My intent was to inform the design education community of new areas designers were working in. Here in London, I am involved with a design community (see our city chapter here) who push the boundaries of the discipline, working in areas where they design for services (both private and public sector), for development, for sustainability and for strategy. Most designers come from the traditional disciplines of product design or communication design, but see the potential for design to move into many new and different areas.
I left London on a clear and sunny afternoon for a red eye flight to Singapore. I stayed at the Meritus Mandarin Hotel (what now seems like a second home for family visits to Singapore) right in the thick of the action on Singapore's main shopping hub, Orchard Road.
The conference presentation was done the following day (yes, while I battled jet lag!) and was very well received. I won't blog details about the conference here as I posted a review on my research blog, Letters to Australia (LTA) (click on the link to view). With the presentation over and done with, it was onto the next conference, the bigger Icsid Design Congress.
This conference was attended by 700 delegates from around the world to discuss and share visions for design in 2050. I only spent 2 days at the 3-day congress but really enjoyed my time there. I posted a more indepth review of Congress on the LTA blog here.
I had a great time in Singapore, talking and hearing all about design, meeting loads of people, making up for all the Chinese food I don't eat in London, and of course shoe shopping (a must every time I visit the city). After a fleeting Singapore stay, it was time to take another red eye to visit home in Sydney.
Note... If you would like to know more about the kind of design I mentioned above, and my PhD research, while I was in Singapore I was notified that a journal paper I co-authored was published online by the Australiasian Medical Journal.
The journal paper is about a project where designers co-designed the future of dementia care with a community of people with dementia and their carers. The paper is called, Co-designing for dementia: The Alzheimer 100 project. Click on the title to download a pdf.
