Design offers methodologies for disciplined rapid discovery, proof of concept, iteration, and implementation to solve big problems or to invent new products and services to help the human life experience. That is what is so exciting about design. It finds untapped potential to meet human need.
— Jennifer Stevenson
I hold a BA in Art and 15+ years of professional experience in Design, Innovation, and Business Strategy. I’ve completed numerous post graduate courses in Product Design, Utilizing Creativity in a Professional Context, Health Care Design, and Design Process and Material Exploration. I believe that design is a powerful tool, and that designers have a responsibility to use their talents for good. I have a deep interest in utilizing design for both social impact and sustainability initiatives.
The term design can refer to many different mediums but the process to attain solutions is universal:
Assess: What problem do we see? Is this the actual problem or a symptom of the actual problem? What does the organization or user need? What do they have already that they can utilize? What can work well in their current environment, within their current systems? If culture change is possible and able to be embraced, is there any culture change needed to effectively utilize the solutions?
Research potential solutions and utilize the findings.
Build new assets, systems, and or services.
Test deliverables (use prototypes, mockups, user testing).
Iterate. Build. Test again.
Launch.
Support and train stakeholders while they adopt new services and systems into their work processes, or users while they utilize new products.
Some Fun Content
Health Design Bootcamp Thomas Jefferson University Health Design Lab, Philadelphia, PA 6/7/18-6/8/18
Workshop Participant
This collaborative workshop included both designers and clinicians working together to explore traditional design methodologies and how they might be utilized to solve today’s problems in Health Care.
Abundance Beyond Waste, Design Process and Material Exploration Maria Blaisse, Li An Phoa / Domaine de Boisbuchet C.I.R.E.C.A., Lessac, France 9/10/17 -9/16/17
Workshop Participant • Video Narration • Video Content
What happens when you discover how forms are being formed? This workshop addresses designers broadly, including artists, architects and engineers. Whether you work with materials or strategies, design is a core activity in every aspect of our society. The adverse side effects of our designs are not directly visible but often have a destructive impact on our living systems. Designers have a key role to play in how we relate with the Earth’s materials.
In short, we will: - Get insights into specific laws of life. - Find our individual understanding of the complexity and simplicity in form and matter. - Develop a skillfulness working with one material and awaking us to its endless possibilities. - Align a design process with the living qualities inherent to matter and form.
Products of Design Graduate Workshop School of Visual Arts New York, NY via Domaine de Boisbuchet C.I.R.E.C.A., Lessac, France 6/17/12-6/27/12
Workshop Participant
This special workshop is an immersive, multi-disciplinary experience exploring the rapidly changing field of product design. Held in Boisbuchet, France, the program will stress a hands-on, making-driven approach to create new points of entry into the enterprise of design.
In addition to intensive study, students will have the opportunity to swim in the estate’s lake, canoe and kayak, take walks through the surrounding woods and relax at the nearby river. Participants feast on farm-to-table nightly dinners with attendees from the two other Boisbuchet workshops taking place that week (approximately 60 people in all), meeting designers from all over the world, and making life-long friendships.
Each day, several facets of the design process will be explored: rapid sketching, brainstorming, materials investigation, prototyping, model building, iteration, narrative creation, sustainability and environmental stewardship. We will complement the studio work with lively debates around the current mandates of design, the challenges of production and consumption, and design’s ability to create value and positive social change. The evenings will offer fun, lectures and discussions.
The program is based on the acknowledgement that industrial-age product design has radically changed in recent years, evidenced by its blurring boundaries and explosive range of new practitioners (makers, crafters, technologists, artists), its multi-disciplinary processes, and its varied outputs, or “products of design.” Participants will investigate the dynamic opportunities these changes present, and through design thinking, design making, and design telling, will complete the program with new skills, new vocabularies and new fluencies. Participants will stay at the Domaine de Boisbuchet, a magnificent estate in Southwestern France, with a private lake and beautiful meadows and an architectural park.