Design Lab Heads Downtown to Present New Strategies and Program to Take on Society’s Most Daunting Challenges

Design Lab Heads Downtown to Present New Strategies and Program to Take on Society’s Most Daunting Challenges

Design Lab Heads Downtown to Present New Strategies and Program to Take on Society’s Most Daunting Challenges

Last week, UC San Diego Design Lab Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science Steven Dow and postdoctoral fellow Narges Mahyar spoke at the Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation’s (CDI) Game Changer series to introduce a new strategy and program, “Design San Diego.” Design San Diego is a public engagement initiative that fosters collaboration between citizens and government to address civic challenges such as urban development and climate change. Design San Diego will increase understanding of current issues, collecting and synthesizing points of view, and bring citizens and government together to co-create solutions.

The Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation is a two-year initiative inside the Downtown San Diego Partnership’s headquarters on B Street that involves workshops where entrepreneurs meet with researchers and scientists to help boost opportunities in science and technology. Dow and Mahyar’s workshop outlined a new program and strategy that will help city leaders take on society’s most daunting challenges. The new program, Design San Diego, relies on a strategy called collective innovation, which combines theories involving design thinking and collective intelligence. With collective innovation, groups jointly explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics. Dow and Mahyar explained that by engaging many diverse stakeholders, communities can solve bigger and messier problems.

“While technology has made it easy to connect people, we need to advance fundamental research on collective innovation, where groups collectively explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics,” says Mahyar.

To further explore collective innovation in society, Dow and Mahyar have put together a research group at the Design Lab and created an online platform that will help San Diego civic, business and government leaders and citizens better understand how to select and build on the most promising ideas. The platform will also address how to engage the general public in the decision-making processes and how to effectively engage in large-scale participatory design thinking by gathering feedback from communities of stakeholders.

To contact Dow and Mahyar or to find out more about the Design San Diego initiative, go to  http://designsandiego.ucsd.edu/

Last week, UC San Diego Design Lab Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science Steven Dow and postdoctoral fellow Narges Mahyar spoke at the Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation’s (CDI) Game Changer series to introduce a new strategy and program, “Design San Diego.” Design San Diego is a public engagement initiative that fosters collaboration between citizens and government to address civic challenges such as urban development and climate change. Design San Diego will increase understanding of current issues, collecting and synthesizing points of view, and bring citizens and government together to co-create solutions.

The Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation is a two-year initiative inside the Downtown San Diego Partnership’s headquarters on B Street that involves workshops where entrepreneurs meet with researchers and scientists to help boost opportunities in science and technology. Dow and Mahyar’s workshop outlined a new program and strategy that will help city leaders take on society’s most daunting challenges. The new program, Design San Diego, relies on a strategy called collective innovation, which combines theories involving design thinking and collective intelligence. With collective innovation, groups jointly explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics. Dow and Mahyar explained that by engaging many diverse stakeholders, communities can solve bigger and messier problems.

“While technology has made it easy to connect people, we need to advance fundamental research on collective innovation, where groups collectively explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics,” says Mahyar.

To further explore collective innovation in society, Dow and Mahyar have put together a research group at the Design Lab and created an online platform that will help San Diego civic, business and government leaders and citizens better understand how to select and build on the most promising ideas. The platform will also address how to engage the general public in the decision-making processes and how to effectively engage in large-scale participatory design thinking by gathering feedback from communities of stakeholders.

To contact Dow and Mahyar or to find out more about the Design San Diego initiative, go to  http://designsandiego.ucsd.edu/

Last week, UC San Diego Design Lab Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science Steven Dow and postdoctoral fellow Narges Mahyar spoke at the Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation’s (CDI) Game Changer series to introduce a new strategy and program, “Design San Diego.” Design San Diego is a public engagement initiative that fosters collaboration between citizens and government to address civic challenges such as urban development and climate change. Design San Diego will increase understanding of current issues, collecting and synthesizing points of view, and bring citizens and government together to co-create solutions.

The Collaboratory for Downtown Innovation is a two-year initiative inside the Downtown San Diego Partnership’s headquarters on B Street that involves workshops where entrepreneurs meet with researchers and scientists to help boost opportunities in science and technology. Dow and Mahyar’s workshop outlined a new program and strategy that will help city leaders take on society’s most daunting challenges. The new program, Design San Diego, relies on a strategy called collective innovation, which combines theories involving design thinking and collective intelligence. With collective innovation, groups jointly explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics. Dow and Mahyar explained that by engaging many diverse stakeholders, communities can solve bigger and messier problems.

“While technology has made it easy to connect people, we need to advance fundamental research on collective innovation, where groups collectively explore and refine solutions for complex, multifaceted problems in business and civics,” says Mahyar.

To further explore collective innovation in society, Dow and Mahyar have put together a research group at the Design Lab and created an online platform that will help San Diego civic, business and government leaders and citizens better understand how to select and build on the most promising ideas. The platform will also address how to engage the general public in the decision-making processes and how to effectively engage in large-scale participatory design thinking by gathering feedback from communities of stakeholders.

To contact Dow and Mahyar or to find out more about the Design San Diego initiative, go to  http://designsandiego.ucsd.edu/

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On behalf of UCSD Design Lab and the Center for Health Design, we’re excited to support the launch of this collaborative innovation ecosystem designing healthcare with our community. From tele-monitoring patients with diabetes to using artificial intelligence to prevent sepsis, the newly launched Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health will seek to develop, test and commercialize technologies that make a real, measurable difference in the lives and wellbeing of patients.

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This is an exciting time for the field of design. The technologies that the research communities have worked on for the past 25 years have leapt off the pages of academic journals and into the daily lives of billions. What used to be our imagination is now our reality. These have enabled an extremely wide range of innovation in multiple arenas: healthcare and medicine, business, social interaction, entertainment.

But technology only enables: a practical application requires more than the underlying technology. If we build things for people, then knowledge of both people and technology is required. If we are to make them pleasurable, then the creativity and craft skills of artists and traditionally trained industrial and graphic designers are required. If they are to be understandable, then social scientists are required, including experts in writing and exposition. If they are to thrive in the world of business, then schools of management are required. Design aspires to combine these very different vertical threads of knowledge. Design is an all encompassing field that integrates together business and engineering, the social sciences and the arts.
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