Participants in the Made in Brunel Pecha Kucha are: David Kester, Chief Executive, The Design Council; Flo Heiss, Founder Dare Digital; Marcus Abbott, BY62x leader, Bentley Motors; Oliver King, co-founder and director, Engine Service Design; Lynda Relph-Knight, editor, Design Week magazine; Warren Hutchinson, Experience Director, LBi; Professor Tony Anson, Brunel University and Anson Medical Ltd; Chenay Nicole Williams, MA Design Strategy student; and Alastair Curtis, Global Head of Design, Nokia.

This is essentially a plea for political humanism and to re-appraise the wonder that is the human race.

My talk

In the noughties, we are increasingly negative about humanity. We see humans as a problem, to be fixed or re-engineered. But we should re-appraise our fellow humans. Humans are...

Enquiring

They look into things. Are intrigued. They seek to understand. [Image of child investigating by platinumblondelife5]

Smart

And they are able to understand amazing things. And to explain and discover new things. [Image of Bill Thompson, Cory Doctorow, Tom Coates and Matt Webb by matlocktest]

Creative

They use their skills to do new, surprising and pleasing things with what we have around us. Do more with less. Challenge the limits of the material world [para]. [Image of Creative Archive BAFTA award by dotben]

Logical

They think through complex problems and describe complex solutions. [Image of logic diagram by psd]

Lateral-thinking

They work around challenges in surprising ways – a designerly attribute [Image of Edward De Bono by 350d]

Insightful

They perceive beyond the obvious, see the depth of challenges, and are wise in giving advice [Image of Matt Jones and Matt Wattenberg]

Problem-solving

They test and experiment [Image of scientists by quiplash]

Transformative

And they turn ideas into things that improve the quality of people’s lives [Image of woman worker by library_of_congress]

Loving

They care for each other, often for reasons they can’t explain [Image of family scene]

Selfless

They do things for others, and for humanity – and make sacrifices, even where there is no clear benefit (for instance around sustainability and climate change) [Image of Alexander Wood by emmaandlorenzo]

Empathetic

They are able to put themselves in others’ shoes and understand their experiences – a designerly attribute [Image of Hannah Redler by matlocktest]

Trusting

They take others at face value and give the benefit of the doubt, believing that if they trust others they will rise to the challenge [Image of young girl by lenny_meriel]

Passionate

They are enthusiastic, driven, committed. Keen to communicate and persuade... [Image of Claire Fox]

Engaged

... And they engage, get deep into things, immerse themselves, and explore [Richard and Ryan by beija-flor]

Aspirational

They aspire to be better than they are, and imagine this for others [Anne Frank]

Entrepreneurial

They are able to work out how to put things into action... [Keith Teare by mbites]

Leaderly

And lead people [Gordon Brown]

Inspiring

And inspire them to be better at all these things [James Woudhuysen]

Misanthropic

But also our human-ness can lead to misanthropy, which is an expression of some of these these characteristics. But who could be anything but inspired by our fellow humans.

[Images in this talk were largely sources from Flickr and are linked accordingly.]