The core elements of biomimicry – reconnection, ethos, and emulation
Megan Schuknecht, Senior Biomimicry Professional, is a biologist by training, she has led numerous research and education initiatives for the Biomimicry Institute and created its design challenge and entrepreneurship program. Megan talked about how biomimicry can help drive innovation by emulating biology’s blueprints, processes, and systems to create more sustainable and effective designs.
Meadow-ing: Complexity and Warm Data in Living Systems
Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Nora is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?"
Where Design Plays: Developing the Invisible Aspects of Integrated Sustainability
Dr. Cheryl Heller is the Chief Design Officer at Viridi Parente, a distributed storage zero carbon energy company. Design has a role to play in changing culture, defining leadership, building relationships of trust and changing mindsets. In her lecture she provided an in-progress perspective on the various ways in which design affects the foundational aspects of culture and leadership that are necessary to integrate principles of sustainability.
Feeding policy directly from grassroots creative experimentation: stories from the MTF Labs
Michela Magas is a designer who bridges the worlds of science and art, design and technology, academic research and industry with a track record of over 25 years of innovation. She is the founder of the Music Tech Fest. Paradigm-shifting ecosystemic approaches of MTF Labs have had direct influence on European policy missions such as the New European Bauhaus, Research & Innovation programmes and industrial strategy.
The scenario of proximity – A design-orienting framework for sustainable futures
Ezio Manzini is President of DESIS Network and Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano. For over three decades Manzini has been working in the field of design for sustainability. He gave a lecture to our students about "The scenario of proximity – A design-orienting framework for sustainable futures" and presented his book "Livable Proximity".
Designing with and for Artificial Intelligence – How AI changes what we can design and the process we use to design it
Daniel Rosenberg is a UX consultant and adjunct professor of HCI at San Jose State University. In his lecture he shared how rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are transforming the world in many ways. Daniel showed our students how AI is changing design processes and the skills designers need. His advice: be a Lifelong Learner, because everything is changing all the time.
Merkle's innovation design model: Tackling clients’ challenges with a user-centred approach.
Marco Hauri and Luisa Mohler, our alumnus, shared Merkle's innovation design model showing “mylivit.” They presented the methods applied. Marco and Luisa presented how they re-designed the whole of process of interaction of “mylivit” with its diverse users. They co-designed “mylivit” to add value to the organization and most importantly to people.
The role of designers in public policies: An empirical perspective from three Chilean experiences
Daniel Moreno has a Master in Urban Development and is a researcher at Nucleus for Research on Governance and Territorial Organisation (NuGOT). He works with interdisciplinary teams on multiple urban and territorial planning projects for the Chilean government. He shared three Chilean experiences on the value that designers can bring generating methodologies, policies, and tools for the public sector.
System thinking for sustainability transformation
Karin Fink is a Geographer and Relational Designer. She works in the field of environmental policy and co-leads the Swiss State of the Environment Report. In her lecture she explored how system thinking can help us to approach the complex, interrelated and societal challenges we face. She focused on the challenges around food, mobility and housing.
Bioregional Regeneration – The Art & Science of Designing for Planetary Health
Daniel Christian Wahl is one of the catalysts of the rising regeneration and the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures. He reflected on his own journey from biological science, ecology and complexity science to writing a PhD on Design for Human and Planetary Health in 2006. Daniel addressed regenerative design as a journey of learning and suggested the need to be humble in our ways of knowing.
Organizational Shifts: Post COVID what changed and which are the new priorities
John Elkington, leader in sustainable business, presented 3 changes, and 3 priorities organizations face post COVID. In conversation with 2 other panelists Elkington highlighted what requires learning and rethinking to transition towards more sustainable futures.
Making the toolkit visible
On June 28 and as part of the Werkschau the Design Management Student Association organized a discussion with Michael Meyer. They discussed what design managers do, how to communicate it and why it is relevant. The goal was to make the toolkit visible.
Building collective capacity to co-design: Perspectives from Systemic and Participatory Design
Dr. Manuela Aguirre, Associate Professor of service design at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), discussed the creation of a co-designing community from both the perspectives of Systemic and Participatory Design. It primarily draws on the work of Bela H. Banathy and compares it to more contemporary work in Participatory Design. It problematizes issues of power and the role of the “professional designer” together with the co-designing community.
An Intrapreneurial Designer’s Mindset for Transforming Organizations
Karel Vredenburg, director of design at IBM and responsible for IBM’s global design leadership, introduced the following idea “much is written about change management but little is written about organizational design transformation”. Few organizations have actually implemented a true design transformation at scale, but IBM has. Karel described this transformation at IBM, the key ingredients that drove it and are still driving it, and the pivots and lessons learned along the way.
Evolution: Living at the Intersections
Kevin is the Founder of dreams • design + life, a think tank that delivers design and innovation services using a human-centered approach. Whilst sharing his experience driving innovations, Kevin also talked about his experience as a nuclear engineer, a business specialist and a designer, and the implications of the accelerating forces of interdisciplinary convergence for organisations and individuals.
Design Education. Moving the conversation to the school
To celebrate the end of our academic year, we hosted a Zoom event with design education leaders in June 2020. Based on the special She Ji issue on Design Education, design leaders presented their reflections and shared their best practices, perspectives, lessons learned and recommendations for action.
Design education has enormous potential. We thank Michael Meyer, Donald Norman, Pieter Jan Stappers, Ena Voûte, Jorge Frascara, Gjoko Muratovski, Ken Friedman, Carla Spinillo, Celeste Martin, Praveen Nahar and our two graduating students Luisa Mohler and Linus Mäder for participating in this online panel discussion. Special thanks go to our Dean, Gabriela Christen.
