Page 9 - CSA Celebrity Speakers | CSA Speaker Bulletin October 2015

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DESIGN THINKING

given a renewed significance to artefacts. help that the result, for many, was often food, designing clothes, journeying, and
The priority for service designers is to create bewilderment. The design priority, it turned caring for each other – from Bali to Brazil,
a prototype as soon as possible: the mock- out, was to make it easier for people to as well as Delhi, London, and California.
up of a website; a waiting room made of connect with assistance that already existed
cardboard boxes and string; a three-minute - from support groups to memory clinics, Throughout the book I celebrate the power
sketch ‘performed’ by real users. These from taxi firms to community kitchens. The of small actions to transform the bigger
so-called boundary objects have become possession of a map is just the start of a picture – especially in the ways projects are
valuable tools for starting a conversation journey through any system. A variety of connecting together as social and ecological
among diverse groups of people. different stakeholders, formal and informal, systems: food commons, social farming,
big and small, need to work together. The fibersheds, cycle commerce, and care
This focus on real people, in real situations, process by which such different people and cooperatives. Read together, these examples
can lead to challenging insights. The most groups are enabled to work together is itself add up to a joyful new story about what
powerful for this writer concerned dementia. an important design priority. an economy is actually for. Growth, in this
When I commissioned designers to ask new economy, means soils, biodiversity
people with dementia, and their carers, what In my new book, How To Thrive In The and watersheds getting healthier, and
one change would make the biggest positive Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World communities more resilient. Its core values
difference to their daily lives, the answer was Today, I draw on a lifetime of travel in are stewardship and health, in place of
not finding a cure, or assistive technology, search of real-world alternatives that work, extraction and decay. n
as I had expected, but “first experiences”. I describe how communities the world over
are creating a replacement, leave-things-
When the ‘journey‘ through dementia begins, better economy from the ground up. Each
we learned, the sufferer, family and caring chapter is about creative ways to tackle
friends are confronted by such a bewildering timeless needs that matter: restoring the
array of people and organisations who could land, sharing water, making homes, growing

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