DeSE Studio Pictures

Great Work!

Thank you DeSE students for a wonderful semester! It was great to see the culmination of your hard work over the past two days. Also, thank you again to all of the excellent critics who took time out to attend our review.

Please check back over the next week for video coverage of the presentations, which will be published on the course site as well.

Final Crit Presentation Guidelines

Is this thing on?

Well I'm definitely looking forward to seeing you present your hard work this semester next week!

Below are important notes on the final crit:

1. Please invite your guests ASAP - if you haven't sent them invitations yet, email your mentor and a rep. from your organization tonight! Faculty and friends from RISD and the greater Providence community are definitely welcome.
2. Everyone must arrive promptly by 10:25am for the morning session and 1:10pm for the afternoon session.
3. On both days, dress is business casual for presenters.
4. All presentations are due to me (via email or Dropbox) at midnight on the night before you present. Place your file in "Design Project 2 > Final Presentations."
5. Presentations should run approximately 25 minutes. This will be followed by 10 minutes of feedback.
6. We will be videotaping each presentation to be published on the website.
7. The major sections of the presentation should be as follows:

• Context: community background, organization background, description of problems faced
• Mission statement: the mission of your venture, why this is a compelling topic to focus on, precedent projects
• Design Concepts: description of the deliverables of your venture - the products/services/systems you have designed in response to the context and problem statements, how these designs impact the life of your target community
• Implementation and Sustainability: distribution, marketing, continuity of leadership, financial sustainability, metrics and evaluation of impact, future expansion of your venture

DeSE Final Crit Announcement

Assignment 9: Due 5/11

We're going to make a class poster for the final crit and on Tuesday morning we will workshop the design of the poster as a studio.

Please bring in one 8.5x11 printed portrait page split into four equal quadrants - the top two should contain images that you feel are symbolically appropriate of your project; the bottom two should be representative of type of demographic you are serving in your community (here's an example [PDF]). Sketches or stock images are definitely OK.

Some projects will not lend themselves well to this assignment. If you don't feel that you can adequately represent these ideas photographically while, for instance, maintaining the dignity of your community, then focus on developing a few abstractions instead.

Final Crit Presentation Schedule

Overview

• 10:30 - 4:30 on 5/25 and 5/26 in the Chace Center
• 35 minutes per student (20 minute presentation, 15 minute response period)
• 2 minutes prep between students
• 1 hour lunch period

Tuesday 5/25

• 10:30 - 11:05 Annemarie Gugelmann
• 11:05 - 11:40 Ji Yae Park
• 11:40 - 12:15 David Zacher
• 12:15 - 13:15 Lunch Break
• 13:15 - 13:50 Lucy Stein
• 13:50 - 14:25 Felipe Sarmiento
• 14:25 - 15:00 Hyun Ju Lee
• 15:00 - 15:35 Jason Lee
• 15:35 - 16:05 Cassie Mauer

Wednesday 5/26

• 10:30 - 11:05 Justin DeSilva
  
• 11:05 - 11:40 Kathleen O'Donnell
  
• 11:40 - 12:15 Louis Rigano
  
• 12:15 - 13:15 Lunch Break
• 13:15 - 13:50 Saba Ahmed
  
• 13:50 - 14:25 Maria Floreena DelGado
  
• 14:25 - 15:00 Peter Simon
  
• 15:00 - 15:35 Esther An
• 15:35 - 16:10 Soomi Lee
• 16:10 - 16:45 Gazal Goenka
• 16:45 Closing remarks and acknowledgement

TinyTech India

Tonight I came across an interesting company out of Gujarat, India, called TinyTech. They manufacture small scale food processing and energy equipment with the intent of helping to foster decentralized economic/human development.

I like their spirit.

Here's an excerpt from a manifesto of sort by Gopal Desai, a director at TinyTech:

MY TIPS FOR HEALTHY AND HAPPY LIFE

(1) Remember that our life is not for unlimited period. The most definite and sure and certain event in our life is our death.

(2)Money is just similar to blood pressure. If it increases beyond certain limit, it creates trouble just like high blood pressure. If it decreases below certain limit, it creates trouble just like low blood pressure. As we remain healthy between narrow range of blood pressure, same is with money.

(3) Attitude of earning more and more money is not good, but attitude of job satisfaction is more important. Never do work at the cost of health. Keep helping nature for all for ever as long as you can help.

(4)Real happiness is generated by serving poor people, trodden people, needy people. Please read mahatma Gandhi’s books & you will understand very clearly how to turn remaining life in right direction.

(5) To become really happy, be satisfied & think always in free time to do something for the most poorest similar to one you have ever seen in your life.

(6) Give most importance to Food , Shelter & cloth. Do something so that lots of employment is created & atleast all people in this world get these 3 basic necessity. This is only possible thro, micro, small, family Or village level industries.

GOPAL DESAI

Design Project 2 Mid-Project Presentations

Annemarie Gugelmann

Cassie Mauer

David Zacher

Esther An

Felipe Sarmiento

Gazal Goenka

Hyun Ju Lee

Jason Lee

Ji Yae Park

Justin DeSilva

Kathleen O'Donnell

Louis Rigano

Lucy Stein

Maria Floreena DelGado

Peter Simon

Saba Ahmed

Soomi Lee

Assignment 10: due 4/22

Hi class! Great to talk with you today. I really appreciate that you're willing to share your concerns regarding project 2 with me since it will help me to optimize the structure of the rest of the course to fit your needs. However, I want pass along this important message: take a deep breath and grab a cold one - the class is performing well on the whole.

Please remember that the goal of this project is not necessarily to solve a problem for your non-profit.

You are working with these organizations primarily so that you can interact with and learn from the people who run the orgs and the communities that they serve.

You should use this information to help you conceive of a proposal for a product, service or system that will sustainably benefit your target community. Your proposal may or may not involve the non-profit you are working with, and doesn't need to be implemented during this course.

Once you have design concepts in hand, you should focus on getting informal feedback from the folks in your organizations and your target communities, rather than treating them like clients per se.

Here is a generic schedule that you could use to guide your work for the rest of the semester:

April 21 - 29

• Continue to research and interact with your organizations target and communities.
• Build a set of potential problem areas to address and early design concepts for each problem area.
• Solicit feedback on these concepts from your orgs and communities, as well as your fellow designers at RISD.

April 30 - May 7

• Choose problem area to focus on and conduct problem-specific research
• Brainstorm on possible solutions and solicit feedback from orgs and communities
• Send out invites to final crit on 5/24
• Research prior art and create a matrix that compares the strengths and weaknesses of your concept to those of precedent projects

May 8 - 14

• Choose and develop one final design solution
• Solicit feedback from orgs and communities

May 14 - 19

• Review and refine all design concept models, diagrams and business plans
• Solicit final round of feedback from orgs and communities prior to presentation
• Package design solution into a persuasive presentation

May 20 - 23

• Presentation preparations for final crit

May 24

• Final crit
• Party

For Thursday 4/22, please complete one or both the following:

Option A

Produce a set of preliminary design sketches exploring the issues you are researching (opportunities for design interventions) and concepts that suggest possibilities for products, systems and/or services that address these issues. Don't be afraid to sketch! Have fun and enjoy the process, really! Have these ready on your laptop, on a USB key or as a hard copy for review.

Option B

Brainstorm on the potential problem areas for your target community that you will address in your project and produce lists, mind-maps and conceptual diagrams and other visual records of your thought process. Have these ready on your laptop, on a USB key or as a hard copy for review.

See you on Thursday!

Yushu Earthquake Relief Effort

Earlier today a 7.1 scale earthquake hit Yushu Prefecture, in southern Qinghai Province, not far from where I worked this past winter. The effect has been devastating in many of the county towns in this region where people live, work and trade their goods. You can read more about this topic here. Please pass along the word that One Earth Designs has begun collecting donations for direct relief to families in this region at their website.

Maternal Deaths in Decline Worldwide

Today the New York Times reports that The Lancet, a leading medical journal, has published a study(Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980—2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5, Hogan, et al. PDF link) that shows a marked decline in maternal deaths worldwide since 1980.

It's interesting to note (as the NYT reports) that the social entrepreneurship community can be conflicted in terms of its opinions of this sort of positive, sweeping social research. On the one hand, the members of social organizations are undoubtedly interested in maintaining the urgency of their mission in the eyes of the public by telling very real stories of tragedy that abound in our flawed planet. This is especially true for issues that, though improving, remain major problems that still deserve to be addressed promptly. Yet, without a sense of progress, all efforts start to seem to be hopeless. Nicholas Kristof has made this point (video) before regarding the seemingly overwhelming problem of forced prostitution.

We should debate this issue of access to clear information vs. maintaing the public's attention in class.

Course Schedule 4/13 - 2/29

Week 8 (4/11)

• Tuesday (4/13)
• AM
• Broader field of DeSE presentation, give out ethnography assignment
• PM
• Work time with organizations
• A8A Ethnography Exercise
• A8B: Develop ethnography plan for your organization

• Thursday (4/15)
• AM
• Presentation of A8 work
• PM
• Intra-Studio Workshop I / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A9: Research and Mind-mapping
• Conduct research in your organization and produce documentation of your observations, experiences and insights. Produce mind maps related to problems or issues faced by the community being served that you find interesting and may want to pursue further in this project. The more the better.

Week 9 (4/18)

• Tuesday (4/20)
• AM
• HCD Curriculum Focus Group with Ayako
• PM
• Desk crits
• (Optional) Intra-Studio Workshop II / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A10: Design concept generation
• Produce a set of preliminary design sketches exploring the issues you are researching (opportunities for design interventions) and concepts that suggest possibilities for products, systems and/or services that address these issues.

• Thursday (4/22)
• AM
• A10 presentations
• PM
• Desk crits
• (Optional) Intra-Studio Workshop III / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A11: Produce mid-project crit materials
• Background of community
• Background of organization
• Observations
• Mind-maps
• Precedents
• Project concepts
• Future plans

Week 10 (4/25)

• Tuesday (4/27)
• MID-PROJECT REVIEW: Local SE design project: Mid-project review with partner organization in ID gallery

• Thursday (4/29)
• MID-PROJECT REVIEW: Local SE design project: Mid-project review with partner organization in ID gallery
• A13: Readings on evaluating social ventures, verify final review dates with partner orgs

Assignment 8: Due 4/15

In order to make a persuasive argument for your proposal in Design Project 2, you will need to be able to effectively organize and convey the information you collect during your ethnographic research of the communities and organizations you are collaborating with. This assignment is intended to give you an opportunity to quickly experiment with ways of expressing how people utilize the spaces in which they live or work, as well as how they allocate their time in a typical day.

For Thursday 4/15, please complete the following:

Choose a person you know and request some time from them to conduct the brief sociological study described below. For convenience this may be simply a friend of yours, though if you have reached a level of access with your Design Project 2 community / organization members, please feel free to work with them instead.

1. Take a photograph of your subject (the person you've chosen), and a separate photo of one of "their" spaces - their home, their desk, their office, etc - such that the objects in this space are clearly visible. Interview your subject about how these objects fit into their lives and use short quotations to annotate the photo of their space (for example, "Coffee Table: I never use this table - it pretty much just collects dust and junk mail. Really, I'm not sure why I still have it!") Lay out this information on an 11x17 page.

Analyze the information you collect from this process and look for trends. Create a few categories (for example, you might come up with categories such as "useful objects" and useless objects," or "handmade items," "gifts from family" and the like) and either color code your annotations or create lists on the side of the page.

2. Interview your subject about how they typically spend their time in this space. Look for trends in how they allocate time and create a graph on a second 11x17 sheet that expresses a trend that you find interesting (for instance, you might graph the hours they are awake against the hours of daylight and find that this person is nearly nocturnal).

For Friday 4/16:

Email me a list of the ethnographic research methods (photos,video,interviews,focus groups,note-taking, etc.) that you anticipate will be the most relevant to work on Design Project 2. For each method please provide a few sentences describing how you plan to employ the method in your research.

That's it! Let me know if anyone still has questions about the deliverables.

Design Project 2 Clarifications

Hi class - I hope you've had a restful spring break. Below are some clarifications that will help you complete Project 2, Design for Local Social Entrepreneurship.

The primary purpose of Project 1, Design for International Social Entrepreneurship, was to expose you to some of the tools and thought processes that go into community-centered design, from ethnographic research to benchmarking to building sustainable models for implementation. Working in teams, you attempted to respond to the needs of communities that were far removed from your physical location and way of life in Providence. Due to these limitations, your design concepts (while excellent overall) were inherently speculative and difficult to verify, though it was apparent that all of you constructed sophisticated models of the communities based on your research.

Whereas in the first project you devised plans for conducting field research and user studies, the second major project in this course will focus on designing concepts that are tied to your own direct contact with a local community. You will be expected to demonstrate your ability to develop skills in these social science areas while using them to build deep, original insights into the social issues you are seeking to address. In parallel, you will create many iterations of design sketches and models and discuss them with the entire class as well as small groups in order to maintain a lively, collaborative studio culture. You will benchmark your ideas against similar project precedents and build sustainable business plans that take into the consideration the limitations and opportunities inherent in the financial, cultural and environmental landscape that you are working within. You will work directly with community members and representatives of social organizations in order to incorporate a tight loop of feedback into your design concepts.

You will work hard, have fun and leave this course with something great in your portfolio. That's the goal!

There are two basic project structures to choose from:

1: Consult for an existing social organization

Deliver the design of a new financially self-sustaining product, service or system to an existing social organization based around their mission, needs and preferences.

2: Create a plan for a new social organization

Building on insights you have gained through direct contact with your target community, propose a new social business or non-profit based around a financially self-sustaining product, service or system.

Timeline (more detail TBA)

4/9 : Organization chosen, volunteering begins

4/24 and 4/29: Mid-Crit

5/24 : Final crit

Assignment 7: Due 4/6

The assignment over break will focus on getting a handle on where you are on your research for the final project.

Please email me, subject: "DESE Org Update" a brief update on the following:

1) Topic / Community that you are focusing on
2) List possible partner organizations

2a) Brief description of each organization
2b) How interested are you in this organization?
2c) Have you contacted them? If so, when?
2d) Have you heard back from them? If so, when?
3) Describe possible project ideas.
4) Do you prefer to consult for an organization or propose a new organization of your own?

Also please read the following article, Introduction to Green Design, by Hendrickson, et al, and watch Majora Carter's TED Talk from 2006 on Sustainable South Bronx

See you guys in a few weeks!

Tips for Contacting Organizations

1. When contacting organizations or companies, you should be up front about the fact that you are also working on a research project and make certain that they are willing to provide support in return for your volunteer time
2. Be clear about both what you will realistically contribute to the organization, as well as the commitment you will expect from the organization.
3. Consider framing your volunteer proposal around making the organization you are contacting more competitive (can you volunteer in a way that is useful to the organization but also indirectly feeds into your project?)
4. You could, for instance, use your skills as designers to produce ethnographic research that acts as evidence of the efficacy of the organization
5. Consider conducting ethnographic research with the communities being served and providing this data to the organization
6. Or, you could help communicate the message of the organization better to donors and the public (a good precedent here is Art Center's "Design Matters" program)

Design Project 1 Team Presentations

It was great to see your work last week and hear some excellent feedback from our panelists! Attending were Chris Bull from Brown Engineering and Rene Chen, Scot Frank and Yi Zhang of One Earth Designs.

Below are presentations from RISD DeSE 2010 Design Project 1, which focused on design to sustainably improve the quality of life for Himalayan communities. Here is a link to a brief for the project.

Team Presentations:
RISD DeSE 2010 Womens Health Team Presentation (Kathleen O'Donnel, Soomi Lee, Esther An)

RISD DeSE 2010 Stove Innovation Team Presentation (Justin DeSilva, Saba Ahmed, Jason Lee)

RISD DeSE 2010 Solar Energy Team (Cassie Mauer, David Zacher, Peter Simon)

RISD DeSE 2010 Sanitation Team Presentation (Flo Delgado, Louie Rigano, Annemarie Gugelmann, Felipe Sarmiento)

RISD DeSE 2010 Ergonomics Team Presentation (Ji Yae Park, Gazal Goenka, Lucy Stein, Hyun Ju Lee)

Human Centered Design Workshop with IDEO

Beto Lopez of IDEO's Boston location will be visiting during the afternoon of 3/25 to run a workshop with our studio in the ID Gallery. In advance of the workshop, please read the Human Centered Design Toolkit, which can be downloaded in sections here.

Here is his bio from the 2009 Better World Conference:

Beto Lopez IDEO UPDATE

Beto Lopez is a systems designer at IDEO Boston, leading IDEO's east coast sustainability initiative working to integrate tenets of considered design across IDEO's project work.

Internally, Beto serves as a regional content guide, contributing to the way IDEO values design alternatives in the development of products and services by looking at the broader environmental and social context of their realization. Externally, he helps IDEO clients advance their social and environmental responsibility through design thinking that promotes positive impact in the made world. He regularly speaks and teaches on topics related to the intersection of design and sustainable development.

Beto came to IDEO in 2004 as an engineer, bringing experience from automotive design and research, architectural engineering and construction, and research in sustainable development. His portfolio spans work in both products and services ranging from the technical design of drug delivery devices to strategic thinking around the future of transportation.

Beto earned a BSME and an MS in Dynamic Systems and Control from the University of Texas at Austin.

Global warming: Indians decide to make their own glaciers

Felipe posted up this link to a CS Monitor article dealing with the looming water crisis in the Himalayas and surrounding environs. The writing is strangely poor for this publication, but the video attached to the article is quite clear and succinct. Take a look!

Presentation Deliverables for 3/23

Dear DeSE students - it was exciting to see your progress earlier today, and I'm really looking forward to discussing your projects in the crit next week. Team presentations will be delivered starting at 1:10pm on Tuesday 3/23 in the BEB Lecture Hall, first floor.

At least one member of each team must show up at 9:50am to test out your presentation on the projection system and sign up for a presentation time slot. If you plan to include audio, please tell me so I can have speakers on hand for you.

Presentation format

1. Presentations will run 30 minutes each with 15 minutes of Q&A and consist of a Powerpoint or PDF along with models and any other tangible objects that your team will demonstrate.

2. All members must contribute drawings, graphs and other content to the presentation while maintaining a visual style and layout that is consistent across slides.

3. The sections of the presentation should be as follows:

• Problem Statement / Description of Status Quo: Introduce your area of study by providing visuals that depict or diagram the problem you are focusing. Wherever possible present a clear sequence of events via drawings illustrating scenarios in which community members presently encounter these problems, and what the repercussions are in terms of quality of life, environment, health, etc. Highlight causal relationships and explain your interest in the particular aspects of the problem scenario you have chosen to focus on.
• Precedents: You will provide evidence from prior projects that are directly or indirectly related to the design(s) you are proposing. Briefly discuss the communities being served in these precedents, the methodology they employed and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the projects overall. Highlight any areas that you specifically adopt or reject in your design(s).
• Design(s): Present visuals that demonstrate the key features and performance of one or more designs that address the problem by building upon precedents as well as your own research and ingenuity. Emphasize the way that the designs fit into the lives of your users, directly illustrating use whenever possible to help bring the audience into the scenario you are presenting.
• Plan for Implementation (formerly called "Support"): This section should address your plan for the implementation of your project, including proposals for navigating the web of constraints that form the structure of any social venture. Please propose at least one concept for each of the following areas, if they are applicable to your project: funding mechanism, training plans (in the case of DIY projects), market research, user testing of prototypes, distribution, maintenance, promotion, measuring the impact of your project and evaluating the success of a given design (metrics and evaluation).
• Proposal for Future Research: Describe your pending research questions, the impact that the result of this research could have on your design proposals and the tools you would propose using to address collect this information.