Design Lab with Bon Ku

How can better designed healthcare tools decrease clinician burnout? Why does the EHR suck so bad? What are ways to improve data visualization in the medical record? As a hospitalist and Associate CMIO at Penn Medicine, Dr. Subha Airan-Javia recognized the daily challenges clinicians faced due to inefficient workflows and poorly designed technology. Knowing there was a better way she decided to pu...

Can the practice of writing make better physicians? Why are stories essential to the practice of Medicine? How can you become a better storyteller? Alessandra Colaianni is a writer and head and neck surgeon who specializes in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer. She writes creative nonfiction essays about the world of surgical training, medical ethics, medical education, and illnes...

What is the relationship between smell and memory? Can our sense of smell improve our emotional health? Should a smell check be a part of our regular check-ups? Nancy Rawson is Vice President of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, and holds a master’s degree in nutrition from the University of Massachusetts and a doctorate in biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her career spans academia an...

What is a design anthropologist? How can design reframe challenges in global health? Why does Montreal have outdoor staircases? Tracy Johnson is a Design Anthropologist at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she ​ leads a portfolio of interdisciplinary investments, integrating human-centered design with the social and behavioral sciences and data analytics to bring about a deeper understandi...

What is the role of culture when designing for humans? How can you create a culture of creativity? Do you always need to do research before designing? Phnam is a partner at Nonfiction, a San Francisco-based design firm that turns science fiction into reality for a better future. She is a French industrial designer, futurist and aerospace architect. Her focus is on designing and developing cutting-...

As Director of Building Design & Building Performance at ICON, Melodie Yashar oversees the architectural direction of ICON’s built work as well as the performance of ICON’s building systems. Collaborating across technology and construction teams, the goal of Building Design & Building Performance at ICON is to deliver optimally-performing structures enabled by 3D-printing and shift the paradigm of...

This is part 3 of a special 3-part virtual talk in partnership with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University. Architects are reimagining the places where we live, work, and gather. Many modern indoor spaces are sealed shut and climate-controlled. The pandemic prompted people to open the windows, move activities outside, and control the flow...

Is surfing the most addictive sport? How did surfing help a writer with a substance use disorder enter into recovery? What activities can be a form of therapy for you? Thad Ziolkowski is a lifelong surfer, person in recovery, and the author, most recently, of The Drop: How the Most Addictive Sport Can Help Us Understand Addiction and Recovery, which was published in 2021 by Harper Wave, an imprint...

How does an architect end up working on Obamacare? What are the differences between designing with data and physical materials? Why does the government need more designers? Sha Hwang is COO and co-founder at Nava, a public benefit corporation working to make government services simple, effective, and accessible. Founded as a part of efforts to help fix HealthCare.gov, Nava now works on projects ac...

What is an open source vaccine? How are vaccine and beer production similar? Are D.I.Y. vaccine starters kits the best strategy to vaccinate the world? Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi is an internationally recognized tropical and emerging disease vaccinologist, global health advocate and co-creator of a patent-free, open science COVID-19 vaccine technology that led to the development of Corbevax, a COVID...

This is part 2 of a special 3-part virtual talk in partnership with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University. Designers are working quickly to protect humans from illness. At the start of the pandemic, designs for personal protective equipment (PPE) had changed very little for nearly fifty years. In the face of alarming shortages, the global...

Is the everyday world making us sick? Can we hold companies responsible for the health consequences of their products and services? How do you design health into the operating systems of our civilization? Steve Downs is a co-founder at Building H, a project to build health into everyday life. Steve, his Building H co-founder Thomas Goetz, and other collaborators are growing a community of entrepre...

Allan Chochinov is an educator, writer, speaker, and advocate for the power and capacity of design. He is the Founding Chair of the MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and a partner of Core77, the design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts since 1995. Allan has moderated and led workshops and symposia at venue...

How does design transform organizations? Why does diversity fuel innovation? What happens when you let curiosity guide you? Kevin Bethune is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a "think tank" that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach. Kevin's background spans engineering, business and design in equal proportion over his 20+ year career,...

Can you microdose fun into your life? How can we become less addicted to our phones? Will injecting more fun into our daily lives make us more creative? Dubbed “The Marie Kondo of Brains” by The New York Times, Catherine Price is an award-winning science journalist and speaker and the author of books including The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, and How to Break Up with Your Phone. She is a...

This is part 1 of a special 3 part virtual talk in partnership with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University. Pandemic-inspired service designers are bringing health care to communities. COVID-19 forced health care providers to quickly ramp up existing services (telemedicine) and set up entirely new ones (mobile testing and vaccination sites...

Did you know that a graphic designer created the first over-the-counter pregnancy test? How did giving birth become medicalized? What does culturally appropriate care look like? Michelle Millar Fisher has worked as an educator, curator, and historian in universities and museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the MFA Boston where she is curre...

Why have the designs of motherhood remained hidden? What can we learn from the design history of pessaries? How can we expand the definition of motherhood? Zoë Greggs (she/they) is a Black, queer, femme, nonbinary Philadelphia-based artist and non-profit administrator. She holds a BFA from the University of the Arts with a concentration in printmaking and book arts. In 2020, they participated in A...

In this show we explore how can design help you live better. Does living in a well-designed city make you healthier? How can surfing increase your creativity? Have you ever wondered why hospitals are so ugly? Bon Ku is a physician and an avid fan of design, food, surfboarding and Medicine. In each episode of DESIGN LAB, Bon and his guests tell stories about how the worlds of design, art, science a...

How do diseases shape design? What does a low cost prototype look like? Where can you view the face masks that Naomi Osaka wore during the U.S. Open? Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Her exhibitions include “Design & Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics,” “Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master,” “Face Values: Understanding A...

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 for...

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 au...

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...

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 participatio...

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, sh...