A Lot To Say welcomes Leah Heiss for a chat focussed on her incredible award-winning work as a designer and researcher 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, engineering and health services through to manufacturing.
Leah Heiss is an award-winning designer and researcher working at the nexus of design, health, and technology. She is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design at Monash University, as part of Monash Art, Design and Architecture.
Leah grows the potential of practice based design research across disciplines, including Medicine and Engineering. She focusses on how design can scaffold major shifts in healthcare towards digitisation and personalisation of healthcare, while continuing her work in wearable technologies and growing a culture of design and health research.
Her health technology projects include jewellery to administer insulin through the skin for diabetics; biosignal sensing emergency jewellery; and swallowable devices to detect disease. She designed Facett, the world’s first self-fit modular hearing aid for profit-for-purpose company Blamey Saunders hears.
The design process for Facett has been acquired into the Museums Victoria heritage collection and been exhibited globally. Facett has received many accolades including the 2018 Australian Good Design Award of the Year, the 2018 CSIRO Design Innovation Award, the Premier’s Design Award 2018 (Product Design), 3 Victorian Government iAwards and Melbourne Design Award. Leah was also the recipient of a 2021 GOLD Good Design Award for the Tactile Tools co-design method.
A few points in the chit-chat:
Notes and Links:
Follow Leah on Twitter: @leah_heiss
Follow Leah on Instagram: @leahroselaurel
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