November 12th, 2011 saw the third annual Design Our Tomorrow (DOT) Conference. Thanks to Waterloo organizer Nan Huang, Waterloo students had free tickets and were transported by bus to Toronto to experience the event, billed as “Rapid fire inspiration”. Modeled after TED conferences, but targeted toward students, DOT is not about current innovation so much as the innovations of the future.
Unfortunately, an accident on the 401 caused the Waterloo contingent to miss the first three speakers, but we were not disappointed by the rest. We arrived in time to see Edward Burtynsky’s expose on environmental degradation through photography, reinforcing strongly the notion that a picture truly speaks a thousand words.
Next up, product design legend Karim Rashid talked about his approach to design and his unique blend of functionality and attention to aesthetics. Despite initially struggling with school, and being unsure about his career path, he found his passion in industrial design. He reminded us that, in a way, we are all designers – whatever we do will be used by someone, directly or indirectly and we must never forget our purpose in serving that future customer. On a side note, his talk highlighted what a good speech should really look like-images of his designs served as a backdrop to his talk, and he had no words to read from the slides. In fact, he barely made reference to the slides, which demonstrated that a truly strong speaker draws power from his words and uses visual aids like PowerPoint to supplement or provide context for their ideas, not to transmit them.
The next segment of talks contained Aza Raskin, former creative lead at Firefox and founder of Massive Health, an organization devoted to applying design principles to health issues. He demonstrated his in-depth grasp of a feedback effect, for example dashboards returning real-time feedback to driver’s on fuel consumption strongly influence driving habits. Though his specific example was diabetes feedback, helping diabetics manage and understand insulin levels in a more meaningful and intuitive way to encourage better response times and insulin management, his talk discussed the broader implications of such an effect. He implored the audience to seek out those pernicious cases in our world where the amount of data is abundant or even superfluous but is not in a form that is manageable and readable by those who need it most. It was fascinating to learn of the motivational effects of real-time feedback, irrespective of additional tangible rewards.
David Keith, climate advisor to Bill Gates, spoke next about the potential of Geo-engineering as a mitigative measure against climate change. He talked about the importance of iterative research and design-theoretical modelling, empirical testing, pilot projects and full-scale implementation, with challenges at each stage addressed by iterating to the previous or even first stage. Unfortunately, his talk was also a sobering reminder of the challenge of catering to government requests. Though using sulfate aersols in the stratosphere to mimic natural global dimming has been theorized for decades, government opposition has limited the possibilities of empirical testing. This is especially critical, as it appears more and more that humanity will be unable to make the requisite carbon emission cuts to prevent serious climate change and may need to rely on direct action such as geo-engineering to prevent runaway feedback cycles. What was most compelling was that David Keith did not have a blind faith in his proposal, but was advocating the need for research and testing to assuage fears about the technology, ironically the same fears which prevent even the tests from occurring.
Raghava KK, contemporary artist, illustrated the power of merging art and technology. He discussed his “Shake-up books”-children’s books for a tablet device that, when shaken, transform the setting to another perspective. One example was a typical nuclear family shaken up to illustrate a gay or lesbian household. Immediately intrigued by the idea and brainstorming my own perspective stories highlights just how valuable conferences like DOT can be. Three weeks later, I am still thinking about shake-up stories I would like to write and am able to apply the principle when approaching complex social situations.
Another speaker, Craig Shapiro, talked about how he shook up the publishing industry. Realizing that magazines typically break even on subscription revenues (when factoring in the cost of promoting the magazine) and make the majority of their money off advertising, Craig took a different approach when founding Good magazine. Subscribers donate the subscription cost to charities of their choice. Not only does this foster goodwill among subscribers, various charities have actually taken it upon themselves to promote the magazine as a way of generating donations. A counter-intuitive approach (giving away what one would think would be a primary source of revenue) has actually been a powerful promoter and revenue generator. It is interesting to think of how other industries such as music, literature and movies could be radically disrupted in a similar way.
The final speaker, Siobhan Quinn at Four Square was, in my initial opinion, the weakest speaker of the event. However, whenever I disagree with an idea, I make sure to write it down in a notebook in case a new perspective sheds light on something I may have earlier missed. One of her ideas, the power of curiosity as a unifying factor actually clicked the very next day when I was facilitating a motivation workshop through the Student Leadership Program. The students were in fact immensely motivated by a task not because there was a reward for success or punishment for failure but because it was challenging and intellectually stimulating. Rather than dismissing her words out of hand, I was able to let them germinate and come to fruition later in a different context.
This discovery speaks to the true power of opportunities such as Design our Tomorrow. It may not be physically sitting in a room listening to someone talk, but the discussions, thought and ideally trial applications that should ensue. Though only a few hours long, I can easily say I learned far more from my one day at the conference than many hours of class – not just because of the talks themselves, but because of the reflection, synthesis and bridging of what might initially seem to be disparate ideas. I would encourage everyone to seek such opportunities, not just for the experience itself, but for true education; nurturing thought, discussion, curiosity and innovation.
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