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Design Thinking

How to fight corruption with meraki

2015, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

In 2015, with Paulo Emediato, we played ‘The Corruption Game’ with Belo Horizonte’s vibrant creative community: Mesha. This workshop helps reclaim agency by building empathy with the inner predator. All of this, applying empathy through a unique and humane methodology.

Travel with me to 2015, taste how a crisis triggers creativity, see how design thinking enhances this transformation and remember that we can always reveal light from darkness.

The Bauhaus effect

A human centered time travel from Bauhaus to Design Thinking

In the 1920´s, after World War I, Germany was in ruins. Artists and designers of the Bauhaus school of though, created by the architect Walter Gropius at Weimar, were overturned to transform and rebuild German society through design. Here, students were encouraged to experiment across different disciplines: painting, carpentry, printmaking, dance, lettering, among others with the aim of creating objects and art to serve people.

Empathy for others was the engine that ignited the flame of this school of design and is the same reason why Design Thinking is a  tool that helps organizations be more innovative and purpose-driven. Two mindsets that encourage us to be integrative and radically interdisciplinary.

“Form follows function”

When we have an idea or a form that allegedly comes from necessity or desire, we think about all the details that would help solve that challenge, but usually we only have our point of view, our background and education to generate the solution. Then, when we sell or share our idea to others we realize that we have missed a lot of vital information from them. That’s why is so important, from the beginning of the design process, to step outside  from our beliefs and experiences and be willing to listen, see, and learn from other people. Communication and collaborative work is the key to design that idea or thought that functions to every member of the project or community.

Interdisciplinary work means bringing together the best of all the members of your team, their education, knowledge, virtues and experience in an organized and methodical way to resume the assets of each member into the final product, idea or policy. A good communication strategy is the key to get your team through the path of transforming a knot into an idea that changes the world, just as the Bauhaus School did, just as we do through Design Thinking.

We realized that design’s not an intellectual or material issue but something inseparable from everyday’s life in a civilized society

Walter Gropius