I relate this to our society in general, right?
That everybody wants a quick fix and a sound bite and I wish they
knew that design is rigorous and a real discipline and that it is
available to anyone and has relevance everywhere.
Hello. And welcome to this episode of
design adjacent, the podcasts that talks about the Nexus of
design today and tomorrow. I'm I'm your host Ben EF
Johnson. And today we have a really
special conversation. We're going to talk about how
design can be used to create real.
And Lasting social change among other ways in which design can
have impact today. My guest is none other than
Cheryl Heller. Cheryl is a true leader,
designer scholar business strategist and author.
Her experience has expand everything from Britta
philanthropic non-profit can academic worlds in each role.
She's been an important part of building designing and
envisioning groundbreaking programs.
She's found it to companies along the way and new programs
at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Arizona State
University. She's taught creativity to
leaders around the world not just here in in the United
States, but in the UK Kenya, Mexico, Sierra Leone, India.
China and South Korea her client, she's helped grow their
businesses from small Regional Enterprises to True Global
Market leaders. But it's not just her work.
In the traditional professional spheres of design that we want
to talk about today. It's really Cheryl's.
Most recent positions in the things that she's been able to
do heading. Both design, integration and
Innovation design, building programs that she created the
first stem-based master's program for design of social
Innovation programs that really touched the Nexus of design
engineering and business. Cheryl is truly an example of
this extension of being design adjacent.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that.
She's also a distinguished aiga medalist for her overall
contribution to the field of design.
She's recognized for deathly, embodying.
It's a great way to be recognized for deathly and
bottling the many dimensions of communication design, and for
inspiring and guiding organizations and individuals to
use design for social Innovation.
And as a strategic tool to improve the overall Human
Experience. I love to welcome today.
Cheryl Heller, Cheryl. Thank you for joining us.
It's a pleasure Fanny. I am so happy to be here and I'm
so thrilled that you are leading aiga.
I'd love everything you doing. I love your energy.
I love your curiosity. So thank you.
Thank you for just for joining us today.
It's to start off. This is really interesting and
such a timely moment. I was reading through some of my
notes. In realize it's almost been 10
years to the day that you offer. These words, social Innovation
needs design and design need social innovation.
A piece that you put together for Stanford, social Innovation
review, talk a bit about that moment and that Proclamation,
it's been 10 years to look at this Nexus where social
Innovation and design meet now. Well, thanks for that question.
It's always interesting to hear people talk about what your,
what you've done in your life. So I was thinking, you know,
I've had complicated relationships with design, and
there have been many moments in my life when I thought it was
limiting. I didn't want to be called a A
fake designer. I didn't want to call a product
designer, didn't want to be called, you know, cuz cuz I want
to do everything. And and what I've learned is
that design is everything design is a way of approaching life,
and I'm more committed and more enthusiastic about potential of
design, and I've ever been what I meant, when I said that,
social Innovation needs to sign, is that in order to understand?
Plex cities of human society. In order to understand people,
in order to collaborate to navigate in ambiguity.
These are all skills that designers have.
And they are precisely the skills that allow us to innovate
in a way that benefits people and do it in a way that that
actually serves them and includes them and is relevant to
them. Well, when we think about, you
know, it in those are the kind of the early moments of thinking
about social Innovation and design later on you came back.
A few years later to talk about the impact of the work that was
going on and professionals. And I use that word because we
start to see people coming from all different.
Backgrounds coming in to look at its social Innovation, but then
after we get this Rush of excitement around it, I love the
conversation that moves into thinking about measurement.
So it moves Beyond kind of trend to really being an impactful
part of the way. We move things forward.
When you came back to speak about that next need for
measurement. When the things that struck me
was the fact that we know that there's a lot of energy money
and resource going in it. But how do we show that these
applications are improving lives?
Yeah, and I think that's it's related to one of the dilemmas
that all new forms of design have faced, right?
I was five years into sharing the program at SVA that I
developed. Right?
And I said, you know, we see evidence of the effect that this
has on people who study it on people that they touch but we
can't quantify it during their stories that If you already know
them, and if you see it yourself, you believe them.
They, you're a great supporter, but for designers to stand up in
a room of scientists or a room of statisticians and say, well,
here's the affected, my work has, we never had the words.
We never had the means to do that.
And so that's what measured was. How do we Discuss and how do we
quantify the count? The difference that design makes
and that was the beginning of a quest that will go on for a long
time? Because I do, I still don't
think we, we have it. There's a, there's a new and in
fact, I could send you a link. If you want to make it
available. Please do fill in behind Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation and usaid.
Just organized, a special supplement to a publication on
global Health security. At USA puts out and it was all
about human centered design in global health and and what it is
and where it comes from and the effect that it has.
And I wrote one of the articles with a colleague and lafon from
Jon Snow ink. So that conversation goes on an
investigation goes on because it's pretty new.
He really is it. I wanted to start with there
with thinking about social innovation in moving to it
maturing as a space because of Interesting.
We talked about kind of the adjacent space is, we're having
conversations about impact, which is always the bread and
butter of nonprofit work and social work.
Well, how do we move from where we are to the impact that we're
having? And I think it's the, you said
it's a healthy part of that maturation, process to say.
Okay, how do we move from the good idea to understanding that
these ideas have impact in our space?
Because that's really the way that we translate designs impact
designs. It's value to other professions.
Like you said that there are other professions who are built
on those impact models. What's interesting?
And I think for our listeners to go, but you have a deep
commitment to social Innovation, but you didn't start off with
that being the name or the section that you're in.
You started off as we said before, as a designer talk, a
bit about your journey. What led you to the end of these
points? Starting off as a designer and
kind of looking, at those first set of creative problems to
where you are today. Yeah, well if our friend has
suggested that my motto in life is there must be a harder way to
do this and I I find that I repeat that I you know, I had a
career I had a career in advertising.
I was invited to start a design Department in the biggest
advertising agency in Boston. It was a national agency and I
really I bought into the corner office and the High heels and
the, you know, all of the accoutrements careers and I had
an epiphany. I just realized, you know, it
didn't mean anything to me and and most of what I was doing and
it was after years of doing it. Right?
And we had dinner with some new neighbors in New York and a
woman named Jamie Cloud. I was having too much wine with
her and I said, would it what do you do?
And she said, well, well, I develop sustainability
curriculum, but overlays normal curriculum for K through 12.
And I said, yeah, what's that? Right?
And she told me and I said, oh, that's really interesting.
And she also told me she was calling her organization a sec.
And I said there's another sec. Right?
You know, that's probably not a really smart the best name for
you. Anyway.
I said, well, I want to know. I want to know everything about
what you do. She came down the next morning
with a stack of books. Pray, and she was standing in
the light in just inside our apartment.
And I said this is going to change my life, isn't it?
And she said, yep, it usually does and it just knocked me for
a loop but it was Peter sangay and David or and Paul Hawkins
and all the people and we know so well now but what happened to
me was I said, this is what I really care about.
This is what I want to do. How do I integrate this with
design? And I didn't know and literally
it was a period of eight years of just identifying people who
were doing things that I really admired and thinking about how
what I knew how to do could help them.
And that was doing it the hard way, people don't have to take
that circuitous route anymore, you know, but I think it's, as I
said it, we're all informed and forged by the journey, right?
And I love having that question because we can see the work that
you're doing now, but all of those Experiences and finding
meaning or not finding meeting help to fortify who you are
today and these conversations. And we think about it that I
remember being in school and it was like, you became something
you went to professional path. You became something and it
locked you in. But really kind of our
conversations here about kind of design adjacency in a way design
and business and Leadership and go.
It breaks all of that. But your background a journey.
Is that noisy is that noisy part of breaking it up?
Ugh. How do we think about it?
Right? Yeah, and I think designers if I
look back, I've had periods of my life where I was part of a
bigger institution and I did what that institution has.
I had a job right? Mean, not all that long ago,
designers were told we you can't right there were professional
writers. Have been trained for that.
So don't you think about words and I was thinking about that
when you were talking about your kids.
And so a combination of those defined roles and then Heads of
okay, I'm going to go out. I'm going to start my own thing
and I'm going to follow my interests and I'm gonna, I'm
Gonna Change, you know, and those contrasting periods of
sort of being locked into a defined role.
And then getting to reinvent yourself is a wonderful part of
a designer's opportunity. It really is, you know, one of
the things that I find really interesting as well.
When you talk about reinvention, is the role that you've had in
academic spaces to help kind of shape the way, that successive
generations of designers, engage with the world, really
interested in how you've built programs, both, it s VA and at
Arizona State that were at these nexuses between engineering
business and design what we are. Some of the principal challenges
you faced bridging those disciplines because I think you
were doing one some of the first programs that brought all this
together. Yeah, and they were very
different at SBA because it's a, it's an art school.
It's a creative school. The challenge was convincing
non-designers to come to a design school.
And, you know, we had a wonderful student to come from
the London School of Economics. Right?
And she said, I want to learn design.
So it was it was promoting and communicating and getting the
word out in that case. But at SVA do was no
bureaucracy. That, you know, we were Were as
inclusive as we could be. And as the people we could
attract ASU totally different story because it's the largest
public university in the United States, right?
And the schools are very siloed. There's a desire to put them
together, but then everything about the way Academia is
structured mitigates against actually doing that from pay
scales for faculty to schedules to everything else.
And not East. Faculty who teach what they
teach and think, that's just what they should be teaching,
and that's fine. So when we launched a
transdisciplinary program that we really wanted to be fully
integrated not, here's this Chunk on business here as Chunk
on engineering, who's this Chunk on design.
It really meant inspiring The Faculty to put aside, what they
were used to teaching and thinking about it from a
student's point of view, right? And and the it was People and
everyone got to learn and everyone everyone got to see the
principles that they had in common the processes that they
had in common and where each discipline contributed something
new right? It's really that power of seeing
how other disciplines can come together and contribute or how
they can amplify and enhance what you have.
But I also find it interesting when disciplines come together
how much we start to realize we have in common?
That we see problems that we reach thinking about, but from
our own lenses. I always think about a quote
that Peterson gay something Peterson guy said he said all
boundaries are arbitrary. We create them and then we find
ourselves trapped within them and if you and it's you know
going back to those original writers that Jamie Cloud
introduced me to Nature, doesn't have silos.
Right? Right, and when you're out in
the world problems, don't happen.
That are only engineering problems or only business
problems for everything is connected.
And so, What it really means is you use a world as a model
instead of the traditional limited institutions, which I
think you know, really speaks to our Dynamic future.
One of the things that that I'd love to talk about, you know, in
thinking of you working as a strategist and as an educator,
there's one space that comes in and it's a word that's always
been near and dear to my heart and that's entrepreneur.
I remember that being the challenge is as a young kid and
being interested in starting their own business and not being
a big deal to learn how to spell entrepreneur, right?
As a young kid. I understood what it meant to
kind of create a business. And then that's always been a
part of my kind of professional journey and thinking about that.
But you know, I had been interested in our conversations
about looking at entrepreneurship today and kind
of your thoughts on redesigning the way we support.
Engaged and think about entrepreneurship.
I think it's really important to recognize first.
That nothing is the same as it used to be right?
That the world markets are not what they used to be Society is
not what it used to be. And so becoming an entrepreneur
takes very different skills than it used to write.
When people actually believe that doing a five-year plan that
you would know what your profit margin would be five years from
now, right? And so becoming an entrepreneur
Requires the skills that designers have.
And again, it's functioning in ambiguity, right?
And scoping, and reframing complex problems and thinking
about things at a systems level, and So I think in the way that
entrepreneurs need to be in the world now, they need design
skills, whether they know what they're doing is design or not.
And the other aspect that I think is really important about
entrepreneurship is Pete's been the way it's taught.
It's been a very narrow swimlane of, you know, here's what your
fourth slide should say. Here's what your ask should be.
You need an exit strategy. You need to try to get money.
From Silicon Valley, whatever it is.
And, you know, the most people in the world, don't need that,
don't want that. And in the places where economic
regeneration and Recovery is most needed right scale, doesn't
matter Innovation doesn't matter.
Right? What matters is that you create
value? And so I think design is
perfectly position to really pay attention.
Shinto, who needs to be an entrepreneur now, who wants to
be an entrepreneur? And how does the traditional
approach need to be modified in order to be relevant to the
people and places where its most needed, you know, it's really
interesting. So going back to my choke about
being a kid and learning how to spell entrepreneurship, you
know, that was different. I understood what it meant to
create value through a business professional needs without
having any Of that structure at a they needed that complex
overhang that the big word provided right and it kind of
speaks to that space that you're already naturally moving it to a
space in which you understand how to create value, which is at
its heart. What became the stifling part
was then building in the expectations of the world of
what it should be. So your point of how we often
think about, you know, I always thought about creating business
and creating value was really, as we said, about problem
solving, it was about, you know, making something.
Better making something more Dynamic solving, and need to go
into it. But when you start to get to the
study of Entrepreneurship to your point, you then have all of
the business plan has to have this structure.
You need to have this page on this end.
These are the acceptable ways in which you operate and they
create a certain type of Enterprise which sometimes we
falsely come in and believe that's the only type of
Enterprise, right? That's the only space in which
entrepreneurship can have early in my career.
I had a mentor who always Ways push the idea of
intrapreneurship and talked about creating from within and
these kind of reinvention spaces and it was so counter to what
everything else is being taught. I know you've expressed that
this kind of opportunity for designed to rethink not just our
entrepreneurial landscape, but really the curriculum that goes
along with it. Hmm.
How do we give people the tools without that heavy framework?
How do we make it relevant and useful for them?
Right? You know what you, I love what
you're saying about creating. You, I also think that what gets
lost is that businesses are about relationships, right?
Right there about it's about thinking about other people and
what they need or what would be a value to them?
And education is a relationship. It's understanding what your,
what your audience needs, what will make them successful, what
they want to do when they graduate from whatever program,
our class you're A about and that gets left out.
Right? Right, right.
In the same way that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and
especially in the, the sort of classic establishment
entrepreneurship, you know, people, they get really excited
about having a new thing, a new technology, and a big mistake
that they make is I got an idea. Now, let me find a market for
it, right? When we know it's identifying an
e and then fulfilling that need it really is.
And that's what You know, Jewish people when you think about
folks creating businesses, you know, how many people Define
themselves in entrepreneur. First?
They Define themselves by the business or the problem or the
solution are defining, right? It's their branded entrepreneur
later on but you know, I love the what comes if I tripping or
a ship at its heart. It's really this sense of
agency. This sense of I can do something
that can have an impact and make a change.
And I think in the Each issue been doing in the program's
bill. It really dovetails nicely with
this idea of social Innovation. If designed for social
innovation of, I can make a difference through the approach,
the work and the skill that we have, how have you seen in the
last few years that you've been working in this space?
How have you seen designers and Business Leaders mature in their
boldness or their ability to take those skills and have real?
So, Impact. We're breaking up one second to
reflect on what you just said. I think design itself is agency.
Right? And I think any designer that's
been practicing for any length of time, recognizes it, a
certain point the power that they have right, right.
Something's going on. I don't like it.
Let's change it. Or I want to reinvent myself.
Let me read design this. And so I think that's at the
heart of design. Sting the maturity, right?
A bunch of things, right? I think more people are
recognizing that when you disaggregate the process of
design from the traditional artifacts from the craft and
they will always be crafts. And it should always be craft
when you disaggregate that you have a process that you can use
everywhere. And for everything from
imagining, you know, an event to changing.
I'm trying to change a whole section of society.
I think, you know, honesty that there is much more maturity
needed. Okay, right.
I think that social design and design activism and social
Innovation design and all those names.
Our designers are just coming to realize that having the power to
affect other people's lives has to come with responsibilities.
Right? And I think it also comes with
measurement and and I think there's such enthusiasm about
changing the world and, you know, making an impact.
And so I see the beginning of, hey, let's look at what impact
were having. Let's look at what we're
changing. Let's be responsible for what
we're changing. And so there's a growing
sophistication in terms of how design can be applied to those
problems and a growing sophistication about
responsibility for the changes that are instigated and lots of
room for all of us to grow, right?
Myself included. This is new, its new stuff which
for me in our conversations becomes really exciting stuff,
right? The spaces in which kind of the
messy spaces on the edge that we're figuring out as we go in.
What advice do you have for design practitioners and other
business or nonprofit leaders who are at that pivot point
where you were a few years ago where they've done a portion of
their career. They've learned a lot.
They've experienced a lot and they're re-evaluating meeting.
What advice do you have for designers?
Who are in this moment? I think.
Did only reward comes from spending time with yourself,
right? And I have to stop.
There's a, you may know there was a famous Boston, Red Sox,
name, Oil Can Boyd, and he was having a great hot string, a
great, a great run of successes. And so it is an oil can what are
you know, what's your secret? And he said I'm playing Within
Myself and I think about that a lot right?
Because in in the world today, it's very easy to not be in our
Bodies anymore to be doing things that we think we have to
do to be addressing needs. That other people say, are
important to be reacting to social media to being seen
whatever it is, right. There's a million things and
what it requires is really taking the time to think about
what it is that matters to you. And in in creative writing the
expression is, you know, that it has to be clear what the author
has come to say, what matters to you and not to devote your life
to eye. And that has to be the guide and
as corny as it sounds, it's actually very difficult, but the
most rewarding thing in the world and what we're seeing
today, right? We're in such a precarious
moment with democracy with the planet.
None of us should feel any time to spend on things that don't
matter. And that don't further the
things that you're committed to in the things that you believe
in. It's so true.
And you know, what the last in our I'm recording.
Now the last 20 months. It's reinforced.
I've seen in all parts of our lives and spaces in there.
Is this break with these implied obligations, right?
The things we thought we needed to do the things that we had to
do. Kind of having that freedom
really, or taking that freedom to separate it.
And say, I want to have more control over my next job.
My next project, my next career, my next weekend, right?
We're seeing that but I I love your advice in the group because
that's what we have is, as members of our profession.
We are a dynamic space that's focused on change.
We're hearing more and more conversations of designers and
Business Leaders, you know, wanting to find peers who can
help them think through, what's next, you know, if I can say,
there's another Kind of advice that I saw with every single
graduate student. Okay, and that is still really
one of the most important things and that is that we can only act
on concrete things. Right?
So, in sustainability, it's called tapping, the power of
limits, right? When we have a limited amount of
time. We get really efficient and
creative about how we use it or money.
A lot of people come to the overwhelming.
Challenges and the number of things there are to do saying
I've got to end poverty. Or, you know, I have to find a
cure for Co, whatever it is, right, and you can't ever act on
those because they're too abstract.
Right? And so, I would say, look around
at the things that You see that are very specific and concrete
and one of the things I wish designers would think about
because it affects all of us is, you know, all of this metaverse
and and the effect that social media are having on children and
everyone, right? Right.
That we're becoming so distanced from nature and the more
distance from nature. We become the more likely it is
that we're gonna self-destruct, right?
Are you know, how can design let, Young people know that
we're already living in a meta verse, right?
Nature is a meta verse. There's every bit of interest in
richness and, and Adventure possible.
Can design act in service to that instead of doing more
websites and apps, and locking Us in to the same bad posture
sitting in front of are saying right.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. We were talking a bit before
about kids and watching the evolving curiosity.
And growing in without the limits that adults put on them.
And keeping that freshness as we've learned and go through,
you know, one of the things that we spoke about as well as some
of the projects that you've been involved with, and we're talking
about Youth and social impact. I'd love to hear a bit about the
program you've done with youth in the foster care system.
Sure. Well, the independent lives are
really, as a tangible conversation, right?
Yeah, and it's design is so, Central to it.
We I work in partnership with an amazing organization called
Community Solutions, and their program called built 40.
That is solving adult chronic and Veterans homelessness and a
wonderful Foundation. The Larsen Family Foundation is
supporting my efforts to help built 40 extend their work to
Foster youth. Hmm.
And what immediately becomes As a parent is that the system
isn't working, fifty percent of people who are homeless in this
country as adults were in the Foster system and nobody's
talking to young people about what they need or what it's like
for them. And so, one of the things I'm
doing is working with communities and helping them,
use design to bring young people into the conversation and to
look at Journey maps and to have the Adult Community because a
lot of the agencies don't even know what other agencies do.
Right. And, and in so many cases, they
had not ever looked at the journey for the people that
they're helping. They focus on Under 12.
And then over 12, it goes to somebody else and and so design
has become this extraordinary approach that has capacity to
level the playing field, right? And one of the Founder of one of
the nonprofit Services supports Foster youth said, you know,
everybody knows they want to bring young people to the table,
but they don't know what to do with them.
Once they're there. Yeah, and so, the ways that
designed the approaches design brings to equalizing a room and
to supporting collaboration. All of these things are brand
new and extraordinarily energizing for these Foster
communities as we were preparing and having our conversation.
It's just an incredible work that you're doing with the
Project and really speaking of designs ability to empower, all
those who are part of the process.
So this isn't designed happening to someone, but having Youth,
who are experiencing the journey, be able to be empowered
and be a part of the code design, which you think it's
really important. You know, we think about the
space. Have there been other projects
that you've seen lately, that of quarter, attention, that you've
seen design really be Being Amplified and use well for
social impact anything. I see a lot of things happening
within Academia. Okay.
I see institutions responding to what I think is a inherent
aspect of designers, which is they want purpose right?
Everyone wants purpose. Everyone wants to feel like
they're working on something that matters.
And so there are more University programs.
There are more centers. Yes, and some sometimes it's
tough to do it in the belly of Academia.
Sometimes it's a center that's associated with the university.
There's a new center at Northeastern.
There are things going on that are really encouraging, and I
see a lot of programs that are focusing on integrating design.
The work that I mentioned in global Health.
There's absolutely Real scale now in the number of
organizations and companies that are using design to develop more
effective programs and products for Global health.
When you look at the kind of growth of the programs of the
space in the work towards you doing, is there anything that
you wish that other disciplines new in ways that they could be
partners and collaborators? I wish other disciplines knew
that this is not designed thinking, right.
I wish people would stop using that expression.
I said to someone at ASU he was like forget what country was
from is so country in Africa, and I said, well, you know, if
you were a Master Chef design, ticking would be a cake mix.
Would you use it? Yeah, so I think and I relate
this to our society in general, right?
That everybody wants a quick fix and a sound.
And I wish they knew that design is rigorous and a real
discipline, right? And that it is available to
anyone and has relevance everywhere.
And I think that's it's powerful to State and to State again and
to State again, right, that design has value and it's
accessible to anyone everywhere and it is a discipline with real
rigor. I know.
That in conversations, we have lot of design leaders and
Business Leaders. It's that connection point and
the translation of value that that were equal Partners in
peers at the table at the solution set.
You know, that design is important, part of that, but I
have conversations with many other Business Leaders.
And one of the things they ask me is how can I be a better
partner? And I, so appreciate your answer
in there because we have other disciplines that want to be a
part in our common problem. It's at these big idea problems
that we can come in and the practical ways to start.
I have one more question for you.
It's kind of spins off from what we were talking before, which
I've Loved, but I want to talk a bit about your exhibition and
design for the other 90% at the cooper-hewitt design Museum.
See, I know it's a good topic whenever I hear you say, ah.
Well, yeah, I'd Paul Pollock who I think, I'm not sure if
everyone knows this but Paul Pollock was the best designer I
ever knew. And he was not a designer.
He was a psychiatric researcher and an entrepreneur and he in
his youth developed a concept around social architecture.
He was treating people who had mental breakdowns, right?
And trying to figure out why some people had them in other.
Student and recognize that there's a social hierarchy,
which now we called the social contributors to health right
poverty, you know, so, Paul knew that and he was a wonderful
natural designer and he always said I met him.
In fact, we all met him at the Aspen design Summit, which was
sponsored by aiga and the Aspen design conference.
Paul said, the David Kelly said to him once he said, you know,
Paul you actually are designer and Paul said he came because he
wanted to know if that was true. And if that was true, he had
designs on the design community and he came to that, wanting
people to know that all designers were only working for
ten percent of the population that had money.
And so at the end of our three days and Aspen, I remember
sticking a note under his suspender and saying, because it
was Michael Cronin and Karen hibner and a couple Other people
and we and, and Willoughby. Absolutely.
We said we're not sure what you're doing or what you're
about. But we want to help you get
there. Right?
And that exhibit emerged from a week that we spent together at
Paul and his wife Aggies place in Nova Scotia.
And I sink, that was one of the biggest wake-up calls.
It was Purely Inspired by Paul. That was the first time that we
We showed evidence for what design can do in places where
nobody ever imagined designed going.
Right. And to me that opened the door
for a different way of thinking about what design is and what a
designer can be. I love just the thought the
premise of it Partnerships, local Global individual, and at
the organization level that are inventing unique ways to provide
better access. And it's just such critical
elements that we speak of in these projects Food, Water
Shelter, health, education and energy.
And looking at how this comes together for a design for the
other 90%, I mean, it really speaks to the work that's
available for us to work. That needs to be done for
designers and Engineers students professors Architects, social
Parchman errors or any of us, just finding a way that we can
help to make things better. Can I just want to say one of
the things? Yes, always Paul was one of the
most important Inspirations in my life and a mentor and and I
got to spend lots of time with him over the years.
What's remarkable about him is that he did what he did and saw
what he saw because he was out in the world doing it.
He interviewed 3000 poor people. He went all over the world.
He spent time with farmers. Understanding why they were poor
and it's a little bit related to the question about what people
should do. Right?
Paul was not a theoretician. It was very late in his life
that he stopped to think about the theory behind what he was
doing. He was just out there practicing
what he said, cold radical practicality.
So I think it's the third piece of advice that I would give
people don't sit around thinking about what you want to do, go
out and learn from people what's needed and be out of the world.
I think that's a wonderful piece of advice and a powerful moment.
I think for us to close out our conversation.
It's been an honor Cheryl to sit down and talk with you and and
explore these conversations and really kind of help our audience
shape, the power of impact of social Innovation design, and
design and social Innovation. So thinking about stopping
jumping in doing work where you are.
And I love the notion of this apartment.
Al's radical practicality. So, as we think about turning a
corner in 2022, is there anything you'd like to share
with our audience? This top of mind for you as we
go into 2022? Yeah, I think one of the
prerequisites for design and when you ask about how people
can be better Partners designers are always willing to question
everything. Right?
And I think this moment and 2022, we have to include
ourselves in that. I think we have to question
everything. We automatically do everything
we think and think about how to be in the world in a way that
supports life. I think this is a wonderful way
to end our conversation today. Cheryl.
I appreciate you. I appreciate your curiosity,
your vision and your spirit of collaboration to help us all,
move forward better. So thank you for helping us play
around with the messy edges of the future.
Thank you, Benny. Well, thank you all for joining
us on this episode of Designing adjacent where we look at the
future through the lens of design business, in the world
around us. I am your host, Vinnie Johnson.
And I look forward to you joining us for our next podcast.
Show notes for this episode will be available on AIG a.org,
please subscribe to our show on anchor Apple, podcasts Google
play Spotify or wherever you get your podcast aiga.
Design adjacent podcasts and its contents.
Are the copyright of aiga the professional association for
design All Rights Reserved, any redistribution or reproduction
of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited
without aig's Express written permission.
My name is Li Xian zhuang until next time.