When you say design, I used to say Gerrit Rietveld. Well, I won't anymore, not after this fourth day of NEXT. I'll probably say Josephine Green in the future, who isn't even a designer but, to use her own words, a design groupie.

Josephine was the second speaker of the day and blew the audience, including myself, away. Design according to Josephine isn't about creating products but about developing solutions with communities. Designers shouldn't limit themselves to coming up with solutions for everyday, practical problems, but they should focus on solutions for the future, life in general and the problems we and our planet are facing. According to Josephine we find ourselves in a period of transition. We're moving away from a top down approach where scarcity dictates design, to a socio-ecological era that represents a complete new way of thinking. In this era everything is tied together.

Design, according to Josephine, plays a key role in this proces of transition and in this new era. Processes and strategies in healthcare, education and transport will need to be rethought and redesigned. We'll move beyond growth, beyond big and beyond the product. Design will be to the 21st century what marketing was to the 20th.

Stay updated on the conference via Twitter (hashtag #next2010) and be sure to check back tomorrow as I'll drop a little post on the last day of NEXT featuring TED fellow Rachel Armstrong and Treehugger's COO Ken Rother.

NEXT Day 1

NEXT Day 2

NEXT Day 3