What does Human-Centered-Design tell me about Innovation?( for second class meeting))

In the reading, there is a story of the internship experience a student from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, had inspiring me a lot.

The student called Kara Pecknold was asked to design a website to connect rural Rwandan weavers with the world. However, she soon realized that in that area actually the weavers had little or no access to computers let alone the internet. So she was pondering there must be some other way to fulfill the function requirement the internet has. Then she started to really understand how local people live a life, how they connect to each other, and how they percept certain things appearing in their daily life. Since this stories mentioned in the reading material, I assume that Kara finally figured out a design that meets local’s needs in their own context very well.

It encourages me to think about the importance to develop proper climate for people to be innovative so that problems from their local area can be identified and solved. Because believe it or not, innovation has its nametag, either it’s regional, national, or international. It has to grow in certain soil that contains the problem triggering the start of it. If we are looking for someone can be called expert about some area, majority of them must be local to them to certain extent. So I am wondering if there is a proper environment that can foster awareness and innovative thinking, those people who are close to problems will be rather influential for identifying, solving problems for their own community.

We already find showcases in some area in India, China, and other countries, such as the $2000 car, some $60 fridge, $20 Nokia cellphone, and X-ray machine, and etc. People outside the country might never think about this kind of direction of innovation before, not because they aren’t smart enough, but because those who don’t live in India and China don’t suffer from being in crowded and low-income situation all the time. However, where is a problem, there will an opportunity, which is the way innovators view the world.  In this case, it becomes so essential to be able to identify what problem is. 

When there are many trends going on about innovation, there are so many opportunities for each country, and every region within it. So it’s very important to develop certain policy, innovation process, and rewarding recognition system accordingly to catch up with the demands for social innovation at a grass-root base. It’s also necessary to melt down some boundaries between different institutions, such as non-profit organization, for-profit cooperation, and government to encourage more people to participate in an innovation-creating era.