april 2, 2023
11th annual harvard x design conference
HarvardxDesign is an annual conference launched in 2012 and led by students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design this year. We bring together creative thinkers, industry leaders, professors, and students to engage, debate, and reinterpret the design process across scales and sectors. Our goal is to share knowledge, tools, and resources that can empower creatives to become change agents through design.
Care is everything that is done to cultivate, maintain, and repair. This year, we aim to unearth the critical role of Care by Design in transforming society, organizations, and individuals â it is in and through care that we design outcomes of meaning and connectivity. Confronted by the wear and tear of diverse systems and communities, we invite creatives to explore the fruits of unsung heroes and sow seeds of care through uncharted, emergent practices in design, health, policy, education, and the environment. Join us in reshaping our interpretations of care and be empowered to grow in gestures of humility.
Sunday, April 2, 2023
piper auditorium @ gund hall
What populations, systems and environments go unconsidered when designing care? Established procedures often result in which communities receive care, but who or what tends to get designated the proper or improper objects of care? This panel aims to lean into the notion of access and discuss what it means to be a receiver of care.
Edward Salonga
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Kathleen Brandenburg
IA Collaborative
Khahlil Louisy
Bloomberg Center for Cities
Moderated by
David Dockterman
Harvard GSE, Dockterman Learning LLC
We tend to hold rigid definitions of who can be a caregiver, yet seldom question the hands in the backstage and the position of the carer. This panel aims to challenge and redefine the role of a care provider. What are unique and undiscovered avenues of providing care and who has the power to care?
Anmol Mehra
Plugin House
Juhan Sonin
Golnvo & MIT
Michael J. Bobbitt
Mass Cultural Council
Moderated by
Audrey Scagnelli
Founder, Cherish
Care is personal. Care is designed. What forms does care take in various cultural, situational, and experiential contexts? Can we reinterpret the definition, processes and practices of care? Can we unearth novel methods of providing care?
Raleigh Tomlinson
Headspace Health
Tina Grotzer
Havard GSE
Tyler King
SAP
Moderated by
Ana LucĂa Merla
Harvard GSD & SEAS
An intimate conversation where a philosopher and a currently incarcerated Justice Studies student engage in a profound dialogue discussing the nuances and intricacies of care.
Lee Perlman
Co-director of Educational Justice Institute at MIT
What populations, systems and environments go unconsidered when designing care? Established procedures often result in which communities receive care, but who or what tends to get designated the proper or improper objects of care? This panel aims to lean into the notion of access and discuss what it means to be a receiver of care.
Edward Salonga is a designer on the Education team at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, working with educators, learning scientists, and technologists to build tools that help teachers center students' well-being in support of academic achievement and success. Salonga also served on CZI's Justice & Opportunity team, where he partnered with grassroots organizations to design products that help community bail funds efficiently deploy bail funds to individuals in pretrial and immigration detention. Prior to joining CZI, Salonga built identity and privacy tools at McAfee and conducted research on emotion at Stanford University, where he graduated as a first-generation student.
Kathleen Brandenburg is a leading figure in the field of human-centered design strategy, an approach that puts the needs of people at the center of every solution. She co-founded the global design innovation consultancy IA Collaborative in 2000 to bring design process and methods to a wide range of industries and sectors, including humanitarian causes. Recently nominated by The Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt as Visionary of The Year, Brandenburg has also been named a Master of Design and one of the 50 Most Influential Designers in America by Fast Company. She serves as an Illinois Tech Trustee and Board Member of The Institute of Design, and is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Fellow, focused on scaling design's impact and influence.
Khahlil Louisy is an applied economist focused on issues of economic development, technology and innovation, and public and global health. His work centers on the development and application of public purpose technologies in response to social challenges and researching their implications for inequality, health outcomes, and human rights. Louisy is the former Head of Global Implementation at PathCheck Foundation - an organization founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop novel technologies in response to health emergencies. He currently serves as President of the Institute for Technology and Global Health and Co-Head of AI and Technology for Public Health -Outbreaks, within the joint World Health Organization (WHO) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) initiative on Artificial Intelligence for Health.
David Dockterman focuses on the translation of the learning sciences into scalable and sustainable practices and programs that promote measurable impact. His HGSE courses teach students how to leverage research, generate evidence, respond to learner and context variability, and integrate into an impact ecosystem to drive change and equity. David led the development of scores of educational programs and products for schools and homes over 35+ years in the educational technology and publishing world. He is currently involved in large R&D projects related to early literacy and the intersection of executive function and math, while consulting with educational startups and legacy organizations.
We tend to hold rigid definitions of who can be a caregiver, yet seldom question the hands in the backstage and the position of the carer. This panel aims to challenge and redefine the role of a care provider. What are unique and undiscovered avenues of providing care and who has the power to care?
Anmol Mehra is the co-founder and CEO of Plug-in-House, a modular, low-cost, quick-build home for urban infill and affordable housing. He holds a B.S in Mathematics and Actuarial Studies from University of Texas at Austin, an MBA from UT's McCombs School of Business, and a degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. A 2022 Axios Austin Power Player, he advises, consults, and invests in numerous nonprofits, social enterprises, and investment funds. He also serves on the board of The Food Project, and Music For All, and as the Board Chair of Urbanity Dance.
Juhan Sonin designs the future of healthcare at GoInvo. His design infects local, state, and national healthcare systems from food stamps in Massachusetts to care planning for half of US residents. Our healthcare is too important to be closed, which is why he drives an open source agenda to make life better for patients and clinicians. Sonin also teaches engineering + design at MIT.
Michael J. Bobbitt is the Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council, an award-winning theater director, choreographer, and playwright. He serves on the Board of Directors for the New England Foundation for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agency. Recently, he was appointed to the Governor's Advisory Council on Black Empowerment. Bobbitt is the former Artistic Director of the New Repertory Theater and the Adventure Theater.
With a mission to improve the quality of life of those impacted by Alzheimer's and dementia, Audrey Scagnelli is the Founder of Cherish, a subscription service for caregivers and their loved ones. Cherish is conducting clinical research with Brigham and Women's Hospital with support from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Mass Digital Health, and Harvard University. An entrepreneur in residence at a corporate venture studio and member of the AARP MA Taskforce to End Loneliness and Isolation, Audrey is passionate about health and wellness. She attended the Harvard Kennedy School and holds an MBA.
Care is personal. Care is designed. What forms does care take in various cultural, situational, and experiential contexts? Can we reinterpret the definition, processes and practices of care? Can we unearth novel methods of providing care?
As a product designer at Headspace Health, Raleigh Tomlinson's goal is to design products that not only meet the needs of users, but also enhance their overall well-being and care experience. With a focus on human-centered design, Tomlinson strives to create intuitive and accessible solutions that promote self-care, mindfulness, and resilience. She believes that every individual deserves access to quality mental health care and is committed to making that a reality through her work at Headspace Health. In addition to this, she is dedicated to creating tools that empower our clinicians to deliver the highest quality care possible.
Tina Grotzer is a member of the Faculty of Education and a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a cognitive and learning scientist who studies learning as it relates to complexity, sustainability, and climate education. Grotzer is the Faculty Director of the Next Level Lab (NLL) focusing on the future of work in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world and new visions of learning for green jobs of the future. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Cognition in a Complex World Lab which supports learning for the development of sustainable thinkers and is a PI on the EcoLEARN team which develops immersive, technology-based experiences to support understanding of ecosystems dynamics.
Tyler King is a senior UX researcher at SAP, focusing on user research for enterprise applications. King previously worked at IBM, where she led research on a variety of products ranging from enterprise hardware and firmware to operating systems to software networking. Her self-proclaimed research specialty is (in)validating product ideas â shutting down projects where research indicated there would be little to no value to users and the business.
Ana LucĂa Merla is a Design Engineer with a mixed background in graphic, product, and strategic design. She is interested in circular, inclusive, and social design and the intersections that could be found between these areas and the public policy-making process. Before joining the MDE program, Ana gained multidisciplinary professional experience working in areas ranging from urban development to neuromarketing research and consultancy. She has worked in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors, the latter involving projects for clients like Heineken and Starbucks. Back in Mexico City, she graduated as a valedictorian with her National Design Biennale award-winning thesis: Access to Justice for People with Disabilities. Ana LucĂa is a Fulbright Grantee, a JUMEX Foundation Grantee, and a FONCA-CONACYT Grantee.
An intimate conversation where a philosopher and a currently incarcerated Justice Studies student engage in a profound dialogue discussing the nuances and intricacies of care.
Lee Perlman is a political philosopher and educator who earned his BA from St. John's College (Annapolis), MA from Georgetown University, and Ph.D. at MIT. He has also taught at several universities, including Harvard, Brown, and Swarthmore.
In 1984, Perlman joined the teaching staff of the Experimental Study Group (ESG), MIT's first freshman learning community and founded a re-entry program, Offenders' Aid and Restoration, in 1974 Maryland. Perlman brought MIT non-violence class into a Massachusetts prison to meet with incarcerated students, and later founded The Educational Justice Institute at MIT in 2016. Through the initiative, Perlman teaches classes to both MIT and incarcerated students at medium-to maximum-security Massachusetts Correctional Institutions â his signature courses included Philosophy of Love and Non-violence as a Way of Life, and Authenticity. Perlman has received numerous awards for his contributions to education, including the Irwin Sizer Award for Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education (1997, 2015, and 2019) and MIT's Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award in 2018.