Design for the Disadvantaged

Last Saturday, for the launch event in Shanghai's Factory at 1933, frog sponsored Design for Disadvantaged (D4D). The event kicked off D4D's social responsibility program initiated by a group of social entrepreneurs and designers in the summer of 2009.

The D4D volunteer community includes industrial, interaction, and visual designers as well as strategists, architects, researchers and students passionate about helping disadvantaged groups like migrant workers, street vendors, garbage collectors, and poor citizens of rural China.

The Key goals of D4D design are practicality, high-quality and extreme cost efficiency as well as social responsibility, sustainability and green design. The Design Committee including Meora Zaner-Godesy from Microsoft, Jianming Dong from Human Factor International and Stephen Protz from Arc8X Design shared the D4D user-centre design process to research, brainstorm, design, prototype, manufacture and ultimately, distribute a working product. In the coming months, D4D is going to launch a series of user research activities and design workshops in Shanghai with a group of volunteers in order to discover the most prominent design needs for the disadvantaged group.

During the presentation, Douglas Wang, founder of D4D shared the vision and mission of D4D and demonstrated their website. The event attracted more than 100 guests including Intel, Samsung, HP and Honeywell. International Channel Shanghai, an English-language TV channel recorded the launch event and media like Global Entrepreneur magazine interviewed frog Associate Creative Director Brandon Edwards and Program Manager Chloe Ng.

The message deeply resonated with the audience, inspiring many attendees to become future volunteers and advocates for the initiative.

-Chloe Ng, Program Manager, Shanghai Office