Posts tagged culture

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation

Project H Lecture at NCSU

Design Revolution Road Show and Lecture
Monday, March 1, 1:30PM
NCSU, Burns Auditorium

Project H Design connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference.

We are a team of designers and builders engaging locally to improve the quality of life for the socially overlooked. Our five-tenet design process (There is no design without (critical) action; We design WITH, not FOR; We document, share and measure; We start locally and scale globally, We design systems, not stuff) results in simple and effective design solutions for those without access to creative capital.

Our long-term initiatives focus on improving environments, products, and experiences for K-12 education institutions in the US through systems- level design thinking and deep community engagements.

Project H is a tax exempt 501c3 nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Bertie County, North Carolina. We believe design can change the world.

Emily Pilloton is the Founder and Executive Director of Project H Design. Trained in architecture at UC Berkeley and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she started Project H to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities, and economies. Former Managing Editor of Inhabitat.com, writer, California girl and unwavering optimist, she has written for ID, GOOD, ReadyMade, taught design theory, and lectures worldwide about new social impact imperatives for the product design industry. Her book, “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People,” is a compendium of and call-to-action for product design for social impact. When she isn’t traveling or emailing, Emily enjoys trivia games and baking (and eating) cupcakes.

Wallpaper Augmented Reality Issue

Wallpaper Augmented Reality issue from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Design Revolution / by Emily Pilloton (2009)

In January of 2008, with a thousand dollars, a laptop and an outsized conviction that design can change the world, rising San Francisco-based product designer and activist Emily Pilloton launched Project H Design, a radical non-profit that supports, inspires and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design. “We need to go beyond ‘going green’ and to enlist a new generation of design activists,” she wrote in an influential manifesto. “We need big hearts, bigger business sense and the bravery to take action now.”

Featuring more than 100 contemporary design products and systems–safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY soccer balls–that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary, this exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world’s biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways–for global citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike. Particularly at a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be changemakers instead of “stuff creators.” Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action, Design Revolution is easily the most exciting design publication to come out this year.

Emily Pilloton is the founder and Executive Director of Project H Design, a global industrial design nonprofit with eight chapters around the world. Trained in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pilloton started Project H in 2008 to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities and economies. Current Project H initiatives include water transport and filtration systems in South Africa and India; an educational math playground built for elementary schools in Uganda and North Carolina; a homeless-run design coop in Los Angeles; and design concepts for foster care education and therapy in Austin, Texas.

Allan Chochinov is Editor in Chief of Core77.com, and writes and lectures widely on the impact of design on contemporary culture.

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GOOD Magazine: The Decade in Design

by Alissa Walker on December 23, 2009

Being a designer means being able to not only predict the future, but to have a hand in shaping it as well. In the last 10 years, however, designers also had to dramatically change the way they worked: What other industry got to weather the dot-com crash, a real estate bubble, and the death of print?

But it was not all boom and bust. The design field redesigned itself during this decade, transforming from an industry that created better objects to one that created better experiences—and endeavored to deliver them to everyone, not just the people who could afford them. Design was the place for big thinkers to cultivate new technology, and it’s where the sustainability movement found its most trusted partners. Here’s a look back on the design decade that was.

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Mobile Interaction Design / by Jones and Marsden (2006)

Mobile Interaction Design shifts the design perspective away from the technology and concentrates on usability; in other words the book concentrates on developing interfaces and devices with a great deal of sensitivity to human needs, desires and capabilities.

  • Presents key interaction design ideas and successes in an accessible, relevant way
  • Exercises, case studies and study questions make this book ideal for students.
  • Provides ideals and techniques which will enable designers to create the next generation of effective mobile applications.
  • Critiques current mobile interaction design (bloopers) to help designers avoid pitfalls.
  • Design challenges and worked examples are given to reinforce ideas.
  • Discusses the new applications and gadgets requiring knowledgeable and inspired thinking about usability and design.
  • Authors have extensive experience in mobile interaction design, research, industry and teaching
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    Henry Jenkins: Future of Immersive Design

    5D: HENRY JENKINS KEYNOTE ADDRESS 5D|08 from Dave Blass on Vimeo.

    As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Henry Jenkins, USC Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture. In this keynote address, Professor Jenkins offers a guided tour of contemporary transmedia entertainment, seeking insights which inform the next generation of creative experiments.

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