This past weekend, I attended the Design Our Tomorrow (DOT) conference held at the University of Toronto. Like TED, speakers at the conference had 18 minutes to talk about whatever they wanted - within the broad theme of "designing our tomorrow". Topics ranged from industrial design, to climate change and the environment to technology. The conference is targeted toward students and young people and the tickets were free for students.
My highlights:
Edward Burtynsky
"Photographer, in 15 museums including MoMA and the Guggenheim, TED Prize Winner."
Having studied some of his work in university in art history, it was really interesting to hear him speak in person. He gave an overview of his past work, and the ideas that inspired him. He also showed us some of his newest photographs, ones that haven't yet been seen by the public.
Aza Raskin
"Rethinking medicine as co-founder of Massive Health, former Creative Lead at Firefox, named 2011 Master of Design by Fast Company Magazine."
His talk was about the rising number of people who are obese and who have diabetes, and how to getting people to change their habits is not easy. His talk was part science, part psychology and part common-sense. He showed us how current blood glucose technologies work, and explained that they don't offer the user any kind of real feedback. He suggests that the only way to affect change in people is to create a feedback loop.
His mobile app, called The Eatery, has the user take a picture of their meal each time they eat, and the community of other users rates the meal as "fit or fat". Over time, the hope is that the instant feedback from peers will give people incentive to think about what they are putting in their bodies and eventually eat better. Aside from instant results, it also gives you information about your habits over time (e.g. by week). I think that the most important feature of the app is that it is so quick to use, and doesn't involve any kind of calorie counting or indexing.
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