Design Lab with Bon Ku

Latest Episodes:

EP 59: Designing Peer-to-Peer Health | Susannah Fox Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

How can peer to peer connection make a healthier society? Can Amazon reviews give us fresh insight into our health? Why do on-line patient communities represent an incredible untapped resource in healthcare? How can a co-designed death give us a fuller life? Susannah Fox will help us answer these questions! Fox is a health and information technology researcher based in Washington, DC. She is a former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama Administration, where she led an open data and innovation lab. Prior to federal service, she was the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For 14 years she directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project where she helped define a new market at the intersection of health, social media, and patient engagement. Fox currently serves on the board of directors of Cambia Health Solutions of Portland, OR, and Hive Networks of Cincinnati, OH. She is an advisor to Alladapt Immunotherapeutics, Archangels, Article 27, Atlas of Caregiving, Before Brands, Citizen, Equip Health, Faster Cures, and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at Smithsonian Institution. Fox is a graduate of Wesleyan University with a degree in anthropology. She is the mother of two children, a caregiver for elders, and lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Eric Halperin.

EP 58: Designing Healthier Schools | Dina Sorensen Feb 03, 2022

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How can we leverage the built environment to unlock our potential? What happens when scientists, architects and public health experts work together? What are movement temptations? And how does planning for a dinner party unlock our creativity? Dina Sorensen will help us answer those questions. Dina is an award-winning, nationally recognized K-12 Education design leader, strategist, speaker, and author with a notable background for achievement in the design of innovative, healthy, high-performance schools. Fluent in all aspects of design, educational philosophy, and research in practice; she works across disciplines to construct meaningful, memorable connections between people and place. Trained at Parson’s School of Design in NYC and Paris, and the University of Virginia, Dina’s unique background in the arts, architecture, and interdisciplinary research informs her holistic approach to promoting health, well-being, engagement, joy, and creativity in architecture. Her passion for health-promoting design and collaborative research have pioneered significant contributions to school architecture and public health resulting in the first health promotion guidelines for school architecture; the Healthy Eating Design Guidelines for School Architecture and the Physical Activity Design Guidelines for School Architecture. Prior to founding d.studio - an interdisciplinary studio practice in 2020, Dina was an educational design leader at VMDO Architects, and the K-12 Design Leader at DLR Group in Washington DC. Dina is known for collaborating with exemplary leaders and entrepreneurs across many disciplines to harness creativity, insight, and innovation to advance an uptick in the adoption of healthier, happier schools by design. Her features in NPR, FastCompany, Time Magazine, and the recent book by science writer Emily Anthes The Great Indoors – The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness – continues to inspire the next generation of changemakers in architecture and design.

EP 57: Designing for Scale | Doug Powell Jan 27, 2022

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What is the superpower of designers? Why does healthcare need better design? And how do you create the condition for designers to thrive? Doug Powell has the answers. Doug is an award-winning designer with more than 30 years of experience in a wide range of design disciplines. A recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Sam Fox School of Design at Washington University in St. Louis, and the 2014 Fellow Award from AIGA Minnesota, Doug is a lecturer, commentator and thought leader on design issues. He has presented at a variety of global conferences, forums, and universities including Beirut Design Week in Lebanon, Fortune's Brainstorm Design in Singapore, and Yale School of Management. He was on the jury of the 2018 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards. Between 2011-2013 Doug served as the national president of AIGA, the professional association for design, the largest and most established design organization in the world. Until the end of 2021, Doug was Vice President of Design at IBM, where he helped to build one of the largest enterprise design organizations in the industry. In 2022, Doug became the VP of Design Practice Management at Expedia Group. Bon and Doug talk about the superpower of designers, why healthcare needs designers and how to create the conditions for designers to thrive.

EP 56: Designing Cures Faster | Michelle Longmire Jan 20, 2022

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Dr. Michelle Longmire is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Medable. Dr. Longmire is mission driven to accelerate the development of new therapies for disease. As a Stanford-trained physician-scientist, Dr. Longmire identified critical barriers to drug development and founded Medable to pioneer a new category of clinical trial technologies that remove traditional roadblocks to participation and radically accelerate the research process. Medable is now the industry leader in decentralized and direct-to-patient research, serving patients in clinical trials in over 30 languages, 40 countries, and across all therapeutic areas. In addition to having raised over 300 million dollars in venture capital and driving Medable to an industry-leading position, Dr. Longmire has received recognition as a leading innovator and business woman, including being named as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company. Bon and Michelle talk about redesigning clinical trials, health equity in clinical trial diversity and the importance of the creative process in scientific discovery.

EP 55: Designing for Labor and Delivery | Jules Sherman Jan 13, 2022

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Jules Sherman is the Director of a new Biodesign Program with Innovation Ventures at Children's National Hospital. In this role, she teaches innovation and design methods to clinicians and co-creates novel medical products in collaboration with doctors and nurses at CNH with the intent to commercialize the inventions. She lectures at The University of Maryland’s Bioengineering Dept. Previously, she designed and co-taught original curricula with Stanford Children's Hospital physicians focused on healthcare design (products/services) at The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. She also worked as a product designer for The Safety Learning Lab for Neonatal and Maternal Care at Stanford Medicine for several years. As the founder of Maternal Life, LLC, Jules co-invented and developed medical products that improve healthcare outcomes for women and children.

Her first product Primo-Lacto: A closed system for colostrum collection, was acquired by Lansinoh in 2018. She is currently working on a product called "NOOMA" with colleagues from Stanford Medicine to help facilitate delayed cord clamping for the preterm infant population, and "Kangarobe," a patent-pending garment that makes skin-to-skin care in the neonatal ICU safer and easier. Her professional background is in consumer products, like kitchen housewares, architectural hardware and personal electronic response systems. Bon and Jules talk about creating safe spaces in hospitals for sharing needs, making labor and delivery safer and why healthcare is incredibly creative.

EP 54: Designing for Inclusivity | Grace Jun Jan 06, 2022

Show notes

Grace Jun is the CEO of a Smithsonian National award-winning nonprofit organization called Open Style Lab and Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia where she researches creative practices that are inclusive of disability, which manifests into outcomes such as accessible graphic design and adaptive fashion. Grace's commitment to designing with disability groups is reflected in her latest publication, Universal Materiality, and an anticipated book on fashion & disability to be released for 2023. Grace has been featured in Forbes, New York Times Style, and recently the Washington Post. From the White House to ABC Channel News, Grace has been asked to speak about disability and design in numerous settings around the world. She is a proud alumnus of both Parsons School of Design and RISD majoring in Design & Technology (MFA) and Graphic Design (BFA) respectively. Grace has previously held positions as a UX Designer at Samsung Electronics and as an Assistant Professor at The New School, Parsons School of Fashion. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, Grace also serves on jury committees and organizations that advance the arts & design. Bon and Grace talk about co-design, the definition of inclusivity and why accessible design is better design.

EP 53: Designing Beauty in Hospitals, Part 2 | Michael Murphy Dec 30, 2021

Show notes

Michael Murphy, Int FRIBA, is a Founding Principal and Executive Director of MASS Design Group, a collective of architecture and design advocates dedicated to the construction of dignity. Since MASS’s beginnings, Michael’s portfolio documents work in over a dozen countries and spans the areas of healthcare, education, housing, urban development, food systems, indigenous sovereignty, and the public monument. Murphy's 2016 TED talk has reached over 1.7 million views, and he was awarded the Al Filipov Medal for Peace and Justice in 2017.

Michael is the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design at Georgia Institute of Technology, Baumer Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University's Knowlton School, and has lectured at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, University of Michigan, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation.

Under Michael’s guidance, MASS has been awarded globally and featured in over 900 publications. Most recently, MASS was selected as the 2022 AIA Architecture Firm of the Year, featured on CBS' 60 minutes and recognized as the winner of the AIA 2021 Collaborative Achievement Award, Wall Street Journal’s 2020 Architecture Innovator, the National Arts and Letters Award for 2017, and the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.

Check out Michael’s new book, “The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity” and visit the “Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics” exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC!

Bon and Michael geeked out about design and health for so long that we had to split the conversation into two episodes. They talk about the evolution of the modern hospital, creating buildings that breathe, bringing beauty into healthcare and so much more.

EP 52: Designing Beauty in Hospitals, Part 1 | Michael Murphy Dec 23, 2021

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EP 51: Designing Medical Technology for Everyone I Krista Donaldson Dec 16, 2021

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As CEO of Equalize Health (formerly D-Rev), Krista Donaldson leads the design and scaling of disruptive medical devices to address global health inequities. To date, over 1M people – mostly children and young people - have been treated by one of Equalize Health’s products in 70+ countries. In 2020, the organization kicked off a bold new strategy to significantly increase the pipeline of innovative solutions that close healthcare gaps by 2030. Peter Singer of the Effective Altruism movement calls Equalize Health “one of the world’s best charities” because of its cost effectiveness and exemplary end-to-end processes. EH is based in New Delhi and San Francisco, with additional offices in Nairobi and Bangkok. Krista has been recognized as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, TED speaker, and a GLG Social Impact Fellow. She was also named one of Fast Company’s “50 Designers Shaping the Future.” Prior to Equalize Health, she was an Economic Officer at the U.S. Department of State where she managed part of Iraq’s reconstruction portfolio. She also worked at KickStart International (Kenya), and the design firm IDEO (USA). Krista holds a master’s degree in Product Design and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Bon and Krista talk about what’s next in design for global health, designing for serviceability and putting the patient at the center of care.

EP 50: Designing Healthier Places at Scale | Matthew Trowbridge Dec 02, 2021

Show notes

Matthew Trowbridge is a physician, Chief Medical Officer at the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), and Associate Professor at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. Dr. Trowbridge’s academic research focuses on the impact of architecture, urban design, and transportation planning on individual and population health. Prior to joining IWBI, Dr. Trowbridge served as principal investigator for the Green Health Partnership between UVA and the U.S. Green Building Council; a multi-year initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, focused on increasing consideration of health and well-being outcomes across global real estate by applying green building principles of market transformation. Notable accomplishments include development of the Health + Well-being Module in partnership with the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, and launch of the Integrative Process for Health Promotion Credit within the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building framework. Dr. Trowbridge is board certified in both general pediatrics and preventive medicine and obtained his medical and public health training at Emory University. Bon and Matt talk about how the built environment is a modifiable risk factor for health, public health experts as design thinkers, and why creativity will win over time.

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