Theme: “After the Pandemic: Designing the Next Version of Our World”
Opening Monday Sept.14, 2020, is the call for submissions in the Longevity Design Challenge 2020/21 by Stanford Center on Longevity now in its 8th year. This could be perhaps, the year with the most demand for technology design creativity to serve not only pre-existing aging and longevity issues like mobility and social isolation, but also to help close some global inequality gaps such as poor access to safe health care delivery.
Now that we are more than six months into the COVID pandemic, the world has moved on in deeper, complex conversations as to how we are going to live and adapt to it for some time to come, while at the same time visioning a better world beyond. Looking at certain countries, we are still reeling in reaction and shock, so those who say we are in “post-COVID” or as in the Stanford theme header “after the pandemic”, are either on the side of false calculation of reality or on the side of futuristic optimism.
As I said in my May 26 post, optimism in the future is not to be discouraged and innovation in technology design is not to be ignored. By helping people continue to realize a healthy promise of longevity – the usefulness of a Longevity Design Challenge continues. In this 2020/21 version, Stanford links us to their on-line interactive project called the New Map of Life: After the Pandemic.
Post-it note graphics on the New Map of Life web page submit examples of perspective statements. Telehealth can greatly expand access to health care. Human history and natural history can no longer be separated. Inequality is a public health crisis. With these kind of high-level considerations provoking thinking, can we hope that the design teams who enter their submissions will use these to inform their work and further questioning while meeting the Design Challenge goals?
Every competition, hackathon and the like needs a theme and set some goals, so parallel thinking as a technology designer here would have to regard one major piece – create well-designed, practical solutions that improve well-being across the lifespan. Fundamentally, the other two goals are what the designers could vocalize as being their own expectations:
- Encourage a new generation of students to become knowledgeable about issues associated with long lives
- Provide promising designers with a path to drive change in the world
Last year’s winner of the Design Challenge was Shishu, Sui aur Dhaaga (Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, India) which translates from Hindi to “Child, Needle and Thread.” This solution converts a common local cultural practice into an immunization tracker for infants in migration, using a version of a bracelet called a Nazar Band. I viewed this as one of my choices for it conveyed the immediacy of humanitarian needs fulfillment.
How relevant the India entry turned out to be as a COVID world emerged simultaneously with the announcement of the Design Challenge winners. The dynamics of several huge global issues continue to converge and dominate the news (at least the news I’m watching) – mass migration, social conflict, economic disruption and the pandemic. Let us see by next April, when the Stanford winners are revealed, how close to the mark the broad humanitarian needs are addressed and how truly global the participation elevates as it did last year.