Today, we are witnessing unprecedented social challenges. Digital disruption has affected every aspect of our lives. It enables us to be far more connected than ever before, it also democratizes opportunities to build businesses and impact. Meanwhile, new ways of interaction and a flood of information greatly affect our mental wellbeing. Our privacy has never been more fragile as we unconciously use our own data to pay for “free things” on the internet. On the other hand, the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed many things for us to learn. We discover the importance of staying home, which could be an ultimate help for the world to heal as we see air pollution decrease drastically. We learned that wealth disparity is very dangerous for any community and that the level of literacy greatly affect life changing decisions. Those are just a tiny glimpse of many complex social challenges today. We are building xdslab as a way to ask “Can design play a role to solve these social challenges?” We have seen the rise of human centred design / design thinking as a more strategic approach to design. It shifts our mindset from products to experiences. It provides a lens to understand deeper about human emotions and mental models rather than focusing solely on shapes and aesthetics. And more importantly, it has helped us dig deeper and elaborate on the reasoning behind the numbers in data. This is why we are confident that the answer to our question is YES. But, we need to figure out how, where, when, who, and other questions that follows. We are more than excited to answer them together with you in the xdscommunity!
