Yves Béhar at the Global Design Forum in London 2015

I had the great forture to see Yves Béhar give a talk at the London Global Design Forum. Béhar is a design entrepreneur and the founder of FuseProject. He was named one of the Top 25 Visionaries by Time Magazine. His humanitarian work includes One Laptop Per Child and See Better to Learn Better.

Béhar believes that technology is evolving so fast, it’s changing the role and responsibility of designers. In Béhar’s opinion technology equals design.  The difference is that technology is about performance, efficiency and features while design is about the human experience.

– Technology has to move from something that has to be learned into something that fits seamlessly into our lives. Design can and will equal technology. It’s not only about making things pretty, but shifting our perception of the world, creating new experiences and shaking the limits of what’s possible. The future of technology depends on us – the designers, entrepreneurs.

Why does technology scare us?

Today design is becoming a driver of technology: what’s possible and what is responsible?  At the same time technology scared us – why?

– Maybe it’s because technology brings upon change and with changes comes a lot of uncertainty. But so does design. It brings social, economic, material and life experience change, says Béhar.

– What have I learned about technology in the last 20 years? It mergers big ideas – big ideas in the technological sense which design has made better.

Béhar believes that design accelerates the adoption of new ideas because design has a central role in implementing of these ideas and making them liveable.

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