Design Thinking Symposium

John Maeda

Pushing Boundaries With Design and Tech

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

“Design is always perceived as something beautiful. Design isn’t about beauty. It’s about solving relevant problems”—Automattic's John Maeda, symposium curator, introduces the Design Thinking, Business, and Entrepreneurship symposium

John Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and organization executive to help leaders, inventors, and designers push the boundaries of innovation in their fields. An internationally recognized speaker and author, Maeda’s books include The Laws of SimplicityCreative Code, and Redesigning Leadership, and his TED talks have received more than 2 million views to date.

Maeda holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, an M.B.A. from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D from University of Tsukuba in Japan. He was the recipient of the White House’s National Design Award, the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Lucky Strike Designer Award, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo TDC Design Prize, and has been inducted into the ADC Hall of Fame. Maeda’s Twitter account was dubbed one of Time magazine’s 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.