There’s lots of news today about the Russian region that’s worth your attention. The above is the image on Google.com of “Russia’s Yuri Gagarin on Tuesday, replacing the logo on its homepage with an image of the first man in space and a rocket that a visitor can launch with a cursor.”
Celebrating Space Exploration
The BBC reported Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says space exploration is still a priority for Russians. For the international community, we can argue important attention to further the sciences is good news. Celebrations for 50 years of space exploration. Great. However this anniversary for Russians comes with unfortunate reports from neighboring Belarussians.
Bombs in Belarus
In Belarus, security is extra tight today after a bomb killed 12 and wounded 150 people in a Subway Blast, a country otherwise known to be a relatively peaceful place. For those skimming past the little sister of Russia, attention is back on Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
Eyes on Chernobyl
The severity of the nuclear crisis rating in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has risen from 5 to the highest level 7 today. This level has only been reached once before in the 1968 Chernobyl (now Ukraine, then USSR) disaster. Though, the amount of radiation leaks is on the decline, it’s unknown if the case is as severe as in the then USSR.
On Design
So how do these smattering of news stories fit into this blog? Each bit in this roundup poses a design challenge. These are a serious, big, enormous design problems that really mean something. Industrial, communication, travel, information, experience, interaction, graphic, material design. All of that and more. Well designed user experience is essential here. It counts–maybe even more–in a high risk scenario. Good design is not always making people “feel good” but a holistic, felt understanding of complex individuals, groups, politics, constraints and environments we must consider when design something that effects people.
Designers, engineers, techies and media people alike, I bet something above has something to do with what you’re working on today. It’s your job to think about it even if the Soviet Empire’s fall lives in your history books. How unfortunate would it be if we closed our eyes to the rest of the world and dipped into a Rooseveltian Isolationism? *sniff* Do I smell a New Deal? Designers working on policy is a whole different (exciting) conversation. Food for thought. I hope I didn’t ruin your Tuesday.
The Chemical Brothers track Leaving Home just came on my Last.fm radio. What timing.
[Image via Google & AFP]