There are many fun ways to get involved with design. Check out some of the cool companies highlighted in earlier posts like Blue Earth Network and D-Rev, or check out IDEO which pioneered HCD. Their free toolkit on HCD is a great place to start. There are some other great west coast firms – Frog, Catapult Design, XPLANE, and Ziba - that also do interesting work and use design and design thinking to solve a number of problems. XPLANE in particular has a great blog that demonstrates innovative ways to use design principles beyond Buchanan first 2 levels of design.
If classes are more your style, check out the class IDEO and +Acumen created. They offer it twice a year and the next one starts March 31st (next week!). It is a free, online 7-week course that involves lectures as well as design challenges to perform with a team. You can learn more about it here and sign up with a team in your area.
Another great way to get involved is through weekend long design events. Service Jam is an event where teams of people think creatively about a theme and build a service to satisfy a need around that theme in 48-hours. Sustainability Jam is a similar 48-hour event with an explicit focus on sustainability. Both of these event occur yearly all over the world.
In fact, design is such a hot topic right now that there are lots of organization to explore like Design for America or community events like design meet-ups, free lectures, and open houses are happening all the time.
I also love exploring blogs. There are some great examples of the 4 orders of design out there. My favorites are: Always with Honor, a graphic design firm in Portland; Design*Sponge, an interior design and product review site; Work|Play|Experience, a German service design firm; and Stanford’s Social Innovation Review.
What are your favorite ways to engage with design?
Hey Caitlin! Thanks for illuminating the concept of design. You have some great sources in this post! I like Social Innovation Review and I bookmarked the German service design firm. Are you participating in the IDEO HCD course? I'm forming a team in Seattle and I'm pretty excited to learn the methodology. I'm thinking of ways to incorporate HCD within education, I feel there is great opportunities! Some of my favorite ways to engage with design is looking at logos and also packaging, the whole gifting process- how a gift is wrapped and packaged and the message the receiver gets, it's a whole experience. For me, design is more than what meet's the eye, it's about story and imagination. I enjoy magazines, too, the layout and overall feel. And I can't forget that designing with and for others can be fun too. Thank you for sharing your voice in this space!
ReplyDeleteCatlin,
ReplyDeleteBoth you and Brittany are working on the topic of human center design from similar angles. I find it interesting that this is the subject we originally wanted to structure our sister work groups around, and that neither of our groups actually used this topic to complete our case studies. Maybe next quarter we can pick this topic up in a more serious way. I would also like to attempt more coordination between the two groups. I am looking forward to the challenge.
Thank you for your recommendations on ways we can get involved with design ourselves. I think it is important for us as consumers, to put our voice in the room; otherwise how can we complain when we do not get what we want or need. The beauty in design is its functionality, not just the ascetics of the product. Of course when a product is pleasing to the eye it is more enjoyable to have in your environment, but for me it needs to function. This is the reason why I shop for old used furniture.
Old wooden pieces have drawers and compartments that modern pieces just have not considered. I prefer to polish up or refinish a functional piece of furniture than to purchase new. In fact, I purchased a 60 year old dining room table and chairs in 1985, which I am still using today. I have to recover the seat cushions a couple of times but otherwise the set looks like great (minus a few puppy teeth marks). I raised my family with this set of furniture, and it has served us well. Best 600 dollars I ever spent.
Over spring break I am going to give the topic of human centered design some thought, I would still love to have the opportunity to work with you on a project so let's chat about how to make that work.
Korine