TED Design

Timothy Prestero: Design for people, not awards

Timothy Prestero thought he'd designed the perfect incubator for newborns in the developing world -- but his team learned a hard lesson when it failed to go into production. A manifesto on the importance of designing for real-world use, rather than accolades. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)

20 Aug 2012 11 min

A sense of humor about Afghanistan? Artist Aman Mojadidi shows how

Afghan-American artist Aman Mojadidi calls himself “Afghan by blood, redneck by the grace of god.” Playing off his two identities, the TED Fellow's bold, funny, thought-provoking artwork explores jihad, gangsterism, consumers and corruption in modern Afghanistan.

1 Jun 2012 4 min

Neil Harbisson: I listen to color

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color -- and yes, even listen to faces and paintings.

1 Jun 2012 9 min

Tracy Chevalier: Finding the story inside the painting

When Tracy Chevalier looks at paintings, she imagines the stories behind them: How did the painter meet his model? What would explain that look in her eye? Why is that man … blushing? She shares three stories inspired by portraits, including the one that led to her best-selling novel "Girl…

1 May 2012 14 min

William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes

How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the Archimedes palimpsest, a Byzantine prayer book containing previously-unknown original writings from ancient Greek mathematician…

1 Apr 2012 14 min

John Hockenberry: We are all designers

Journalist John Hockenberry tells a personal story inspired by a pair of flashy wheels in a wheelchair-parts catalogue -- and how they showed him the value of designing a life of intent. (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)

1 Mar 2012 19 min

John Hodgman: Design, explained

John Hodgman, comedian and resident expert, "explains" the design of three iconic modern objects. (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)

1 Mar 2012 6 min

Frank Warren: Half a million secrets

"Secrets can take many forms -- they can be shocking, or silly, or soulful." Frank Warren, the founder of PostSecret.com, shares some of the half-million secrets that strangers have mailed him on postcards.

1 Feb 2012 11 min

Mark Raymond: Victims of the city

Architecture can bring people together, or divide them -- witness the skyscraper, costly, inefficient, and only serving small portions of the community. At TEDxPortofSpain, Mark Raymond encourages city governments to let go of their old notions of success and consider the balance of environment, economy, and society to design cities…

1 Nov 2011 19 min

Scott Summit: Beautiful artificial limbs

Prosthetics can’t replicate the look and feel of lost limbs but they can carry a lot of personality. At TEDxCambridge, Scott Summit shows 3D-printed, individually designed prosthetic legs that are unabashedly artificial and completely personal -- from macho to fabulous.

1 Nov 2011 11 min

Kelli Anderson: Design to challenge reality

Kelli Anderson shatters our expectations about reality by injecting humor and surprise into everyday objects. At TEDxPhoenix she shares her disruptive and clever designs.

1 Nov 2011 16 min

Jer Thorp: Make data more human

Jer Thorp creates beautiful data visualizations to put abstract data into a human context. At TEDxVancouver, he shares his moving projects, from graphing an entire year’s news cycle, to mapping the way people share articles across the internet.

1 Nov 2011 17 min

Sebastian Deterding: What your designs say about you

What does your chair say about what you value? Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and what the good life is are reflected in the design of objects around us.

1 Nov 2011 12 min

Honor Harger: A history of the universe in sound

Artist-technologist Honor Harger listens to the weird and wonderful noises of stars and planets and pulsars. In her work, she tracks the radio waves emitted by ancient celestial objects and turns them into sound, including "the oldest song you will ever hear," the sound of cosmic rays left over from…

7 Sep 2011 11 min

Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

Venice is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters carbon, too.

30 Aug 2011 10 min

Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

Here's a powerful provocation from artist Jae Rhim Lee. Can we commit our bodies to a cleaner, greener Earth, even after death? Naturally -- using a special burial suit seeded with pollution-gobbling mushrooms. Yes, this just might be the strangest TEDTalk you'll ever see …

1 Jul 2011 7 min

Gabe Zichermann: How games make kids smarter

Can playing video games make you more productive? Gabe Zichermann shows how games are making kids better problem-solvers, and will make us better at everything from driving to multi-tasking.

1 Jun 2011 16 min

Bjarke Ingels: Hedonistic sustainability

Bjarke Ingels' architecture is luxurious, sustainable and community-driven. At TEDxEast he shows us his playful designs, from a factory chimney that blows smoke rings to a ski slope built atop a waste processing plant.

1 May 2011 22 min

Richard Seymour: How beauty feels

A story, a work of art, a face, a designed object -- how do we tell that something is beautiful? And why does it matter so much to us? Designer Richard Seymour explores our response to beauty and the surprising power of objects that exhibit it.

1 Apr 2011 17 min

John Hunter on the World Peace Game

John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x5' plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches -- spontaneous, and always surprising -- go further than classroom lectures…

5 Mar 2011 20 min