Srini Srinvasan about the Mission, Programs & Supporting Measures for Designers
President of the World Design Organization (WDO) addressed designers from Russia at the St. Petersburg Design Week Online Forum.
As part of the lecture, Srini Srinivasan presented the Organization’s key programs, including World Design Assembly, World Industrial Design Day, World Design Corporate Circles, World Design Talks, World Design Impact Prize, World Design Capital, World Design Protopolis, and Inter Design.
"All over the world, we face problems every day: lack of water, busy traffic, a large number of homeless or addicted people. It happens that we just pass by, knowing that there are many non-profit organizations that are trying to solve these problems. We engage people in developing solutions to these global problems and reward the best ones in the World Design Impact Prize. We already had projects from Sri Lanka and India. It is important that the winner has the potential to speak to the UN within 60 seconds.
Another program that we have been running for the past 13 years is World Design Capital. It lasts for 52 weeks per year. The design capital demonstrates design achievements, its passion for design. In 2020, the city of Lille (France) was declared the Design Capital, in 2022 Valencia (Spain) will rightfully receive this title, and for 2024 you can still apply. Designers, architects, and designers who develop the user experience are participating in this program. "
An important topic of the presentation was a review of measures that WDO has taken to support design and designers in the context of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.
"The pandemic broke all our plans for the year, and we decided to think about what we can do together. We cannot create a vaccine or cure people, but using our Design Challanges, we can communicate and just tell people what a pandemic is, what kind of disease it is and whether there are any medicines for it. Together with IBM, we organized the Design for Medicals program: we decided to call people in social networks, received a lot of feedback and, as a result, even arranged a contest. We divided 225 designers from 33 countries into 21 teams and gave them 7 themes for development. Within 24 hours, we got 180 design statements, which were reduced to 7 clusters during the discussion and then we distributed them to different communities. All decisions on how design can help the healthcare system as part of a three-week seminar are compiled on covid19designchallenge.org. "
See the full version of the speech here.
"All over the world, we face problems every day: lack of water, busy traffic, a large number of homeless or addicted people. It happens that we just pass by, knowing that there are many non-profit organizations that are trying to solve these problems. We engage people in developing solutions to these global problems and reward the best ones in the World Design Impact Prize. We already had projects from Sri Lanka and India. It is important that the winner has the potential to speak to the UN within 60 seconds.
Another program that we have been running for the past 13 years is World Design Capital. It lasts for 52 weeks per year. The design capital demonstrates design achievements, its passion for design. In 2020, the city of Lille (France) was declared the Design Capital, in 2022 Valencia (Spain) will rightfully receive this title, and for 2024 you can still apply. Designers, architects, and designers who develop the user experience are participating in this program. "
An important topic of the presentation was a review of measures that WDO has taken to support design and designers in the context of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.
"The pandemic broke all our plans for the year, and we decided to think about what we can do together. We cannot create a vaccine or cure people, but using our Design Challanges, we can communicate and just tell people what a pandemic is, what kind of disease it is and whether there are any medicines for it. Together with IBM, we organized the Design for Medicals program: we decided to call people in social networks, received a lot of feedback and, as a result, even arranged a contest. We divided 225 designers from 33 countries into 21 teams and gave them 7 themes for development. Within 24 hours, we got 180 design statements, which were reduced to 7 clusters during the discussion and then we distributed them to different communities. All decisions on how design can help the healthcare system as part of a three-week seminar are compiled on covid19designchallenge.org. "
See the full version of the speech here.