Jon Kuniholm, "Good Design by Design" | Talks at Google

A search for examples of good design captures the usual suspects: logos; consumer products like chairs, faucets, and computer mice; storybook homes from the pages of architectural digest. Despite calls to action from many sides, meaningful and well-funded efforts at design in the public interest remain much more rare than they should be. And even those funded by foundations justifiably focus on the most pressing utilitarian goals: clean water, sanitation, and preventable and widespread disease. Significant problems for insignificant numbers of people remain in significant numbers. These "medical orphans" have been targets for policy encouraging drug development, with limited success. Where those who suffer from rare medical conditions are orphaned for want of a medical device, we have yet to see a policy solution. Here, I propose a slew of ways that governments, corporations and individuals might help to create an environment where solutions to such problems might be more likely, or even inevitable, through a spectrum of measures of varying degrees of difficulty. I invite you to help me add to this list, and to help us all to a future where these measures make competition for solutions to these neglected problems as fierce as it is for smartphones and automobiles.

Jonathan Kuniholm is the President and Founder of the Open Prosthetics Project, and the Founder of StumpworX, Inc., a startup focusing on prosthetic arm R&D. He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1997 to 2006, as a combat engineer officer and platoon commander for the 1st Marine Division in Operation Iraqi Freedom II. In 2006, he was honorably discharged after being wounded in combat and losing his right forearm. He is a Presidential appointee to the National Council on Disability, the microagency that drafted the ADA.