An Important Update from Sami

Well, this is an official notification to everyone, that as of a couple of months ago I am now on the roster of adjunct faculty members for the Industrial Design department at RISD. My time has been spent this summer continuing my research and developing a syllabus for an advanced studio in the Fall, hence the slow pace of blog updates. I am telling people now to encourage feedback, advice, input, collaboration and dialogue over the next couple of months before embarking on this new journey. I have quite a bit of freedom on this development with some big picture ideas, so I would love to hear all questions and comments. Feel free to inquire if you would like to know more details, and more posts on the matter are to follow. Below is my course description:


Design for Social Entrepreneurship (DeSE)
RISD Fall '08

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.

This course aims to cultivate social entrepreneurial designers by investigating the power of product, system and service design to create positive social and environmental change. Looking at both international and domestic issues, this course asks, how can design and design thinking be used to solve the world’s leading problems to achieve triple bottom line sustainability—environmentally, socially, and economically? Structured around holistic thinking, collaborative and individual design work, with mentorship from experts in the field, this course uncovers how to design products and/or services, wrap a business around it, and create tangible positive impact in our world today.