This year, in our first-ever Spring Mini-Conference, we are so excited to be collaborating with Design for America (DFA), the energetic student group that tackles social problems with design thinking. Below, Annie Wu (RISD ’13) shares her experiences and what makes her so excited about DFA and ABWxD. Make sure to come check out the DFA-lead workshops at the Mini-Conference on Brown’s campus on April 28!

To most people, the word ‘design’ carries connotations of aesthetics, e.g. furniture,fashion, posters. But design is so much more. All the things designers do – understanding the problem through research, interviewing and uncovering users’ needs, coming up with innovative solutions – can certainly lead to products such as the Swiffer, or an intuitive interface on a smartphone app. What happens when this process is applied to social issues? What if human-centered design thinking were used to address the increasing rate of heart disease, to help children with learning disabilities succeed in school, or to encourage consumers to recycle? The results would be incredible. That’s why I, along with David Emanuel (Brown ’13) and Sophia Yang (RISD ’12), started the RISD/BrownDesign for America Studio.

This year, we’ve had three teams use human-centered design to tackle local and national issues such as healthy food access, childhood lead poisoning, and dyslexia. What’s been especially inspiring to me is how these interdisciplinary teams work together and are able to see the issues through so many different lenses, ranging from public health to graphic design. And of course, this applies to the Better World by Design Conference too, as it’s organized by students of all different majors and features speakers and leaders of alldifferent disciplines – and I think that this is one of the major reasons for its awesome success.

On behalf of Design for America, I am so ecstatic to continue working with A BetterWorld by Design. Like DFA, the Conference represents progress through a different way of thinking: change by design, change by collaboration, change by approaching the world both with curiosity and the conviction to improve it. It is these values and ways of thinking and doing that truly will make a better world.

- Annie Wu, RISD/Brown Design for America Co-founder and Team Lead

www.anniewu.net

We all know the thrill of the startup phase. It’s nothing less than exhilarating. But after Year 1 when the rubber hits the road and the real work begins, one discovers that the day-to-day duties of running an organization are not only challenging, but not very FUN! Learn how to deal with these difficulties with this series of classes from the Social Innovators Collective.

In response to the number of social enterprises and nonprofits that have failed within the last year and after 30 hours of interviews with founders, the Social Innovators Collective put out a 911 call to New York’s best and brightest social entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives. The result? A series of classes designed to teach you what’s needed keep your doors open so that you can do the meaningful work you’ve chosen.

Whether you’re in the early stages of your organization’s enterprise building or are contemplating launching a social enterprise or nonprofit, now is the perfect time to take advantage of the amazing knowledge and experience the instructors possess.

The workshop series was designed as a whole, but you can also sign up for individual classes.

Tickets and information

20% Discount Code: PARTNER

About the Social Innovators Collective:

The Social Innovators Collective is an international network of emerging founders, leaders and individuals who work in the social enterprise and nonprofit sectors. The Collective was born in 2010 when a handful of New York-based social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders realized that we were dealing with strikingly similar challenges, and that by leveraging our collective resources and insights we could overcome those challenges. Currently, we connect through an online forum, workshops, social events and Mastermind Sessions (peer to peer mentoring). The story of how we began was featured in NextBillion last December.

We are so excited for the SEEED Conference to kick off this year! We have invited Josephine, the Outreach and BIG Challenge Coach for SEEED, to share her experiences and why she got involved. Check out her story below and definitely come and check out the conference on March 16th and 17th!

My fascination lies in finding efficient and effective solutions to solving social problems. Upon returning from Udaipur, India working for a small, local NGO I desired to understand how NGOs can be most effective — my thought process being that in order to avoid becoming another intermediary, NGOs should have as their overarching objective to be obsolete long term. At SOCAP last summer, I pondered about how the current philanthropic funding mechanisms are encouraging the behavior and problems of the non-profit world. My eyes have recently landed on Big Society Capital – the first wholesale social investment bank in the UK, which aims to develop the social investment market by catalyzing private investment.

The importance of structuring a stable and efficient infrastructure for social enterprises to thrive is becoming increasingly important. The social sector is lacking the efficiencies that the commercial sector naturally has developed — mostly due to different capital flow and customer relations. These efficiencies are found by innovating around market mechanisms to equalize supply and demand; using banking structures to strategically invest philanthropic capital balancing financial and impact returns; and promoting the creation of policies, incentives, and standardization to increase the effectiveness of the larger ecosystem. Social entrepreneurs are equally as important within this infrastructure for creating innovation, development, and resilience of market forces. Redesigning the structure of the social sector will allow for riskier innovation to happen and entrepreneurs to scale and deepen their impact. Luckily many exciting things are happening all over the globe and an opportunity has come to explore these initiatives together.

On March 16 and 17, Brown SII and SVPRI are organizing the first national social enterprise and ecosystem builders’ conference as drivers for economic development (SEEED). This will be an opportunity for practitioners, leaders, academics, and students to convene and discuss current issues, barriers, and solutions within the social enterprise field. There will be an extensive student track, multitude of panels, workshops, and networking opportunities to discover or grow within the social enterprise space. Students can even sign up for an executive mentoring session to discuss career options, venture issues, or develop a mentor relationship with experts in the field. For more information or to register, check out its video or go to http://seeedus.com/. Join me to be part of the SEEED movement!

- Josephine Korijn, Outreach and BIG Challenge Coaching for SEEED

Only 2% of Americans produce food for the entire country. That means that large distributors that sell in bulk, like Sysco, find it more cost effective to haul one truck filled with product cross-country rather than to have local producers provide part of the product. When Michigan State asked Sysco to start providing local options, Sysco answered. It took them 3 years to overhaul their massive production and distribution system, but they found a way.

Here’s how it works:

STEP 1: Sysco representative talks to local farmers about how much produce the distributor needs for the year and the farmer plants accordingly.

STEP 2: Sysco representative forwards list of farmers to a broker.

STEP 3: (a) Small, remote farms deliver to a “food hub” – a satellite collection point from which the broker will pick up the produce. (b) Farmers who live near the broker can deliver the food there themselves. (c) If Sysco needs a farmer’s product badly enough, it will send a truck to pick up the produce.

STEP 4: The broker consolidates the food with those of other local growers, marks where they’re from, and assigns tracking numbers.

STEP 5: Sysco sales reps sell the food, prioritizing local food in the surrounding area before offering produce from other regions.

STEP 6: Customer eats.

While this system doesn’t seem like rocket science, it is a huge leap forward for large food distributors and offers huge possibility to schools across America that have their food provided by similar companies. Keep it up Sysco!

Personally, I find myself most struck by the concept of interdisciplinary collaboration that A Better World by Design entails. After transferring from a Pre-Med/Bio-Engineering major to an Industrial design major, the most common response I get from people is an eyebrow raise followed by a statement along the lines of “Wow. Well that’s a huge change.” In actuality, I’ve found that there’s a good deal of overlap between the two disciplines, in terms of both process and goals: both look to use design thinking to solve problems. It’s this kind of collaboration and partnership between disciplines that I find so essential toward bringing about a better world.

For instance, Skylar Roebuck and Lauren O’Neill of Operation Simple really epitomize the kind of collaboration I believe will solve global issues through design thinking. Together, a computer engineer along with a graphic designer worked together to develop a portable surgical table for underprivileged countries. The table can be shipped easily to those in need and provide them with better healthcare. By designing their product together, they created something compact and cost-effective, while still retaining the integrity of its function by reaching out to resolve global problems and promote a better world. Read more at http://operationsimple.com/.

For rather obvious reasons, the interdisciplinary nature of this project struck a chord with me, and I can only hope to strive toward something similar. Though many of my own ideas are primarily concerned with healthcare, such as a needle cover that enables a safer and more efficient way to administer vaccines, I believe a Better World by Design can encompass so much more. The solutions to social, economic, and environmental problems of our world can be realized through community collaboration. After all, A Better World by Design is so much more than a conference. It’s a way of thinking and a way of doing.

- Katharine Li, 2012 Competition Coordinator

To me, a Better World is the culmination of a multitude of efforts around the world to improve society, the environment, and our collective future. It is both small steps and large undertakings that empower not only the target community or area but the actors for change themselves. It is the improvement of our collective wellbeing both mentally and physically through taking an optimistic yet critical approach to solving global problems.

For me, personally, I first began to consider what a Better World really means after graduating from high school. I had been accepted as one of the pioneering members of the Brown/RISD dual degree program and was doing an internship for the xclinic in New York City when I realized that I wanted my studies and my career to make a positive impact on the world around me. That summer, I found myself surrounded by passionate people who were taking their love for art and design and applying it to environmental and health problems in order to create an impact. I have been striving to do the same ever since.

Through my studies in the Environmental Studies department at Brown and the Industrial Design department at RISD and through my attendance at the A Better World by Design Conference, I have found so many ways that we can use design thinking to reduce our impact on the environment, make daily tasks easier for the marginalized user, or ease the lives of people in the developing world. Most importantly, I think, I have learned how to redefine the problem and to question the parameters.

- Beth Soucy, 2012 Public Relations Coordinator

bethsoucydesign.com

But at the moment, there are, in simple terms, 9 designers pumping out cool products for 1 rich guy while there’s only 1 designer listening to 9 different “poor” people to design affordable and need-based products/systems. The proportions are all messed up! Here’s why:

For my footwear design class one of our projects was to design $1 shoes for developing countries. I was really excited because it’s the type of thing I’d love to take on in the future. But I soon realized it was a flawed assignment. How the heck would I design cheap shoes for “poor” people without physically observing where/how they live and what kinds of local materials their area produces? How do I know what kinds of shoes they really need without asking them? It’s not like the Internet has a well-updated list of specific consumer footwear needs that you can pick and choose from. Out of hope I even typed “chat with poor people” to see if I could somehow get in contact with someone in a developing country and ask them what they needed.

You might think it’s over-doing it, going to those places and asking what they want. But that’s called market research and product designers of corporations big/small are doing it everyday with you and me. The process is not any different just because your market is “poor.”

Anyway, the $1 project was difficult. It was so much harder than our previous projects where we had to just redesign historical shoes into cool modern day ones. Our teacher brought in bags of material swatches to look at. Binders and binders dedicated to midsole rubbers, upper meshes, exotic animal leathers, high-performance technology synthetics, and even reflectives. You just pick and choose, try different combinations, and BAM you got yourself your next bestseller. For the $1 shoes I had not choice but to take someone else’s research and base it off of that. I used Jacqueline Novogratz’s experience in Mathare Valley, the oldest and worst African slum, where she personally spoke to a woman who had escaped extreme poverty through entrepreneurship. (Click for her amazing TED talk that will change your perspective on poor people and poverty)

It’s just easier to design for rich people. In the world that you and I live in the physical and systematic infrastructure of industries from material-sourcing, to manufacturing, to production are all well-established (and just to be clear well-established does NOT mean well-designed). So it seems pretty straight-forward to design something and get it produced just like that.

Here is what I ended up with for the $1 shoe. (Click preview photos to view larger)

-Leah Erica Chung, 2011 Planning Committee Member- Branding

A Better World by Design and Décor Craft Inc (DCI) come together to bring you the annual DCI Product Design Challenge, now open for submissions!

This is a great opportunity for anyone to develop, submit, and produce their own ideas in order to help resolve a particular issue in our world today.

The DCI Product Design Challenge is a competition for design thinking and ideas. A Better World by Design and DCI encourage participants from any field or background to submit their concepts for consideration.

The 2012 competition asks participants to tackle this challenge:

In today’s society, many people are spending more time indoors than ever before and missing the beauty outside. Submit an idea for a product that will encourage people to re-engage with the great outdoors.

The winners will be awarded $1,000 for 1st place, $500 for 2nd place, and $250 for 3rd place. Additionally, winners will be presented with the great opportunity to have their winning design produced and distributed across the nation by DCI and showcased at the 2012 Better World by Design conference!

Submissions are due by April 1st.

Click here for more information about the challenge and how to enter.

View last year’s prompt and winners.

We are so excited to announce our 2012 Planning Committee! They hail from Salt Lake City to Beijing, from Development Studies to Graphic Design and as always, from RISD to Brown. The Planning Committee is full of inspiring ideas and can’t wait to get started on A Better World by Design’s 5th Anniversary Conference. We’re already looking forward to it! Here they are:

Hannah Bebbington, Brown’14
Isabella Giancarlo, Brown’14
Alexander Hadik, Brown’15
Erin Jones, Brown’12.5
Katherine Li, RISD’14
Arisa Lohmeier, Brown’14
Andreas Nicholas, RISD’13
Anna Plumlee, Brown’15
Kaitlyn Marley Schoeck, RISD’13
Alexandria J. Sheng, Brown’15
Ivy Sokol, Brown’15
Elizabeth Soucy, RISD & Brown’13
Aparaaajit Sriram, Brown’15
Allison Wong, RISD & Brown’15
Tabitha Yong, RISD’13

Committee 2011 on the eve of the conference

Anybody who was at this year’s conference knows what a stimulating and inspiring experience A Better World by Design can be. Now, we’re recruiting a new planning committee of Brown and RISD students who want to be a part of next year’s conference, our fifth anniversary, from start to finish. Applications are open until 10/31.

Students on the committee can expect to take part in every aspect of the conference, from selecting topics,  designing menus, and organizing publicity to planning parties and engaging the community. Be prepared to work hard, meet like-minded and interesting people, and join a network of changemakers.

For more information and the application itself, see www.abetterworldbydesign.com/join.

Out with the old, in with the new.