ASID Platform Retreat Encourages Designers to Think Differently

Reed Kroloff of Jones|Kroloff Design Services kicks off Platform. Photography courtesy of ASID.

Designers are paid to think differently. So the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Platform: A Retreat for Design Visionaries conference in Victoria, BC, gathered a powerful group of industry professionals to do just that.

For starters, scholars, editors, authors, and luminaries in their fields tackled nine critical questions on technology. Designers turned to WIRED editor in chief Nicholas Thompson for answers on topics from online privacy to cell phone overuse to tools of war.

*WIRED* Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson ignites the audience with conversations about current and future technology. Photography courtesy of ASID.

They explored the topic of stress with Harvard-educated medical practitioner and author Dr. Shimi Kang. She offered a suggestion based on her book, The Dolphin Parent: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy, and Self-Motivated Kids. Remember the timeless acronym POD—play, others (for interaction), and downtime—to reduce stress and boost brain health.

Attendees strategized on business transformation using “intrapreneurs,” based on the rubric of Chitra Anand of Forbes School of Business and Technology. She challenged designers to tap intrapreneurs who think and act like entrepreneurs, delivering positive change and innovation inside their own organizations.

And to help designers fathom our urban future, New Cities Foundation senior fellow Greg Lindsay mapped smart city trends from mobility to resiliency. Lindsay explored how cities may be optimized through investing, storytelling, and co-creating.

Layer those heady topics with informal experiences and structured, roundtable-style conversations, and the results were evident. For example, designers logged a list of things design firms should stop doing, and they matched that with things design firms should start doing. See the lists below.

ASID CEO Randy Fiser, Hon. FASID, describes Platform as a catalyst: “We recognized the demand for an industry experience that brings together the best of the best, the true visionaries of the design community, for a retreat that provides an arena for relationship building, interaction, and idea sharing that moves the entire industry forward, not as disparate pieces, but as one united community.”