Nov 24, 2019

Design: The Last Line of Defense

Ben Fry

About this video

Description

While Google's mission is to organize the world's information, this information needs to be made understandable and usable. We hear a lot about data, and worse, “big data,” but far too little about its meaning and how to make it approachable for the people who need to use it. The solution is to treat data as a design problem, where it can be addressed by starting with end users and working back to the data in all its messy complexity. Join Ben as he explains how to put reams of data through the filter of design to turn information into understanding.

Ben Fry

Ben is Owner of Fathom, an award-winning studio in Boston focused on making complex data more understandable, accessible and usable. He holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory and teaches at MIT as a Lecturer. Ben develops "Processing"—the programming environment he co-created used by artists, engineers, scientists and students all over the world. His work can be found in museums (MoMA, Whitney, Cooper Hewitt), films (Minority Report, The Hulk), research labs (Harvard, Stanford, MIT) and Fathom's client portfolios including Nike, Samsung and Mayo Clinic. In 2011, Fry visited the White House to receive the National Design Award for Interaction Design.