Monthly Archives: February 2010
Design Thinking in Action: Embrace Global
In conjunction with the launch of our new game Design Thinker, we will post several real world examples of design thinking in action. Today’s post highlights the work of Embrace Global and one of its co-founders, Linus Liang.
20 million premature and low-birth-weight (LBW) babies are born every year. Of these, four million will die within the first month of life. Those that survive face severe long-term health problems like diabetes and respiratory disease.
99% of neonatal deaths occur in low to middle income countries. Why? The proven treatment – the infant incubator – is cost prohibitive. At $25,000 for a single unit, this life saving device is out of reach for the world’s poorest.
The solution seems obvious – design an affordable incubator. In 2007, Linus Liang and his team at the Stanford d.School were tasked with the ambitious objective of creating an incubator for 1% of the standard cost – a mere $250.
I recently shared this story with a friend who is an accomplished engineer and his immediate reaction was one of excitement. “It actually might not be that difficult,” he claimed, “incandescent bulbs, analog, combined with appropriate insulation would be a starting point.” A talented, visual thinker, my friend appeared to be working up the schematics in his head.
And perhaps he’s right – it might not be that hard. However as Linus and his team soon discovered, hard to design or not, an affordable incubator would have little impact because it solves the wrong problem.
Artist Series – Banksy
Here is my second part to my ongoing series on artist in different mediums. I will try to feature artist that I find to have influenced my career in the arts. I have gone in a different direction this time from my previous edition which feature one of the most respected American photographers, Ansel Adams. This time I will be featuring one of the most notorious street artists currently working in the UK and around the world, Banksy.
Responding to feedback: GlobalTech Update, Feb 2010
Even though we’ve been hard at work on Design Thinker, we’ve made some time to respond to feedback we’ve heard on ExperienceChange: GlobalTech. We have addressed some minor user experience issues and added a feature we’ve had a lot of requests for—the ability for learners to interview stakeholders before the day of a session without the ability to implement tactics.
Thank you for continuing to provide us with great feedback! We hope these updates result in an even better experience for you and your learners.
We heard: “Can I have learners interview the stakeholders as pre-work and prevent them from implementing tactics?”
We created an ‘interviews only’ mode that locks the Tactics, Planner, Feedback, and Debrief tabs and automatically unlocks them on the day of your session.
