On FRiday March 1st 2013, the Desmeemers were invited to the Lebanese American University to talk about their design process during the three months of the Desmeem project. The teams informed the design students about the research methods they used, the challenges they faces along the way, and the outcomes they achieved through human-centered design. On behalf of the MENA DEsign Research Center, we would like to thank LAU and the Desmeemers for this truly informative and inspiring event!
Posted in DESMEEM, MENA PROJECTS, SOCIAL INNOVATION
During December 2 workshops were held in AltCity concerning migrant workers in Lebanon. At the end of which an exhibition and a Community Day was established on December the 16th. The workshops were developed in collaboration with Migrant Workers Task Force, AltCity, Joumana Ibrahim, and a group of Graphic designers who dealt with infographics. The exhibition design and concept was developed and implemented with the help of Doreen Toutikian, Director of the MENA Design Research Center, since it is one of the center’s goals to contribute to design for social change in the Arab World. Moreover, having worked with migrant workers on a previous Desmeem project, Community Day with the aforementioned partners is a good way to follow up with the latest updates and concerns regarding this serious challenge that affects the country profoundly.
On Community Day migrant workers from many different communities plus Lebanese and other nationalities came together in AltCity to share food, stories, laughter and celebrate the end of the year’s classes.
The Two Exhibitions of the Workshops are:
1) Lens on Life: A series of photo essays created by migrant workers using their mobile phones under the guidance of Ann Megalla and Dima Saber
2) Visualizing Migrant Rights: A series of infographics depicting the lives and rights of migrant workers in Lebanon produced by graphic designers under the guidance of Joumana Ibrahim.
In addition to the 2 workshops, AltCity is also displaying a series of infographics by Visualizing Palestine depicting some of the human rights violations conducted in Palestine.
This whole exhibition has been made possible through the help and support of the MENA Design Research Center, the Netherlands Embassy in Lebanon, the Migrant Workers Task Force, and numerous volunteers.
For more images click here, courtesy of AltCity.
Posted in EVENT, MENA PROJECTS, SOCIAL INNOVATION
This past weekend, as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Region in collaboration with AltCity, ArabNet, the MENA Design Research Center along with dozens of active partners in the Middle East, organized the first Beirut Social Innovation Camp. As a Design Coach, director of the MENA Design Research Center -Doreen Toutikian- was invited to spend one-on-one time with each team to guide them through the design process of their project.
The room was crawling with developers, designers, and entrepreuneurs who had come to team up with each other and turn their ideas to life. 14 teams were formed with project themes varying from community recycling plans, customer- product reviews, local talent archiving, braille apps, Garage sales, bio-lemonade, handcrafts, location-based job scouting, health planning, youth protection, housing for students, and gunshot detection.
On the third day, the judges who were representatives of ArabNet, Cedar Environmental, AUB, and Naharnet listened to the pitches and picked the winners. Instead of creativity, originality, research, or reasoning behind the project, they seemed to be entirely focused on business models and competitors. Personally, we would have preferred more diversity in the criteria, but nonetheless, it was a great effort from all parts; and surely the participants learnt some valuable lessons. The first prize went to Job Pinner, an app that determines the location of freelancers/ service providers from various fields.
Images Courtesy of Naharnet & Beirut.com
Posted in EVENT, SOCIAL INNOVATION
On November 1st 2012, Design Without Borders, a 10-year project in association with Norsk Form and DOGA organized an international conference with a curated exhibition of the collected works in Oslo, Norway. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs being a partner of this project, invited over 50 designers, educators and professionals from 20 countries around the world. Two people from the Arab World (MENA) were invited as well: Doreen Toutikian, Director of the MENA Design Research Center from Lebanon and Younes Duret from Morrocco.
About Design Without Borders: ” In the field of both design and development aid, there is increasing awareness about the important contribution design makes towards solving the challenges facing developing countries. The last decade has shown us that designers, in their enthusiasm to act, often underestimate the complexity of the challenges they undertake and create practical but inappropriate solutions. Similarly, the developing communities are often so overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation that they are unable to innovate effectively. The conference Design without Borders – Creating Change focuses on the work and thoughts of designers, organizations and entrepreneurs that have managed to find a way of combining complexity and action, effectively using design to create change in real world situations.”
The Speakers: Leif Verdu-Isachsen (Norsk Form), Cynthia E. Smith( Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum), Tor Inge Garvik (Laerdal Global Health), Sille Askefrø Bjørn (INDEX: Design to Improve Life), Eve Blossom (Lulan Artisans), Elizabeth Palmer (Danish Refugee Council), Ole Chr. Kleppe (SuSan Design), Anna Kirah (Steria), and Nita Kapoor (FK Norway)
The conference was followed by a curated tour of the exhibition which was a collection of products, architecture, and services that have been designed and implemented through Design Without Borders for developing countries over the last decade.
For more info about Norsk Form and Design Without Borders click here. Photo credits: Norsk Form/Kjersti Gjems Vangberg
Posted in EVENT, INSPIRATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION
The first MENA Design Research Center project, which was a cultural probe kit called Konfikit (2010), is now published in the globally acclaimed 2nd edition of the book ‘Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research’. The 600- page text book is written by Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky, and Andrea Moed, and published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (an imprint of Elsevier).
Excerpt from Back Cover: Observing the User Experience is a groundbreaking, comprehensive resource for user experience research. For over a decade, it has helped readers better understand what their users want and need from their products and whether users will be able to use what they’ve created. This second edition improves upon a classic, adding new methods and approaches to meet today’s challenging and diverse research requirements.
We would like to thank Elizabeth Goodman, for contacting us and finding our project suitable for the book, our client Toufoula, and all the illustrators and designers who contributed to making the Konfikit a beautiful research method.
On Sunday October the 7th, Director of the MENA Design Research Center -Doreen Toutikian- invited past Desmeem Participants to join in a panel to discussion: Open Design. Along with Elena Habre, Rawad Hajj, Giorgio Roberto Uboldi, Dima Boulad and Andreas Mueller, they discussed how a designer can play an important part in society by contributing to social and environmental issues.
The Desmeemers explained to the audience the different design research methods they used, and how their understand of design changed within the participatory process they developed with their project stakeholders. Then went on to infer how the Desmeem project has affected their current situation. Andreas and Giorgio returned to Lebanon to further develop some of their projects, Rawad won the Seeqnce challenge for his new social venture, Rikbit, and Dima continues to develop new initiatives for the community with the Beirut Green Project.
This discussion showed the various scopes of the designer outside the commercial sphere, and presented the audience with examples of some socially conscious efforts that are made possible within the world of design and social innovation.
Finally each designer discussed their own definition of Open Design. To Rawad, design became everything; to Elena is was the breaking of disciplinary boundaries: to andreas, he wanted design to be open for more than just designers; to Doreen, it is the founding of the MENA Design Research Center.
Posted in MENA PROJECTS
Between the 13th and 17th of September 2012, we travelled to Scandinavia and witnessed the Design Week of the World Design Capital – Helsinki. With a rich design and craft history as well as a highly progressive technological output, and a vision for healthy sustainable communities; this city has a lot of knowledge to offer to the world. At first sight coming into the city, it is obvious that the entire environment is delicately and finely branded by the World Design Capital 2012 with Alvar Aalto as the godfather of their design heritage.
The PechaKucha night presented the audience with a variety of speakers from Asia, India, Australia, and Europe. They all sprung from various disciplines and yet spoke about the design thinking and process behind their work. The event took place in an old warehouse and the interiors were designed by Marimekko.
At an old cable factory transformed to a massive exhibition hall, Design Week’s Co-Creating exhibition introduced work from designers from Germany, Slovenia, and Taipei. From tofu stools, to interactive photo booths that analyzed your racial features and colorful watch shaped reminder notes, one can find a bit of everything from the latest creations in the global design scene.
Like most design weeks around the world, design studios have ‘Open Studio’ days where the public can enter their workplace, and see what it is like to work there. Luckily right before our visit, Pentagram had relocated in Helsinki to what used to be a hat factory. The interiors are all white with some vibrant flashes of color. The space is immaculate, with high ceilings and three floors. They even had a brainstorming room with a light installation in the ceiling that changes color to influence the designers’ mood. But the nicest part about this studio was hat all employees, no matter their position, sit together in an open space.
Much of the creative scene in Helsinki is owed to the great University of Art, Architecture and Design AALTO/ TAIK. So we visited the media lab and design departments to get a taste of the inspiration and fell in love with the large screens with a complete assortment of video games in the studios and the interiors (including swings) of their kitchens !
One of the most popular workshops for all ages was the LEGO workshop. The participants were hard at work throughout the week-long event, creating post-modern and fantasy-world architectural structures for a white LEGO city.
Another interesting workshop was the Open Data Cooking where participants used food ingredients to create data visualizations. These examples are about alcohol consumption in Finland and non-Finnish minorities represented by their national food.
Throughout Helsinki an easily recognizable community initiative is the urban gardening spots which allow city residents to plant their own food in their neighborhood. This added a new dimension to the city within a sustainability context and design for social innovation.
A smart method for exhibiting in open air spaces whilst encouraging recycling proved to be the use of containers that were redesigned for Helsinki Design Week. Many of these colorful containers were used as small exhibition spaces, souvenir shops and cafes.
And finally we ended our week of inspiration with a film about Pablo Ferro, the man behind some of the best film title designs of all time.
Kiitos Helsinki!
Posted in Helsinki Design Week
The first Beirut Design Week 2012 was a great milestone for Lebanon and the Middle East as it was the first of its kind in the region. The reason behind the success of Beirut Design Week was the fact that we as a design community at large collaborated together and each participant, partner and sponsor put great effort into the event. In honor of this week, we have created a report of all the events and communications that contributed in making Beirut Design Week 2012 a week to remember.
Please visit the link below to look through the pages that will remind you of your experience of that week, and perhaps highlight some events that you might have missed. Feel free to share the link with your friends and colleagues.
http://issuu.com/mena-design-research/docs/beirut-design-week-2012
See you at Beirut Design Week 2013.
Posted in BEIRUT DESIGN WEEK 2012, DESMEEM
We would like to thank all the participants, sponsors, volunteers, the wonderful DESMEEMERS, the workshop givers, the designers, and all the partners for making Beirut Design Week 2012 a truly memorable first step towards making Beirut the Design Capital of the MENA region.
Posted in MENA PROJECTS
In the MENA Design Research Center, we take design very seriously. For all our graphic work, we consult extensively with our brilliant graphic designers in the studio which belong to Tagbrands. Every design process is democratic, and everybody is welcome to share their opinion. So we thought we’d share with you the process behind our new logo.
The Beirut Design Week logo is inspired from our DESMEEM logo, which has been our main project since December 2011. By using the triangles inside the logo, we came up with interesting shapes and patterns that could reflect the Beirut Design Week vibe.
We knew that we wanted something vey vibrant, edgy, dynamic and bright. We wanted it to reflect what is considered trendy in the 2D design world. And most importantly, we wanted it to look global. So we tried putting the triangles together in a shape that combines all those aspects using the desmeem colors and exploring just hues of one of two colors. We came up wit the following, which we were not too happy about yet. We stuck to Helvetica Neue bold condensed, as it was also main typeface used on DESMEEM.
So we took a vote, most people preferred the monochromatic options and wanted the shape to be somewhere between the first (too crazy) ones and the last (too subtle) ones. So we experimented a bit further.
Then, it was decision time, we altered the shapes to avoid looking like a dancing star, or something too unstable. We also realized that even though we love our trendy summer colors, next to other logos, they seemed a bit pale. So we went full throttle with bright red. Now we are finally satisfied with a unanimous vote throughout the studio!
Posted in BEIRUT DESIGN WEEK 2012
