Essays

I received the Frontier Design Innovation award by the World Design Conference and the Shanghai Municipal Government. My acceptance talk is based on my book, Design for a Better World: Understandable, Sustainable, Humanity Centered (MIT Press, March 21, 2023: talk video is in the post).

The Service Design Network has put together a small panel (6 people) of designers--two from Ukraine--to talk about what design might do for Ukraine. I am one of the six people: Here is my talk.

Human-Centered Design works well for mass-produced products and traditional products and services. But today, we owe our allegiance far beyond individual people -- we owe it to all humanity.

Almost Everything I see Is Artificial, and Almost Everything Artificial Has Been Designed. If it is design that got the world into its current mess, perhaps it is design than can get us out.

The great spiritual and humanistic power of design has been lost in its current emphasis upon business and industry. Design can be much more powerful than that: Design is a way of thinking that can be applied to almost any issue, but most importantly, to the major societal issues facing the world.

Does design education prepare designers to work with the multidisciplinary teams required for the complex issues of the 21st Century? Join us in rethinking design education. Help us find people who will provide diversity of age, gender, race, interests, socioeconomic status, and political views.

The 21s Century brings new challenges to design The implication? Design Education must change.

A quote from the poet Muriel Rukeyzer's book "The speed of darkness." Why stories? Because they combine history and context, critical events and results, both good and bad, expected