Juhan Sonin (Involution / MIT) joins our 2013 lineup

For the third year in a row, a Bostonian will grace the stage of UXcamp Ottawa.

Design is Medicine
Nov 9, 10:05am / 45 MINUTES

Remember doctor’s visits when you were growing up? The wooden tongue depressor. The well-worn stethoscope. That weird thing they jammed in your ears. And now, my young children are getting about that same treatment. But that is going to change.

As design harnesses digital, materials and networking technologies, a very new health experience is just over the horizon. Proactive, lifestyle design. Tracking real-time health data. Non-invasive tools. Custom “just for you” treatments based on your actual genome. These are all real technologies, being used by ordinary people. Together they are leading us to “stage zero” detection and treatment which has the potential to double or better the lifespan of every first-world citizen. Not science fiction, the children of the 2020’s will only know this reality. Tongue depressors will be limited to school craft projects and popsicles. And it is all the product of technology and design.

Design is Medicine introduces participants to the macro factors shaping these realities, along with an in-depth exploration of the various impacts of and opportunities for design.

Speaker Bio: Juhan Sonin

Juhan Sonin, an emeritus of Apple, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and MITRE, is the Creative Director of Boston-based Involution Studios where he is responsible for all product design and service delivery in the shop. Since 2008, Juhan has also been lecturing at MIT on design and rapid prototyping for Course 2.009. In the last 18 months, Juhan released several pieces of OS services like Staffplan.com, PainTrackr.com, and hGraph.org.

He has been a creative director for almost two decades with his work being featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, BBC International, Billboard Magazine and National Public Radio (NPR). His designs have infected United States health policy and homeland security decision making. Juhan also previously served on the CCHIT Personal Health Records Workgroup and is currently involved with the national electronic health record design standards.

During his time at NCSA, Juhan led or contributed to projects featured in The Chicago Tribune, Siggraph, ORF and Euro Television, National Public Radio, The Village Voice and Siemens Broadcasting. Some of his installations graced locations such as Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Georges Pompidou/IRCAM center (Paris, France), Miller Theater (New York City), St. Louis Science Center, Minnesota Science Center and Illinois State Museum, among others.

Recently, Juhan has delivered a variety of high-profile presentations about interface design-related topics, including for the Harvard Business School, Ignite Boston, IxDconf, IxDA and UXPA.

He is also an avid photographer (his weapon of choice is a Canon 5D), a committed violinist (most recently in the Lexington Symphony) and a loyal member of the Burlington RC Flyers, a radio-controlled airplane club where has built and flown hundreds of model airplanes over the years. One of the little-known facts of this hobby is that few planes are able to land safely and as a result, much of Juhan’s hard work has ended with spectacular crashes. He has been also frequently seen/photographed wearing a scarf.

You can follow Juhan on Twitter @jsonin

*Image credit: CanUX & Elida Arrizza