Adital Ela

I am a designer and teacher incorporating indigenous knowledge into sustainable design. My exploration is around finding ways in which design can support sustainable life habits that come from a deep sense of participation. I run S-SENSE-DESIGN , an active sustainability design studio, promoting various projects with companies, non-profit organizations and social groups. I teach sustainability design at the social-environmental design study program at the Faculty of Design at HIT, Israel. And lecture regularly at conferences and lead workshops around the world touching upon various aspects of design for sustainability. And I am a TEDglobal fellow 2010-2011.

I dedicate my professional life to explore ways in which sustainability designers can envision, illustrate and enable the realization of new and inviting life habits that can thoroughly reform the encounter between man, object and environment. In my work I aspire to create fresh and creative alternatives to our prevalent lifestyle which offer not only social and environmental benefits but also illustrate appealing, sensual, experiential and inspirational products, services and systems. I hope to inspire designers, creative thinkers and decision makers to join this valuable quest towards design that comes from a deep sense of participation.

What are your top 3 Tips to a woman who, like you, tries to solve crucial social and environmental issues through design?

i) Connect to your own passion as a guide to choosing a theme you would like to focus on and stay with it for a while..

ii) Choose a narrow and focused goal and find the depth within it

iii) Allow yourself NOT to know that will enable the answers to come.

I am quite active in the various networks in the field of sustainability design such as DESIS, o2, and other local ones. What has been extremely exciting is being selected as a TEDfellow and becoming part of this fascinating and enriching network.

Which female social innovator would you particularly recommend our readers to look at/be inspired from?

I keep being inspired from my fellow TED fellow from Kenya Su Kahumbu Stephanou that works on building a better Africa from the ground up. Su is a social entrepreneur, founder of Green Dreams Ltd and Green Dreams Tech Ltd companies focused on creating solutions for small scale organic farmers in Africa. She has extensive experience across the organic value chains from production to consumption , policy and advocacy. She is the creator of the Apps4Africa Award winning app iCow, a mobile application developed to help small scale dairy farmers track their cows fertility cycle.