It's a Remarkk-able life

Bruce Nussbaum writes:

So where are we with humanitarian design? I know almost all of my Gen Y students want to do it because their value system is into doing good globally. Young designers in consultancies and corporations want to do humanitarian design for the same reason.

But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in. Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

It's a good question. Change-making as mass movement enabled by Western hegemony and entitlement is problematic not only in the field of humanitarian design.

However, designers are perhaps better equipped than most international development professionals in shifting the lens towards the end-users and beneficiaries of innovation.

First stop - obesity in the United States. I love this design contest that flips the usual developing/developed dependency relationship on its head.

Check out this great deck on social innovation by my Mike Lewkowitz (@Igniter). It's a great intro to the concepts of social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Mike and I share a very similar understanding of the state of the world, and the reasons we do the work we do.