Long-time member Richard "Dick" J. Keohan, 75, of Braintree, MA, died suddenly at his home on July 7, 2012.

Born and raised in Weymouth, son of the late Edward and Josephine Keohan, Dick was a graduate of Archbishop Williams High School. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1959 with a degree in industrial design. He served in the U.S. Army National Guard while beginning a long, rewarding career inventing and designing products primarily in the technology and health care industries, where he holds numerous patents.

Following in line with the palpable excitement currently being generated within RISD’s Department of Industrial Design, I spoke with graduate students Gunther Chanange and David Zacher on what they design for.

With the conference tomorrow, all of the Rhode Island School of Design’s campus is bustling with both old and new friends stopping by the studio to give impromptu lectures and check out what is going on in studio. Such was the case today when Colin Kelly, Erica Eden, and Nathaniel Giraitis gave a lecture over lunch on the People and Process of Smart Design.

On the first day of the IDSA Northeast District Conference, there will be a variety of workshops covering topics from rendering to career storytelling. One of these workshops is titled Opportunities for Sustainability and is appropriately taught by none other than Matt Grigsby, principal of Ecolect.

“I teach this class every year because the problems are really hard and they’re really interesting and they need to be solved.”

For William Harris, a typical design challenge entails creating a phototherapy device to treat jaundice in rural Vietnam to developing a body worn hearing device for children, costing around $30 lower than current technology. A fresh graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design, Harris (BFA ID ’10) works for Design that Matters, a nonprofit design firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Continuing to speak with students, teachers, and designers, I posed the question, “What do you design for?” to undergraduate student Evan Brooks. A sophomore majoring in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brooks replied with the following response.

As the Design4 Conference draws closer, the conversation of “what do you Design4?” is one that I have been having with a variety of designers around the country. From creating a system for transporting clean water in third world countries, to solving more local challenges such as humanizing products in the U.S., people design for a variety of reasons. This past week, I spoke with Rob Brady of ROBRADY design on what he designs for.

Entrepreneurial juniors at RISD, Nate Phipps and Madeleine McGarrity have created a new service called Pink Rides. They have stationed bicycles downtown in the lobby of the RISD residence hall of 15 West. During the first phase of the program 2 bicycles are available for any RISD student to use for up to eight hours at a time.