Fast Company has announced the honorees of its sixth World Changing Ideas Awards. World Changing Ideas is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. Among them are three distinct projects born at ID, honored across the four categories of Art & Design, Social Justice, Education, and Students:
- Anti-Racist Pop-Ups, finalist in the Students category and honorable mention in the Social Justice and Art & Design categories
- Redesigning Contextually Appropriate Education Materials for Incarcerated Women, finalist in the Students category and honorable mention in the Education category
- Microgrid as a Civic Infrastructure, honorable mention in the Students category
Together, these ID projects take on some of the most complex challenges of modern life: racism, recidivism, and climate change. Honored three times in the Students category, the Institute of Design earned more finalist honors than any other school, including the Savannah College of Art & Design (two projects), MIT Media Lab, the School of Visual Arts, and others. In addition, ID has been recognized beyond the Students category, meaning that our work in tackling global challenges is being honored alongside some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies.
The Anti-Racist Pop-Ups, a project led by ID Clinical Professor Chris Rudd, were a set of activities that enabled participants to identify racism, imagine equitable futures, and co-design anti-racist infrastructures where they can be protagonists of change. Students and faculty created a new framework and playbook for engaging participants, who came away from the engagement feeling that a future where racism no longer exists is indeed possible—and that we all, together, are the ones who can build it. The team plans to expand the project in the coming months.
In Redesigning Contextually Appropriate Education Materials for Incarcerated Women, ID Clinical Professor Tomoko Ichikawa partnered with WIND, Women Initiating New Directions, to solve for the many challenges of teaching in jails and re-entry centers during a pandemic. Students in Tomoko’s Communication Design course reimagined carceral education at the Cook County Department of Corrections (CCDOC) and Grace House, a residential re-entry program. ID’s work enabled WIND to relaunch classes and deepen learning even during the pandemic. Beyond the pandemic, WIND seeks to bring the program to other parts of Illinois and potentially other states.
Through Microgrid as a Civic Infrastructure, Charles L. Owen Professor of Design Carlos Teixeira and students in his Sustainable Solutions Workshop responded to a problem articulated by ID’s 2021 Lucas J. Daniel speaker, Gretchen Bakke, a month ahead of the 2021 Texas power crisis: our crumbling grid. Students used design to envision a more sustainable energy infrastructure: microgrids. The approach would move our society to a distributed system of production and consumption. This new energy paradigm would benefit not only the environment, but also the people connected to the grid as we pursue a healthier relationship with energy.
To tackle global issues, ID students and faculty have started thinking locally—on Chicago’s South Side, in our municipal district, and on our Mies van der Rohe campus at Illinois Tech. By combining a systems outlook with expertise in human-centered design, ID simultaneously works to improve both individual experiences and system efficacy. These are ideas with great potential, and we invite partners to help us scale these efforts.
This 2022 recognition marks the fourth year in a row that ID’s socially responsible student work has been recognized by the leading technology, business, and design magazine. Previous World-Changing Ideas at ID include the Inclusion Diagnostic Floor Plan Tool and the Miranda Rights in Translation project, which also focused on advancing equity and inclusion.
These 2022 ID honorees were selected from a pool of nearly 3,000 entries from around the globe. They can be viewed alongside other honorees at Fast Company‘s website.
Students
Gauri Bhatt (MDes 2022)
Zeya Chen (MDes 2021)
Samar Elhouar (MDes + MBA 2021)
Mrinali Gokani Rajesh (MDes + MBA 2021)
Jessica Meharry (PhD 2022)
Jocelyn Jia (MDes + MBA 2022)
Mithila Kedambadi (MDes 2021)
Priyanka Lalwani (MDes 2023)
Haiping Liao (MDes 2021)
Anand Nagapurkar (MDes 2021)
Zack Schwartz (MDes 2021)
Veronica Paz Soldan (MDes + MBA 2021)
Siwei Sun (MDes 2021)
Azra Sungu (PhD Candidate)
Julian Walker (MDes 2021)
Victoria Marie Williamson (MDes + MPPA 2022)
Monica Villazon San Martin (MDes 2022)
Catherine Wieczorek (MDes 2021)
Alpha Wong (MDes 2021)
Kelvin Yu (MDes 2021)
Callie Zhou (MDes 2021)
Faculty
Weslynne Ashton
Daniel Chichester
Kelly Costello
Tomoko Ichikawa
Ruth Schmidt
Chris Rudd
Carlos Teixeira