Not Your Usual Design?

Not Your Usual Design? Re-Orienting Policies, Organisations and Services around People and Planet

Once again, we find ourselves in an era where many pillars that framed our thinking and doing in the past are being challenged and questioned on a daily basis. Professor Sabine Junginger's inaugural lecture is an invitation to designers, managers, scholars, researchers, and students to examine the role, place, and contribution of design to business, the public sector, and society in times of commotion and disruption.

When people start to focus on laying new foundations for economic and social innovation - foundations that account for the needs of society, the individual, and the planet - design moves centre stage. It is no coincidence that the German Bauhaus offered rigorous design education among the uncertainties of the Weimar Republic, nor that the Ulm School of Design forged new possibilities for the future in the aftermath of the German Nazi regime.

When nothing seems quite what it was and when the status quo is no longer tenable, the ways in which we conceive, plan, develop, and deliver new paths forward into the unknown acquire new signifi­cance. In a captivating talk, Professor Junginger will show how human-centred design principles, methods, and processes can support researchers and practitioners across the disciplines in their efforts to transform systems around people and planet.

About the Speaker

Professor Sabine Junginger’s work sheds light on how human-centered design contributes to social change and business innovation by re-orienting policies, organizations and services around people.

She is especially curious about policy work and believes no policy can succeed in the absence of appropriate products and services that people can understand and use.

Her research focus is on organizational change and transformation, design in government, public sector innovation, design for policy, design thinking, design leadership, design management, service design, interaction design. Through her international and interdisciplinary research collaborations she hopes to become part of the solution when sincere people seek novel solutions to complex problems of business and society.