TED Design

TED: Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). This section contains talks generally related to design.
Occasionally English United States Design
84 Episodes
20 – 40

Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others,

Facebook’s “like” and “share” buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart, Facebook’s director of product design, outlines three rules for design at such a massive scale—one so big that the tiniest of tweaks can cause global…
6 Aug 2014 13 min

Shih Chieh Huang: Sculptures that'd be at home at the bottom of the ocean

When he was young, artist Shih Chieh Huang loved taking toys apart and perusing the aisles of night markets in Taiwan for unexpected objects. Today, this TED Fellow creates madcap sculptures that seem to have a life of their own—with eyes that blink, tentacles that unfurl and parts that light…
22 Jul 2014 5 min

ikolai Begg: A tool to fix one of the most dangerous moments in surgery

Surgeons are required every day to puncture human skin before procedures — with the risk of damaging what's on the other side. In a fascinating talk, find out how mechanical engineer Nikolai Begg is using physics to update an important medical device, called the trocar, and improve one of the…
16 Jul 2014 9 min

Sarah Lewis: Embrace the near win

At her first museum job, art historian Sarah Lewis noticed something important about an artist she was studying: Not every artwork was a total masterpiece. She asks us to consider the role of the almost-failure, the near win, in our own lives. In our pursuit of success and mastery, is…
21 May 2014 11 min

Hamish Jolly: A shark-deterrent wetsuit (and it's not what you think)

Hamish Jolly, an ocean swimmer in Australia, wanted a wetsuit that would deter a curious shark from mistaking him for a potential source of nourishment. (Which, statistically, is rare, but certainly a fate worth avoiding.) Working with a team of scientists, he and his friends came up with a fresh…
21 May 2014 12 min

David Epstein: Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?

When you look at sporting achievements over the last decades, it seems like humans have gotten faster, better and stronger in nearly every way. Yet as David Epstein points out in this delightfully counter-intuitive talk, we might want to lay off the self-congratulation. Many factors are at play in shattering…
6 May 2014 14 min

Aparna Rao: Art that craves your attention

In this charming talk, artist Aparna Rao shows us her latest work: cool, cartoony sculptures (with neat robotic tricks underneath them) that play with your perception -- and crave your attention. Take a few minutes to simply be delighted.
11 Feb 2014 8 min

Teddy Cruz: How architectural innovations migrate across borders

As the world's cities undergo explosive growth, inequality is intensifying. Wealthy neighborhoods and impoverished slums grow side by side, the gap between them widening. In this eye-opening talk, architect Teddy Cruz asks us to rethink urban development from the bottom up. Sharing lessons from the slums of Tijuana, Cruz explores…
10 Feb 2014 13 min

Luke Syson: How I learned to stop worrying and love "useless" art

Luke Syson was a curator of Renaissance art, of transcendent paintings of saints and solemn Italian ladies -- serious art. And then he changed jobs, and inherited the Met's collection of ceramics -- pretty, frilly, "useless" candlesticks and vases. He didn't like it. He didn't get it. Until one day…
21 Jan 2014 13 min

Krista Donaldson: The $80 prosthetic knee that's changing lives

We've made incredible advances in technology in recent years, but too often it seems only certain fortunate people can benefit. Engineer Krista Donaldson introduces the ReMotion knee, a prosthetic device for above-knee amputees, many of whom earn less than $4 a day. The design contains best-in-class technology and yet is…
6 Jan 2014 9 min

Enrique Peñalosa: Why buses represent democracy in action

"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport," argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the former mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the transportation dynamic in the Colombian capital…
9 Dec 2013 14 min

Chris Downey: Design with the blind in mind

What would a city designed for the blind be like? Chris Downey is an architect who went suddenly blind in 2008; he contrasts life in his beloved San Francisco before and after -- and shows how the thoughtful designs that enhance his life now might actually make everyone's life better,…
13 Nov 2013 11 min

Xavier Vilalta: Architecture at home in its community

When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of energy whose design had absolutely nothing to do with Africa. In this charming talk, Vilalta shows how…
1 Nov 2013 7 min

Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places

In the center of Caracas, Venezuela, stands the 45-story "Tower of David," an unfinished, abandoned skyscraper. But about eight years ago, people started moving in. Photographer Iwan Baan shows how people build homes in unlikely places, touring us through the family apartments of Torre David, a city on the water…
21 Oct 2013 16 min

Jeff Speck: The walkable city

How do we solve the problem of the suburbs? Urbanist Jeff Speck shows how we can free ourselves from dependence on the car -- which he calls "a gas-belching, time-wasting, life-threatening prosthetic device" -- by making our cities more walkable and more pleasant for more people.
16 Oct 2013 16 min

Jake Barton: The museum of you

A third of the world watched live as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001; a third more heard about it within 24 hours. (Do you remember where you were?) So exhibits at the soon-to-open 9/11 Memorial Museum will reflect the diversity of the world's experiences of that…
12 Sep 2013 15 min

Alexa Meade: Your body is my canvas

Alexa Meade takes an innovative approach to art. Not for her a life of sketching and stretching canvases. Instead, she selects a topic and then paints it--literally. She covers everything in a scene--people, chairs, food, you name it--in a mask of paint that mimics what's below it. In this eye-opening…
11 Sep 2013 7 min
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