As a creative director at Ideo, Paul Bennett reminds us that design need not invoke grand gestures or sweeping statements to be successful, but instead can focus on the little things in life, the obvious, the overlooked.
As the originator of the iPod, Tony Fadell is no stranger to disruptive technology. With Nest, he’s zeroed in on tech’s most elusive targets: household appliances.
From wedding invitations to Utopian newspapers, Kelli Anderson re-designs commonplace objects to go beyond their ordinary functions and create surprising experiences.
As the CEO of MIT-inspired WiTricity, Eric Giler has a plan to beam electric power through the air to wirelessly power your laptop or recharge your car. You may never plug in again.
Showing a series of inspiring, unusual and playful products, British branding and design guru Paul Bennett explains that design doesn't have to be about grand gestures, but can solve small, universal and overlooked problems.
Robert Fischell invented the rechargeable pacemaker, the implantable insulin pump, and devices that warn of epileptic seizures and heart attacks. Yet it's not just his inventive genius that makes him fascinating, but his determination to make the world a better place.
Sinéad Burke is acutely aware of details that are practically invisible to many of us. At 105 centimeters (or 3' 5") tall, the designed world -- from the height of a lock to the range of available shoe sizes -- often inhibits her ability to do things for herself. Here she tells us what it's like to navigate the world as a little person and asks:...
Eben Bayer is co-inventor of MycoBond, an organic (really -- it's based on mycelium, a living, growing organism) adhesive that turns agriwaste into a foam-like material for packaging and insulation.
IDEO's David Kelley says that product design has become much less about the hardware and more about the user experience. He shows video of this new, broader approach, including footage from the Prada store in New York.
As human beings, we get used to "the way things are" really fast. But for designers, the way things are is an opportunity ... Could things be better? How? In this funny, breezy talk, the man behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat shares some of his tips for noticing -- and driving -- change.
People don't just cook anymore -- they're cooking, texting, talking on the phone, watching YouTube and uploading photos of the awesome meal they just made. Designer Paolo Cardini questions the efficiency of our multitasking world and makes the case for -- gasp -- "monotasking."
Timothy Prestero thought he'd designed the perfect incubator for newborns in the developing world -- he even won awards for it. But he and his team learned a hard lesson when their incubator completely failed to catch on. Hear his hard-earned manifesto on the importance of designing for real-world use, not accolades.
Flags are one of the simplest yet most powerful pieces of design ever conceived. They can make us swell with pride, burn with hatred -- and even inspire people to die or kill in their name, says vexillologist Michael Green. Take a brief walk through history as Green explores the symbolic fervor behind flags that unify and divide, inviting us to ...
Facebook's "like" and "share" buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart, Facebook's director of product design, outlines three rules for design at such a massive scale—one so big that the tiniest of tweaks can cause global outrage, but also so large that the ...
Engineering a website is equal parts vision and adaptation ... responding both to how users navigate the site and what new goals of the organization have emerged. Rochelle King, the senior designer at Spotify, was recently challenged to combine the many mismatched interfaces of Spotify into a single harmonious layout. She walks us through the pr...
Tim Brown says the design profession has a bigger role to play than just creating nifty, fashionable little objects. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory "design thinking" -- starting with the example of 19th-century design thinker Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
From the micro scale to the building scale, Neri Oxman imagines and creates structures and objects that are inspired, informed and engineered by, for and with nature.