Fabricants are makers.
My mother, Florence, is a well-known food journalist and cookbook author who taught me how to make fantastic meals from scraps in her pantry. My big sister, Patricia, is an award-wining book designer and artist. I have had a bit of a harder time focusing. Over the last 25 years, my work has spanned everything from the design of interactive environments and virtual worlds to medical devices, in-car navigation systems and civic services. I even made a book with journalist / designer Cliff Kuang.
These days I lead the global design practice at Dalberg Design, working with creative teams in London, Mumbai, Nairobi and New York to make change.
DALBERG DESIGN
The experimental practice I founded with dear friend & collaborator, Ravi Chhatpar. A small but mighty design studio on four continents dedicated to social impact within a firm with deep expertise in development and civil society. DD has created the opportunity to cultivate design talent and leadership in places where it is sorely missing. Our passionate team gets to work every day on the issues that they care most about.
USER FRIENDLY
You might think that user experience design was invented by Steve Jobs, but the origin story is both more unusual and more compelling. Six years ago I reached out to Cliff Kuang, the only writer I knew capable of reporting and capturing this hidden story for a broad consumer audience. The result is the book User Friendly which he so eloquently crafted and which I am proud to have helped to bring to life.
FROG DESIGN
I was privileged to work with frog’s amazing creative team for more than 13 years, building our flagship New York studio and working globally to help launch frog in China and South Africa. During this period, I co-led a team over 250 designers and built disciplines in design research & experience strategy while also launching frog’s social impact practice.
PRAEKELT.ORG
Praekelt is at the forefront of using mobile technologies and messaging platforms like Whatsapp to reach millions of people with critical, life saving information related to their health and well being. Their platforms provide services to low-resource communities in 65 countries at population scale. I have had the privilege of collaborating with the Praekelt team and serving on the board for more than a decade.
Doodle books
What is the purpose of note taking in the digital age when we already share files that capture more information than we can possibly absorb? So, I developed a note-taking style that visually captures the color of a conversation as a series of pictograms. My little doodlboxes have been featured on Fast Company. TED and Poptech.
“The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands and crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to be carried and a person for work that is real.” – MARGE PIERCY
SELECTED PROJECTS & COLLABORATIONS
60%
of families bibendum eleifend
30%
interdum mauris egestas non
10%
Maecenas a ultricies elit
With ten gardens and counting, Project Sprout has seen a significant improvement in mental and physical health for all participating community members. Other than lowering obesity, blood pressure, and depression rates, the crime rate has also fallen. Our children are doing better in school, reporting higher grades and aspirations, and better job prospects.