Dr. Lorna Ross (2024)

Presentation speech by Dr Lorna Ross on Receipt of Honorary Doctorate in Art and Design at the NCAD Conferring on 29 November 2024

Professor Scott of University College Dublin, Professor Sarah Glennie of NCAD, Registrar, Heads of School, staff of NCAD, friends, family and most importantly today’s graduating class:

As an alum of the NCAD, it is such a delight to be standing here today to celebrate you all and to help send you off into the world knowing that you are part of an amazing legacy of creative excellence and a community of stellar alumni. 

There is nothing like the feeling of being celebrated by the people you most admire and to be the recipient of this honorary doctorate is such a remarkable honour. I want to thank each of the members of the National College of Art and Design Academic Council for bestowing something so auspicious and generous. 

40 years ago almost to the day I entered NCAD as a painfully awkward 17 year old. 

As I journeyed through the Irish school system in the 70’s and 80’s, I was probably far more aware of the things I was not good at. I’m not sure creativity carried much currency back then, and certainly having a ‘vivid imagination’ as I was often accused of by the mother superior, was a small step away from being deviant, or even sinful.

When I reflect on the danger that I now understood lurked in my imagination, it was that it is magical, and expansive and wild. The Irish word for imagination is so beautiful, samhiaiocht which had such potency for our ancestors. Imagination was understood to be the place of visioning, wisdom and intuition. Even the more familiar word insight, (Scandinavian in origin), means ‘inner sight’. I cannot think of a better time for us to be sitting here together, in this auditorium, celebrating the potency and wonder of your limitless and wandering imaginations. 

I’m going to share a little of my own story and not because there is anything heroic in it but rather that it makes a case for searching.

The first ten years of my career I worked surrounded by brilliant engineers and scientists at a research labs in California and Washington. It was there I first became aware of the potency of certainty and confidence, a hallmark of both science and more recently tech. I also witnessed the momentum generated by principles and rules that galvanize thinking, and expel hesitation or doubt. 

This was such a revelation to me because I had always thought science was something more real. As a powerful ideology, it has shaped our world for the past 400 years, yet the more I learnt about how science works, or thinks,  the more limited I believed it to be. Coming from design, it seemed so exclusive and rigid in how it describes the world.  It did not accommodate the messiness of humanity, nor the magic of serendipity. 

I could see it was admired for explaining things, particularly things that appeared complex. But design does that equally well, and can be just as illuminating. Just as science can reveal and describe things, so too can design. I began to see the generative inquiry in design as a natural counterpoint to the rational logic of science.

I should say that during this time, I was perpetually terrified of being discovered as an imposter. I had not been trained to have such fortitude of ideas. But I saw certainty all around me and the potency of confidence. It was evident then that the humility that design demands, can leave us at such a disadvantage.  

During this time I had one important secret weapon … it’s such a tiny thing really, a subscription to the New Scientist magazine which I got weekly and which I would read cover to cover, 3 or four times. I would make notes on posits alongside the articles, not so much what I understood , which was limited, but more the things it made me think of.  It forced me to interpret what was happening in the world of science and technology, creating a parallel inventory of how that was also equally relevant to design. 

I became comfortable with the idea that you don’t have to be an expert to find something interesting, just as you don’t need permission to want to understand something.

I did not set out to work in healthcare although I do remember the day it began, very vividly. It was early 2002 and I had just joined the MIT Media Lab as a principal investigator, and was due to set up my research group to continue my work in the area of wearable technology, which I had built a solid reputation. 

I was passing through London and eager to chat with a biologist friend of mine. I was uncertain about what work I should be doing at the lab and needed to spend some time with someone I knew would challenge me. We arranged that I would meet Julian at the Royal Institute, and wait for him there. He was to be part of a think tank assembled to discuss the chronic state of the NHS. Sitting in the back of this glorious room, eavesdropping on the huddled conversation bemoaning the intractable complexity of the health systems and its immunity to change, it seemed like an inevitability that this would become my next obsession. 

Not needing any further encouragement, or permission, I returned to the Media Lab and pivoted my research squarely into healthcare innovation. Within a year I had been fired and my group disassembled. 22 years ago, healthcare was pretty much a black box. The only people who went in were patients and clinicians. I was given the option of doing what I had been hired to do, or leaving. 

So I left and soon after, joined the faculty at Rhode Island School of Design with the understanding from the outgoing Dean that I would build a discipline in healthcare innovation within the industrial design program. Two years later I had been fired again for persisting on a theme that was considered pretentious.

In total, it would take 7 years before I arrived at the Mayo Clinic, finally getting to seed design in healthcare. Words cannot do justice to the feeling of arriving at a place so steeped in excellence but also kindness and compassion. I would not be standing here today but for the people who put their faith in me and welcomed design in, giving it space to explore and flourish.  It was remarkable the comradery from people who embraced our differences and celebrated our tenacity, who protected and defended us. For 8 years we were the most privileged group of designers in the world.  When I think of what I am most proud of, it’s this group of fierce individuals, scattered across the world now (and some here in this room today) who turned up in the freezing Minnesota snow to do really challenging work that often broke their hearts. 

Watching them, I could see a fierce courage that came from their compassion. There was also something intoxicating and compelling about being part of something bigger than ourselves. 

For me, and I think for them also…design has been a way to live a life poised in slight outrage and discomfort, to be agitated and searching, but also to be grounded and connected. There is permission in design to be determined and passionate and forceful, but without ego. 

You can really, really want something, not for yourself, but for others.  

What advice can I offer to you of value as you head off into a very different world that I did 35 years ago? I’m not sure advice is the right word, but perhaps a few seeds to sow in your fertile minds, to take with you as prompts or challenges. 

• Imagination is the greatest simulation machine and the place where impossible experimentation happens. Even the most abstract and complex thing can be disassembled in your head. No matter what skill you think will make you great, your greatest tool is your imagination. Make sure you know how it works, and how to nourish it. Be careful what you allow distract you. You will need to find the confidence to be curious over the urge to be expert. 
• When I began my career, we would talk about design being the act of making things people wanted. A decade later, design became about making people want things. Today, design has become about trying to stop bad things from happening. This shift is sobering and weighty and not for the faint of heart. We are likely entering an age of great redress and retribution. When we look at our collective human angst and uncertainty, the despair is less from what we have created, but more from what we have lost. The role of design during this period will be to retrieve and restore, to re-materialize and re-inhabit. 
• It can feel like much of the future has already been colonized, hijacked by the idea of technology as humanity’s pioneer. The belief that science and technology progress ahead of humanity, that they inhabit the future first, shaping the world we will arrive into should be fiercely challenged. The future does not exist yet. Nothing is decided and everything is possible. The future will be whatever we give oxygen to. You get to decide. Build your own spaceship and fill it with designers.
• I think sometimes design waits to be invited to conversations, hired often, but there needs to be design that turns up uninvited, and stays. It takes a lot of confidence and swagger to go where you are not welcome. But remember, you are there to bring balance and harmony to the conversation. There is potency in your love of design. If you get into those rooms, remember that you are there not to defend yourself but to point to the edges and illuminate the shadows. You bring wonder and awe, possibility and hope wherever you go.
• And lastly compassion. There is infinite courage to be found in compassion. It is possibly the most underrated superpower. What it does, is that it quietens the ego so you can act fearlessly. Some of the bravest designers I have known are also the most compassionate. Do not be afraid to get close to pain, or sadness… or despair. Don’t be intimidated by complexity or chaos. That is where you will grow.

Conclusion

To all the families here today, to the parents who are so proud of you even if they do not fully understand you. I hope you know that your child has the potential, and courage, to change the world in such powerful and positive ways. I would also invite you yourself to consider your own creativity and how little it may have been encouraged in you, often traded for other more practical endeavours. 

Particularly now, as the world seems so paralyzed and cynical, there is infinite hope and agency to be retrieved through creativity and you should not forget that you were all born will wild and wonderful imaginations too. Just as you have nurtured it in your child, you can journey there yourself.

To my own extended family here today, my husband Luke and remarkable son Osgar, who is equal parts kind, wise and hilarious. My brilliant sister Fiona, who has loved me unconditionally despite finding me deeply infuriating. My dearest friends Josina, Leslie and Marnie my Mayo Clinic family, who have travelled from Oslo, New York and Amsterdam. The equally loved, Emma and Wilby, my parents and brother. 

And all the people not here in person but who have believed in me and cheered me on when I doubted myself. To the people who made space for me, who shared their wisdom and answered my confused question with such generosity. To all the fearless young designers who trusted me enough to follow me into uncharted territories and then taught me so much about fortitude and determination. 

End

I would like to use my last few minutes to acknowledge the last recipient of this accolade, the Palestinian Artist, Dr Emily Jacir. I cannot imagine that when Emily stood here a year ago she, or any of us, imagined the horror that would unfold in her home. I am humbled to walk in her footsteps and in accepting this award I would like to draw particular attention to the targeted torture and slaughter of 1000 healthcare workers in Gaza over the past year. I can think of no greater insult to humanity, no more cynical act, than to kill those who heal. 

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to wish you well. Congratulations to every one of you today on your graduation. 

Be kind, be brave… and do epic stuff.