Excellencies, Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
1. A very good morning. Thank you for inviting me to join you here at the 2025 Don Norman Design Award (DNDA) Summit. This is held for the first time outside the United States (US), and I would especially like to welcome Professor Don Norman, whose work has fundamentally shaped design thinking, as well as our distinguished international guests who we will be hearing from and discussing with over the next few days.
2. The DNDA is an award for young designers working on projects for social good. By choosing Singapore – a UNESCO Creativity City of Design – as the first venue outside of the US for the DNDA Summit, the award recognises Asia's growing role in design for societal impact. It also affirms the objectives of Singapore's Design 2025 Masterplan for our nation to be both an innovation-driven economy and a loveable city while recognising Singapore's legacy.
3. We are a Nation by Design. Singapore, our history, our sovereignty and our success over 60 years didn't happen by chance. Instead, we've had to turn our limitations and constraints into launchpads for imagination and bold action for the last 60 years. This spirit can be seen in projects that are visionary and sustainable – from designing circularity in our water system with NEWater to creating a lush forest with a waterfall within a transit hub at Jewel Changi Airport.
Why Design Matters
4. In today's complex world, it is not enough for us to view design in its traditional approach, with aesthetic or functional consideration only. Increasingly, more businesses and organisations are recognising that design is a powerful tool for change, and it can shape how we understand user needs, identify opportunities, and develop solutions.
5. One example from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) is the User Experience Centre. They worked with polyclinic operations through design thinking to better understand user requirements. And in that experience, the team discovered how patient anxiety can be caused by environmental factors.
6. For instance, doctors moving in and out of consultation rooms – doors opening, people moving in a way that the patient doesn't quite understand – can be a cause of patient stress.
7. And so, to address this and enhance the patients' experience, SP borrowed design elements from the theatre, creating backstage corridors in the clinic so that staff could move around more discreetly just like in stage productions. The team also applied insights from the travel industry, introducing self-service kiosks like those used for airport check-ins, providing patients with an itinerary within their clinic experience.
8. The results were remarkable: waiting times were reduced significantly, and patient stress levels decreased. And, from a systems perspective, polyclinic operations were far more streamlined.
9. Beyond user experience, design must also be sustainable. With climate change, it is now both a challenge and an opportunity for designers to systemically take into consideration environmental impact on a product's or service's entire lifecycle – from material sourcing to end-of-life disposal.
Theme of DNDA2025 Summit
10. The theme of the 2025 DNDA Summit is "Humanity-Centred Design: The Future of Education, Business, and Community". This edition of the Summit will explore how Humanity-Centred Design (HCD+) can drive transformation across sectors, with four key goals for the summit:
- Empowering education through systems thinking and real-world application;
- Developing people-first infrastructure and innovation;
- Building sustainable and inclusive communities; and
- Advancing climate action through aligned education, infrastructure and policy initiatives.
11. These four goals form a holistic framework for the societal impact that we need, the change that we need to effect, and the tools that we need to bring to bear on the most pressing challenges of our time.
Launch of SP's HCD+ Innovation Playbook
12. Design education, which encourages experimentation and people-centricity is key in helping to impart traits such as curiosity, empathy and courage that will be needed for the future.
13. This is not something we say just for students, this is something for all of us that are engaging in these types of efforts. It is fitting that the DNDA Summit is hosted by SP, as SP's User Experience Centre, inspired by the work of Professor Don Norman, has been developing a HCD+ Innovation Framework and Playbook. It shows how HCD+ can be applied to education and beyond, and how it enables designers to become facilitators of change.
14. Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of this HCD+ Innovation Playbook – designed for practitioners, leaders, educators, and students. It offers practical tools, and strategies to foster meaningful, inclusive innovation, and complements the national design education architecture and our capability building efforts.
15. In addition to the launch of the playbook, there are partnerships being formalised today – including the renewal of the SP-UOB collaboration and the expansion of the Design Thinking|User Experience (DT|UX) Regional Consortium, which promotes cross-border exchange and builds design thinking capabilities within the region, working with seven regional universities.
Conclusion
16. All of these efforts, the summit, the playbook, the framework, the partnerships, the products, the centres, and most importantly the people – all of these demonstrate how we value design and how we realise our vision of Design 2025 Masterplan, as driven by DesignSingapore Council, our national agency for design, which is also supporting today's DNDA Summit.
17. As we prepare for the future, and beyond, planning for a new Design Master plan 2035, I encourage you to take these few days to build meaningful exchanges. Take these days to develop collaborations and leave with a plan to apply HCD+ in what you do. By working together, we can shape a future that is not only sustainable and inclusive, but one that truly serves humanity.
18. I wish you all a fruitful and inspiring summit. Thank you for inviting me to join you today. Thank you.