 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Darnell Jamal. I'm an education associate for transformation level programming here at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. We are so extremely to welcome you to the Q&A session on entering the 2021 National High School Design Competition. This is the sixth year of the competition. It's always a wonderful opportunity designed to solve real-world challenges. An enormous thanks to Shelby and Frederick Gaines for helping to make this year's competition possible. This year's theme is what would you design to create a healthier world? We're seeing designers respond to this very challenge today and I'm so pleased to have Ellen Lupton, a senior curator of contemporary design here at Cooper Hewitt and Rachel Smith, designer and founder of Design to Combat COVID-19 who will share more about the topic and answer all of your questions. If you haven't already, also check out the resources on our website CooperHewitt.org forward slash design competition to see more examples of how designers are responding. I actually want to start off today by sharing the designs of our 2020 winners. So if you give me one quick second I'm going to share my screen actually. I'm going to share my computer screen and as I scroll down if you actually go to the our homepage for the design competition you'll be sent to the about the competition main web landing page which afterwards you'll be able to scroll down to the bottom right and you'll see our list of past winners and also last year's design challenge. So I'm going to scroll and once you scroll down a little bit towards the right you'll be able to see all of the projects that were the finalists. Here we have uh yes and so I want to share today the designs of our 2020 winners and the finalists just to get your gears grinding a bit um and the 2020 challenge just to bring your attention to was what would you design to help more of us feel included and like this year they were asked to submit a design sketch and respond to a few questions. Remember you won't be judged on the quality of your sketch and there is no right or wrong answers or wrong way to respond to the questions. We're looking for your innovation ideas to design a healthier world for all. So here we have Priya and Anika who were the winners of last year's competition for their story project a project that allows users to create characters that look like them that will be inserted into diverse selection of storybooks. Next we have we have Skye who I'm sorry we have Skye who designed an accessible hygiene product dispenser particularly catering to the transgender community and lastly but not least we have we have Nyra in Nyra and Yara who presented their no-face app which was meant or is meant to tackle discrimination in hiring practices. We receive so many inspiring ideas and you can explore more from previous years online like I said if you go back to that about the competition for this year 2021 web landing page and you scroll down to the right you'll be able to see all the past winners as well and you'll be able to research their presentations and also I believe we recorded them and you can also go to YouTube and find previous competition presentations so you can see how they actually enacted their presentations in the process that they went through but we can't wait to see what you all submit this year and with that said I'm going to stop sharing my screen and with that said I want to welcome again Ellen and Rachel and you'll hear a little more about their about them and their work and then we'll jump into some questions and also feel free to use the chat throughout the presentation and share any questions in the Q&A box so first Ellen over to you. Thank you Tarnel that's fantastic I am really excited to be here I am a curator here at Cooper Hewitt let's get this nice and big for you. So I organize exhibitions and I write books about design and some of my things are in collaboration with doctors and healthcare professionals because one of our interests here at the museum is design for health so I worked with Dr. Bon Koo on publishing this book called health design thinking and I'm going to show you just a few examples from the book to give you a sense of the kinds of things that designers are doing out there in the world to make things better so these designers in in Britain asked why is it that there's so much violence in emergency departments and this is a real issue that people get very upset they get agitated they get tired of waiting and they get angry at the nurses and the doctors about waiting and so the design team decided that if they could just create better signs inside the emergency room that would explain to people what the process was and where they were in the process then people would have a better experience be happier and be less angry and I think this is such an inspiring idea because it's very low cost it's something that any hospital can create and it really speaks to the experience of people in the hospital and it's example of what designers call empathy which is putting themselves in the position of someone who's very vulnerable maybe they're injured or sick and they're afraid that the nurse has forgotten that they're there and they have these great terrible feelings of anxiety and so these very simple signs really help people to to feel better and to feel safe in the hospital a question that hospitals and doctors are asking right now is how do we deliver COVID-19 testing and vaccines to vulnerable communities and so one of the solutions for that is to bring testing and vaccination to people where they live instead of expecting them to to get on the bus or the subway and go a great distance and find a pharmacy or a hospital that has the service that they need so these architects in New York have created a system that uses school buses to drive into neighborhoods and offer people services another big problem in healthcare is waste so think about how many masks you've thrown away or how many rubber gloves you've seen your parents throw away this is a huge problem and so some designers are specifically concerned with how can we waste less material in creating things like masks or the scrubs that nurses and doctors wear in the hospital so this wonderful designer Danielle Eisner has created a whole system for sewing clothes with zero waste and so she's designed a whole pattern system for how you cut things like sleeves and pant legs and the pockets and all the parts of the garment so that none of the fabric gets thrown away and she's applied this to designing scrubs which are needed by by healthcare workers and other frontline workers so I hope you'll be inspired by a few of these ideas and just to see the incredible creativity that the designers are bringing to the field of design and health wonderful it's so inspiring and you know just not to waste any you know not a second of time we're going to move right into Rachel's presentation presentation before we move into the Q&A session thanks so much I am so excited to be here you know it was in high school when I actually started first meeting designers and had mentors and that's really when the light bulb went off for me so I'm super honored to be here and tell you a little bit more about myself let me go ahead and share my screen perfect so hey everyone I'm Rachel I'm the founder of Design to Combat COVID-19 I'm currently a product designer at Sillow previously I've been with Nordstrom in the Home Depot so through the organization I founded I've been able to get an organization of people to help deliver over a hundred thousand pieces of personal protective equipment oh let me see if I can let's see here um can can you see like the little bar that has like mute and stop video on that is that there or should I move it okay I'm assuming no we can't see okay perfect it's like blocking so I wanted to make sure thank you we've been able to create infographic posters for hospitals and more if you want to know more about us you can go to design to combatcovid19.com we've gained over 7000 global volunteers created infographics for hospitals assisted small businesses with marketing needs have helped those displaced by layoffs with resume mentorship guidance and more these are some doctors that received donated PPE from our organizations so how did we form overnight and what is Design to Combat COVID-19 well we're a community of creatives using whatever skills we have to address the devastating effects of the pandemic we're real creatives making real impact who are not here to ask permission but rather to fix broken systems so I remember sitting on my couch March 15th 2020 scrolling through the coronavirus news and seeing the effects it was having globally in communities it was absolutely devastating without a second thought I purchased a domain set up a website all in one night this overwhelming urge to help hit me I thought to myself I'm somebody who uses design to solve for problems so what could I do to help to solve for this I knew I couldn't be the only person feeling this way so what did I do I got on Twitter I sent some tweets out into the universe and overnight we had 100 folks join our community within a week over a thousand and that's when I knew we were on to something bigger than what I had originally anticipated we've had folks joined globally from Indonesia UK Canada Africa and more all stepping up to help create design solutions for those affected by the pandemic this group has been able to create PPE distribution models delivering over 100 000 pieces of PPE personal protective equipment to healthcare workers worldwide we've also created infographic posters for hospitals in Canada assisted small businesses with marketing needs have helped those with resume and mentorship guidance and so much more additionally we've partnered with other organizations such as fight pandemics and rebuild black businesses connecting them with our extensive global network to help those who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic so I'm going to go ahead and just show you some of the products and organizations that we incubated just a small snippet of what we've been able to create in terms of impact so one of our volunteers said she's a Guatemalan designer based out of Mexico City she actually teamed up with another organization called COVID response advisors to create a testing program to help safely reopen schools child care and other essential organizations and this is just one of an example of the designs that she was able to create and you can see her website there down below another product we incubated is safe healthy kind which was created by two of our volunteers an ICU physician and a software engineer this is a community created for healthcare workers to turn to each other for comfort and guidance through support chat forms having real in raw conversations to support each other another organization we incubated was the refugees care community our volunteer Rainey in Australia teamed up with the Distribute Aid volunteer in Norway to provide web page designs to support women in these refugee camps to help fund make and distribute a hundred thousand masks to people in need around the world however the biggest moment that sticks out to me was the formation and rapid growth of the second organization I co-founded masks for docs which incubated out of design to combat COVID-19 tech CEO Chad Loder came into our space asking about problem solving for the PPE shortage we initially started thinking about posters or web campaigns raising awareness around donating excess PPE to medical workers however it evolved into so much more we ended up building our own grassroots supply chain network to provide PPE from local communities to hospitals being a designer we had to think of the various ways we were able to send people to the site we had two main routes folks who wanted to donate and folks who wanted to help this is just a small example of some user flows we built overnight to help guide folks through the master docs ecosystem listening to our volunteers needs and getting the feedback from our users really helped us to determine how we were able to launch the 2.0 version of our site master docs gained over 5,000 volunteers and over 100 global chapters delivering PPE to the state these organizations as mentioned has delivered over a hundred thousand pieces of medical equipment to folks globally you know the biggest thing that I've learned from this experience is that you're never alone there's a community of folks out there who are willing to step up and are just as passionate as you are about making a difference even if it's virtually another big takeaway for me is being okay with ambiguity and pivoting your plan to solve for things that pop up in the moment that sometimes originally what you planned it may not work and sometimes you just have to go out with what works in the moment if it means getting people what they need if you want to find out more about design to combat COVID-19 our work and our impact you've been able to create you can check us out at design to combat COVID-19 or you can follow either of the twitters design to combat COVID-19 or mine over Rachel Smith to keep up with our progress and updates and that's it that's absolutely amazing I mean both of your presentations really spoke to this idea of empathy and this idea of connectivity that really has been challenged you know during this COVID era and really how designers are grappling with that I mean both Rachel as a designer yourself and Ellen of course being adjacent to designers and curating obviously exhibitions that exude these very interval aspects to our day-to-day so I commend both of you for the work that you've done and with that said you know I want to just jump right into different questions and I welcome everyone out there who's participating with us to link your questions upload your questions to the Q&A box it's on the bottom of your screen you'll see a little Q&A and then once you upload I'll be able to read it off but until they come in I like to kind of ask some of my own because myself I'm a fashion historian so this is like very much opposite angle from how I approach you know in general my entire educative outlet but so I'm going to be asking questions that may come off as rudimentary but I hope that you know they do allude to some great conversation but the first one I had was what are some of the foundational principles both of you work by before even thinking about taking on a design project or for you Ellen that you've seen other designers have within their their work like what are those kind of foundational principles that you have or see great well a really important question to ask right away is who is this product for and that means thinking about the human beings who are going to interact with your product and then you have to ask who is excluded by your product and that's just as important and that was really the whole theme of last year's competition right how to create a more inclusive world through design and that's something that we'll be looking at when Cooper Hewitt reviews all your amazing proposals it's like is this inclusive does it bring people together or does it keep some people on the sideline yes 100% to that for me you know being a designer I'm also a user experience designer meaning you know I design for folks experiences research is absolutely key in things that I like to do when I'm designing or thinking about a product or anything I want to create really as Ellen mentioned who's going to be using this are there gaps within the audience of people who are be going to be using this but also what's existing out in the world you know with design a combat COVID-19 we were working so rapidly that we didn't realize for instance back in April if you were to Google COVID testing locations they're really it was so hard to find anything in our group we tried to create one of the first sites it was called covid testing sites calm but what we didn't realize is there were so many other folks ramping up doing the same thing and if we just kind of like stopped took a moment and said okay are there other folks that are doing this like can we connect to them can we do the research see what's already out there we probably could have banned together and and worked more quickly so it's doing the research it's seeing what's already existing but also saying you know how can you improve the thing if it is existing or how can you make it better oh go ahead don't stop me oh I was just sure if Ellen wanted you want to say something I mean I guess it's like one of those things where you know both of you are pointing to this idea of like audience make sure there is audience driven that it's it's it's usable because I do feel like sometimes we do live in this bubble right like that some of us are used to certain privileges and in certain access to how things work and not realizing that there are communities that don't have that and within that I think that those are very important points that I hope that whoever's interested in you know submitting to this year's competition which I will definitely get into towards the end of the talk you know about submission and the process and a little bit into that but again we also I also want to direct all of you to out there to go to the website to kupaheward.org forward slash design competition to get the specific details on the the process but also what our intentions are this year you know the pandemics racial pandemics the health pandemics all the different pandemics that we're really enduring and that have been here throughout you know all of our existences are something that we're trying to truly tackle and we really want to see and feel inspired by the projects submitted and speaking of that when you begin thinking about different projects you know or seeing designers think about different projects you know you both talked about the importance of identifying the user audience but I guess like how do both of you take on that that aspect of the project like when you look at audiences are you is there a system that you kind of in that in order to find that audience or do you look at past work you know and say well this didn't necessarily fill what we wanted to and then we kind of take it from there and in order to tackle those or filling the void in terms of the audiences that you want to obtain that's a really great question ideally designers collaborate with the very people who are impacted by their work that may not be possible you're working at home you're in high school right that's a big a big ask but let's say you interview your grandmother or a neighbor about your idea and ask them for their feedback you know maybe they find it too high tech or it would be hard to understand or maybe they love it and have a great suggestion for making it more streamlined so working working with people is really important and we all just have to find the best way to do that given your resources yeah absolutely um talking to folks i think is absolutely important um understanding their experiences and documenting that right like maybe you know google has free surveys that you can send out so maybe you can get like a little email list and send it out to folks and say hey can i get your feedback on something that way you actually have you know a data point to reference saying okay it shows that you know six people enjoyed this experience you know four people and did have questions about this like where can i improve i think that's really important but also you know darnell you kind of touched on this a bit but it's also you know going outside of what you know so thinking about designing for other folks think about people who may not necessarily have your day to day experience an example i can bring to you all is you know spotify i'm pretty sure everyone's fairly familiar with this platform they actually have you know the app that you use but in other countries that may not have such a strong wi-fi connection they actually have a light version of the app which you know living i live in the los angeles area i have a pretty good wi-fi connection i've never had to think about that but are there opportunities or gaps where you can reach out to different folks who may have a different experience in you example being the spotify example um some people have a completely different app experience because they don't have a strong wi-fi signal so i think reaching out to folks documenting their experiences and just asking them and recording that information will definitely give you insight to whatever it is that you're trying to build or create amazing and and i think that it's it's it's like what you're saying well both of you said are just very just integral to like design fields across because i think that you know i feel like some disciplines get a little bit more you know bs than the other it's like it goes across it's for everyone um and in that is it possible to create design that everyone is satisfied with because i think that that's where like we're trying to not i guess no one's perfect and nothing is perfect but are there examples in both of your work or in other people's work that you've admired that you've seen like a very successful approach to kind of really um to really creating design that that that helps a larger mass amount of the population rather than a specific aspect of the population so an interesting example darnel is uh redesigning hospital gowns so a designer and a team set about to do this and they were very concerned about the needs of the patient to feel more dignity to feel more privacy to feel less exposed you know this is a already a very vulnerable situation being in the hospital but then they realized that they also had to account for the needs of the nurses so the gown had to it had to be easy to um access iv ports it had to be easy to take the gown on and off of somebody who might have difficulty moving their own body so when you start to think about a product is not having just one user but that it actually affects multiple people and i was intrigued by your reference darnel the fashion history because actually there's a lot of fashion related to health care and a lot of very practical issues in fashion around waste around accessibility around um body fit right be able to fit multiple bodies and not just an ideal body around expression of gender and imposing certain gender expressions on people so really every part of design is related to users um and i think that's a really fascinating way to to look at the objects and products that you buy and interact with is is who's using this and who isn't who's excluded did you all see the i mean maybe it's old news i just saw it this week but nike just came out with the um the shoe where you're just able to slip your shoe in without actually having to tie the laces that's incredible i mean imagine folks who aren't able to bend over or tie their shoes they can just slip it in and go that is an incredible opportunity and you know it's reaching out to folks who may have not been able to have that before it's it's amazing to see um yes you know i think we need to understand about different needs we need to be inclusive in our design meaning that we're considering a wide range of abilities and disabilities that we must consider for equitable use um again it requires empathy so it's thinking outside of yourself and your own experiences and really chatting with folks to understand their needs think about websites and if you if you're a website um designer you know there are some people who are blind who have to go on the site and then use a screen reader if you don't set up you know the site in a way where they're able to access information you know that you're not you're not being able to talk to them so these are things that you have to be thinking about moving forward is um you know equitable use for folks definitely right and i think you both hit on to something that even is related to the questions of you there are a few audience questions two of them are very much related to if the project submissions have to be related to COVID-19 and even though that that is what is on everyone's mind no like the the the task is how can we design to create a healthy world and that relates to so many different levels and even to both of your points you know from you know having accessibility to to to see a keyboard or to to to see a website or to even like weight or like health like there's a lot of different like avenues that we can go through in terms of how to design a product for whatever our needs are or whatever our wants are to to get to that healthier world so it doesn't have to be COVID related it doesn't have to be specific to the time well i mean obviously everything is specific to the time that we live in but it doesn't have to be specific to these kind of large large looming issues that are going on even though obviously you know that's what's on on a lot of our minds and i'm actually going to kind of skip around and there is a question here we have from Joe you know he teaches at sportswood high school at king university in new jersey and at king university in new in new jersey and his question is in the guidance for his high school students that he's going to be working with on this project for well submitting for the competition um and then it says how far into blue sky do we recommend we go and if we are discussing as a group any available technologies versus tech we wish existed how far of a swing should we go so i think that this question in general is about i think it's touching on how what ways do you all see educators roles in encouraging their students to really participate like how extreme like like what's the enthusiasm or what are like tips that you will all suggest and i know rachel specifically i know that we discussed you know prior to about your mentoring experience that like being a mentee and and being mentored and so i think that both of you can really kind of speak to this being that you both have been in the education space it's a great question um i think it i think a successful entry can use technology that doesn't exist anymore but it shouldn't just be a fantasy it's not the fairy godmother coming and turning a pumpkin into a carriage but we could think about for example ar or br becoming more accessible to people right and that's something just a few years out um and right now nobody's walking around with goggles or google glass but in five years they could and so i think if you want to develop something that relies on a future oriented technology just make sure it's addressing real problems and that it's addressing it in a way that speaks to real people just the way we've been talking about design's function yeah one thing that i've really noticed especially being a designer and i'm sure everyone else has felt this in the past year is what we knew before has gone completely out the window we've had to shift pivot things are all online now use the grocery stores different i don't know about you all but even when i'm well i don't know how many of you can drive it when i'm at the gas station and i'm pressing the buttons i don't even want to use my finger anymore i mean it's just the tiny things right and i think as a designer that's a really great or for students or for educators a really great opportunity to think to think about areas in your life now that have been affected that have what i call duct tape on it so an opportunity to fix something that may like be a little bit broken or that was that used to work before that maybe is not working in the environment that we live now i think there is just immense opportunity to think about the things that affect you in everyday life because of the changes we've had to make and really running with those ideas and thinking okay this is something that i know is not working so well how can i go ahead and maybe improve on this or think about it a bit more um you know if not now to kind of come up with new ideas and new opportunities than when we're all just figuring how does we go right so i would kind of think at least in my experience maybe something look around your life for something that has changed that you can improve yes this is about designing a healthier world i know mental health has been a huge impactful thing that's been happening for folks for me personally i you know um i have to take a walk midday sometimes just to get away from a screen so what what are some things that you recognize in your own life that you can go ahead and and speak to and maybe you know explore a bit more um that's just my two cents but yeah there's a lot of great opportunity it's great because you know one of my questions was also in inspiration like where do you where do you seek inspiration and you know i guess there's a lot there's a lot going on in our world right like there's a point too that is it's tough to kind of not move your your head away from right be a basis of your own inspiration but even in like a very fun quirky sense you know where do you find inspiration for things that not necessarily are are you know that we need you know but things that that you know amplify that that sense of joy where do you where have you seen you know designers take that inspiration ellen and where have you seen where have you taken that inspiration for yourself rachel i get inspiration from museums yeah libraries and netflix i recommend the netflix series called abstract which is all about great designers in every field solving problems for people amazing i love reading science fiction i love the writer tavia butler who writes about what could go wrong in the future and about the incredible heroic people kind of forging a new world in the future so there's so much inspiration in art and literature and and movies that a lot of it's free you know your your library you can check out ebooks for free you can get movies streaming for free there's just so much so much to be inspired by for me inspiration i would say pre-pandemic it was definitely traveling um last year wait no at the end of 2019 i'm like i don't know what year it is anymore it's just been like the whole long stream of time the end of 2019 my husband and i we we had the opportunity to go to japan and the one thing that i saw with every single train station and this is true you can google it every train station has a different song a tune that they play when the train arrives and the person who wrote those tunes for each train station encapsulated the personality of the train station i mean i've been on a million trains here in the us and i've never heard its own individual personality tone for when it arrived to me going outside of my normal experience especially when traveling really inspired me because it made me think wow this is such a different experience this culture embraces things so much differently than how i normally had grown up um in this day and age honestly ellen brought up a good point there's so many free resources online and also there's so many amazing networks online too i've met incredible designers i mean i'm not kidding from norway to australia as i mentioned two of our volunteers were able to join forces um fed who's guatemalan living in mexico city we've been working together to create projects as well just seeing how these different designers work and think virtually within their own cultures around the world has brought me so much inspiration because yes i'm familiar with the tools that i have and yes i know the access points that i have but how are other people thinking and how are other people working there are so many amazing design communities online that i definitely encourage you to check out because those connections uh they'll last a lifetime and there's so many cool people out there that you should just be chatting with and getting their insights from so yeah that's where that's where i find inspiration chatting with other folks yeah i love that i mean it it's interesting that you say because feel like you could pull it anywhere and ellen you brought up abstract you know scott gattage that's his that's his baby and he was one he won the national design award last year for communication design so definitely abstract has you know the full plethora of of a lot going on but um switching gears back to the competition specifically you both in your presentations talked a lot about you know empathy you talked about how design connects to uh really kind of like the psychological process of like feeling those feelings that people are are enduring and i'm curious to know you know and this is not you know this is in no way to bring down any design or anything like that but i i think it would be realistic to kind of put in perspective unsuccessful projects and why that was unsuccessful um because at the end of the day i feel like some of the greatest successes come out of failure and you know from your perspectives you know what are design projects that you know you've seen or were a part of that um that may have had an intention to reach out to you know creating a healthier world creating a more inclusive world or kind of these kind of big broad foundational principles and they didn't miss they didn't make the mark well a big example is last spring in new york city uh the government built emergency hospitals in uh sports stadiums in the civic center they brought the ship military ship called the comfort yes and these facilities had thousands of beds were thousands of patients and they were basically not used and this is because the hospitals had never figured out a way to actually transfer patients to those facilities and this is a huge waste of money and meanwhile there were certain hot spots throughout new york city like in the borough of queens where the hospitals were overflowing with patients and had no way to share them with other hospitals that had space terrible failure but it prompted new york city hospital systems to actually get together and create a system for communicating with each other so that if one hospital ran out of beds they could actually know where to send their patients so failure but then dealing with it and creating a new system designing a new system yeah i think as i mentioned earlier uh this pandemic just really revealed a lot of opportunity to fix broken systems uh one of those being as you can recall at the beginning of last year you know we had a mask shortage supply changed to simply were not able to keep up with the demand of folks who needed masks um you know so that's one of the reasons why our organization got up and started running masks for docs and we literally were asking people do you have a mask in your earthquake kit do you have it in your art supply can you give it to this local hospital because the supply chains they they just weren't able to keep up with this huge spike in demand overnight and not only was there a spike but then you had people you know price gouging a lot of shady things were happening um you know but i think we can learn from those experiences and say okay if something were to happen if we needed something in a large amount of quantity like how can we fix that so didn't work out so well but i think a lot of people stepped up to the plant not only our organization there are lots of PPE distribution organizations that basically are people like you and me who just stepped up and said we want to help like let's do this thing and they were able to come up overnight and really help make a difference yes we've been able to catch up yes you can go to your local hardware store or even a cbs and get a mask um but you know nine ten months ago i mean we didn't even have toilet paper so we were you know just kind of colon with it as we could um yeah there's there's opportunities for it um but it's been an experience definitely and then looking at that you know as the you know those who decide to submit their projects are you know we have specific guidelines but once they get past that first step and you know they're looking at all these kind of big picture things that are happening and they're narrowing down how they're going to enact it what's what tips can you both give those students who are in that process because this can be a bit overwhelming and I feel like this year is probably more overwhelming than recent because you know we're at home most of the most of everybody and you know all we have time to do is think we're out in public you know we can we have no choice but to kind of narrow things down automatically because we have a lot of things on our minds but now we have all this time to kind of like think about these processes and it can get overwhelming but what tips do you both can you both provide well I think Darnell your point is to take a big topic and find something specific so let's take a topic like vaccination there are many design challenges around vaccination one is building public trust in the science and that's a communication challenge and within that challenge there are different audiences there are communities who have historically felt misused by the medical system there are healthcare workers who are a very specific audience where there's a high percentage of vaccine deniers among healthcare workers so so even within just communicating the vaccine there's sub challenges or you might address something like how do you bring vaccination sites into communities right through mobile systems through using schools as as vaccination sites you know all kinds of solutions for that so the idea of taking a big problem and then finding something specific is a really good strategy for a design competition I'm glad you brought up the vaccination example Ellen because I see it happening I mean I hear stories of folks who are saying you know oh our freezer is broken who wants a shot like that shouldn't be happening there should be a better plan for that that aside tips to give it can be overwhelming thinking about all of the things that are happening in this day and age don't try to solve for all the things really try to narrow down and also be okay with ambiguity meaning be okay with the unknown right maybe you don't have all the answers right now maybe you know there's a big question mark in your head with this thing that you want to run with but what I would encourage you to do is speak to those people that will be using your product or using your design get feedback because when you start getting feedback from folks it's going to start those question marks are going to start disappearing a bit more and you're going to say ah okay they have this experience what can I learn from that so be okay with the unknowns in the beginning and also users needs change as well maybe at the beginning of your project you thought okay they need this experience to happen but towards the end you're like oh it's changing a bit it's okay to pivot learn from how you're learn from the research that you're getting from your users be okay with some question marks and just get feedback that's that's what I would encourage you to do but don't try to solve for all the things they can be overwhelming definitely you know have a focus point and then go from there and that's interesting and that brought me brings you to the next question you know when you who do you go to to prototype out your project like do you like and I'm curious to know like even like do you go to your family members I know Ellen obviously we both work at Cooper Hewlett there's like when it comes to the curatorial process there's a lot of committees there's a whole nine there's a lot of people that's in your business so that that we do know but if there's anyone I know if I'm involved in the curatorial education initiative I go to my mom you know that like because she is like very far removed from all of this what I do so I'm like does this make sense so I'm curious to know who do you both go to to try to prototype your ideas from like just a very foundational standpoint yeah I mean I think it's it's a really great opportunity to talk to as I mentioned before people who are not like you so maybe somebody who's older maybe who is someone who's younger maybe someone who doesn't identify as much as you do go to a neighbor go to a friend get as many a spectrum of as many folks as possible because you're going to get lots of different perspectives that's what I would encourage you to do and you'll get a lot of insights and gems that maybe you didn't even realize just by talking to these folks it's great yeah and you can also do role playing you know you can try to literally put yourself in the perspective of someone who doesn't have a phone for example and how would they access a particular service if they had to borrow someone else's phone or if they had to go walk to the place or if they had to use their landline you know I remember that so you know sometimes just imagining somebody else's circumstance can get you part of the way to understanding the issues and I just think that you know that those ways that you've both suggested are just amazing ways to just kind of just help the process grow and help the design and even do things that you may not even have thought of you know because other people's minds work differently sometimes you get like tunnel vision it was like this is what it is and then you ask somebody like well I don't I don't use it in that way this is not what I do so it definitely revolutionizes how products are created and how the design develops but with that said I know there was another question in Q&A this this this program will is recorded it's going to be on stream it's streaming now through YouTube so you will always be able to have it as a reference and for those who are educators that joined us that this is you know perfect to pass on you know to your students and we have you know plethora of resources here at Cooper Hewitt that we welcome you to to to look at but I'm just wrapping up this is really much all the time that we had for today but before we go you know I want I'm very excited to announce that Rachel will be our lead mentor for mentor weekend you know for those who are get to the advance of that that stage in the competition you know finalists will have the opportunity to work with Rachel and others to develop their designs in the next stage of the competition um so I just want to thank you thank you all out there for joining us and thank you Alan and Rachel for spending some time with us today really illuminating a nice path for everyone's journey and again this is on YouTube so it's permanent it's here forever and we look forward to being inspired by your designs for those who just had to submit you know again visit www.cooperhewitt.org forward slash design competition for details on how to enter and don't forget the entry deadline is the end of this month um on February 22nd um so definitely get on it time to get started if you haven't um you know the the the different requirements are actually not as strenuous as it comes across so you can definitely submit something and definitely look at the past winners and the past finalists to get that inspiration and beyond the competition we we hope that you'll continue to be inspired by design and explore all that we have to offer digitally while the museum is still closed for the moment but we're crossing our fingers that that will turn around soon including enriching design activities on the Smithsonian Learning Lab virtual field trips for kindergarten to 12th grade and much much more thank you all so much again and thank you again to our speakers um and have a blessed day thank y'all so much thank you Darnell that was really fun thank you i'm excited to see what everyone comes up with i am too