Website of Neil Goldberg
Writing a memoir at the same time as developing materials for a new course in design leadership has taken what is typically a mundane task for me – introducing myself to my students – in a surprising direction. I needed to practice what I preach; – design and story-telling go hand in hand. I needed to tell them my story – an authentic account of why I got into design, and how I landed up teach a course about design leadership.
I just discovered a fabulous podcast about Design Leadership which is a topic that is slowly getting the attention it deserves. Two industry veterans – particularly at the service design/experience design edge talk through challenging topics that shed lights on what the real world issues are that we’ll need to deal with if we try to design a better world.
https://overcast.fm/+aWTyCZt6o
This was brought to my attention by my friend Stephen Taylor, a service designer with the Atlanta, GA based firm Harmonic.
Social movement are inherently creative. We are in such a moment now and the streets of Oakland are an art gallery that has surfaced an energy that has been invisible to me until now. Its alive. It’s diverse. Its expressive of the moment and of the universal urgency for dignity and agency. It is beautiful.
“The Torah of Design – Living with Creative Intention” is an hour long workshop that is three things in one – design-thinking, Torah, and Mussar. I recorded this on May 29th 2020 at a Zoom event for Shavuot at Chochmat Halev, the Jewish community that I am part of in Berkeley, CA.
The following paragraph is the description I sent to participants:
“l present design-thinking method as a life-coaching framework (similar to many “design your life” books and courses available). Briefly we’ll discuss what the 4 big creation stories from the Torah teach us about creative agency and we’ll relate the “middot” (measures) of Mussar to the soul practices needed to be a designer of an intentional life. Through a demo I’ll (try) give an experiential understanding of the power of intentional creativity to living a life that brings you alive.”
Time didn’t allow me to get to the demo of the life-coaching part that I intended for the workshop.
You can view the presentation deck that I used by clicking below.
I have just begun my second semester teaching an Innovation by Design course in the College of Business at San Francisco State University. In it we practice the rudiments of design thinking to which I add an element of “design consciousness” that underpins “conscious design. Design consciousness is the beliefs and values that we bring to any purposeful creative effort. Our design consciousness has a defining impact on what we design, how we design it and what impacts our designs have, intended on otherwise. I am including it because we are rarely aware of many of the beliefs and values that underpin our design activities. This lecture introduces a framework for thinking about design consciousness and, at the end, I give the students an assignment to reflect on their own design consciousness.
(There is a break from 46:50 to 52:00 that you can skip)
