The Remarkably Cool Emily Pilloton

Emily Pilloton, my colleague here at the Design Green Blog, has just published a new book, “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People” and scored an article in the New York Times. How cool is that?

I really enjoy alternating blog posts with Emily – we have different but complimentary approaches I think – and I learned a lot about her in the Times piece. For example, she’s a genuine do-gooder. The organization she founded, Project H, enables others, specifically like-minded designers, to identify and address humanitarian design projects.

As described in the Times article, “one project, the Learning Landscape, began when Ms. Pilloton visited a Ugandan school for orphans who had lost their parents to AIDS. “The kids had very specific emotional needs and needed more engaged ways to learn, but there weren’t any good teaching materials,” she recalled. Project H’s New York chapter formed a design team to research the problem and devise a solution: a grid of 16 or 20 recycled car tires half-buried in the ground. “It’s an incredibly dumb construction method,” Ms. Pilloton said. “But it’s cheap — we just built one in the Dominican Republic for $75 — and very effective. We developed games for kids to play in the grid that use movement, competition and connectivity to help them learn anything from kindergarten math to eighth-grade algebra.”

Project H runs on a shoestring. Wanna help? Buy the book, which Emily describes as “a call-to-action for design that matters and a compendium of 100+ products in 8 categories that catalog great product design that improves life.” She’s taking her Airstream trailer on a book tour next spring to design schools – this woman keeps getting cooler.

Emily, I’m proud to share a dais with you.