Ellen McGirt

2 months ago | designobserver.com | Lee Moreau |Adina Karp |Ellen McGirt

Subscribe to Design As on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. In this bonus episode of Design As you’ll hear Lee Moreau in conversation with Jadlia (Jada) Britto, Mahsa Ershadi, and Susan Fabry discussing: What is a working definition, and a potential role, for design research, or research through design, in the business context?

2 months ago | designobserver.com | L’Oreal Thompson Payton |Delaney Rebernik |Ellen McGirt |Jessica Helfand

When the author and advocate learned to live with — and do — less, she found so much more. Christine Platt never had any intention to start a minimalist movement, but when her first book, The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living with Less, was published in 2021 — amid the global COVID-19 pandemic — that’s exactly what happened. “I tried to mimic mainstream minimalism, but it was boring. It was awful.

2 months ago | designobserver.com | Ellen McGirt |Delaney Rebernik |Jessica Helfand |Lee Moreau

Soft rains come in spite of us. For the past week or so, a phrase has been knocking around in my mind that I cannot shake, so I share it with you now: There will come soft rains. “There Will Come Soft Rains”is the name of a beautiful short story by the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, which he published in 1950 in response to World War II.

Jan 21, 2025 | designobserver.com | Jessica Helfand |Ellen McGirt |Lee Moreau

It is early winter, 2014, and I have just lost my husband to a brief but brutal illness. Friends check in on me, offering support as they are able, but this is a bleak moment, and I’m embarking on what appears to be a pretty lonely trail. My phone rings, and it is Véronique Vienne, inviting me to Paris to teach for a semester. “Is there a job opening?” I ask. “Just come,” she replies. “We’ll invent one.” And invent one we did.

Jan 7, 2025 | designobserver.com | Lee Moreau |Ellen McGirt

Subscribe to Design As on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. On this episode of Design As you’ll hear from: Shin-pei Tsay is Director of The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) for the City of Boston. Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at, University College London, co-founder of The Institutional Architecture Lab, and the Former Chief Executive Officer of Nesta.