Gretchen Chern | Design Research & Strategy

Designing A Difference: Part 2

Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence — Small­bean Part 2 on Vimeo Almost one year ago, I wrote about a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Design Muse­um Boston and Small­bean to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of Smallbean’s solar suit­case in a post titled Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence: Smallbean’s Solar Suit­case. Here is phase two of the project, which focused on refin­ing con­cepts […]

Tippy Tap: Save Water, Save Lives

I found this video via World Water Day: Tip­py Tap keeps it sim­ple + saves water — Core77. I love how sim­ple the solu­tion is. To learn more vis­it www.tippytap.org/.

Designing A Difference: Smallbean’s Solar Suitcase

Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence: Small­bean Part 1 from Design Muse­um Boston on Vimeo. A team at Design Muse­um Boston is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Small­bean, a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion based in Boston, to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of Smallbean’s solar suit­case. This video doc­u­ments phase one of the redesign, which is still in progress. Phase one focused on under­stand­ing […]

The Launch of OpenIDEO

Intro­duc­tion to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo. This week, IDEO launched an open idea gen­er­a­tion plat­form called OpenIDEO. It is a place where any­one, not just design­ers, can con­tribute ideas, become inspired and eval­u­ate the ideas of oth­ers. The thing I like most about OpenIDEO is the fact that it uses col­lab­o­ra­tion to […]

The Design Imperialism Debate

As soon as I wrote my post about Emi­ly Pilloton’s Design Rev­o­lu­tion Road­show, my hus­band was quick to show me this arti­cle writ­ten by Bruce Nuss­baum over at Fast Com­pa­ny: Is Human­i­tar­i­an Design the New Impe­ri­al­ism? This arti­cle has caused quite a stir in the design com­mu­ni­ty. At first glance, I found the arti­cle to […]

Design Revolution Roadshow: Changing the World by Design

What began as a tour for Emi­ly Pilloton’s book, “Design Rev­o­lu­tion: 100 Prod­ucts that Empow­er Peo­ple,” end­ed up becom­ing much more. Pil­lo­ton used her 2009 Sap­pi Ideas that Mat­ter Grant to turn the book tour into a mobile exhi­bi­tion with work­shops and lec­tures geared towards inspir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of young design­ers and pro­mot­ing the idea that design can have a pos­i­tive social impact.