Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving pioneered by the design firm IDEO. Our team at Abovegroup immersed ourselves in IDEO and +Acumen's course, testing out this design thinking process on challenges in Trinidad's context. In turn we workshopped the methodology with a group of students at Artisans for Change initiative, hosted by UNESCO.

QMilk upcycles milk protein from waste milk to develop a skincare line, fibres for apparel, and fully biodegradable plastic raw materials (granulate). We worked together to research a new market for entry and create a strategy framework for their skincare product offering.

In this interview, Mau discusses how we live and the structures we have created to support our life styles. He reminds us that “design is invisible until it fails” and calls for rethinking the role of design in creating the good life and in shaping a better future. He discusses the underlying and unavoidable links between design and economies that must support and sustain nine billion souls.

Traditional leadership development methodologies do not provide a practice field for cultivating spirit or connecting the spirit of enterprise to the realities of a world of resource constraint and urgent need. This paper proposed such a practice field, and presented the methodology at Spirituality in Management Conference at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. 

Pratt Institute’s Design Management graduate program cultivates creative enterprise leadership that develops thriving cultures. Working closely with my mentor, Dr. Mary McBride, deepened my understanding of operations management and planning within a large academic institution, while enabling me to make a contribution to a world class program.

Every two years, hundreds of designers make plans to attend the AIGA Design Conference, and in 2011 I designed one of the presentations that was shown. This single gathering connects designers with people and ideas on the leading edge of the design profession, addressing the challenges and issues that matter most.

In researching the particular ways that children are vulnerable in school environments, their learning stimuli and the various elements of a sustainable school, it became clear that while initiatives like the Center for Child Honoring exist, it is a process of steps that will move the cycle forward, and create a good life through education, one child at a time.

In March 2010, Adventure Ecology founder and environmentalist David de Rothschild and his intrepid crew set sail on an ocean adventure of unrivaled proportions. The journey took them over 11,000 nautical miles across the Pacific in a boat made almost entirely from plastic bottles. The Plastiki has been on a mission to beat waste, not only as a product or outcome, but also as a system for how strategic design can re-imagine definitions of the “good life”.

This series of infographics focuses on indicators of the wellbeing of children in the US and around the world, such as health, education and play - combined with other activities, has a profound impact on cognitive and social development. This infographic was designed to show the percentage of children in the US that participated in various after school activities, and the effects that these activities have on them.