Design Lab with Bon Ku

Latest Episodes:

EP 88: Designing Relationships for Health | Julianne Holt-Lunstad Sep 08, 2022

Show notes

Does loneliness make us sicker? Do people who have more friends live longer? Why is loneliness a public health issue?

Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience, and the Martin B. Hickman distinguished scholar at Brigham Young University. She is also the founding scientific chair of the U.S. Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness and Foundation for Social Connections.

Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s research is focused on understanding the long-term health effects, biological mechanisms, and effective strategies to mitigate risk and promote protection associated with social connection. Her work has been seminal in the recognition of social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for early mortality. She serves as a scientific advisor and regularly consults for organizations across sectors aimed at addressing this issue. She has provided expert testimony in a US Congressional Hearing, consults with the office of the US Surgeon General, served as a member of the UK Cross Departmental Loneliness Team, a member of a National Academy of Sciences consensus committee, and a subject matter expert for the Gravity Project and Commit to Connect the national clearinghouse of interventions. Her work has been widely recognized within her discipline, including several awards, and is regularly highlighted in major media outlets.

Episode Mentions:

Julianne’s Website: https://www.julianneholtlunstad.com

Julianne’s Academic Site: https://julianneholtlunstad.byu.edu

Coalition to End Social Isolation and Lonliness

Foundation for Social Connection

Gravity Project

Article: Reducing Social Isolation Isn’t Rocket Science, or Is It? - Psychology Today

Article: Social isolation and loneliness increase the risk of death from heart attack, stroke - Science Daily

Article: Loneliness among older people: A research roundup and 5 tips for covering the topic - The Journalist’s Resource

Follow Julianne: Twitter | Insta | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/julianneholtlunstad

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Edit by Fernando Queiroz

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

Indexed in the Library of Congress: ISSN 2833-2032

EP 87: Designing for Health in the Age of Anxiety | Timothy Caulfield Sep 01, 2022

Show notes

Is there scientific evidence behind the daily decisions you make about your health? What role should clinician scientists and institutions play in debunking pseudoscience? Why does misinformation spread like a virus?

Timothy Caulfield is a Best selling author and Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science and public health policy has allowed him to publish over 350 academic articles. He has won numerous academic and writing awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of two national bestsellers: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012) The Science of Celebrity…or Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? (Penguin 2015). His most recent book is Relax, Dammit!: A User's Guide to the Age of Anxiety (Penguin Random House, 2020). Caulfield is also the host and co-producer of the award winning documentary TV show, A User's Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America.

Episode Mentions:

Show: A Users Guide to Cheating Death (via IMDB)

Website: University of Alberta

Books Website: Penguin Random House Canada

Publications via Google Scholar

Follow Timothy: Twitter | Insta

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/timothycaulfield

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Edit by Fernando Queiroz

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

Indexed in the Library of Congress: ISSN 2833-2032

EP 86: Designing for Disability | Laura Mauldin Aug 25, 2022

Show notes

Why do we hate disability? Why does design neglect disability? How do disabled people tap into their creativity to make the world accessible?

Laura Mauldin is a writer, sociologist, and interdisciplinary scholar based in Brooklyn, NY. She's currently an associate professor at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses broadly on disability, care, and technology. Her first book, Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children, documented the structure and culture of the systems we’ve designed to try to make deaf kids hear. Currently, she is writing a nonfiction book on spousal caregiving that weaves together research, memoir, and cultural commentary. She’s recently published articles in The American Prospect, Baffler Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review of books connected to spousal caregiving. Most recently, she launched the new website DisabilityAtHome.org which documents the daily hacks that disabled people and caregivers have devised to make life work at home.

Episode Mentions:

Book: Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children by Laura Mauldin

Website: disabilityathome.org

Article: Care Tactics: Hacking an Abelist World by Laura Mauldin

Article: Finding Comfort at Home: New Website Logs Solutions to Everyday Problems for Disabled People and Their Caregivers

Follow: Liz Jackson

Follow: Imani Barbarin

Website: Well Spouse Association

Other related content:

Website: engineeringathome.org

Link: Designing for Disability - TED Talks

Follow Laura: Twitter | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/lauramauldin

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Edit by Fernando Queiroz

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

Indexed in the Library of Congress: ISSN 2833-2032

EP 85: Designing Curious Minds | Perry Zurn and Dani S. Basset Aug 18, 2022

Show notes

How do you define curiosity? Can it make us happier? Does curiosity have style?

Perry Zurn is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University and the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry.

Dani S. Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014.

They're the authors of the forthcoming book Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (MIT Press, September 2022).

Episode Mentions:

https://www.perryzurn.com/

https://Danisbassett.com/

Guest photo credit: Tony & Tracy Wood Photography - Lissa Warren

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Follow Dani: Twitter | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/perryanddani

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 84: Designing Healthcare through Stories | Jay Baruch Aug 11, 2022

Show notes

Does creativity help physicians care for their patients? Can making space for stories improve healthcare? How does imagination come into play in the practice of Medicine?

Jay Baruch is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where he directs the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Scholarly Concentration. He's a practicing ER doc, writer and educator. His upcoming book of non-fiction, narrative essays is: Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER (MIT Press, fall 2022) He is also the author of two award-winning short fiction collections, "What's Left Out" and and "Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers" (Kent State University Press, 2007).

His academic work emerged as a response to the realization that medical training didn't prepare him for the complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity that pervades patient care. His teaching involves interdisciplinary collaborations and pushing boundaries with people who hold different expertise and ways of looking at the world. His innovative collaborators have included brilliant museum educators, designers, and artists.

Past honors include Director-at-Large, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the medical humanities section chair for the American College of Emergency Physicians, and faculty fellow at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. He received the inaugural Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Gold Humanism Award and the Brown Emergency Medicine, Innovations in Education Award.

His current work focuses on arts and health and designing authentic spaces for fostering difficult conversations.

Episode Mentions:

Jay Baruch, MD. Doctoring and writing, creatively

Book: Tornado of Life. A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER

Follow Jay: Twitter | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/jaybaruch

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 83: Designing a Healthy Work Culture | Nina Bianchi Aug 04, 2022

Show notes

How can we create a healthy work culture? What is equitable listening? How does making space for learning benefit organizations?

Nina Bianchi is a Solutions Principal at Medallia with the regulated industry practice (government, healthcare, and life sciences). Prior to joining Medallia, she served as Chief of People and Culture at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration in partnership with the U. S. General Services Administration IT Modernization Centers of Excellence. As a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow with the Biden Cancer Moonshot 1.0 at the National Cancer Institute, she coached diverse stakeholders in leading culture transformation and designing healthier work experiences to drive personalized patient experiences. Much of the work of building positive employee experiences, frontlines to C-suites, rests on creative leaders who reimagine how we measure and improve experiences over time. Before joining the federal government, Nina co-founded and ran a social innovation consulting enterprise that fostered a vast portfolio of high-impact public-private partnerships for over a decade. Her teams designed experiential solutions for local, national, and international clients including City governments across the globe, philanthropic organizations, non-profits, Fortune 500, and leading institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Episode Mentions:

Amy Abernethy | FDA

Healthcare Customer Experience | Medallia

New podcast: Solving For X - ATARC

Article: The State of Employee & Customer Experience in Government: Q&A with Nina Bianchi

Follow Nina: Twitter | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/ninabianchi

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 82: Designing Creative Acts | Sarah Stein Greenberg Jul 28, 2022

Show notes

How does design unlock your creative abilities? Why is it so hard for us to tolerate ambiguity? Can the fundamentals of design help us to learn more quickly?

Sarah Stein Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Stanford d.school. She leads a community of designers, faculty, and other innovative thinkers who help people unlock their creative abilities and apply them to the world. Sarah speaks regularly at universities and global conferences on design, business, and education. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in history from Oberlin College. Sarah also serves as a trustee for Rare, a global conservation organization. Among other creative pursuits, she spends her free time as an underwater and wildlife photographer. She lives in San Francisco.

Episode Mentions:

Books from the d.school

Book: Creative Acts for Curious People by Sarah Stein Greenberg

Book: Make Space (awesome book about designing creative spaces)

Article: Recipe for a Tasty d.school

Resource: Teaching and Learning Studio faculty workshops

Follow Sarah: Twitter | Insta | LinkedIn

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/sarahsteingreenberg

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 81: Designing Against Burnout | Sudhakar Nuti Jul 21, 2022

Show notes

Sudhakar Nuti, MD, MSc is a primary care doctor and public servant who seeks to use clinical medicine, science, and policy to improve the health of disadvantaged people in America. He trained in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital during the height of the COVID pandemic and will start working in the New York public health care system later this year caring for people experiencing homelessness. He has done extensive research studying health disparities in the United States and has worked in the health departments of New York City and North Carolina to design and implement policies and programs to improve health equity. For his work he has been recognized as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in healthcare, a 40 Under 40 Leader in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum, and a STAT Wunderkind. He obtained his BA and MD from Yale University and his MSc in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Episode Mentions:

I worry that burnout can’t be reversed and has fundamentally changed me as a doctor and a person

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Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/sudhakarnuti

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 80: Designing Wayfinding | Katie Osborn Jul 14, 2022

Show notes

Katie Osborn’s passion for wayfinding is at the heart of improving people’s interactions with the built environment and is a believer in collaborating with experts to create ambitious, user-centered, and experiential design solutions. She is a regular speaker on wayfinding strategy and how it is “more than just signs,” sharing her expertise and passion for solutions that work for all people. She has presented her ideas and projects at national conferences for the American Planning Association, American Institute of Architects, and Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Before establishing Via Collective, Katie’s prior experience includes large scale projects with Pentagram and Citizen Research & Design. She holds BFA from the University of Wisconsin – Stout; taught typography and design at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota; is a past board member of AIGA Minnesota; She currently serves as the Director of Communications for the AIA NY Transportation & Infrastructure committee.

Episode Mentions:

Via Collective

The Importance of Universal Design

Book: Image of the City by Kevin Lynch

Sylvia Harris

Wayfinding in the Tokyo Subway System

Follow Via Collective: Twitter | Insta

Episode Website: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/katieosborn

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

EP 79: Designing the Treatment of Pain | Haider Warraich Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

Why is almost everything we know about pain wrong? How can we reframe our understanding of chronic pain? Is there a more effective way to treat pain outside of pills and procedures?

Haider Warraich is a physician and researcher at the VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 135 papers including in the NEJM and JAMA. He frequently writes for the New York Times and Washington Post, and is the author of the books Modern Death, State of the Heart and the just published The Song of Our Scars – The Untold Story of Pain (April 2022).

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