For a couple of months, at Big New Ideas, I’ve been tinkering about the idea of a weekend event that brought together creatives to use our skills to help a local non-profit. I believe in what many non-profits do and I believe that as designers we have a role to play. However, with our society is moving at an ever quicker pace, and time commitment is getting harder, something needed to be done.
That is when the idea of the “24 Hour Design Jam” (As it is currently called) came about. Where every month, we get 6-8 creatives together and over Friday and Saturday apply the creative process to develop an appropriate brand and plant the seeds for a nonprofit’s online presences. This weekend was the first 24 hour jam we did with a local non-profit in Providence, RI called Young Voices. They are a youth led advocacy group training young people to become leaders in their communities.
It was an amazing experience! I knew it was going to be fun and never so much fun, and on top of that it feels really good to have worked along side with other young people who believes in the sames things I do and is as passionate or even more passionate about help others. And Young Voices have a new website!
The big idea is for us to work with a couple more non-profits by assembling a different team each time, so that we can find a formula that can be scaled and done anywhere in the world. Follow us on Facebook.
Comments Off | Share posted on April 20, 2010 at 4:54 pm
As I am working with a company trying to engage kids to use their product, something struck me. Kids are exposed to all sorts of media these days, from social media, to game consoles, to online gaming, to good old TV. It struck me to how much time our generation and the upcoming generations are spending in the virtual world: learning, solving murders, saving lives and creating new worlds. What if we can transfer some of those experiences into reality?
Jane McGonigal spoke at TED this year about her vision of transforming the world through video games. She began her talk by throwing out some out some numbers to how many young people out there are playing video games, and they were staggering. And if we could tap into a fraction of the billions of people playing video games making a change in the video game world to cross over to make a change in this world, imagine what that impact would be:
Will Wright, designer of popular game titles such as Sim City, the Sims and Spore, see the power to educate kids through video games:
Comments Off | Share posted on March 1, 2010 at 9:45 pm change, Design
Using this diagram to sum it up, what I do and Big New Ideas does is to use strategy, design and story telling to bring a community together around ideas to help change the world. This is the power of design, this is what it can do and this is how it can change the world.
Comments Off | Share posted on February 13, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Monthly Design Reviewhas finally launched its first pilot issue this week. It was an exciting day for Big New Ideas and the team working on the project. It has been 4 months in the works, and we finally got our foot out the door. We are now entering in the next phase of building the publication.
We have gotten a lot of interest in the publication and having people join the conversation. It is not about the definition of design, the absolute of design, but the opposite, the in tangible benefits and value of design. Creativity can not be taught, however, we need to create a habitat for creativity.
The Monthly Design Team invites all who are interested in the design conversation to join us in New York City on February 19 at 8pm in the SALT Art Space. For details goto Monthly Design Review
Comments Off | Share posted on February 10, 2010 at 7:49 pm
The first session started off talking about behavioral economics, and delivered by the father of this think Daniel Kahneman. He spoke about the relationship between the experiencing self and the remembering self, and how that changes our perspective on our perspective of happiness, and the measurement of happiness.
At the end of the day, it is about story telling, how the experience and the memory works together, and how it would change our decision making if you weren’t going to remember anything. His question was that if you were given a drug that will make you forget any memory about your vacation (which is part of the deal), will you change your choice of vacation? This really begs you to think about the divide, or not, between your experiencing and remembering self.
Happiness doesn’t equal to Wellbeing. Very appropriate as my company has been working with Energy Inside creating pepfly a revolutionary product grounded in positive psychology.
For TED, I have printed serval copies of the Monthly Design Review, thanks to Mercury Prints, who have been awesome over the years donating print material to the Better World by Design Conference for the past 2 years. Here is a sneak peek. You can find all the articles online as well.
The first session started off talking about behavioral economics, and delivered by the father of this think Daniel Kahneman. He spoke about the relationship between the experiencing self and the remembering self, and how that changes our perspective on our perspective of happiness, and the measurement of happiness.
