Guest Lecture Video: Mariana Prieto & Danny Alexander
“If you a designer who focuses on perfection, you don’t get anywhere. Part of the beauty of being a designer is to be able to get dirty and find imperfections.” —Mariana Prieto
MFA Products of Design was proud to host Design Innovation Lead for the International Rescue Committee, Mariana Prieto and Co-Founder and Chief of Product & Purpose at Who Gives A Crap, Danny Alexander. In their talk, Lion, Toliets, and Bears Oh My!, Mariana and Danny talked to us about their journeys throughout their design careers that have led them to design for good.
Drawing on her childhood as an animal lover, Mariana went into Wildlife Design as she saw a need to design for our interactions with wildlife. She says “When you really think about what we call ‘human/wildlife conflict’, which is when humans and animals are fighting over resources, and interacting in ways that are not beneficial to each other, you realize that it is the second largest threat to wild animals in the entire world.”
When talking about his company Who Gives a Crap, Danny says “Innovation isn’t always necessary where you think it is. As a product designer, my instinct was ‘Let’s get in there and explore different textures on the toilet paper. Let’s rethink the form factor.’ But we soon realized that the product itself is really good, so we just needed to rethink the whole experience around it.”
Mariana Prieto
Mariana Prieto is a designer for wild animals by supporting wildlife conservation organizations through design thinking. Previous to her work in conservation Mariana was Design Innovation Lead for the International Rescue Committee where she led teams working on innovative solutions for the Ebola crisis in West Africa and the redesign of the refugee resettlement process in the United States. She was named TED Resident in 2018 and 2019 and IDEO.org Global Fellow in 2013. Mariana graduated as a product designer from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and has taught at USC Marshall School of Business and been a guest lecturer at Berkeley Haas School of Business, Stanford University, Parsons School of Design, Art Center College of Design and Caltech University and speaker at TED HQ in New York.
Danny Alexander
Danny Alexander is the Co-Founder and Chief of Product & Purpose at Who Gives A Crap, the world’s most delightful toilet paper company. He oversees the creative, product, and marketing teams, and as an avid toilet user, is also passionately involved in guiding the direction of the company’s donations (over $1.3 million donated to help build toilets to date!). Prior to Who Gives A Crap, Danny spent several years as Senior Designer at IDEO.org, the non-profit sister company of the acclaimed design consultancy IDEO. While there he led the organization’s sanitation portfolio and developed his deep love of toilets and for working with communities around the world. He's led projects with organizations such as Marie Stopes Zambia, PSI Tanzania, Sanergy, Unilever and others, working primarily in East Africa and Asia.