DX-5 Retrospective: Design is Responsible

The recent DX event DX-5: Design is Responsible brought together Saigon’s creative community for a series of presentations about responsibility in design. We had three speakers who approached the general theme from very different perspectives. We’re happy to release videos of all three of those presentations here.

Responsibility of Designers

The first speaker was actually me (Thomas Grové, founder of dxSaigon). It was the first time for me to present at one of our events — organising them leaves little time for thinking about a presentation of my own — but a last-minute cancellation from a slated speaker had me rushing to fill the gap.

I started my presentation with a definition of social design — that’s where a designer thinks about the impact of their work on the world — but shouldn’t that be a concern of designers as a matter or course? Since designers have such a prominent role in the creation of products it is our responsibility to fight for quality. Not only the obvious stuff like build quality but also the user experience (joy), practical usability, explicit safety, and implicit safety of our works.

My presentation concludes with a brief case study of our Athena Project, which is still really early in development.

Fashion 4 Freedom

Our second presentation was a tag-team effort by Lan Vy Nguyen and Rachael Carson of social entrepreneurship fashion company Fashion 4 Freedom. They outline their company journey to mesh high fashion design with traditional artisanship. Their goal is to create wonderful works such as the Saigon Socialite shoes — providing equipment, design, and income to craft villages that not only empowers the artisans but also incentivize them to maintain their heritage arts.

The Cost of Great Design

The final presentation was by Andrew Currie of architectural firm Out-2-Design. Andrew breaks down the cost of running a design firm and the correlation between a design budget and award-winning design.

Thank You!

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Thanks to everyone who attended and to our sponsors who helped to make the event possible:

  • dpiCENTER — Design school for creating bright minds.
  • Sentifi — Global leader in financial crowd-intelligence.
  • gloops — Social entertainment provider that continues to innovate “fun”!
  • Glass Egg Digital Media — A leading art outsourcing studio and game developer.
  • Lush Saigon — Our venue and drink sponsor.
  • Rice Channel — The nice guys who recorded and edited the event videos for us.

If you enjoyed these presentations please subscribe to our youtube channel, our mailing list, or consider sponsoring or attending a future event.

Do you have any opinions about responsibility in design? Let us know in the comments bellow!

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