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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Design@Large UCSD Design Lab

Design@Large Spring 2022


For the first time in the nearly 10-year history of the Design@Large speaker series the UC San Diego Design Lab is partnering with California 100, an initiative focused on identifying and uplifting transformative ideas, people, and projects through research and engagement that accelerate progress towards a shared vision of California’s future over the next century.

**This will be a hybrid event (in-person and remote). Capacity is limited. Please register ahead of time.

TOPICS
- 4/13, Alternative Transportation Futures
- 4/20, Climate Risk Reduction and Technology
- 4/27, Housing Justice and Urban Design
- 5/11, Transborder Regions and Immigrant Integration
- 5/18, Future Prospects in Health Equity and Tech Innovation
- 5/25, The Future of Work and Higher Education

There will be no Design@Large classes on 04/06, 05/04 or 06/01.
There are no speakers on 03/30, but class will still take place for students.

Opinion: The World Design Capital is more than an award. It’s a chance to solve problems.

San Diego Union Tribune Op-Ed by Tad Parzen and Eddie Matthews*
*Eddie Matthews is also a Designer-in-Residence with the UCSD Design Lab

Design and discovery are in our San Diego-Tijuana region’s DNA. We are risk-takers, a nimble community that has long fostered life-changing design and innovation to improve the world, save lives and sustain critical resources. San Diego-Tijuana has long been the epicenter of a binational design revolution.

In this inclusive spirit, a cross-border community of designers, activists and community leaders have joined together to submit the first binational bid to the World Design Organization to name San Diego-Tijuana the World Design Capital in 2024. This designation recognizes cities for their effective use of design to drive economic, social, cultural and environmental development, and showcases best practices in sustainable, human-centered policy and innovation.

Every member of this region has something to contribute and the World Design Capital will be the centralized place for these binational design contributions, making the border immaterial by making design visible.

Keolu Fox: Decoding the past to build a better future

Growing up, National Geographic Explorer Keolu Fox heard the stories of his intrepid ancestors as told by generations before. He comes from a line of voyagers who traversed oceans thousands of years ago aboard canoes fueled only by manpower and wind.

They eventually founded settlements on islands across the Pacific, including in Fox’s native Hawaii, and their characteristics as wayfinders live on not only as part of Indigenous oral history—the traits are inscribed in their DNA.

But modern-day Indigenous genomes tell a more complex story, Fox explains. The earliest settlers’ history is as much about crossing oceanic highways as it is about the troubles of resettlement and colonialism. By decoding these truths, Fox, a geneticist and Indigenous rights activist, is working to ensure Native communities are spearheading the future.

Meet Member of Postdoctoral Fellowship Program’s Debut Cohort: Jane E

Jane E is part of UCSD’s Computer Science and Engineering’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and is currently a member of  The Design Lab under the guidance of mentor Scott Klemmer. E’s journey to The Design Lab started when she earned her B.S. in Computer Science in 2012 at Princeton, then studied as a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Stanford University. Along the way, she has worked in the information technology sector for companies like Adobe and Microsoft, and her awards include the Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant. Jane’s research aims to expand the horizons of human creativity by searching for a balanced relationship between humans and computational assistance. 
UC Adopts Recommendations For The Responsible Use Of Artificial Intelligence

UC adopts recommendations for the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence

Camille Nebeker, Ed.D., associate professor with appointments in the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and the Design Lab

The University of California Presidential Working Group on Artificial Intelligence was launched in 2020 by University of California President Michael V. Drake and former UC President Janet Napolitano to assist UC in determining a set of responsible principles to guide procurement, development, implementation, and monitoring of artificial intelligence (AI) in UC operations.

“The use of artificial intelligence within the UC campuses cuts across human resources, procurement, policing, student experience and healthcare. We, as an organization, did not have guiding principles to support responsible decision-making around AI,” said Nebeker, who co-founded and directs the Research Center for Optimal Digital Ethics Health at UC San Diego, a multidisciplinary group that conducts research and provides education to support ethical digital health study practices.

Frontier Design Prize Announces Winners at World Design Cities Conference

Shanghai, September 15, 2022 | The Frontier Design Prize announced the winners of its inaugural edition during the opening ceremony of the World Design Cities Conference (WDCC).  Mr. QU Xing, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. GONG Zheng, Mayor of Shanghai, Ms. XU Xiaolan, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology (China), along with leading designers, scholars and industry leaders, attended the award ceremony. The Frontier Design Prize (FDP) is a visionary, innovative, world-class design award established with the aims of encouraging design innovation, enhancing the impact of design in driving industrial transformation, and promoting the role of design in shaping a better world. A central program of WDCC, it is undertaken by Design Innovation Institute Shanghai (DIIS) with guidance from the Shanghai Municipal Government. 
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