Menu Close

6 March 2019 @ 4:00 pm

Emotional Technologies

How can design help to improve wearable technologies? How can we design medical technologies that people love and cherish but that also keep them alive? How can we collaborate empathetically with people from diverse viewpoints to create better outcomes?

In this talk Leah discussed the wearable health technologies that she has designed over the past decade. She shared the strategies that she has devised to coalesce interdisciplinary teams and her tested approaches for increasing innovation: the power of prototyping; being at the table; inviting people in; and seeking inspiration outside the frame.

This forum took place on 6 March 2019.

A livestream of Lisa's forum talk is available here

Leah Heiss is a designer and RMIT academic working at the nexus of design, health, and technology. Her practice traverses device, service and experience and her process is deeply collaborative, working with experts from nanotechnology and health services through to manufacturing. Her wearable health technologies include Diabetes Jewellery; biosignal sensing emergency jewellery; and swallowable devices to detect disease. Facett, the world’s first modular hearing aid that Leah designed for Blamey Saunders hears won the 2018 Good Design Award and the CSIRO Design Innovation Award. Leah has won five Good Design Awards in total and her work is part of Museums Victoria heritage collection. She has exhibited at the Melbourne Museum, Gallery of Modern Art and other galleries locally and globally. Leah teaches through the RMIT Master of Design Futures and her teaching practice focuses on health sector innovation.

leahheiss.com