resource Page

NHNE's 1000 Most Recent Climate Change Articles

A DIY Eye Controlled Mouse

Two students from a technical high school in Argentina!!! (ORT) developed a mouse that can be controlled by eye movements, which allows people with total paralysis to use the computer.

Named the "Eye Mouse" this idea is not really new but what makes this case so different is that it is a DIY mouse that almost anyone can build with cheap and easy-to-find components.

How much does a glass of orange juice contribute to global warming?

Super interesting article in the NYTimes about research conducted by PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana brand, decided to try to answer that question.

TED2009: Pattie Maes and her "eco-friendly" wearable web-camera

Mark Frauenfelder posted an article about Pattie Maes latest wearable-camera, via Boing-Boing:

MIT Media Lab researcher Pattie Maes is on stage at TED2009.

We don't have sense organs for data. Thanks to efforts such as Tim Berner-Lee's all of this knowledge has become available online. Could we evolve a 6th sense that would give us access to meta-information that may help us make the right decisions?

When you go to supermarket and you look at all the different kinds of toilet papers, you don't pull out your cell phone to look for which brand is the most eco-friendly (but I'll bet some of you Boing Boing readers so!).

Pattie is a wearing web-camera, a battery-powered projection system with mirror. It lets you walk up to any surface (including your hand) and interact with the projected interface. It responds to his gestures. If you hold your hands like you are taking a photo, the camera takes a photo, and then when you go back to the office, you can project all your photos and sort through them using natural gestures. She showed a projection of a phone keypad on her palm and dialed a number to make a call.

She shows a video of a guy looking at products in a supermarket. It projects a green, yellow, or red dot on a product, telling you whether or not it's eco-friendly (or whatever criteria you set up). If you look at a book, it'll project the Amazon rating on the book. Projecting a video of a news story on a blank rectangle on the Wall Street Journal!

Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by a westerner

Interesting article in The Guardian written by Nirpal Dhaliwal (Thursday, 15 January 2009).

It describes how blind Bollywood producers are to the reality of India

After its rapturous reception in Britain and America, knives are being sharpened for Slumdog Millionaire. Old iconic Bollywood blusterer, Amitabh Bachchan, critized the movie "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition," he added. Bachchan is no doubt riled, as many other Bollwood no-talents will be, about the fact that the best film to be made about India in recent times has been made by a white man, Danny Boyle.

The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners. The talent exists in India for such movies: much of it, like the brilliant actor Irrfan Khan, contributed to this film. But Bollywood producers, fixated with making flimsy films about the lives of the middle class, will never throw their weight behind such projects. Like Bachchan, they are too blind to what India really is to deal with it. Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema.

Bachchan's blinkered comments prove how hopelessly blind he and most of Bollywood are to the reality of India and how wholly incapable they are of making films that can address it.

World Water day March 22, 2009

The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2009, the focus of World Water Day on March 22 will be on transboundary waters, with UNECE and UNESCO as the lead agencies.

More information is available on the official UN World Water Day website: http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/

They have a very interesting display of collateral materials for promoting the event (posters, banners, web buttons, t-shirts and even mobile desktop wallpapers).

http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/campaign.html

Teaser Poster

Official Poster

Wallpaper 1 Large Display (240 x 320)

Wallpaper 2 Large Display (240 x 320)

Wallpaper 3 Large Display (240 x 320)

Screensaver 1 All Displays

Design #1 Download Template (PDF)

Design #2 Download Template (PDF)

300 x 76


274 x 113


215 x 124

Within Water for Life IRC will focus on water, gender and poverty alleviation. Water and sanitation are critical factors to alleviate poverty and hunger, for sustainable development, for environmental integrity, and for human health.

Communities have complex priorities for the use of water for economic activity and for household use. Men and women often have different priorities and responsibilities. A gender focus is not simply about ‘involving women’. It is about recognising the roles of men and women, and ensuring that the voices of women, who are mainly responsible for household water but who also want economic activity, are acted on.

This woman from the Sironko District of Uganda is a true citizen of the 21st century – a multi-tasking manager with daily performance targets. She wakes early to fetch water, store it, distribute it and manage sanitation facilities in the home. She goes to bed long after dark, when the cooking, cleaning, laundering and other chores are done. She probably has more work than her mother, being also responsible today for domestic animals. The 21st century woman participates in community development work, and uses her ‘spare’ time for income generating activities. She lives a high-pressure executive lifestyle, lacking only the income, the status, the holidays, the help in the home, a lifestyle consultant, a retirement date and a pension. Will the action decade - Water for Life - make a real difference to her life?

Picture from Allen Wekoye, Uganda.

Students Take Back The Tap

This is a great initiative: I love tap water campaign

Students are vying for $1,500 and making a pitch to their campuses to kick the bottled water habit.

Check the video