Fontys Happiness in Education Conference
THEME
I had the opportunity to present on the topic of happiness at Fontys University during their International Week in March 2019.
We’ve entered into an era of human-centered design that places the importance upon humans as users of design products and processes. We aim to make services, processes and products please and satisfy our target persona or audience.
However, we live in a time that is in need of much more radical change, change that will influence generations to come. We need to make decisions that recognize intervening on systems that are creating toxic results on our planet, well-being, and social responsibility.
We need to move beyond the user and enter a space that allows us to think beyond innovating on already developed systems. We need to enter a place of disruption that will allow us to build systems from scratch that are not serving the common good of the planet, our well-being, and social responsibility for the future.
APPROACH
An approach to creatively understand how to intervene in the world to enact positive social and environmental change that innately influences our need for usefulness and a fulfilling life. Our world will require more than innovation to solve the problems we are facing now and also the problems we will be facing in years and generations to come.
Innovation is iterative change to an established status quo, however disruption is the rewriting of scripts that make the old ways obsolete.
It means stripping ourselves of preconceived ideas and building from ground zero. Completely reinventing how systems work to service our world and create bigger end goals that ensure a happy planet, happy people, and happiness globally.
THE WORKSHOP
Identifying and acting upon how we can intervene in the systems around us in very disruptive and critical ways. Rewriting what we know from scratch. The basis of the workshop used cluster mapping and information design tactics to map systems we know and then identify nodes or connections where we can disrupt in order to create radical change.
