Inaugurating “The Creative Mind & Leadership: Innovation, Design & Entrepreneurship Lecture Series” of the new academic year on October 9th, Princeton University’s Keller Center guest lecturer was Michael Ventura, Founder and CEO of Sub Rosa. In his Princeton University innovation talk entitled, “Empathic Design or How to Put The Experience Above All Else,” CEO Ventura discussed the role of empathy in design and the communication tools that businesses should use “to put the customer’s experience at the forefront of their vision.”
In attendance were students and Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship Derek Lidow who launched Princeton University’s first design thinking class last spring called “Creativity, Innovation, and Design.” During the first half of the semester the class focuses on helping every student find their own creativity and style, while the second half focuses on how to marshal those abilities into having a major impact on the world using design thinking methodology.
Ventura founded Sub Rosa in 2005 as a “strategy-led design and innovation practice that helps organizations explore, learn and grow.” Clients include well-known brands and corporations such as ATT, Panasonic, Reebok, Neiman Marcus, Nike and others. He defined his firm’s core expertise to be in the areas of: product, brand, packaging and marketing.
Ventura first presented the key elements necessary for true empathic design: objectivity, feedback, behavior, relationships, memory and conversations, delving into detail and discussion of each. He explored with the audience three case studies: Pantone, GE and Nike. Of the three, possibly the most curious was Sub Rosa’s involvement in the repositioning of GE’s medical imaging business, specifically for mammograms. The result was a proposal for GE to create women centers that would focus on wellness including mammograms, addressing the anxiety breast cancer examinations often provoke. The project included the design of special gowns and an increase in the temperature maintained at the facilities for greater comfort. The latter generated an unexpected outcome of greater diagnostic efficacy due to less stress and the relaxing of muscles often tensed during the mammogram procedure.
With his class in attendance and an active Q&A following the presentation, Professor Lidow thought Michael Ventura and Sub Rosa was “the real deal”. He felt it was a great discourse for his students. He noted that the spring class was assigned the course’s first project which required his students to create designs that “mitigated high risk drinking on campus”. It was described as a purposely wicked’ problem (a wicked problem is one where no amount of words can describe all the constraints that must be dealt with in a successful design). The four student teams came up with four designs that the university is now seriously looking to implement.
