Tag: Carla Diana

Podcast – Tech Designer Carla Diana

This year’s World IP Day theme celebrates Women and IP: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity, and for that reason as well as the fact that artificial intelligence dominates all topics these days, my guest for this episode is the highly innovative Carla Diana, whom I first interviewed in 2014.

Carla is a tech designer, author, and educator. She runs the 4D design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan; she is the lead designer at Diligent Robotics in Austin, Texas; and she is the author of dozens of articles and essays about technology and design. Her most recent book, published in 2021 by Harvard Business Review Press, is My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human. And we’ll talk about what that means, plus generative AI, driverless cars, ethics in technology, and at least one product I had not imagined was a thing.

Show Contents

  • 00:01:24 – Carla’s background.
  • 00:05:57 – Why good design is social.
  • 00:11:55 – Design modalities & thinking about consumers with disabilities.
  • 00:20:27 – That tech should not mimic human behavior.
  • 00:28:57 – On avoiding innovation for its own sake.
  • 00:36:07 – On ethics in technology.
  • 00:45:51 – Generative AI and the arts.
  • 01:00:55 – Tech solutions for tech problems (e.g. Glaze for visual artists).
  • 01:05:32 – Self-driving vehicles.
  • 01:09:30 – Economic & social implications of a driverless world.
  • 01:15:26 – Combining design and ethics.

Smart Design & Women in Engineering with Carla Diana (Podcast)

Carla Diana Part I
Carla Diana Part II

I’ve mentioned a few times that I don’t really get GoldieBlox CEO Debbie Sterling’s motivation in allowing herself and her brand to become the face of what may be a years-long copyright battle with the Beastie Boys, but these are strange and volatile times.  Still, the controversial story has brought the subject of women in engineering and technology design into the foreground, and it occurred to me that I know a really cool woman engineer/designer, who has smart things to say on that subject as well as the future of technology itself — especially robotics.  This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve had to date.

In Part I, we talk about design, smart objects, and the responsibility of designers to consider the social implications of their products.  In Part II, we talk a bit about GoldieBlox and about 3D printing.

Carla Diana originally studied mechanical engineering, but early in her career, she shifted her focus to industrial design, which demands a broad set of disciplines that sound more sociological than technological.  In January of 2013, Diana wrote an article for The New York Times about how we interact with robotic machines, how that interaction is anticipated by designers in the early stages of development.  Most recently, Diana published a book called LEO the Maker Prince, a children’s story meant to spark interest in the possibilities of 3D printing and that works in conjunction with projects kids can do using a consumer-grade 3D printer. Diana also teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and School of Visual Arts in New York City. She spoke to me via Skype from her home in Manhattan. (Apologies for the couple of Skype dropouts, but the context is still clear).

To learn more about Carla Diana or LEO the Maker Prince, go to: www.leothemakerprince.com