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Cecilia Brenner: Moving beyond design theater to measurable impact
00:22:53
In our conversation, Cecilia explains how Design for Good measures real impact (not estimated future impact), why they chose to focus on one SDG at a time instead of spreading resources thin, and what it means to design for “all life,” not just human life.
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- [00:02]
Cecilia Brenner
So this learning mechanism where we feel that yes, it's important of the impact we're making on the ground with the projects that we do, that is the heartbeat of the sun for good. But we are also here to change mindset and skill sets in the designers because they are having their new learnings and hopefully they take it back to their own organizations making a ripple effect of change.
- [00:30]
Eli Woolery
We've talked to many design leaders who've burned out after a decade or more of corporate work. But after 17 years at Philips designing health innovations, Cecilia Brenner wasn't burnt out. She loved it and she wanted to find a way to scale her sense of purpose. So she joined Design for Good as Managing Director and found a way to work with hundreds of designers who want meaningful impact without leaving their day jobs.
- [00:52]
Aaron Walter
Design for Good mobilizes what Cecilia calls a radical Global Action Collective. 1600 Designers from companies like Philips, Lloyds bank and others to tackle UN Sustainable development goals through focused two year cycles. Their first cycle addressed clean water and sanitation and now they're working on quality education. And here's the twist. Everything they create is totally open source.
- [01:20]
Eli Woolery
In our conversation, Cecilia explains how Design for Good measures real impact, not estimated future impact, why they chose to focus on one sustainable development goal at a time instead of spreading resources thin, and what it means to design for all life, not just human life. If you've ever wondered how to find more meaning in your design work, or question whether purpose driven projects actually move the needle, this episode offers a surprisingly practical model. This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Woolery.
- [01:52]
Aaron Walter
And I'm Aaron Walter. If you're hearing this, you're not currently on our premium subscriber feed. Design Better Premium subscribers enjoy weekly episodes. That's four episodes per month rather than just two, and all of them are ad free. Plus you'll get an invitation to our monthly AMAs with the smartest folks in design and tech. And if you subscribe at the annual level, you'll also get our Toolkit, a collection of our favorite design and productivity tools like Perplexity, Miro, Read AI and more. You'll hear a preview of this episode, but if you'd like to hear the full conversation, please consider becoming a premium subscriber@designbetterpodcast.com subscribe. The podcast is available to everyone through our scholarship program, so if you can't afford a subscription, just shoot us an email at subscriptionsecuriositydepartment.com will help you Out. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break. DesignBetter is brought to you by WIX Studio, the platform built for all web creators to design, develop and manage exceptional web projects at scale. Learn more@wix.com studio. And now back to the show. Cecilia Brenner, welcome to Design Better.
- [03:27]
Cecilia Brenner
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [03:29]
Aaron Walter
Yeah. So we're interested in talking with you because you're working with a fascinating organization called Design for Good. It's interesting for a number of reasons, but I think a lot of our listeners, they've been through the wringer in some sort of corporate environment where they are working hard at a mission. But that mission is some sort of capitalistic mission and no shade on that whatsoever because it's the key part of our economy and there's a lot of fun and engaging and enriching jobs out there in that space. But you've made a shift from Philips, you worked there for 17 years, so corporate environment, to a different type of organization designed for Good, where you're using design, as the name suggests, towards mission driven projects. 17 years is a long time at a single organization. That alone is pretty impressive. But could you give us the backstory of why leave the commercial sector to join a nonprofit?
- [04:28]
Cecilia Brenner
I loved it there. 17 years is a long time and I look back at that as the best design journey that I've had. Seventy years is indeed a long time. I've seen every corner of that company started off of course, working in the consumer health innovation space. I had the opportunity to improve people's health and well being there. Also had the opportunity to look at healthcare professionals and improve their working environment through digital apps in hospitals, improving the patient's experience there as well. And the mission of Philips is of course to improve lives. And at the time when I had done my 17 years, Philips actually joined Design for Good as an alliance member. So the first experience I had with Design for Good was actually joining Design for Good to work on a project as a design lead. And that was the first cycle, which was cycle one where we focus on SDG 6 clean water and sanitation. I actually came into Design for Good through Philips, funny enough. And that was just an amazing journey for me as a design leader to be able able to design with other designers from other corporates, seeing the world in a different place, where we're actually really making impact on the ground with individuals, communities and organizations. And when Design for Good a year ago were looking for a new mat niching director, I jumped on it because I Thought, what better job that could be to actually design the world a little bit better every day?
- [06:08]
Eli Woolery
Apart from your experience at Philips, it sounds like it was very mission driven. There are many people that yearn for more of that big P purpose, as Dan Pink calls it, something that really drives good in the world. Another example being Aaron leaving during COVID from Envision. He went to go work for a nonprofit and help them out. And I think that's a pretty common theme that we see in talking to people. What advice do you have to people who might be looking for more meaning for their work, even if they can't leave their current job, but maybe work on a project like you did with Design for Good.
- [06:41]
Cecilia Brenner
It's really what Design for Good is trying to achieve. So what Design for Good is, is that we are mobilizing a creative alliance to create lasting, measurable impact towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And we believe you can only do that through worldwide collaboration. From the inception, we're only three years old, but from the inception, we had 1600 designers already across 30 countries being involved while keeping their day job. Right? So these designers are working for alliance members that are now on board from Philips, from Nesli, from Nedbank, from Lloyd Banks. But they still can learn through Design for Good on projects, but also through our academy to become the new generation of designers that I think the world desperately needs.
- [07:33]
Aaron Walter
Tell us more about those UN Goals. That's a particularly interesting part of Design for Good. In my experience, having worked for Resolve to Save Lives, a big nonprofit, I realized that there's just so many things that you could work on, and they're all, you know, meaningful and important, but it's hard to be successful on all the things with whatever resources you have. Why did you align to those UN Goals specifically?
- [08:02]
Cecilia Brenner
So we started off three years ago with our co founder and now chair, Ben Shepard. He was actually hosting Chief Design Officer's roundtables. And one of the themes was sustainability. And he basically asked the questions, like, are we really doing what we can here, or are we doing a little bit more of the design theater? Like, designers love ideas, but are we actually implementing them? Do we see an impact there? And the answer was then, at the time, maybe not. So that's why Design for Good came about, to really make a lasting impact in the world. And United nations is probably the greatest framework that humanity needs to solve by 2030. So that's why we have chosen them. We don't do all of them. So every two years, we pick another SDG. So the first two years we focused our work on SDG 6, which is clean water and sanitation. And now we're in the second cycle where we're focusing on SDG4, which is quality education. And we have already started mobilizing for October next year where we're going to focus on on people on Planet health, which is SDG 3 and 13. And there are many problems in these SDGs, right? High and low. But the most important is that you do take action. And we believe that most important is to take action through radical global collaboration.
- [09:27]
Aaron Walter
And can you just for our listeners, so they understand what an SDG is, is that sustainable design goal.
- [09:33]
Cecilia Brenner
Sustainable development goal, indeed.
- [09:34]
Aaron Walter
Development goal. Okay, gotcha.
- [09:36]
Cecilia Brenner
Exactly what we do when we start, we choose the sustainable development goal with our alliance members and there's basically based on three criteria every second year. One is urgency. So which one do we think that we can help through the sign the most? Secondly is where do we think we can make the most impact and quick impact? Because obviously they need the support that they need. And thirdly, we're also looking at the diversity. Can we through design, through communication, product ux, spatial design, what have you help in this area? And with water we really were able to already show impact within two years we already have impact on the ground, which is quite fantastic if you ask me. If you look at innovation and the quality education projects that we're having at the moment, we're still now in, in the second year, so impact have to wait. We only have estimated impact numbers, but it's also there advancing the goals because to be realistic within five years from now, we are already on 2030 and they're all lagging behind all the SDGs. So what we're trying to do is say, hey, let's collaborate together to move towards a successful on target number by 2030.
- [11:00]
Eli Woolery
So a lot of these initiatives, I'm sure they have great intentions, but like you said, it might take more time than anticipated or perhaps maybe you're not measuring the right thing. How do you go about setting the right goals and standards and measurements to make sure that you're on track to have an impact with these projects?
- [11:16]
Cecilia Brenner
We have a mechanism and that means that when we have selected an sdg, we go out in the world and we Talk with local NGOs and share charities and foundations and we ask them what problems do you have that keep you up at night and how can we help you help solve for this? And that's a really important point because without that commitment, we cannot reach the effective community and we cannot drive impact and we cannot measure impact. Otherwise our ideas will remain ideas. So that's the first thing we did, was to say that there is no design team starting this exercise without a clear brief from a development organization with the clear measures. Because at the end of the two years, whatever we have created, we make sure that we implement it back into that local NGO or charity and to also that effective community. Because that is where lasting change happens, that you take it back to where it belongs.
- [12:15]
Aaron Walter
One of the big challenges when designers come from corporate environment where everything's moving super fast, sometimes way too fast, and you enter into an NGO where you're aligned with large organizations like United nations, the speed change, there's a whiplash to it that everything moves a lot slower. And you've got these kind of mandates that have discrete time periods. So it's a one year time period for each goal, is that right?
- [12:42]
Cecilia Brenner
Two, yeah. So the first year we innovate and the second year we implement.
- [12:46]
Aaron Walter
Yeah, okay, gotcha. And you know, two years sounds like a lifetime in the software world, but it can end up being not that long in the NGO space. How do you deal with that with just like the tempo of projects and partnerships?
- [13:01]
Cecilia Brenner
Yeah. So when I say two years, that is the time frame where we need to make it happen. But the real mandate that what the designers that are in the alliance actually do is minimum of five days per year. So when they go in, they obviously have their full time job next to this. So we have an agreement with our alliance member that maximum of five days a year you dedicate to this. So in that sense, it's quite speedy for the innovation and impact that we're seeing in the world. Of course, we see that knowing designers, they are very passionate people, so many of them spend more than that. But the minimum is five days, which is not a lot to make the impact that we have seen today.
- [13:44]
Aaron Walter
Can you just break it down for us, like the projects a little bit? So you've got this partnership, you've got a clear mandate for two years. There's the design it phase of a year and then build it phase the second year. Are they volunteer designers who come in for five days? What's their involvement? Where do developers fit in? How does it all work?
- [14:06]
Cecilia Brenner
Yeah, so what we do is that when we finally have that design challenge, we basically look at the challenges, say, okay, what do we need to make this happen? And then we look at our 1600 designers that we have in our network, and we probably have access to the most talented designers. In the world. And we create this task force, force of needed skill sets for this project. And we have a project lead that we set to be the contact person to the local ngo. And then we also realized that even though we call design for good, we start the process with only a design team from these companies. But as we move forward, we also need other skill sets for it to make to be implemented. You need development skills if you're creating an app. You need copywriting if you're telling a story. You need a game designer if you're designing a game. And that is something that we're also helping to source as the project move on. And the designers are then there to let us know what extra skill gaps they need to get it implemented on the ground.
- [15:10]
Eli Woolery
A lot of our audience is familiar with human centered design, design thinking, those types of principles. But your organization focuses on something slightly different called life centered design. Could you talk about that philosophy?
- [15:22]
Cecilia Brenner
Many of us, including myself, my background is in human centered design, but last five years, I've been looking at a more holistic way of looking at design. A holistic way where you are more interconnected with nature and where you are giving actually nature a voice in the design process. And I believe that that is very much a deep system thinking awareness, maybe more so than only thinking that we're designing for a user. There are many other key stakeholders in the ecosystem. So what we're trying to teach through our projects, but also through our academy, is more of a deep system thinking mindset and skill set that they need to be able to solve for these wicked problems of United Nations.
- [16:11]
Aaron Walter
One of the real challenges for designers stepping into work like this is just understanding the domain. So, for example, I led a team inside of Resolve to Save Lives, where we were working on epidemic preparedness, and I was working with epidemiologists all the time, and there's so many acronyms, and it's hard to even understand the language in meetings, let alone build like design and build something that will be successful. In a country I've never been to, how do you help designers be successful so they understand the language, the background, the context that they need to create relevant solutions?
- [16:49]
Cecilia Brenner
Yeah, it's a very good question and actually a learning that we had from the first cycle of water. We realized that even though we have access to the most talented designers in the world, there's something different when you design for these wicked problems. Hence, we have started an academy with one of our alliance members, Royal College of Art. We call it Royal College of Art Design for Good academy where we actually are training our designers on all topics relevant to this. So how do you actually co design with affected communities? How do you measure impact? How do you use AI to look at predictive impact numbers? How do you even look at these system approach like an ecosystem mapping, how do you do that? And how to integrate nature in your process, in your line of thought. These are topics that we train every year in different kind of aspects because we have a different focus of The United Nations SDGs that has proven to be very successful. So we started our first cohort a year ago with 279designers. Last cohort had a double up on 500ish. And in October we start the new one with we hope over 1000. So this learning mechanism where we feel that yes, it's important of the impact we're making on the ground with the projects that we do, that is the heartbeat of the sun for good. But we are also here to change mindset and skill sets in the designers because they are having their new learnings and hopefully they take it back to their own organizations making a ripple effect of change.
- [18:34]
Eli Woolery
Curious how you approach research and prototyping. We know it can be really tough to design from a distance if you're not on the ground in some of these locations. One of my colleagues at Stanford teaches a class called Design for Extreme Affordability where they design products and services for developing countries and they make a point of sending the students to the countries and some actually really successful products have come out of it. The embrace warmer for one of them. A story you might be familiar with. But yeah, just curious, how do you get people first hand knowledge of the problems that they're trying to solve?
- [19:05]
Cecilia Brenner
Yeah, so in some projects we've been really lucky that we actually have been able to ship the design team to the location. So in January we were able to ship the design team to Mexico where they did a week of research and they totally pivot the whole idea and came back with new game knowledge, which we know that that's key for research in prototyping, especially also collaboration tools. We are still looking at tools that could help us even better because we are working across borders, time zones, countries. You need good prototyping, collaboration tools. So we have just started to look into that and hopefully we have some organization that will help us to use maybe the potential of AI as a tooling to free up more time for us to do even more research and to collaborate better. But that is something that we have raised and are currently working on to improve for our design teams tell us more about that.
- [20:04]
Aaron Walter
It seems like for the type of work that you're doing, AI could be perfect. There are things like cursor, lovable, replit, lots of other things where you could design something or just design as you're building and be able to put this idea, a solution in front of real end users in these different countries where they can test things out instead of having these long cycles where you have to go back and forth with developers. How is it changing the workflow? What tools are you using? What are you seeing designers do on projects?
- [20:37]
Cecilia Brenner
Yeah, so we are currently investigating tools to your point where we can free up them even more to do more research and do more prototyping. And I also see a potential for us.
- [20:49]
Aaron Walter
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