Design Center “Wild Card” Winner at San Francisco Design Week Awards
Center for Design in the Public Interest
DiPi was founded in 2014 to bring together interdisciplinary teams with expertise in humanities, arts, social sciences, engineering and technology to solve community problems through research-based design.
DiPi, the Center for Design in the Public Interest at UC Davis, was honored at the first annual San Francisco Design Week Awards for a project on chronic pain. DiPi, part of the Department of Design in the College of Letters and Science, was overall winner in the Wild Card category for “unexpected and experimental products that can’t be put into a category.”
The project, Outpatient Radio, weaves together stories of eight chronic pain patients from Solano, Sacramento and Shasta counties to combat the stigma and isolation of chronic pain and improve understanding of issues related to chronic pain. Outpatient Radio is part of DiPi’s flagship effort, The Pain Project, which seeks to address problems in pain communication by redesigning existing tools and creating new ones, both with and for health care providers and patients.
Outpatient Radio is a collaboration with the Hill Country Health and Wellness Center, with support from Art Rx, a project of UC Davis Health and the Crocker Art Museum.
The project team was made up of Susan Verba, DiPi director; Bo Feng, associate professor in communication; Chelsea Best and Zoe Martin, undergraduate design students; Hannah Hill, graduate student in textiles; George Slavik, graduate design student; and Tracy Manuel and Kenna Fallan, junior specialists with DiPi.
The Wild Card award was one of only 18 awards made during Design Week which started June 6 and ends June 16.
San Francisco Design Week is a gathering of the world’s most active design community that debuted the first annual San Francisco Design Week Awards at Pier 27, San Francisco. This year’s theme is “Where Innovation Meets Social Responsibility.”