NICE TO MEET YOU GEOFF SUVALKO
Where are you from?
The beach. Ruakaka, Northland, about 2 hours north of the city of Auckland
How did you end up at ID? Where were you before?
For the last 10 years I’ve run my own design firm in New Zealand and Australia. Over the last 4 years I got involved with one client in particular - Air New Zealand, in product and service innovation. It was within that project I worked alongside Ideo and got introduced to human centered design.
Tell us quickly about a project that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about.
A museum at home that I worked with before I came over and still work with while I’ve been at ID. I have been given the opportunity to help redesign the entire customer experience - and I love it.
What do you do in your spare time?
I love standing on the beach at dusk with not a soul around casting into the surf and waiting for something to bite. Generally i’m waiting a long time.
What would you do with 20 million dollars?
Develop an innovation design think tank downunder to address economic, social and evironmental progress. If I had the money, i’d do it tomorrow.
What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
Persuasion, because as designers that’s what we tend to spend so much of our time doing, persuading organisations that design can make a difference, and persuading them to pay for it!
What are the websites you could not live without?
Right now - Seeid! apart from that I sleep around.
Is there anything you would like to say to ID?
Apart from thanks for giving me a great year, I would suggest the more ‘real client’ project work amalgamated into the program the better.
To accompany this week’s scores, here’s a highlight video with some of the participants crushing their cans:) Watch till the end to see danimal’s beast-like can-crushing prowess!
Brains, Behavior and Design
Research in the field of behavioral economics can help designers understand why people often don’t adopt offerings designed to address identified consumer needs. Based on a synthesis of current behavioral economics research our ID Demos team developed a set of tools and engagements that help designers more effectively understand and design for people’s decision making processes.
Learn more and download the kit at:
NICE TO MEET YOU HANNAH SWART
Please introduce yourself in a few sentences.
About 3 decades ago, on the red dusty plains of Southern Africa, a rational planner and passionate artist kissed and not long after that beautiful moment, I happened. I am in love with life and the people that share it with me. I am endlessly fascinated by the thinking that sustains and creates our lives and futures.
How did you end up at ID?
During my career as interior architect, I saw glimpses of what our future could be, but I did not know how do get there. This dissonance between what I was doing and could be doing grew until I realized that I had to leave South Africa to bridge the gap between what is and what can be. I came to Chicago to lecture at the School of the Art Institute and then stumbled across ID.
Tell us quickly about a project that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about.
During the past weeks, I started to read about living systems. This way of seeing is generating a new paradigm where we learn to work with the bigger order to create a sustainable future. This excites me beyond words.
What would you do with 20 million dollars?
I would set out to discover how a sustainable future might look, by starting an organization that brings together brilliant minds from various disciplines that can see a new way forward. Together we can prototype how new thought patterns may become tangible realities. As we discover sound ways of thinking and doing that creates wholeness, we would partner with companies to bring the future into the present. We would work with companies to redefine and broaden their identities and start the necessary transformation from the inside out.
What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
Hmmm, I’d like to be the melting muse. I’d LOVE to be able to lose my form and melt into stuff – become one with it and learn it’s core nature. Imagine melting into the side walk, being absorbed through the roots of a tree, breathed out by it’s leaves and rained back through layers of misty clouds; imagine melting into language and becoming the pattern that adapts to different meanings; imagine melting into the body and mind of a tiny 8 year old in a dusty African shanty town; imagine melting into the internet and hearing the billion voices and bits of information whizz through me, catching phrases, picking up repeats, understanding us all the more.
Be EPIC
Design skills for a good cause
EPIC (Engaging Philanthropy Inspiring Creatives) helps creative professionals and nonprofits join forces, making a bigger impact on the world than either could alone. In regular intervals, they pair select teams of “creatives” from the ad/design industries with select nonprofit clients dedicated to education, children and families. During an “8-week creative rally,” each team creates plans, programs, and materials—on a pro-bono basis—that their nonprofit client needs to positively affect the lives of those they serve.
Are you EPIC?
Whether you are a creative or a nonprofit, we can make a big difference by working together. EPIC is pairing select teams of creative professionals with select nonprofit clients whose missions focus on education, children and families. Deadline is March 1st.
Past/Present ID/EPIC contributors:
Rober Zolna
Tim Miller
Amanda Stewart
Interested? http://iamepic.org/
or email: miguelc@id.iit.edu
Nice to meet you Miguel Cervantes
Where are you from?
Born in Mexico. Raised in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood (so sort of like being raised in Mexico). And there are bits of my heart in rural Minnesota and Paris (not Texas).
How did you end up at ID? Where were you before?
No other school would take me. Kinda. I have a B.A. in Anthropology with a French studies concentration. Naturally, I found a job as program director for a Chicago nonprofit that offers educational opportunities to under-resourced middle-school students. Nonprofit budgeting made me really resourceful, so I often found myself designing everything from event flyers to the students’ academic experiences. I enjoyed this and wanted to do more of it. Turns out that what I was doing was part of something called Design thinking, but I had no traditional design background. ID offered all of that and then some.
Tell us quickly about a project that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about.
Taking photos that John Grimes won’t crop, color correct, or straighten. I’m 0 in 3. Oh, and if you come to my presentation I’ll tell you about other side projects that have me tickled pink.
What do you do in your spare time?
Attend classes at ID. On my busy time I do my homework for said classes.
What would you do with 20 million dollars?
Pay my grad school loans. If I had anything leftover, I’d go on a gastronomic world tour.
What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
The power of staying awake for 24 hours a day. Because then I could attack super villains while they slept.
What are the websites you could not live without?
In no particular order:
www.thenewidiom.com
My music blogs.
google maps (I like knowing where I am and where I’m going)
Is there anything you would like to say to ID?
I have never encountered a more diligent, apt, and quick-minded group than I have here.
Nice to meet you Amber Lindholm
Where are you from?
Here’s the quick version. I was born in Bossier City, Louisiana at Barksdale Air Force Base (both my parents were in the Air Force), and then moved to Okinawa, Japan until I was five. We came back to the States and followed jobs around, moving almost every year. I lived in a bunch of different states: Florida, New York, Arkansas, Ohio, Missouri. We moved to Chillicothe, a small town in central Illinois, when I was starting high school.
How did you end up at ID? Where were you before?
After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I moved to Chicago and worked as a graphic designer for Rotary International. I was keeping up with changes in design and knew there were some skills that I wanted to build on top of my traditional design education. A woman I worked with, Reiko Takahashi, was in the MDM program at ID and recommended that I go to an open house. A week later, I sent in my application.
Tell us quickly about a project that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about.
In an Interactive Product Workshop with Kei Sato we are prototyping concepts to solve problems that occur in the elderly experience in activities around the hospital bed. I’ve done a lot of conceptual and high-level planning projects while at ID, so I’m looking forward to some hands-on product prototyping and experimentation.
What do you do in your spare time?
Hang out with my husband Tom and our three cats: Dewey, Zoe, and Penny. We like to hang around in our neighborhood, Lincoln Square, and go downtown to the Chicago museums. When it’s warm I get out and run, bike along the lakefront, and swim in the lake. I grew up swimming and it’s my favorite sport; now I also do triathlons.
What would you do with 20 million dollars?
Travel everywhere. Buy a house with an outdoor pool, an observatory, and a horse stable. Have a huge library of old books and an art collection. Basically, the same stuff that I used to dream about when I was a kid.
What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
Is being able to swim like a dolphin a super power? I’d love to be able to do that.
What are the websites you could not live without?
Delicious and Google. And I use Wikipedia, Pandora, and Twitter a lot.
Is there anything you would like to say to ID?
When things get really serious, take a break and breathe. Laugh with others. It’s easy to get caught up in the work and neglect what really matters. Of course, it’s easier said than done!
Consumerism in the Wild, Wild East: What to Know About Designing for China →
This was a blog article I wrote for my company (Artefact), primarily to show that we’ve done some serious research and thinking around what it takes to design products (we tend to do consumer electronics, like mobile phones, media devices, home entertainment, etc.) for China.
The lessons/insights/points are more general than specific, but our hope was to start an ongoing dialogue with our clients, other designers, researchers, and people in the community in trying to understand such a dynamic and complex part of the world, full of dynamic and complex and diverse people!
I did NOT go to China to do any research (no budget!). It is not a user-research piece, at least not based on personal experience. It was the result of a tremendous amount of reading (books, articles, blogs, reports, etc.), and numerous phone interviews or emailing/Facebooking (some in November last year and the rest this January) with professionals in design and market research, business, product design, UI/UX, and some students. The calls were to discuss some of these claims I was making and whether or not they were true, and if they had any anecdotes to share related to the claims.
In terms of acknowledging the ID students (former and current) I spoke with, they include: Lin Lin, Nanqian Xu, Ash Bhoopathy, Pinxia Ye, Fei Qi, and probably a couple others I’m forgetting.
I also briefly spoke with Anjali Kelkar, a former professor at IIT Institute of Design, about doing field work in China.
Hopefully, some of you will have some of your own knowledge, perspective, and insights to share by contributing to the ongoing dialogue on our blog, commenting, re-tweeting, or writing your own thoughts on your own blog in response.
Thanks,
Gabriel Biller (MDes, Design Planning, 2008)
Nice to meet you Raph D’Amico
Where are you from?
I was born in France but moved around when I was a kid - nine places before I was nine - Boston, Milan and then the rest of my life in London before ending up at ID.
How did you end up at ID? Where were you before?
I was working in private equity and running music events.
Tell us quickly about a project that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about.
Redesigning the humble grill for Marty’s intro to product design class. Hoping to make something with the simplicity of a Foreman and the taste of a Weber. Plenty of late nights in Rhino to come…
Oh, and I’m very excited about co-chairing the DRC.
What do you do in your spare time?
I love rock climbing to bits - the guy to my left in the picture is my hero, Chris Sharma. I also beatbox.
What would you do with 20 million dollars?
Rock climb and snowboard for as long as possible… and then probably go back to design school!
What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
The ability to cook.
What are the websites you could not live without?
NYTimes.com, the Google empire
Is there anything you would like to say to ID?
Happy to be here!
