Design Lab with Bon Ku

This week we talk about how real food is the best medicine. Dan Barber is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, and the author of The Third Plate. A fierce advocate for sustainable, ethical farming and cooking, Barber’s opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in The New York Times and other publications. He also co-founded Row 7 Seed Company, which...

This week we talk about simplicity as a strategy. Howard Belk pulls double duty as Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of leading global brand experience consultancy Siegel+Gale, which he claims is one (or two) of the six best jobs on the planet. He is an entrepreneur who helped a 50-year-old branding firm reestablish industry leadership by embracing its disruptor legacy. Since h...

This week we talk about designing for diverse perspectives  Katie is a designer and researcher; she is a design consultant and Senior Research Associate at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design which is an Inclusive design Centre based at the Royal College of Art in London. Katie is neurodivergent (Dyslexic and Dyspraxic) and for the last 16 years has collaborated with neurodivergent people to explor...

This week we talk about designing human-centered care, at home. Gregory Snyder is a clinical innovator and physician executive leading technology-enabled care delivery models to improve healthcare quality and safety. He is a graduate of Princeton University, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, Brigham & Women’s Hospital Internal Medicine residency, and Harvard Business Sc...

This week we talk about the story of nursing how it has shaped our world. Sarah DiGregorio is the critically acclaimed author of Early: An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human and Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World. She is a journalist who has written on health care and other topics for the New York Times, the Washington Post...

Today we talk about building a healthy relationship with the ocean. Helen Czerski was born in Manchester. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London. As a physicist, she studies the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the ocean to understand their influence on weather and climate. Helen has been a regular presenter of BBC TV science do...

This week, Bon talks about redesigning medicine with Will and Kristin Flanary (aka the Glaucomfleckens)! Knock Knock, Hi! Is a podcast and YouTube series hosted by Will and Kristin Flanary (aka the Glaucomfleckens). I had the chance to join this famous duo on their show and chat about redesigning medicine. We talk about why fax machines are still a thing, how I can die happy if we figure out how t...

This week we talk about The New Designer: rejecting myths and embracing change. Manuel Lima is an internationally renowned designer and author of three bestsellers that have been translated into several languages: The Book of Circles, The Book of Trees, and Visual Complexity. Named “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds” by Creativity magazine, he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Ar...

This week we talk about designing real self-care versus faux self care. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, MD is a psychiatrist and author, the founder of Gemma, the digital community focused on women’s mental health and equity; and a contributor to The New York Times. Her new book, REAL SELF-CARE: Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble-Baths Not Included, has been featured on Good Morning America, NPR’s Code Switch and...

This week, we are talking about designing better dementia care. Sandeep Jauhar has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. His latest book, "My Father’s Brain," published in April 2023, is a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. In the book, Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward u...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing for health equity. Adriane Ackerman is a community convener, strategic innovator and life-long rabble-rouser. She currently directs several programs at the Pima County Health Department in Southern Arizona, including a $4 million grant program from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health to Advance Health Liter...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing open source medical software.  Maya Friedman is a digital product design lead and art director who designs solutions for unmet needs in the health tech and femtech spaces. She currently leads the user experience, visual and sonic design for Tidepool's FDA-cleared, automated insulin dosing mobile application, Tidepool Loop. She is also the fo...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing hope in American medicine. Dr. Ricardo Nuila works as an internal medicine doctor and hospitalist in his hometown of Houston. It’s hard for him to imagine practicing medicine anywhere else but at a safety-net hospital, where he focuses on a person’s healthcare problem. His experiences as a doctor gives his writing its fuel. Ricardo focuses m...

In this episode, we talk about what a body can do and how we meet the built world. Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, professor at Olin College of Engineering, and the creator and host of the Sketch Model podcast. She is the author of What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, published by Riverhead/Penguin Random House. It was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by NPR and...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing with biology. Dr. Ritu Raman is the d’Arbeloff Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her lab is centered on engineering adaptive living materials for applications in medicine and machines. Professor Raman has received several recognitions for scientific innovation, including being named a Kavli Fellow and a Ford Fellow by the...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing a good death. Dr. Sunita Puri is the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, where she is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. She completed medical school and residency training in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco followed by a fellows...

How can revolt against industrialized healthcare? Can we design careful and kind care? Dr. Dominique Allwood is a healthcare leader with almost 20 years of experience working as a medical doctor and public health physician in healthcare in the UK. She enjoys variety and juggling multiple roles and is currently Chief Medical Officer of UCLPartners, a health innovation partnership across a populatio...

Today, we are going to take a deep dive into the promising therapy of fecal transplantation Saffron Cassaday directed her first documentary feature film called Cyber-Seniors in 2014. The film followed a group of senior citizens as they learned about the internet from teenage mentors and the connections made both on and offline. The film has been broadcast in 40 countries including on PBS, Netflix...

Learn how behavioral designers are tackling the most complex health challenges on the planet.  As a founder and lead strategist at Common Thread, Sherine Guirguis turns data into powerful narratives. She brings over two decades of experience leading large-scale behaviour change strategies to tackle public health crises. She’s helped rid the world of polio, mitigate COVID-19, end West Africa’s Ebol...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing harm reduction. Dr. Kimberly Sue is an Assistant Professor of Medicine with the Program in Addiction Medicine (Division of General Internal Medicine) at Yale University School of Medicine. She is the former Medical Director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, New York, NY, which strives to improve the health and wellbeing of people who...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about design through the lens of policy. Rick Griffith is a British-West-Indian collagist, writer, letterpress printer, designer, and optimist futurist based in Denver, Colorado. As a designer, he works at the intersection of programming, policy, and production. He is a columnist for PRINTmag.com, the two-time programming chair for the AIGA National Confere...

Can hospital care be delivered at home? Will the hospital of the future only consist of ERs, ORs and ICUs? Dr. Helen Ouyang is an emergency physician, Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Columbia University, and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has written for The Atlantic, Harper’s, Los Angeles Times, New York, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Po...

Health is not a luxury product. But why have our systems commodified health? How might we design health into our everyday lives? Joanne Cheung is an artist and designer. She formerly served as a Director of Systems Change at the global design firm IDEO. In her ongoing effort to amplify the public impact of research and policy through design, she spearheaded creative collaborations with institution...

What role does creativity play in the field of medicine? Vidya Viswanathan is a writer and primary care pediatrician in Philadelphia. She founded Doctors Who Create, a community focused on medicine and creativity, and led the Creativity in Medicine conference in Philadelphia in 2019. She has published longform journalism and narrative nonfiction in outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, The Philadel...

Did you know that the healthcare industry is the largest employer in the U.S.? Learn how an economist turned healthcare entrepreneur is redesigning how we train the workforce of tomorrow.  Dr. Norma Padrón is a Latina and first-gen economist with a doctorate in health economics who founded EmpiricaLab—a company specializing in peer–to–peer training within healthcare organizations to accelerate the...