Rafael Canales – Innovation Strategist

The way I think about design has been evolving over the years. At first, I started my education in industrial design due to the great interest I had in technology and aesthetics. I was interested in the products we interact with everyday and how they made our life better through good functionality and aesthetics. As I explored this field, I started to look into how things were made, why they were made that way and the interaction between people and their built environment. I started to notice the connections in systems and objects that surround us, and began to imagine different ways to improve them in terms of economical, social and environmental sustainability.

As a designer, that is how I see our profession should be like. Design is all about interaction, about how the tangible and intangible products and systems around us connect to each other and people. Design explores the possibilities for making new connections and improving them in ways that create a better future by means of collaboration and creativity.

For making this happen designers should not only conceive products, services and interactions, but also strategies that allow the implementation of these concepts in a determined context. Strategic design draws the paths for new ideas to become realities in a determined context.

Lately, I have been involved in projects related with planning, developing and facilitating collaborative processes to generate new ideas and strategies with people from different skills and professional backgrounds and working on problem-solving projects addressing local challenges. 

Although a big buzzword recently, I believe that working in design-thinking frameworks can contribute to come up with better propositions in governments, companies and organizations that truly translate people’s needs and context into meaningful, sound and integral value propositions.

I am currently doing a Master of Science in Strategic Product Design at the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands.