Ana Pinto da Silva - Design for Innovation - SIC2012

Ana Pinto da Silva, Microsoft’s Strategic Prototyping and Advanced Strategies Group (StratPro) Design for Innovation: Shaping Design in the 21st Century The physical/digital divide is closing. NUI is becoming normal. Social Media feels old-hat and “Big Data” is a fact of life. As the tech revolution moves from adolescence into full-fledged adulthood, the lines between design disciplines are increasingly blurred and new design paradigms are emerging, profoundly affecting the ways in which designers work, innovate and create change. At this critical juncture in the digital revolution, what is the future of design innovation? Designers are change makers. Designers are a critical part of the world’s imaginative engine, marking and celebrating even the most mundane moments of the human endeavor. Designers help frame lenses through which we understand and communicate who we are and how we relate to each other – as individuals, as tribes, as communities at every scale. Design marks the cleaving point between art, technology, business, science and culture. Ultimately, design shapes action and at its best, serves as a cultural change agent in the service celebrating the arc of human potential. What is the future of design innovation? What technological, cultural and demographic forces will shape the way we practice design? How will design impact the development of technology? What does this mean for traditional and emergent design disciplines? What does it mean to be a designer in the 21st Century? In what ways will designers act as disruptors and change agents? What central problems are designers especially positioned to solve? This talk will take a broad look at the future of design and design innovation, contextualizing the role of design in the past century and looking forward to the century ahead to understand the future potential of design innovation.