Better, boring, bauhaus, and beliefs

Prototypes and popcorn will come back this month with for a look at why designers always seem to make it worse, followed up with why designers are making everything look the same. The two speakers this month are Ross Floate and Rachel Bucknall.

Doors open at 6pm
Talks start at 6.30 and finish an hour later

Talk 1
Have you noticed that the technology that we bring into our lives is all starting to look the same, and what they look like is nothing? In this talk, Ross draws a line connecting the Bauhaus architectural movement, and its machines for living all the way through to what he calls the soulless "un-things" that we now bring into our homes. The unlikely hero in this story? Ikea.

Talk 2
We want to make things better, so why do so few projects actually improve social and environmental problems...or worse still, exacerbate them? Perhaps the way we’re approaching things sends us off on these poor trajectories. Rachel’s review of alternative philosophies gives us some ideas of what different approaches can look like.

We are in the backroom at Loop, with free popcorn.

Ross Floate is a designer, writer, strategist and, bizarrely enough an ethicist in the field of medical research. His 25 year career has seen him design and produce things as varied as safe injecting kits, Australia's most highly-trafficked sporting website, and a magazine for the Sultan of Brunei. He got sad the day that his dog got more Instagram followers than him, but he is dealing with that in therapy.

Rachel Bucknall is a human centred design practitioner at W3.digital, and founder of the not-for-profit, Fibreshed Melbourne. She’s interested in the co-design of solutions that generate and sustain benefits for people and the planet.

Get in touch if you have an idea for a talk to give at the next Prototypes and Popcorn