The poetics of design (think Italian design) serve the whole needs of users in a wellness model! Von explains that design always must consider people as complex, multidimensional beings with emotional, physical, cognitive, spiritual and social needs. We are multidimensional in every context where we show up!
Authority Magazine interviews with Von about healthcare design
Jake Frankel at Authority Magazine interviews Von about designing for health and wellness. Von highlights key qualities that help when addressing wellness (what Von just considers good design) and other complex design challenges. A big thank you to Jake for the thoughtful, far-reaching questions that made for such an engaging conversation!
click title below to read the article:
Von Robinson Of Play Orbit StudioOn The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry
Strategic Design Workshop with Wynton Marsalis
Play Orbit created and facilitated a “design jam” workshop for the University Musical Society, who partnered with the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business to explore new economic vehicles that sustain both artists and the performing arts. The event was structured by the design arc Play Orbit designed for Ross’ Business + Impact (B+I) +Impact Studio, so the team at B+I created an overview of our workshop on their website. Joining us was Wynton Marsalis, a creative force who uniquely stands at the intersection of business and the arts.
The workshop’s Central Question: How might we use new tools of organizing to create more equitable vehicles for artists to reach audiences and preserve what is sacred in the performing arts?
A fun blast from our past: Alexander Girard's La Fonda del Sol Restaurant in miniature
The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum gave Miho and I the pleasure of recreating a miniature of the La Fonda del Sol Restaurant for an exhibit honoring Alexander Girard. This was very early in our career. I recently stumbled across this picture of the tiny vac-formed Eames La Fonda chairs and had to post!
Play Orbit's approach is Deep Design
We may design “things,” but our approach focuses on the relationships between things.
Play Orbit's +Impact Studio is named one of “The Most Interesting New MBA Courses”
Play Orbit designed a course that brings a systems approach to human-centered design and a space where multidisciplinary teams led by business professors can address wicked problems.
The +Impact Studio, created by Play Orbit for the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, was recently included in Poets and Quants as “The Most Interesting New MBA Courses at Business Schools This Year.”
Thanks again to Assistant Dean Jerry Davis for the opportunity to help Ross in their mission to use business to make a positive difference in the world. That’s what Design is for!
Play Orbit designed a new space and course for the ideas and research being developed at Ross to address the wicked problems of our world. It is a space, an action-based learning course, and a campus hub for programming and events. Learn more about this project.
A cybernetic perspective on being a designer
Tyler Epson, a student of Von’s at CCS, surprised us with this video
Ross School of Business' Assistant Dean Jerry Davis on the +Impact Studio
Jerry Davis is amazing! We were honored to be asked to work with him to create the +Impact Studio program, course, and interior design. These clips are from our winter 2018-19 prototype semester, which helped us improve both the content of the final course and our design of the actual studio space inside Ross.
The Studio will have its grand opening in the Fall of 2019 where the first full cohort (20+ students) will follow the systems + human-centered design approach to address wicked problems and making +impact!
Lynn Margulis: a radical living systems biologist
Video: Symbiotic Earth trailer from Hummingbird Films
Wendell Berry advises all poets stuck in sticky times
Video: How to Be a Poet read by Wendell Berry
Eyes and brains alone won't do it
"So...what even is a 'fucking stick' say, should I wanna?
Link to a wonderful article that reminds us just how multi-sensorially we connect and engage with our environment
The need for Radical Innovation in Healthcare
"Things and the Space Between"
Video: Von talks about his design philosophy
A Designer’s perspective on Jim Hackett: Ford’s System Thinker in-chief
The question goes, “Do you think a guy that ran a furniture company is the right pick to steer Ford through the coming upheaval?”
As a younger designer, I said I could never work inside a company. Straight out of school, my wife and I opened our Brooklyn-based design studio, which we ran for 11 years, until a beloved friend and design ethicist said I needed to move to Grand Rapids to design for and learn from Jim Hackett. So I did. At that time, Jim was the CEO of Steelcase. Once inside his company, it didn’t take long to realize why this beloved friend and design ethicist wanted me to learn from this creative servant leader. Jim has since become a caring mentor and role model. He is a passionate advocate for design, so I’d like to offer my unauthorized, design-based perspective on why “a guy that ran a furniture company is the right pick to steer Ford.”
It’s all about how Jim sees. Discussing the decision to name Jim as Ford’s new CEO, Bill Ford said something to the effect, “Jim sees the future and he knows how to talk about it.” Wizardry! I’ll chase a bit of magic from the world by confessing that Jim isn't a wizard who sees the future — he is a systems thinker who sees emergence within systems.
“The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability.” These points of instability introduce novelty (disruptions) in the system. To system thinkers capable of seeing the meaningful patterns in complex systems, emergent phenomena are opportunities to innovate. And if that’s not good enough, these opportunities are networked in patterns that give instructions on how to responsibly and desirably design for these novel conditions. That pattern network provides insights into emerging needs, roles, burdens, and behaviors — the guideposts and guardrails of great design. This is how Jim sees, so instead of being blindsided by and reacting to “external” disruptions, he recognizes opportunities for today’s innovation that will address tomorrow’s needs.
Linear, historically-derived thinkers simply don’t see the interconnected system as the grounds for insight-driven innovation, so they can’t see the opportunities. Many people who recognize the value of systems thinking still are overwhelmed by what they perceive as a chaotic mess of seemingly discrete data points and “things.” A systems perspective doesn’t focus on the things: It focuses on the relationships between things, and that brings orderliness to the chaos and reveals meaning inherent in the mess. This is why Jim will humbly and honestly say, “I’m comfortable in complexity” and is able to embrace the largest overall system (life context).
A CEO who sees the interconnections and interdependencies between the local (furniture, mobility, any vertical) and the apparent “externalities” can:
Welcome the messy world into the problem frame
Leverage emergence as opportunity for meaningful difference
Increase a company’s circle of empathy to include the system and its parts (3Ps)
Increase the diversity and quantity of possible solutions
Remain open to providing any right solution that fits within the overall pattern in a way that contributes to the betterment of system and people
Essentially, a company that uses this approach co-evolves (or co-designs) their offerings with the system, which increases the likelihood those offerings will fit healthfully within that evolving system; the system being the individual’s (or customer’s) life now, near, or in the further future. Wizardry!
Jim’s real value is that he is not a “furniture guy” or a “car guy” (though he very rigidly and inflexibly is a UofM guy). His expertise is the ability to recognize relevant meaning outside of a narrow industry focus. It’s a value Richard Saul Wurman attributed to the Eameses (though, he seems to only reference Charles):
“Sell your expertise and you have a limited repertoire. Sell your ignorance and you have an unlimited repertoire. He was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject. The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work.”
It’s not that the Eamses were ignorant about everything. They were experts in seeing relationships and what is meaningful throughout the system and across industries (closer to the truth, they were experts at that which is at the core of everything). That expertise allowed them to productively play in any industry and it is the same for Jim.
It’s not wizardry and not at all descriptive to name it “out of the box” thinking. What makes Jim Hackett the right pick for a company dedicated to innovation is the way he sees. Ford’s new systems-thinking CEO brings the world into the problem frame and recognizes emergent phenomena, which is a bland and prosaic way of trying to communicate something that really belongs in the poetic realm:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Von Robinson is an Associate Professor of Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. With his wife, Miho Suzuki, he leads Play Orbit Studio, a design consultancy based in Ann Arbor.