Meaning and Impact: Design That Matters

Notes from Nikkei's Universal Design Symposium in Tokyo.

I was recently a guest speaker at Nikkei's Universal Design Business Symposium, sponsored by Toyota, in Tokyo, Japan on June 18, 2010. The theme of this forum was universal design, that is, "design that brings happiness to every corner of the earth," a more endearing description than the too often used "design for the 90%."

Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H Design, started the forum with a speech presenting six tactics for human-social innovation. She described several examples of work she's done in various communities around the US. Her work is inspiring — she emphasizes solutions that can be brought to market rapidly and feasibly, a point often missed in too much social innovation work that picks concept over practice.

My speech, entitled "Meaning and impact: design that matters," built on this theme. I drew on frog's experience with for-profit clients who often want tangible, measurable ROI from any innovation or design effort to suggest how social innovation efforts can have meaning and impact. Too often, we see examples of ideas that are feel like clever solutions to pressing social problems, but that fail in the field or that neglect to consider how to scale (e.g., the Hippo Roller). Alternatively, there are many examples of ideas that scale successfully but that are questionably clever to a designer's eyes (e.g., village rainwater collection systems).
 
I described frog's work on Project M, tackling South Africa's HIV problem, to define meaning and impact in social innovation. Beyond the home testing kit at the core of the solution, a mobile service platform was critical to sparking initial adoption and ensuring usage of the solution over time. Designing for awareness and advocacy in addition to usage is essential to creating meaning. Meanwhile, wearing a corporate strategy hat ensures questions of impact are adequately considered, as manufacturing, deployment, partnership strategy, quantitative validation, and long-term roadmaps are designed and executed.