IDSA's Design Voices is a semi-recurring series (2020-2021 and 2015) of 1-hour virtual events with top design leaders presenting, discussing, and debating current trends and specific practice areas.
Each discussion is followed by a moderated Q&A where attendees can post questions and interact with the presenters. Topics are pulled from a variety of sources, such as IDSA’s Special Interest Sections and subjects requested by our community. Design Voices live events are FREE for all current IDSA members and $10 per event for non-members.
2021 Design Voices Host & Curator
The Design Voices sessions in 2021 were curated and hosted by Başak Altan, IDSA, a design strategist, educator, future thinker, and connector. For over 20 years she has been providing leadership in design and strategy services at the intersection of business, technology, and education. Başak is the current West District Chapter Representative for IDSA. She holds a Bachelor’s of Industrial Design from Syracuse University and a Master of Business Administration from Presidio Graduate School.
Design Voices Event Recordings
Life Centered Design
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
What does designing for ‘one planet living’ look like? Guests Morag Gamble, Founder of Permaculture Education Institute, and Chhaya Bhanti, Founder and Creative Director at VERTIVER, a women-owned social enterprise, have deep expertise in this area. Learn from their inspiring journeys designing with communities for a more sustainable, fair, and cleaner world, through their diverse work encompassing six continents on ecological design and applied systems thinking. This special DV episode was hosted by Başak Altan, IDSA.
Women in ID: Data Bias & Entrepreneurship
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Host Başak Altan, IDSA talked with guests Anne Cocquyt, Startup Founder of GUILD, and Merry (Rheim) Constantino, IDSA, Founder of ProductLogic LLC, about how data bias impacts female entrepreneurship. As mentors and influencers in the product innovation space, Anne and Merry shared perspectives of their own entrepreneurship journeys, along with advice to empower women in design and business.
The Intersection of Service Design & ID
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Guests Ode Ozlem Dessauer-Siegers, Design Lead – UX CoE at VodafoneZiggo, and Dr. Geke van Dijk, Co-founder and Director of STBY at REACH Global Design Research, shared with host Başak Altan, IDSA both their professional experiences in service design and why this matters to industrial designers who are looking to contribute to strategic value for their clients’ offerings on a larger scale.
Perspectives on Race & Design
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Donald Burlock, Jr., IDSA, author of “Superhuman by Design,” Ayana Patterson, IDSA, Leader on IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council, and Jasmine Kent, IDSA, Apparel Designer at Under Armour, shared their stories and journeys to becoming industrial designers with host Başak Altan, IDSA.
Design for Democracy
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
A discussion on design’s influence on democracy and politics, as well as its social implications, with host Başak Altan, IDSA (design strategist, educator and future thinker) and uests Lisa Kay Solomon, Designer in Residence at Stanford d.school, and Jeroen van Erp, professor at Delft University of Technology and co-founder of Fabrique, Netherlands.
Close That Loop Part 1: Circular Business Models
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Hosted by Philip White, IDSA, Professor, The Design School, Arizona State University with:
- Anna Queralt Fuentes, Engagement Manager, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
- Bridget Croke, Managing Director, Closed Loop Partners
Close That Loop Part 2: Circular Business Opportunities and Navigating the Risks of Zero Carbon
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Hosted by Shruti Parikh, IDSA, Associate Director, Takeda Pharmaceuticals with:
- Joel Makower, Chairman and Executive Editor, GreenBiz Group, Inc.
- Peter Minor, Innovation Lead, Carbon180
Conquering the Chaos of Creativity
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Creativity is a hallmark of human evolution. We are uniquely wired to transform imagination into reality, moving from “what if?” to “here it is!” Somewhere along the way, though, we lose touch with our innate creativity, as we lack an understanding of how to access and properly harness it. This session is a practical, problem-solving guide that is meant to help you tap into your unique creativity, as this can help to you live a more fulfilling life.
This Design Voices virtual event is sponsored by Patton Design.
Hosted by Doug Patton, Founder and CEO of Patton Design, with:
Alex Demmler, Industrial Designer, Patton Design
Phoebe Camilletti, Writing Coach and Editor
How Industrial Design Can Save Fashion
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
An empowering conversation about how innovative design thinking is transforming the Fashion Industry. Learn how emerging industrial designers can shape the post-pandemic future by using technology, sustainability and human centered practices.
Hosted by Rob Price, Senior Design Consultant and Creative Director at Price Design NYC, with:
- Keith Kirkland, Co-founder of WearWorks
- Lizz Hill, Business Development at Formlabs
IP / Design Protection
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
A dialogue built to explore recent design patent cases and their rulings as a way to understand and expose the impact those cases have on us as industrial designers, both individually and as a profession.
Hosted by Charles L. Mauro CHFP, IDSA, President & Founder, MAURO Usability Science, with:
- Joel Delman, IDSA, Industrial Design Consultant and Design Expert Witness
- Elizabeth Ferrill, Partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
Transportation Design: Collaboration in Innovation
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
A conversation exploring current trends and emerging technologies taking hold in the world of transportation design, and how designers are leveraging both to envision and realize the future of mobility. Paul Priestman focuses on what the future holds for the transportation sector and the role of collaboration in innovation, while Mary Lombardo covers the subject of creativity in collaboration with mechanical design, explaining how Collins Aerospace leverages the creativity of Industrial Design with innovative practices, like lean and agile design thinking, to rapidly produce designs that interest customers.
Hosted by Glenn Johnson, IDSA, Fellow of Industrial Design – Interior Systems, Collins Aerospace, with:
- Paul Priestman, Chairman, PriestmanGoode
- Mary Lombardo, Advanced Technologies, Engineering Excellence, & Certification, Collins Aerospace
Intersections: Design and the Queer Mind!
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Join three designers turned queer storytellers for a Design Voices Pride event, in which they share their personal journeys on designing from their own unique perspectives.
Hosted by Vanessa Melendez, Principal Designer- Global Baby Care at Procter & Gamble, with:
- Cory Fites, Associate Design Director, Strategy & Innovation – The Clorox Company
- Nicholas Lo, Industrial Designer – Method
Beauty in Design
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
For function-oriented designers, “beauty” can seem like a dirty word. It’s marked by the stigma of frivolous ornamentation and embracing the ephemeral in rejection of rationality and the timeless. What is often overlooked in the classic debate between form and function, is that beauty is a function in and of itself. We select, cherish, and promote those objects which bring us joy, and to suggest that beauty is irrelevant is to ignore that fundamental facet of human psychology. And while applying narrow criteria by which we define beauty can stifle innovation, celebrating our individual tastes, preferences, and perspectives can immeasurably enhance it.
Hosted by Hector Silva, IDSA, Executive Director at Advanced Design, with:
- Laura Silva, Vice President, Global Tech and Ops – Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead, Bank of America
- Alex Lobos, IDSA, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Foresight at Autodesk
Design Voices began in 2015 with a series of 1-hour, interactive webinars, sponsored by Philips and based on IDSA’s inaugural Medical Design Conference in 2015.
The Future of Healthcare and What it Means for the Role of Industrial Designers
May 5, 2015
Presenter: Stephen Wilcox, PhD, FIDSA
The presentation starts with a summary of the changes that have taken place in healthcare, particularly with medical devices, over the past 30 years, then provides predictions of what will happen in the next 30 years. Medical care has changed dramatically; many of the procedures that we take for granted today didn’t exist 30 years ago. Changes in healthcare have relied upon general technological developments, so, to predict what will happen in the future, it’s necessary to predict what will change in technology. It seems likely that many present developments will continue—e.g., better computing power, smaller miniaturization, etc. The difficult part is to predict the radical changes to be expected in the future. The final challenge is to figure out what the role of industrial design will be in healthcare.
Designing Healthcare of the Future: Disease to Wellness to Swellness
April 15, 2015
Presenter: Clay Marsh, MD
To sustainably improve the health of our population, health and healthy choices in communities need to become the norm. This presentation discusses our approach to this goal targeting the dimensions of health that include exercise, food, sleep, stress, social networks and family. We believe that the areas of Design and Design Thinking are critical to construct health ecosystems and optimize user experiences. These complex systems are asymmetric, where a few agents or elements are more important than others. Ecosystem design allows us to initially target the high value areas of exercise, and envision how to construct an ecosystem that makes healthy choices and health the norm by bending the world around the person. This presentation will discuss how we are trying to construct this ecosystem with designers, focusing on optimizing the user experience at the interface level, and layering this experience set with precision tools to navigate individual decisions and nudge community decisions and offerings.
mHealth and Medical Web App UI
March 18, 2015
Presenter: Bill Evans, IDSA
What kinds of medical information-oriented products will designers be working on in 5 years time, and how can we rise to the patient and clinician ‘engagement’ challenges? Based on years of FDA/EU regulated UI design experience, Bill Evans gives his predictions and recount 5 lessons from the device UI world to help designers understand and meet these challenges:
- Usability isn’t just can you use it, but WILL you use it.
- Data isn’t useful if it isn’t actionable.
- Sharing data—the practicalities and challenges beyond HIPAA concerns
- User testing from start to finish—what are the issues specific to this kind of usability challenge
- Small is beautiful—what kinds of rapid prototyping and small scale tests are likely to lead to success