Bill Moggridge, cofounder of Ideo and director of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, has a suggestion for anyone designing a phone: "Put on a thick pair of gloves and try to operate the cell phone. If you can successfully do it with that thick pair of gloves on, it's probably going to work for the person whose hands don't work quite so well." Empathy isn't an obvious job requirement for a designer, but it will be at the heart of this biannual conference of universal-design advocates in London. Read More »

Few people have résumés like Bill Moggridge. Soon, no one will.

Ten designers created functional objects with native materials from places with fragile ecosystems. We asked three to tell us about their work.