Encouraging design students to close their books and open their eyes, Designmatters is a proactive and unique program at The Art Center College of Design that puts the focus of design on the greater good. Through a variety of outreach programs, courses, groups, and initiatives, Designmatters explores the social and humanitarian benefits of design and responsible business by recognizing design as a tool that can shape human behavior and improve quality of life right now. Begun in 2001 by then incoming president Richard Koshalek, the program works with organizations, citizens, and groups from the UN to the Red Cross to collaboratively study, design, produce, and deliver systems, spaces, and products that can make a real difference.

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MIT’s D-Lab program is a research center and set of courses devoted to the design and production of products and technologies that could have a big effect in impoverished communities. To date, students have engineered and delivered solutions such as Sugarcane Charcoal, a screenless hammermill for more efficient production of flour and other agricultural grains, and a solar water disinfection system.

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Operation Blessing, a non-profit committed to “breaking the cycle of suffering” has taken the age-old technique of harnessing the sun’s heat to cook food, and turned it into a viable design for off-the-grid, minimal-resource third-world demographics. In the Gansu Province of China, and soon in Darfur camps, the sun-powered parabolic solar oven allows the suffering and hungry to cleanly cook and boil water and without firewood, using only that always-renewable energy source: the sun. The oven’s design is also a great example of using ancient technologies in modern ways to address social problems.

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