Design is Everywhere

We’re all able to connect through our phones and social media, but humans crave coming together, and yet participation in the classic religious and civic communities has declined over decades. COVID-19 has certainly complicated our ability to gather in person. Community is so important to us at the Design Museum, and like anything, you can be intentional about designing creating, maintaining, and growing community. It’s more than simply bringing people together and watching the magic happen, even though that’s definitely part of it! In this episode we talk to two community experts. Sara Sigel is a product and community builder who advises and invests in profit-from purpose companies — she’s an Advisor and Investor at Rev Boston. And Sascha Mombartz is a multidisciplinary design director, and the Founder of The Office for Visual Affairs. Sascha and his 2 other community-loving friends created the Community Canvas, which is a framework that will help you build a community. Plus we have our weekly dose of good design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page: How Do You Design a Community? Start with the Why or the Who  

Sales and design thinking in the same sentence? It’s a new way of selling that builds off of the design process: empathy, discovering insights, and genuinely building relationships with customers. Ashley Welch, Co-Founder of Somersault Innovation and Author of Nakes Sales, joins us to discuss her Sell by Design methodology. She’s teaching sales professionals the tools of design thinking to drive customer centricity and revenue growth. We dive into her process and design-informed sales strategies. We’re also joined by Sachin Rai, a Senior Account Executive at Salesforce, who utilized Ashley’s training and advice to transform how he sells. Before selling to a new customer, Greyhound, Sachin took an 8-hour bus ride to learn about his potential customer and the pain-points in their service. Armed with surprising insights from his own first-hand experience, he was able to close a multi-million dollar deal. Sachin tells his story and the impact on his work. Plus, our weekly dose of good design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  Always. Be. Curious. Design Thinking and Sales Unite for Extraordinary Results

Every teacher is a curriculum designer, creating experiences for people to understand and learn. In this episode we explore curriculum design with an important lens: equity. Successful curriculum connects with kids of different backgrounds and learning styles, and contains content beyond a white-centric history and approach. We discuss with Design Museum Everywhere’s very own Director of Learning and Interpretation, Diana Navarrete-Rackauckas, and Dr. Aaliyah Samuel, Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and Partnerships at NWEA. The conversation also explores strategies for parents who were transformed into teachers almost overnight because of COVID-19. It’s all connected because our kids are growing up and learning in the context of a global pandemic — their learning experience has dramatically changed — and during a growing, global protest movement against police brutality against Black Americans. Our guests provide insights on how we can meet this unique moment for our kids and our communities. Plus we have our weekly dose of good design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page: Infusing Equity in K-12 Curriculum Design, In the Classroom & at Home

Design and the ecological systems that support life (including human life) are intimately connected. Typical to design and make something we’re removing resources from ecological systems and transforming those resources into something: a product, a building, an article of clothing, etc. In this episode we explore that relationship, including how design can help protect, learn from, and regenerate those systems. We talk with Lana Sutherland, Co-Founder and CEO of TEALEAVES about sustainability and biomimicry, the focus of TEALEAVES’ latest documentary, Garden of Secrets. The film positions botanical gardens as “idea banks” for future designs based on nature. And we speak with Dawn Danby, Co-Founder and Principal of SPHERICAL about her work on strategies for actually regenerating Earth’s living systems. Plus our weekly dose of good design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  Regenerating Earth’s Living Systems by Design

Many of us are aware of human-centered design, which is all about placing real people at the center of our design work, so that we’re always designing with empathy and thoughtfulness. But what if we take it a step further and design with relationships in mind, so that we’re strengthening the bond between people, or between people and organizations, and build real loyalty? This is particularly interesting when we think about financial organizations and their customers, many of whom are adversely affected by the current financial crisis. So instead of blindly selling services and products, these organizations can focus on where people are in every moment of their journey to develop a life-long and trusting relationship. You can imagine this has business impact as well as social impact for the customer, as the fates of both the company and the customer are intertwined. We discuss with Mike Kirkpatrick, SVP of Client Experience & Strategy at Mad*Pow and Russ Wilson, Chief Experience Officer and Head of Design at Fidelity Investments. Plus our weekly dose of good design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  https://designmuseumfoundation.org/007-human-to-relationship-centered-design

As cases of COVID-19 spike, hospitals are simply running out of space and beds for people who need them. This is one of the main reasons we’re quarantined, not just to keep ourselves safe from the virus but also to “flatten the curve,” and help our hospitals keep up with a growing number of cases. On this episode we talk about how hospitals are designing solutions for surge capacity and what lessons there are for the future of hospital architecture. Those lessons could be very important as we may see new spikes in COVID-19 and as we must adapt facilities to be equitable for all patients, healthcare workers, and staff. We’re joined by Dr. Diana Anderson, a doctor architect, or Dochitect, currently a geriatric medicine fellow at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Esther Choo, she’s an emergency medicine physician and health services researcher based in Portland, Oregon at Oregon Health & Science University, and she’s the chief medical advisor for a startup called Jupe, which is creating pop-up medical facilities. Plus our weekly dose of good design. For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page: https://designmuseumfoundation.org/006-fix-room-16/

COVID-19 is necessitating rapid change in our cities. As many stay-at-home orders are lifting, people are getting outside, but we still need to stay 6 feet apart, so citizens and cities are stepping up in some interesting ways. How do you stay 6 feet apart when many sidewalks aren’t even 6 feet wide? The answer might just be rethinking the design of our streets and our cities overall. From tactical urbanism to open streets to changing the very notion of what a shared street is: we discuss with Jonathan Berk, placemaking advocate and a Director at Patronicity; and Jeff Speck, city planner, author, and long-time advocate for more walkable cities.  For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  https://designmuseumfoundation.org/005-covidstreets/

With pretty much every design student in the world learning remotely, it’s a good moment to talk about the state of design education at the college and university level. To train a well-rounded designer, the number of things students need to learn increases every year, but the amount of time in class stays the same. How do professors and administrators plan to teach the next generation of designers to enter an ever-changing industry and world? And then, how can design be taught remotely? We speak with Derek Cascio, newly appointed Chair of the Industrial Design department at Wentworth Institute of Technology; and Jason Schupbach, Director of the Design School at Arizona State University. Derek and Jason agree the future of design education is flexibility. Design has the proverbial “seat at the table,” so, in Jason’s words, “We must prepare students to be in that room.” Plus, our Weekly Dose of Good Design. For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page: https://designmuseumfoundation.org/004-the-future-of-design-education/

This year is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and it just so happens to coincide with a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. There’s an interesting phenomenon happening while the majority of the world’s human population is staying at home: we’re driving less, flying less, and consuming less; and as a result the earth is getting cleaner. This may be the first time in our lives that we can see how action on a massive scale can have an immediate, real impact on our environment. Perhaps COVID-19 presents an opportunity to hit the reset button on production and consumption practices that cause damage to the planet. One way designers can make an impact is by helping us move to a circular economy — an economy where our resources are in a closed loop, so we take materials once, make and consume, and then those resources are repurposed, then repurposed again and again in a closed loop. To discuss we’re joined by Bergen Hubert, Manager for Built Environment at the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, a global nonprofit that certifies products within a circular economy; and Roxane Spears, VP of Sustainability in North America at Tarkett, and innovative flooring manufacturer with a number of Cradle to Cradle certified products. https://designmuseumfoundation.org/003-the-big-reset-on-production/

Unless you’re an essential worker (thank you), you’re likely working from home right now. And for many of us, this is a whole new reality. With stay-at-home orders across the world, companies, and individuals are shifting to work remotely, at a scale we’re never seen before. How are they handling the challenges of this transition? Is the cat out of the bag on remote work, will we see more companies shift now that we’re all experiencing this paradigm? We discuss the challenges and ways forward with two experts: Tracy Brower, Ph.D. sociologist, and principal within Steelcase’s Applied Research + Consulting Group; and Richard Banfield, Vice President of Design Transformation at InVision, one of the largest, full distributed companies in the world. Plus our Weekly Dose of Good Design.   For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  https://designmuseumfoundation.org/002-remote-work