frog design and Austin Center for Design are pleased to announce and host a one day Design For Impact Boot Camp. This free event will be held on Saturday, April 24th, 2010.
What is Designing for Impact?
Creative designers typically produce stuff - toasters, websites, airplanes, and cell phones - for mass production by large, for-profit corporations. These designers frequently bemoan what they observe to be a misappropriation of their talent - that their creative efforts are misguided, and the hard work and energy they are putting into product development is lacking integrity or honesty. Rarely does their work have a humanitarian element to it; the corporations that hire designers are fundamentally interested in appeasing their shareholders.
Designing for Impact is an overt redirection of these creative design efforts, in order to tackle the large-scale humanitarian problems that plague our country and our world. The design process is purposefully applied to issues of poverty, access to clean drinking water, equality of education, and other large problems, and the outcome is a combination of products, services, and systems that are intended to better the human experience.
After taking part in the boot camp participants will have:
- Acquired a high level process for approaching large-scale social problems, and understand the challenges associated with these types of problems
- Experienced the research, synthesis and ideation processes as related to design for impact
- Gained empathy with a target, at-risk population
- Acquired the introductory vocabulary to speak about strategic design work, in the context of designing for impact
This aggressively-paced boot camp is intended for designers, technologists, marketers, and other professionals who are interested in extending their skill set into the realm of social innovation and design for impact. All levels of design ability are welcome; the only pre-requisite is passion. There are limited participant seats, which are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Design for Impact Bootcamp is April 24th - sign up now!
Schedule
9:00 - 9:15
Introductions & Welcome.
9:15 - 10:00
Designing for Impact | Jon Kolko
In a group conversation, we will examine the precedents that have been set in the social innovation space, discuss the holistic process of design, and understand why the methods of design are most appropriate for tackling these complex social problems.
10:00 - 12:00
A Process for Seeing: Guerilla Ethnography | Lauren Serota
In the first methods session, we'll talk about how to practice guerilla ethnography, by using sketching visualization methods, rapid photography, and in-context conversations in order to engage with target audiences.
Applied: Ethnography in Austin.
In groups, we'll tackle a design problem related to the context of Austin, Texas - and we'll engage the community by practicing the guerilla ethnography methods we've just discussed.
12:00 - 12:30
Lunch break, provided
12:30 - 1:45
Understanding Insights and Themes | Jon Freach
As we progress through meaning-making, we'll begin to identify insights and themes. These methods will describe how to capture these high-level takeaways, and how to form actionable design directives out of these conceptual frames.
Applied: Extraction of Insights and Themes.
In groups, we'll extract insights and themes, and position these elements in the context of our initial design brief - designing for impact, and producing new products, systems and services.
1:45 - 3:00
Externalization and Rapid Modeling | Matt Schoenholz
We've just explored how to quickly gather qualitative research data, and we've practiced it. Now, we'll focus on how to externalize this data and form visual representations of it, in an effort to drive synthesis and build understanding.
Applied: Externalization and Modeling of Ethnography
In groups, we'll model the data we've gathered from the guerilla ethnography. These representations will capture the high level takeaways from the streets, and will build frameworks for discussing insights and themes.
3:00 - 4:30
Rapid Ideation | Justin Petro
The insights and themes that have been extracted can now be visualized. We'll use rapid iterative sketching and ideation in order to focus on a breadth of new ideas.
Applied: Ideation based on Insights and Themes
We'll apply the methods of rapid sketching and visualization in order to create new and interesting - and appropriate - design ideas and solutions to various problems observed in the opportunity space.
4:30 - 5:30
Reflection and Share-Out
As we conclude the day, we'll reflect on the methods we've covered, and share the results of the ideation sketching with the larger group. And, we'll foster a discussion about the nature of designing for impact and social innovation, and discuss the challenges facing designers and other creative professionals in further embracing these methods and systems in the future.
6:00 - 7:30
Happy Hour, cash bar
About the Facilitators
Jon Kolko is an Associate Creative Director at frog design, and the Director of the Austin Center for Design. He has worked extensively in the professional world of interaction design, working around complicated technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. His work has extended into the worlds of consumer electronics, supply chain management, demand planning, and customer-relationship management, and he has worked with clients such as AT&T, HP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, IBM, Palm and other leaders of the Global 2000. The underlying theme of these problems and projects was the creation of a solution that was useful, usable, and desirable. His present research investigates the process of Design, with a focus on Design Synthesis and the creation of meaning.
Jon Freach is a Principal Designer at frog design, and a faculty member at Austin Center for Design. Jon has a 14-year background in the areas of user experience research and interaction design and has served in a broad range of roles, from designer to strategic planner and manager of best practices. Prior to working at frog, Jon was the Experience Research and Design Lead at fd2s, an environmental graphic design and wayfinding consultant based in Austin, Texas.
Justin Petro is the CEO of Thinktiv in Austin, Texas, and a faculty member at Austin Center for Design. Thinktiv is a venture accelerator - an ecosystem of people and technology focused exclusively on business innovation for brand, marketing, and technology challenges. Justin has worked with clients such as Dell, Pricelock, Siemens, and Merrill Lynch and holds patents in hardware, software and retail design. Prior to founding Thinktiv, Justin worked as the Director of User Experience at Design Edge, HCI specialist for Trilogy Software and Visual Interaction Designer at Maya Design Group.
Lauren Serota is an interaction designer at frog design. Prior to earning a Bachelor's degree in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Lauren spent her formative years in public relations and promotions for the electronic music industry. She developed her own cultural anthropology curriculum while at SCAD, and continues to seek out information and perspectives that challenge and reinterpret norms. Lauren has spent time as an industrial design recruiter, interaction designer and trend researcher. Her work incorporates her ever-present passion for cultural diversity and objectivity in the acquisition and analysis of consumer insights for product and service development. She is actively involved in the Industrial Designers Society of America and currently serves as chair of the IDSA Young Professionals interest section.
Matt Schoenholz is a Creative Director at frog design. He is passionately and deeply involved in the conceptual explorations of frog's many convergent projects. During the past 12 years, he has managed multidisciplinary user experience teams in the development of compelling user interfaces across multiple platforms. Most recently, Matt has focused on the development of systems for digital entertainment, including the creation of engaging ten foot experiences, architecting digital media servers, and creating unique discovery mechanisms for consumer content. Matt contributed directly to the award winning MediaSmart TV interface through his in-depth investigation into synchronization and content aggregation methods, which allow for remote content access and playback of digital media.
About frog design
frog design is a global innovation firm. We work with the world's leading companies, helping them create and bring to market meaningful products, services, and experiences.
Our multidisciplinary process reveals valuable consumer and market insights and inspires lasting, humanizing solutions. With a team of more than 450 designers, technologists, strategists, and analysts, we deliver fully convergent experiences that span multiple technologies, platforms, and media.
We work across a broad spectrum of industries, including consumer electronics, telecommunications, healthcare, media, education, finance, retail, and fashion. Our clients include Disney, GE, HP, Logitech, Microsoft, MTV, Seagate, Siemens, Yahoo! and others.
About Austin Center for Design
Austin Center for Design exists to transform society through design and design education. This transformation occurs through the development of design knowledge directed towards all forms of social and humanitarian problems.
The Center offers an innovative curriculum that repositions creative design education in the context of designing for the public sector. Students learn the interdisciplinary skills of creative design thinking, as applied to solving complicated problems of society and culture.
These skills broadly include divergent thinking, ideation, visualization, synthesis, prototyping, and the managing of complexity and data organization. Students use these skills to develop systems, services, products, and new business models that address pressing social issues.