Product Design

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Humanity Daniel Feldman and Adam Reineck of Ideo.org join us to talk about human-centered design.

Community Development
Environment
Healthcare

115 | Designing for Women & Girls

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Anna Meddaugh is an American designer who developed a personal, reusable urinal designed for women and girls in refugee camps to use at night when it is too dangerous to go to the communal toilets. She named her design “The Night Loo.”

Conflict and Disaster

35 | Big Problems, Simple Solutions

How do we design with scarcity? Ashok Gadgil speaks to us about simple, low cost solutions to global public health.

Advocacy

36 | Changing the Way We Make Fire

How do we design with scarcity? Dean Still of Aprovecho talks to us about the history of Aprovecho and their work to improve cookstove technology.

Advocacy
Community Development

44 | The Blue Economy of the Future

Can a city work as an ecosystem? Jan Jongert of Superuse Studios shares experiences in designing new forms of ecology within the city.

Community Development
Environment

52 | A Vision for the Future

How do we democratize design? Dr. Silver of the Centre for Vision in the Developing World shares how his groundbreaking design for self-adjusting glasses can address a serious lack of optometrists in the developing world.

Healthcare

59 | Architecture at the Border of Design and Politics

How do we design resistance? Ronald Rael is an applied architectural researcher, design activist, author, and thought leader in the fields of additive manufacturing and earthen architecture. Additionally, he works extensively in the field of research at the intersection of politics and architecture at the U.S. Mexico Border.

Advocacy

98 | Empathy Overdrive

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Humanity Ken Banks, Founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change. He has spent the last two decades working on projects in Africa.

Community Development
Conflict and Disaster

99 | Catching Up with D-Rev 2.0

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Humanity D-Rev, a nonprofit product development company based in San Francisco designs, develops and distributes radically affordable world-class medical products

Community Development

Antonio Scarponi

2008 Prize Winner

Are you ready to co-opt mass consumerism? Dr. Antonio Scarponi is an architect, designer, educator, and the founder of Conceptual Devices, a Zurich-based office with the mission to develop design strategies with social, economic, and poetic impact.

Environment

Aprovecho Research Center

Are open source, global standards for clean, efficient cook stoves possible? Aprovecho Research Center (ARC) is dedicated to researching, developing, and disseminating appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of refugees and impoverished people.

Advocacy
Community Development

Arquitecturas Colectivas

How can global practices and individuals share ways to effect change within the built environment? Arquitecturas Colectivas is a massive, open-source network interested in the participatory construction of the built environment. The common thread is a willingness to manipulate the fabric of the built environment.

Advocacy
Community Development

Ashok Gadgil

Can low cost, simple designs be implemented at scale? For over twenty years, US engineer Dr. Ashok Gadgil’s work has focused on designing low-cost technologies that help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Advocacy

Design for Extreme Affordability

Can social change be taught? Design for Extreme Affordability is a graduate course offered by Stanford University where students are asked to design products and services which will change the lives of the world’s poorest citizens.

Advocacy
Healthcare

Equalize Health (Formerly D-Rev)

Can high quality, low cost medical equipment be broadly available to the world’s poorest? Equalize Health (formerly D-Rev) is a not-for-profit medical technology company working to prevent people lacking access to treatment from suffering treatable conditions.

Advocacy
Healthcare

Foldit

Can an online puzzle game crowdsource solutions to preventing and curing disease? Foldit is an online game where players contribute to scientific research via an addictive puzzle game. Crowdsourcing is Foldit’s success: the creative problem-solving of thousands of people refines complex computations.

Advocacy
Healthcare

FrontlineSMS

2011 Prize Winner

Can SMS technology be harnessed as a powerful information dissemination tool? Frontline SMS is software that acts as an information dissemination service for text messages. It uses cell service, not internet access, to create communication networks and exchange information.

Advocacy
Community Development

Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design)

Can design challenge inequality? Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design) is a construction and design school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. Located in Berkeley, California, its programs range from carpentry and activist art classes to design-build programs where high school students construct full-scale architectural projects for community-based clients.

Advocacy
Community Development

Inteligencias Colectivas

What happens when traditional and modern design techniques are blended? Inteligencias Colectivas focuses on the ‘fringe’ of construction practice. Between highly mechanized construction and ancient methods are blended practices with their own wisdom. Inteligencias Colectivas¬ collects, collates and shares these.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

Isla Urbana

Can DIY harvesting of rainwater solve a water crisis? Isla Urbana is a project dedicated to contributing to water sustainability in Mexico through rainwater harvesting.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

Liter of Light

2012 Prize Winner

Can a plastic bottle bring light where electricity is scarce? Philippines based Liter of light is a global, open-source, grassroots movement committed to providing affordable, sustainable light to people with limited or no access to electricity.

Community Development

Maya Pedal

2010 Prize Winner

Can bicycles power essential tasks and support microbusinesses? In rural Guatemala, energy sources are scarce. Maya Pedal repurposes donated bicycles into pedal-powered machines that can blend food, grind corn and lift water from wells, without requiring electricity.

Community Development

Open Source Ecology

What are the fifty machines essential to modern life—and can their designs be open-sourced? Open Source Ecology is dedicated to an open-source economy. At their core are plans for fifty fundamental machines; what is required to create a small, modern civilization.

Environment

Proximity Designs

2013 Prize Winner

CSF Grantee

Can design help raise the income of small hold farmers in Myanmar? Proximity Designs is a not-for-profit social enterprise working to reduce poverty for rural families in Myanmar.

Community Development

Sanergy

Can waste management create jobs and improve hygiene? Launched in Nairobi’s slums, Sanergy is a business and sanitation initiative. Low-cost pay toilets are run by locals as a business. Waste is processed into fertilizer and sold to commercial farms.

Community Development
Environment

Shawn Frayne

2008 Prize Winner

Can wind energy be harnessed with a handheld device? Shawn Frayne invented a nonturbine wind-powered generator that [could] help people in poor communities power lamps, keep small vaccine refrigerators cool and charge cell phones for relatively little cost.

Environment

Slow/d

Can the product-to-consumer supply chain be made more equitable? Slow/d is an Italian organization seeking to disrupt traditional supply chains in design by connecting designers, consumers & artisans directly.

Advocacy
Community Development

Superuse Studios

Can a “blue” economy be created where one business' waste is raw materials for another? Rotterdam based Superuse Studios is at the leading edge of ecological thought. Their work pioneers ideas around an economy where the waste of one business becomes raw materials for another.

Environment

Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)

2010 Prize Winner

Can menstrual pads contribute to economic opportunities for women? Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) has designed a menstrual pad made from banana tree fibers—a local, renewable resource that SHE sources from two (largely female) farming co-ops in the eastern region of the country.

Healthcare

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