Whole Life: Designing Life After Covid-19

This initiative intends to help individuals and organizations be better prepared for future epidemics than was the case when COVID-19 emerged. It will help public health officials form plans for a rapid response to the first signs of an epidemic, government leaders differentiate between science and myth about fast and effective action, and the public realize that pandemics can arrive at any time and are probably the natural disaster that causes the most harm. Our premise is that organizations can design the objects, services, and environments that support people in daily life with built-in abilities to detect viruses and other pathogens.

 

From Data to Meaning

This initiative has three interconnected projects: Remember Now, Sketch Tomorrow, and Prototype Futures.

  • Remember Now is an ethnographic study to gather data about how people in different parts of the world are coping with the COVID-19.
  • Sketch Tomorrow is a series of ideation sessions where experts use their experience and data from Remember Now to quickly explore new organizations, services, and strategies to make a less toxic world. This process follows a similar logic to the sketches designers use to explore new products.
  • Prototype Future includes experts in implementing bold policies to plan the best ways of implementing the sketches.
At the moment, we are collecting data from over 1,000 households in 15 different countries to learn how people worldwide are coping with this pandemic. Together, these three projects should bridge the gap between data owned and controlled by research teams and organizations, and meaning, which is owned and controlled by people. Treating this initiative as a data system that leads to surprising insights and then using this to create prototypes that ensure the ideas are meaningful to those using the interventions will increase the speed and relevance of the work.

We are working with faculty and their student teams from leading universities around the world. As of mid-November, the faculty are:

Chujit Treerattanaphan, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Praima Israsena Na Ayudhya, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Kevin Denney, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Carol-Ann Courneya, The University of British Columbia, Canada
David Dunne, University of Victoria, Canada
Jan Yager, University of California San Francisco, USA
Guillermina Noël, Lucerne University, Switzerland
Germán Valenzuela, Talca University, Chile
Jorge Camacho, Center for Design, Cinema, and TV
Marcos Almaguer, Monterrey Institute of Tecnology, Mexico
Sepideh Yousefzade, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Elena Cavagnaro, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Francesca Zampollo, Online School of Food Design, Italy
Abubakar Ismail, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
Binta Zakari Bello, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
Aminatu Umar Makarfi, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
Bayero Muhammad Tukur, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
Leandro Mauricio Porras Molina, Francisco Marroquín University, Guatemala
Alessandra Cristina Santos Akkari, Mackenzie Presbiterian University, Brazil
Larissa Ferrer Branco, Mackenzie Presbiterian University, Brazil
Maria Thereza de Moraes Gomes Rosa, Mackenzie Presbiterian University, Brazil
Marlucy Godoy Ricci, Mackenzie Presbiterian University, Brazil
Sameer Tendolkar, NMIMS School of Design, India
Manisha Phadke, NMIMS School of Design, India