One of our sponsors, Sappi’s Ideas That Matter grant program, just finished putting together a beautiful video about our adventure. Thanks to Arvi Raquel-Santos and team…
Archive for the ‘Video’ Category
May 18th, 2010
Lovely video by Sappi / Ideas That Matter
April 15th, 2010
Recap: University of Cincinnati, April 15th
Our former intern, Jince, is a student at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP), so we were not at all surprised to see him out on the college’s lawn and the first to greet us with his usual jovial smile. Jince had helped us plan the event with help from his professor Sooshin Choi, pasted posters all over campus (so many that administration made him take them down), and is even the co-author of our Design Revolution Toolkit.
As we pulled up to McMicken Commons, which is essentially the central nexus of campus, we were almost immediately mobbed by a group of excited DAAP students who had been awaiting our arrival. Our location was central to a slew of star-architect-designed buildings on campus, from Peter Eisenman to Frank Gehry. Before heading to our lecture, we enjoyed bagels with a select group of students and faculty who discussed DAAP’s program with us and asked for suggestions on how to move to a more social impact-driven collaborative model (though it seems they have some great studios in place already, including one looking at Cincinnati’s transportation system from the perspective a variety of disciplines). Sooshin Choi talked about the importance of building skills before you can rebel as a designer (as our intern Jince said, “I want to understand the beast before I tame it.”). We heard about the college’s co-op program, in which students spend every other term in an internship to better learn the profession from a real-world standpoint and extend their education into the practice of design.
Jince interviews his fellow students about the Design Revolution (see video above)
After our lecture, in which we urged students to put pressure on faculty to teach more studios focused on social impact (the faculty was in a meeting), we headed back out to the trailer where we were joined by the Dean of the college, and dozens of others.
It was great to catch up with Jince and some of his colleagues who are equally as impassioned about taking design beyond the product. We took a small detour to Graeter’s, the city’s famous ice cream establishment before packing up shop and taking to the road again. A HUGE thanks to Jince and everyone at DAAP for hosting our third-to-last-stop!
April 7th, 2010
Recap: SAIC + Millennium Park Chicago, April 5-6
As a proud alumna of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I did my masters degree in product design, I was thrilled to return to the Windy City for 2 days of road show excitement. Some of my old teachers and from the school- Helen Maria Nugent, Sarah Mallin, Lisa Norton, and John Eding- had scored us a sweet spot in downtown Chicago, right in the middle of Millennium Park, where we parked on Sunday against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline and of course the beacons in the park (Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate “bean” sculpture and Frank Gehry’s bandshell). Since I left, the skyline has changed a lot, including a new skyscraper by Jeannie Gang (who stopped by to visit!), the Trump Tower, and more.
On Monday, we opened the doors at 10am after taping a radio spot with Chicago Public Radio’s 848 program (hear the podcast here). Because it was a gorgeous day and we were so centrally located (hard to miss!), we attracted hundreds of passers-by, tourists, and curious folks wondering what the heck the shiny “bus” had inside. A gaggle of school children stopped by as well, excited to get to play with the objects and full of questions, though left the exhibition sort of a mess and spilled pickle juice in the front corner of the trailer.
Messy exhibition shelves after dozens of school children toured the trailer!
Groups of Illinois Institute of Technology and School of the Art Institute of Chicago students came out over the course of both days. It was great to hear about what they were working on that related to design for social impact: charcoal compressors for Haiti, community gardens and urban farming on the west side of the city. It provided more proof in my mind that the next generation of designers will be stubborn in changing the way we design, proving that design can change the world and not just fill our houses with stuff.
At 4:15 pm we headed to the 112 S. Michigan building for the lecture, which took place in the beautifully ornate ballroom. Helen Maria introduced me and Matt and we proceeded with our presentation. I was thorough in talking about my time at the School and hopefully instilled a bit of inspiration in the ears of current students, encouraging them to get out of the studio and actually do real work, not just student projects that fill portfolios.
My sister Molly was also in town (she used to live there as well), so it was great to have a mini family reunion amidst the chaos. Our Uncle Bear (real name is Albert) works downtown and stopped by, along with old friends Rob Davis (who runs the school’s awesome shop facilities) and Ryan Flynn, furniture designer Sean Scott, IDEO designer Annette Ferrara, and more. Of course, Jon Honor who leads the Chicago Project H team stopped by to represent, and we caught up about the progress of the local projects which are looking at access to services for the homeless across the city.
Some of my former instructors, Carl Ray Miller, Helen Maria Nugent, Lisa Norton, Anders Nereim, and the legendary Bob McAnulty, were there both days as well. Bob McAnulty was my advisor and for various reasons is now not entirely welcome on the School of the Art Institute facilities. That didn’t stop him from attending my lecture and making his presence known, or serving as informal bouncer at the trailer both days (thanks Bob!). As my advisor, Bob was probably the one to first instill a sense of rebellion in my work, and the one who encouraged me to always be critical and redefine what we usually accept as the status quo. In other words, he taught me to make up my own rules. Helen Maria as well, was one of my inspirations as a student. She led a team of students to exhibit at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York where we won an Editor’s award for our built installation. The project remains one of the best things I’ve done as a designer to date. Needless to say my time at the School of the Art Institute was the best two years of my life, and I owe a lot to the school for giving me tools and freedom to carve my own path and define what “success” would mean to me as a designer.
On the second day in the morning, I filmed a 7am TV spot for the local WGN TV station with reporter Ana Belaval (watch it here!). We talked about the road show in general, and highlighted a few key products in the show like the Adaptive Eyecare glasses, water filtration devices, and some of the toys and educational products. Matt predicted that after the show aired, we would have dozens of visitors with “invention pitches,” who would be proposing their ideas to us. Later that day, sure enough, one man in particular came out with a particularly memorable pitch. Over the course of this trip, we’ve noted how much people confuse the terms “invention” with “design,” saying things like “there are lots of cool inventions here!” Additionally, folks have come out to talk to us about their “million dollar idea” or “worldchanging invention” without being able to tell us how it works or how they’ve tried to make it real in the world. This man in particular was particularly militant and protective of his “inventions.” He brought with him 2 “prototypes” which were not so much prototypes as a wheel in a bag and a headphone plugged into a radio, which he billed an anti-gravity machine that could make motorcycles fly and a machine that could make deaf people hear. While the prototypes may very well have merit and be partially functional, I asked him to explain how they would work, and he would not do it. “How do I know you won’t steal my idea?” he asked. I replied that I had no desire to steal his ideas, but I could not critique or help if he didn’t tell me how, for example, this mangled headphone was different from a traditional hearing aid. “Have you tried this out? Have you given it to someone with hearing impairments and asked them if it works?” I asked. “No, but I know it will,” he replied. After asking him to at least explain how the devices worked, or how he planned on prototyping or implementing them, he stormed off in anger, mad that I had asked him to reveal his secrets. He had kept the two “prototypes” in a bank vault for 10 years, and I suppose he was off to return them to their safe spot.
Matt and I have discussed this phenomenon at length: the misconception that an “invention” is a) the same as design, and b) just an idea that will make you tons of money and not something you have to build, understand, and make possible through tons of hard work and human-centered research. Additionally, all these ideas for inventions we keep hearing are proprietary- people pitch their genius ideas to us but won’t tell us how they work. I even asked the man in Chicago “Well then why did you come out here to talk to me if you won’t tell me how these work?” to which he said “I don’t know, I thought you’d want to invest in them or buy them from me.” What we are interested in is not the “next million dollar idea,” but thoughtful solutions to common problems that address human needs with grace and humility, and that give people the power to improve their own lives. If the real goal is social impact (not just profit as such “inventors” have made clear), then there would be little proprietary protection over the idea, but a sincere desire to put it out in the world. SO, if you have an invention that you want to profit from, that you haven’t thought through, and that you won’t explain for fear of us stealing the idea, please stay at home. If you believe that design thinking and creative problem solving can make life better, and you’re willing to put in the work for the long haul to create and scale solutions to big social problems, by all means come talk to us. (Sorry for the rant!)
Over the course of both days, we asked visitors what the Design Revolution means to them. And we were surprised and delighted at the responses we got (watch the video above). After two days in the park, we pulled away and drove off into the Midwestern sunset. Thanks so much to everyone at the School of the Art Institute (and Louis from Millennium Park) for an action-packed, inspiring, and thought-provoking two days!
April 1st, 2010
Recap: College for Creative Studies, April 1st
We pulled into D-Town today (gorgeous weather!), and Matt, my partner and former Detroit resident, was excited to be back in the city we’ve all come to know as the urban representation of collapse. Amidst the city’s tragedy, there’s tons of hope, much of it coming from a recent influx of artists and designers intent on bringing empowering solutions to the city’s residents. While we have to be careful about just making “design for design’s sake” and actually provide real sustainable solutions, we were thrilled to get to talk to students at CCS today about what they were doing in their own back yards.
After our lecture (which included forty high school students who have collaborated with CCS professor Stephen Schock’s industrial design studio), we opened our doors to a huge crowd of post-lecture visitors. We were also joined by my old friend Jason Chernak, who went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with me, and Project H’s “roving critic” Justin Mast – the two of them (below with professor Stephen Schock) drove in from Ann Arbor.
The highlight of the day, however, came when we visited Stephen’s industrial design studio in the new Argonaut building (700,000 square feet!). I had spoken to the class at the beginning of the term via Skype and gave them some advice on how to engage within a community, take the product out of product design, and really focus on working solutions. We heard presentations from each student about their projects, which ranged from aquaponic urban farming systems to homeless craft enterprises, ideas for new and improved outdoor community spaces, and more.
A few themes we saw that impressed us were a focus on enterprise- infusing products with the holistic system that might make them more easily accepted and owned by a community. Many students looked at homelessness in Detroit, a rampant issue, and one students’ amazing “coat-turned-sleeping-bag” design did a great job of bringing homeless individuals into the creation process to integrate job skills and ownership (photo above). She has spent 3 nights a week the entire term in one of the most intense homeless shelters in the city, working with the homeless and the folks running the shelter (kudos for taking to the streets and not producing work in a vacuum!)
One promising projects was almost undesigned: it was simply an idea to grow grapes on chain-link fences (though there was a fixture design component that facilitated the vine growth through the chain-link). We spoke about incentives, which were missing from some projects. When designing for hesitant or even truculent users, the design must provide an incentive to use the new and improved solution. The grapevine idea required little work on the part of the end user but did provide a significant benefit: easy and free access to healthy food that didn’t need much maintenance.
One other great project was a simple design for a bag that could be transformed into a shoe (or shoe cover) for homeless individuals. A huge problem for individuals living on the street is keeping feet dry and warm in winter months. The bag was well-designed to morph into a rubber shoe sole, and could also be sold as a cool object to a retail market (video above).
Another project took an inexpensive water bottle (also a solar pasteurization device) and applied graphic maps to outline resources for the homeless: local shelters, etc. We left the students with two pieces of advice (as they have 4 more weeks to refine their projects): Grow/build stuff, and team up – so many of the projects had great synergy! We can’t wait to hear how some of the projects turn out.
April 1st, 2010
Daily Postcard (VIDEO): April 1st
Driving through Detroit, half a mile from the financial district, now an urban prairie. Note the house at the 24-second mark (2-story concrete block with navy blue), which was designed and built by Project H’s own Matthew Miller as his graduate thesis for a low-income single mother and her children.
March 30th, 2010
Recap: Design Lab High School, March 30th
In the case of our visit to the Design Lab High School in Cleveland, Ohio, a picture (or video) is worth 1000 words, so I will keep this brief. Principal Raymon Spottsville greeted us this morning as we pulled up to the school, which is an Early College STEM school that prioritizes design thinking and creativity as an approach to all subjects. I should also mention that the Design Lab High School is currently on spring break, but students came back to school today just to see the road show. The students share a facility with Jane Addams High School, which was in session, so we also got to share the presentation and products with some of the Jane Addams students. We talked to Tim, above, who had some amazing things to say about what design means to him and how the school has been a great academic experience.
Mr. Spottsville explained to us how the school offers college credit while the students are still in school, thanks to a partnership with the neighboring community college. The school’s creed includes the term “imaginative citizens,” which so eloquently describes the character of some of the students: creative, engaged, and energized. Mr. Spottsville explained to a group of students how the Hippo Roller worked and why such solutions had power within communities (video above).
Of course, the Hippo Roller versus 5-gallon bucket races were proof of the efficacy of the Hippo Roller, which totes 22 gallons easily compared to the hefty buckets. Before leaving today, we got a tour of the school from Cherry, one of the students. Cherry told us about the design fundamentals class and their ability to choose college courses to add to their high school schedule. The design fundamentals teacher, Cassandra, was fantastic as well, and described how she views design not as a training program but a way to think, and a sensibility that encourages creative approaches to all subjects. If you know how to think like a designer, you’re more likely to find unlikely ways to solve math problems, to learn a foreign language, or to do research for a social studies project.
We’ll be back in Cleveland later this month and hope to meet with the Design Lab High School students and teachers again. We were so impressed at the school’s organization and the students’ commitment to their own creative futures.
March 24th, 2010
Recap: BCAM High School, March 23rd
Just down the street from Pratt, where we were parked Monday and Tuesday, is an amazing public school called BCAM (Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School), started by James O’Brien. I met James back in October 2009 at the PopTech conference in Maine. He and I were both Social Innovation Fellows and got to be good friends (watch his presentation from the conference below). The school takes an arts- and media-based approach that combines community, personal identity, and achievement. In short, it’s awesome.
The students came out to the trailer in 2 groups. The first was 9th and 10th graders in the morning, the second was 11th graders after lunch. I started each session by going over to BCAM and showing the Colbert clip, and asking students what they thought design was and how it might be important (or not be important) in their own lives. One student from the second group noted the distinction between something like an iPod and the Hippo Roller, and that she saw the difference between just a product and something “that actually helped people.” We worked with two teachers, Christy Herbes and Elise Pelletier, who were fantastic and got the students excited to see the trailer.
Photo: Kristen Taylor
After the quick in-class presentation, we hurried out to the trailer to see the products in person. The students loved the Whirlwind wheelchair and were timid at first to try it out, but a few had a good wheelie down by the time they left. It was interesting to see how many of them overcame their fear of falling backwards in the chair after only a few tries. Another crowd favorite was the Subtle Safety ring, which many identified as “looking like brass knuckles,” but said it would make a great defensive tool to have on hand when walking home.
We were also joined by Kristen Taylor from PopTech, who came by to say hello to James and myself, and stuck around to take some photos and videos of the students. A PBS film crew was also there, getting footage about the road show for their upcoming show Need to Know, which debuts in May!
Photo: Kristen Taylor
Christy Herbes told us that their next project is in fact a product design project, and that the book would be helpful in guiding and inspiring some of the student work. We hope to keep in touch with everyone throughout that project to see how we might advise students. After school, two students came back to the trailer and brought friends who couldn’t make it out during school hours. One young man brought his friend and said “you have to check out the wheelchair!”
Thank you so much to James and Christy for helping to organize such a fun day with so many great young creative minds.
March 23rd, 2010
Recap: Pratt Institute, March 22nd and 23rd
We spent two days at Pratt, parked right in the middle of their plaza- a veritable sculpture garden and bucolic campus amidst the hustle of Brooklyn. We were particularly excited to come to Pratt as many of our colleagues and friends (including Project H’s awesome New York-based team) were coming out for the show! In attendance were Eddie Chiu (designer of Mobee, the toy for children with cerebral palsy featured in the second room of the exhibition), professor Robert Rabinovitz (who coincidentally had recently met my old high school friend Natalie!), Provost Peter Barna, department head Matthew Burger, my book editor from Metropolis Diana Murphy, and the book’s foreword author Allan Chochinov of Core77.
Diana Murphy of Metropolis Books (my publisher!) and Allan Chochinov of Core77 and Pratt faculty (author of the book’s foreword!)
On Monday, we gave a lecture after being introduced by department head Matthew Burger, who is so passionate and articulate about the power of design and the role of education in shaping future designers’ values. He spoke about hearing Victor Papanek speak in the 1970’s, and that everyone in the audience (designers in suits) thought he was crazy. (Note: Victor Papanek is quoted in our presentation, calling for the end of industrial design if it continues to produce such superfluous objects as “sexed up shrouds for typewriters” and more. At the end of the day, another professor told us he used to teach at Purdue with Victor Papanek, who he reported was a very cranky, difficult, disagreeable, but genius, educator and designer). The Q&A section brought up some interesting discussions of working domestically versus abroad, and how the scale of needs may change, but the need for good design does not.
We also got a chance to meet with Eddie Chiu, who designed Mobee. He told us the backstory of the design as part of a Parsons project he did while still in school. Watch his interview video below with professor Robert Rabinovitz.
Also present was a student named Vera from the School of Visual Arts, who is trying to put together a thesis for the coming year. Her interest in design for social impact brought her out to see the trailer, and we spoke about the challenges of doing “design that matters” in the right way, and not just doing it for a portfolio. Watch her video below.
At the end of the day, I got a chance to sit down with Kristina Drury, our New York team’s co-head and a former Pratt student. She now works at Pratt and is an amazing voice in our Project H community as a proponent for doing “design for the greater good” in the right ways. Her cohort Dan Grossman unfortunately could not attend (we missed you, Dan!). A special thank you to Deb Johnson and Laurel Voss from Pratt for helping to coordinate the parking of the Airstream and all of our logistical details.
March 13th, 2010
Recap: The Park School, March 12th
The Park School on the North side of Baltimore is the only K-12 school on our itinerary, so we knew it would be unique. Presenting design to students as young as six is eye-opening, both for the students and for us as designers, to see through their untainted eyes how design has (or does not have) impact.
The Park School is an amazing institution. A private school, its teachers have some liberty in teaching what they want, outside of the rigidity of publicly mandated curricula, which means students have learned about sustainability through real projects, and have access to an incredible art gallery which currently features pieces from digital photographer Chris Jordan. Students learn through exploration and experience: one of the fifth grade classes I spoke to said they save their food scraps for their teacher’s chickens.
Our schedule was insane, with full classes of anywhere from 15-30 students back-to-back in 30 minute chunks. We met with 5th and 6th graders first, who were by far the rowdiest over the course of the day, but also brought a critical eye to the work without losing a childlike innocence that inspired blunt and observant comments such as “That thing is cool. It helps people who have… issues” (speaking about the Boezels toy for children with Down syndrome, without any prior explanation). While we worried about the NYC Condom Dispenser on the back wall and how we might explain its use to the younger children, the 5th and 6th graders stepped right in and said, “It keeps adults safe during sexual intercourse.”
Our next group was a 4th grade class, who were the most inquisitive not only about the products but where they could get them. Several students asked me for websites for where they could buy things online, including the XO Laptop and DIY soccer ball tape, and said they were “making up their Christmas lists.” One of the 4th graders asked how the SinkPositive toilet top water saver worked, and before I had even begun explaining, he said, “Oh, nevermind, I get it. The water goes up there first and you wash your hands, and then that water goes into the bowl so you use less water, right?” One other student in the 4th grade class renamed the Solio charger the “Solar Flower” and noted how beautiful he thought it would look in his family’s garden.
The 2nd grade classes that followed were by far the loudest, as the young students flooded the trailer and were screaming with questions and excitement. I tried to keep up with them, answering the “Miss Emily what does this do?” questions that came at me rapid fire. The 2nd graders read the labels to try to figure out the uses (”Subtle Safety Ring” became “Stubble Safety Ring”) and some even guessed as to how things might be used before listening to my explanation (”So the medicine goes right into your eyes!” one student attempted to explain about the Adaptive Eyecare liquid-filled glasses). We pulled out the WEZA foot treadle pump to let them try it out, and after, when asked by her teacher “What did the WEZA do?” one girl replied “It made a lot of noise!”
It was comments like this throughout the day that reminded me just how human design is, and how good it can be when it is honest. Young students see what is in front of them, usually unshrouded by judgment or preconception, bringing to light issues and the bare essence of things we designers often think too hard about and never see in the first place.
Two classes of high school students rounded out the day (we showed the Colbert Report clip), many of whom had smart questions and asked about their own possible career paths in science and technology. The entire day was inspiring and unlike any of our stops to date.
Two statements made my day. One came from a 2nd grader who returned to the trailer after her class had left, to tell us in one loud run-on sentence, “THANK YOU THIS WAS THE BEST THING EVER!”
The second came in the form of a comment on our website from Ms. Baker, a 6th grade teacher who had brought her class to the Airstream in the morning. She said, “Thank you for a wonderful experience. The exhibit was followed an amazing classroom discussion with my 6th graders. My goal is for my students to see the world around them with a new lens – I want to teach my student to ask questions, to not accept things so readily – this exhibit was a wonderful way to inspire those conversations.”
Thank you to all the teachers, particularly Carolyn Sutton, for making our visit so lovely.
March 12th, 2010
Recap: Johns Hopkins University, March 11th
Despite a security guard who “greeted” us when we arrived, telling me to “F#$K off,” we had a lovely afternoon with students from Erica Schoenberger’s sustainability in engineering class at Johns Hopkins. In fact, the students had been using my book, Design Revolution, as a text book, and had split into groups to run case studies on a few of the products: SkySails, sugarcane charcoal, Plumpynut, and two that were in the show- Adaptive Eyecare and the Lifestraw (watch the video below to see some reactions from students).
As we had set up on the grassy knoll in front of the central library, we picked up some passersby as well, and many tried out the Whirlwind Wheelchair down the hill. Students were excited to see the products in person, and many said it was nice to look at the way they were put together, to understand the materials chosen, and to really get a feel for the object as a device with a human function. Thanks so much to Erica for helping to coordinate our brief stop at JHU!
