Competition: speak at DRC (Now closed!)

Print
E-mail

DRC speakers may be exceptional, but we know that most of you have just as much to say. That's why we've scheduled time for five-minute lightning talks by attendees. There are eight slots, and all you have to do to enter is send us a short (300-500 word) abstract of the story you want to tell on stage. Note, you do not need to register to enter the competition, but will need to register if selected.

We are looking for a story of or about great design research. Maybe it's about a new tool you're developing or something your company is doing to better understand people, or it could be about a particularly interesting project. Maybe you once did design research naked (see Luis Arnal's talk from DRC 2008), or discovered a very strange alternative use for Vicks VapoRub (Stokes Jones at DRC 2009). This is an opportunity to tell a great story to a great audience.

Entries will be judged on:

Relevance: The story is about design research - perhaps a powerful new method or a highly effective/original application of an existing method.
Stickiness: An enthralling, entertaining and memorable story.
Insight: The story highlights an interesting insight about design research, unmet needs or perhaps even the human condition.

The deadline for submissions was April 2, 2010, and below, you can find the winners based on their presentation schedule:

Tuesday, May 11, Morning session

Ayla Newhouse

Designer, Normative Design

Ayla is a designer and creative generalist. She is equally fascinated by the smallest details and grandest theories about the universe. Her many loves include: storytelling, business models, dancing, espresso and cultural anomalies.

Irish Malig

Project Manager, MSK Cancer Center

Irish was born in Pampanga, Philippines, grew up in the Northwest and now lives in New York City. She has always been curious about how things work, which drives her love of research and research methodologies. Her current fascination is with kawaii bento boxes.

Tuesday, May 11, Afternoon session

Lawrence Swiader

Director of Digital Media, The National Campaign

Lawrence has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of media, digital media, and instructional design. In his role at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, he oversees all aspects of the campaign’s digital presence. Responsible values and behavior by both males and females are supported through innovative use of messages delivered through social media, games, video, mobile devices, and the Web. Critical to delivering effective content is an understanding of the audience and its attitudes and behaviors.

Lorrisa MacAllister

Healthcare Practice Leader, Progressive AE

Lorissa has practiced as a healthcare architect in leading clients while building a practice as a planner, programmer, strategist and sustainable healthcare designer. She practices a process- based planning approach to projects that integrates evidence-based design with financial outcomes. She has worked nationally as co-chair of the green guide for healthcare operations section. Lorissa sits on the steering committee of the Healthcare Vision 2020 to establish regional quality measures, integrating technology and public reporting.

Wednesday, May 12, Morning session

Arturo Pelayo

Experience Lead, Ocean University

Arturo’s passion is to interconnect people and empower them to leverage their experiences and interactions through instructional design and social media. He believes that design is an art of listening, observing and emergent thinking. When he doesn’t have his designer hat on, he can be found facilitating race relations seminars, volunteering in various social justice events or working through many organizations that keep him thinking bold on what is next. He leads his design practice through his online portal: MediaAlchemy.org

Joyce Chou

Design Strategy Lead, T-Mobile

Joyce explores future technologies by studying the changing role of mobile interaction in people’s relationships, communication behavior and values systems. Leading multi-functional teams, Joyce helps create real business value with innovative new product categories that solve unmet needs and combine customer desirability, technological feasibility, and business viability. Her background spans innovation consulting, emerging technology, behavioral research, trend forecasting, financial analysis, fashion and art.

Wednesday, May 12, Afternoon session

Elaine Ann

President and CEO, Kaizor Innovation

Elaine helps companies strategize, research and design innovative products and services for the Chinese market. Born and raised in Hong Kong and having lived in the U.S. for 12 years, Elaine brings to Asia processes of new product innovation and user-centered design. With a deep rooted bi-cultural and bilingual background, she brings a perspective helping both Western companies develop strategies and new products for the Chinese market and Asian companies restructure their management and work processes for design innovation.

Behavioral Economics Team

Students, IIT Institute of Design

We’re a group of six Masters of Design students: Nikki Pfarr, Ann Hintzman, Van Vuong, Miguel Cervantes, Jennifer Lee and Jerad Lavey. Development of the Brains, Behavior & Design toolkit has been part of our year-long “Research & Demonstration” project. We look forward to continuing this work after graduation, helping researchers, designers and businesses make behavioral economics actionable in their practice. We’ve been advised by a wonderful group of folks, including Ruth Schmidt, Jeremy Alexis, Andrew Buhayer and Erik Van Crimmin.

What does a good story look like?

Stokes Jones, DRC 2009

"In South Africa people had different understanding of what counts as healing. Healing for South Africans was about taking an action, then feeling the sensation of that action. That was healing for them.

A popular product that we found in people's houses was Vicks VapoRub, which was actually introduced into South Africa in 1910. It hit all the right cultural buttons by sheer accident, because of course Procter & Gamble hadn't tailored this to the South African market. It helped to heal, and felt like it was healing, because it burns.

Here in the US we use it as a kind of soother, but over there it was used in a completely different way. They didn't use it as a standalone treatment; they used it as part of a whole regime with four steps. It was used for of a very targeted application: to sweat out fevers. And what South Africans found in 1910 is that VapoRub is an incredible catalyst for that.

They first drink a hot ginger ale with Disprin. Then slather VapoRub over as much of their body as they can. Then they wrap themselves in blankets and go to bed, creating a little sweat box. Then they sweat out the fever.

So they've innovated, and found a very different use for VapoRub that they find very, very effective, somewhat to the dismay of those who sell the product. This had important implications for the design recommendations that followed.

Embedded innovation is not something companies do to the world – after a staged series of research and workshop events – but a cultural process that is continually unfolding in the world over time. In this approach, the key focus for design research and strategy becomes 'attunement' to invention - identifying the embedded innovation already taking place, then aligning to and enhancing it."