design lab michele morris greg horowitt scale

Smart Cities: Urban Innovation & Design Thinking

Smart Cities: Urban Innovation & Design Thinking

Smart Cities: Urban Innovation & Design Thinking

UC San Diego Design Lab Associate Director Michèle Morris recently joined venture capitalist, entrepreneur and author Greg Horowitt at a “Community Fireside Chat” hosted by SCALE. SCALE is a startup accelerator that provides funding to exceptional companies developing technology for urban innovation. SCALE partners with prominent local city officials, universities and corporations to provide “smart citizens” with the resources to tackle urban problems.

“Design thinking is critical to creating smart city solutions,” said Michèle Morris. “Design thinking involves group thinking for a multi-faceted approach that really looks to find the root of city problems.” The talk was held at one of San Diego’s premier co-working spaces, Downtown Works, and moderated by Daniel Obodovski, co-author of The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things, a book about the upcoming technology revolution. Mr. Obodovski was formerly the director of business development at Qualcomm and director of strategic marketing and business development at Motorola Germany. During the event, Morris and Horowitt helped clarify how startups can utilize human-centered design thinking and smart-city solutions to address urban problems.

The talk also included a lively discussion on how human-centered design can be applied to smart city technologies such as sensors, networks, data analytics, machine learning and robotics. Morris and Obodovski explained how these technologies are leading to new “smart city solutions” for transportation, parking, sustainability, climate action and open data city projects and proposals.

“We were thrilled to have Michèle Morris and Design Lab join us to help further our understanding of urban innovation and design,” said Obodovski. “At SCALE, we set our focus on helping entrepreneurs and start-up companies get to the next level in the urban innovation space. We believe we are at the perfect moment in time to bridge the divide between talent and technology, by providing support to entrepreneurs who are bringing great ideas to urban innovation,” he added.

UC San Diego Design Lab Associate Director Michèle Morris recently joined venture capitalist, entrepreneur and author Greg Horowitt at a “Community Fireside Chat” hosted by SCALE. SCALE is a startup accelerator that provides funding to exceptional companies developing technology for urban innovation. SCALE partners with prominent local city officials, universities and corporations to provide “smart citizens” with the resources to tackle urban problems.

“Design thinking is critical to creating smart city solutions,” said Michèle Morris. “Design thinking involves group thinking for a multi-faceted approach that really looks to find the root of city problems.” The talk was held at one of San Diego’s premier co-working spaces, Downtown Works, and moderated by Daniel Obodovski, co-author of The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things, a book about the upcoming technology revolution. Mr. Obodovski was formerly the director of business development at Qualcomm and director of strategic marketing and business development at Motorola Germany. During the event, Morris and Horowitt helped clarify how startups can utilize human-centered design thinking and smart-city solutions to address urban problems.

The talk also included a lively discussion on how human-centered design can be applied to smart city technologies such as sensors, networks, data analytics, machine learning and robotics. Morris and Obodovski explained how these technologies are leading to new “smart city solutions” for transportation, parking, sustainability, climate action and open data city projects and proposals.

“We were thrilled to have Michèle Morris and Design Lab join us to help further our understanding of urban innovation and design,” said Obodovski. “At SCALE, we set our focus on helping entrepreneurs and start-up companies get to the next level in the urban innovation space. We believe we are at the perfect moment in time to bridge the divide between talent and technology, by providing support to entrepreneurs who are bringing great ideas to urban innovation,” he added.

UC San Diego Design Lab Associate Director Michèle Morris recently joined venture capitalist, entrepreneur and author Greg Horowitt at a “Community Fireside Chat” hosted by SCALE. SCALE is a startup accelerator that provides funding to exceptional companies developing technology for urban innovation. SCALE partners with prominent local city officials, universities and corporations to provide “smart citizens” with the resources to tackle urban problems.

“Design thinking is critical to creating smart city solutions,” said Michèle Morris. “Design thinking involves group thinking for a multi-faceted approach that really looks to find the root of city problems.” The talk was held at one of San Diego’s premier co-working spaces, Downtown Works, and moderated by Daniel Obodovski, co-author of The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things, a book about the upcoming technology revolution. Mr. Obodovski was formerly the director of business development at Qualcomm and director of strategic marketing and business development at Motorola Germany. During the event, Morris and Horowitt helped clarify how startups can utilize human-centered design thinking and smart-city solutions to address urban problems.

The talk also included a lively discussion on how human-centered design can be applied to smart city technologies such as sensors, networks, data analytics, machine learning and robotics. Morris and Obodovski explained how these technologies are leading to new “smart city solutions” for transportation, parking, sustainability, climate action and open data city projects and proposals.

“We were thrilled to have Michèle Morris and Design Lab join us to help further our understanding of urban innovation and design,” said Obodovski. “At SCALE, we set our focus on helping entrepreneurs and start-up companies get to the next level in the urban innovation space. We believe we are at the perfect moment in time to bridge the divide between talent and technology, by providing support to entrepreneurs who are bringing great ideas to urban innovation,” he added.

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San Diego And Tijuana Selected As 2024 World Design Capital

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US-Mexico Border Cities Win Historic Designation to Become First Binational Design Capital

SAN DIEGO-TIJUANA - Today the World Design Organization (WDO) announced the San Diego-Tijuana region has been selected as the World Design Capital (WDC) for 2024.

The selection of the San Diego-Tijuana joint bid makes it the first binational World Design Capital in WDO history. While the designation is for both cities as a united region, San Diego is now the first U.S. city ever to receive the WDC designation. Tijuana is the second city in Mexico to hold the title, following Mexico City in 2018.

"We did it!" said Don Norman, founder of UC San Diego’s Design Lab (now retired) and co-founder and Board advisor to the Design Forward Alliance (DFA). "Designers, city officials, and organizations in both the Tijuana and San Diego regions collaborated to make our binational community the World Design Capital for 2024. It shows the power of design as a way of thinking, to address important societal issues, and as a source of innovation for companies, organizations, and educational communities at all levels. We have built a permanent coalition of our communities to address civic and climate challenges, to grow our industrial sectors, and to support a strong culture of cross-border design."

Design and Innovation Building Grand Opening: UCSD’s front door to community collaborations

In November of 2021, the UC San Diego Design Lab unveiled their long-awaited new home in the recently constructed Design and Innovation Building, or as it is affectionately referred to, the DIB. The DIB will serve as a hub for academia, industry and community innovators to participate in design events, lectures, and other working partnerships within the design community that aim to create human-centered solutions to the complex problems facing our region and beyond. The grand opening of the DIB showcased the potential for such gatherings, boasting the presence of organizations like the UCSD Design Co., Girls Who Code, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, to name a few. Such groups showcased current and past projects to the students, professors, and industry leaders in attendance. 

The opening of the DIB marks a momentous occasion in the history of the Design Lab, as the building itself, which is a multi-use environment bringing together multiple disciplines under one roof, represents the journey and philosophy at the heart of the Design Lab’s mission–making UC San Diego a world center for design research and education that fosters a new way of thinking, which addresses the core issues with a systems point of view, and emphasizing the role of people in the complex systems of the modern world.

Opinion: The World Design Capital is more than an award. It’s a chance to solve problems.

San Diego Union Tribune Op-Ed by Tad Parzen and Eddie Matthews*
*Eddie Matthews is also a Designer-in-Residence with the UCSD Design Lab

Design and discovery are in our San Diego-Tijuana region’s DNA. We are risk-takers, a nimble community that has long fostered life-changing design and innovation to improve the world, save lives and sustain critical resources. San Diego-Tijuana has long been the epicenter of a binational design revolution.

In this inclusive spirit, a cross-border community of designers, activists and community leaders have joined together to submit the first binational bid to the World Design Organization to name San Diego-Tijuana the World Design Capital in 2024. This designation recognizes cities for their effective use of design to drive economic, social, cultural and environmental development, and showcases best practices in sustainable, human-centered policy and innovation.

Every member of this region has something to contribute and the World Design Capital will be the centralized place for these binational design contributions, making the border immaterial by making design visible.
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Design Lab member and UC San Diego Cognitive Science professor Benjamin Bergen was featured as an expert in "History of Swear Words," a new Netflix comedy series exploring the usage of and science behind cursing. Bergen is the author of "What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves" and "Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning"

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"I think we have to start over. And we may need very separate networks. The notion that there is one network that is for everything maybe is wrong. We used to have separate networks. They were, in fact, determined by the technology. Hence radio was different than telephones, which was different than television, which was different than printed books. And today we say, “Nah, it’s all information,” and that this isn’t that neat, because on the internet you can do all of that. Well, OK. But the content is really what’s important, not the technology or the way it’s distributed. And I would love to find a different scheme where people are controlling their own data." - Don Norman
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