Perfection kills life.
The everydayness of life lulls us to sleep.
The everydayness of life tries to numb us from what’s really important.
The everydayness of life keeps us running on a never-ending treadmill.
You need a strategy, a lifeline to stop the treadmill and wake up to life.
What’s your strategy?
What’s your lifeline?
Is it working for you?
“Design, at its root, is creative problem solving,” explains Tad Hirsch, UW School of Art advisor. “The goal is to analyze a problem holistically, looking at an entire system of interactions and experiences, and then locate intervention points where design can have an impact. The design could be a physical object, software…it could be almost anything.”
Here’s what a few University of Washington designers have envisioned…
A woman forced into prostitution against her will, with no plan or resources for escape, opens a feminine product in the privacy of a restroom. Inside the packaging she finds information for getting help and the phone number of a dedicated hotline. She tears off the phone number—disguised as a fortune cookie “lucky number” to avoid suspicion—and flushes the rest down the toilet, per package instructions. She leaves the restroom with an important lifeline and hope for the future.
It’s a design scenario five UW graduate students recently developed called The Pivot Project, aimed at combating human trafficking. The project won the 2013 Design Ignites Change Idea Award and is a finalist in the Industrial Designers Society of America’s Ideas competition.
As a UW graduate myself, I couldn’t be more excited about the design idea these students have created. Innovative and life-saving.
What more can you ask for?
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Holmes
What are you curious about?
What is drawing your attention?
What have you learned this week?
Dive into it. Ask better questions. Get new answers.
It’s the only way to live fully alive…
Here’s what I believe. The need for safety and security is built into our DNA. It may look different and present itself in unique ways, but we all crave it. When we look out at the world and see attacks like the one at the Boston Marathon or the Boston Library it can shake our sense of safety and security. Beyond that, we’re seeing more crime closer to home. Even in my “safe” suburban community we’ve had a string of attempted break-ins and burglaries. It all can start to chip away at your sense of safety.
I turned to a home security expert for advice and this is what they shared…
Your home is more than just a place where you eat and sleep. It’s your buffer from the hustle and bustle of the outside world. It’s a place where you can kick back and relax after a long day. But most importantly, your home is a place where you can feel safe and secure with the people you love most.
Unfortunately, burglary has become quite the epidemic around the country. The latest FBI statistics show that there are roughly 2.2 million burglaries – or roughly one burglary every 15 seconds – annually in the U.S. While these numbers are quite alarming, the good news is that you can drastically minimize your chances of falling victim to burglary by taking just a couple of commonsense protective measures around your home. You’ll find some tips below that will help you do exactly that: Continue Reading…
