Designers have always used their hands to craft and imagine new worlds. While the instabilities and inequities in our society have been exposed over this past year, design can be used to build, leverage, and confront power structures at various scales. This year's theme explores Power by Design as represented by hands and the many forms they take, from vessels of control to symbols of solidarity, to provoke discussions about the power held by designers as agents of change.
Team
Co-chairs
- Maggie Chen, GSD '22
- Dania Ghuneim, GSD '22
- Annie Zhou, HBS '22
Conference Team
- Liz Cormak, GSD '23
- Dishi Gautam, GSD '23
- Jack Halverson, GSD '23
- Cherry Wu, GSD '23
Special thanks to
Sheng-Hung Lee (MIT)
Branding and Design
Speakers
Power to Change
The rigidity and volatility of varying societal systems often influence the role of designers in their institutional or personal environments. In what capacity do designers provoke or respond to change in our societies?
- Caroline Nevejan, Chief Science Office at the City of Amsterdam and Professor at the University of Amsterdam
- Tim Stonor, Managing Director of Space Syntax
- Summer Li, Designer and Artist
- Yihyun Lim, Assistant Professor of Practice at USC, Research Affiliate at MIT Civic Design Initiative, and Co-Founder of D.Fluence
- Moderated by Felicia Liang, Harvard Design Engineering
Power in Teams
The rigidity and volatility of varying societal systems often influence the role of designers in their institutional or personal environments. In what capacity do designers provoke or respond to change in our societies?
- Renee Reid, UX Design Research at LinkedIn, and Tech Wrap Queen Podcast Host
- Sara Beckman, Professor at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, Co-Director, Management of Technology Program
- Pancham Yadav, Product Designer at Okta
- Lexi Hradisky, Design Leader at Adobe, Emerging Design Team
- Moderated by Sheng-Hung Lee, MIT Designer and Research, Chair at IDSA Boston
Power of Ethics
The implications and consequences of design may not align with intentions of a given work. What are the ethical responsibilities of designers, and how do we gauge limitations versus opportunities when considering the ethics behind design decisions.
- Kat Zhou, Creator of Design Ethically and Product Designer at Spotify
- Jason Belaire, Chair of Industrial Designers Society of America
- Gabriel Mugar, Senior UX Researcher at Meta
- Moderated by Jenny Fan, Multidisciplinary Product Designer at Palantir