Design and Hope with Rinat Sherzer

In this episode, hosts Lee-Sean Huang and Giulia Donatello welcome back Rinat Sherzer—a biotech engineer, transdisciplinary designer, artist, and adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design whose work sits at the intersection of science, technology, and social justice. Together, they discuss the deep human construct of hope, unpacking how it differs from mere wishful thinking and exploring how designers can act as vital conduits for it. Rinat shares her journey from scientific training to social innovation, the unpredictable ripple effects of her global projects, and how she balances multi-sensory design, teaching, and motherhood through an intentional quarterly focus.

In This Episode

• The logic of the backward glance. Rinat shares her journey from biotechnology engineering into tech and ultimately to design for social innovation. Mirroring Steve Jobs' famous sentiment, she notes that the dots of a multidisciplinary career can often only be connected in hindsight.

• The history and bad rep of hope. When researching the framework of hope for her PhD, Rinat was struck by its historical negativity. From Plato viewing it as an unreliable guide to Nietzsche labeling it the worst of all evils, it wasn't until Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946 that hope was structurally recognized as a vital resource for human survival.

• The three dimensions of hope framework. Moving beyond Richard Snyder's purely cognitive, goal-oriented approach, Rinat's framework treats hope as an embodied, immersive experience. It breaks down into three dimensions: the extreme moment (crisis or joy) where hope is born, the greater social good if that hope comes to fruition, and the concrete, physical action an individual can take.

• Breaking bread and multi-sensory co-design. Rinat breaks down her immersive project, The Rebirth of Hope, which utilizes sound and taste to tap into primal, nonverbal memories. By choosing raw ingredients that resonate with their personal dimensions of hope, participants create a literal "bite of hope" to consume collectively, bridging the deeply personal with the universal synergy of a group.

• Translating data into human music. The Rebirth of Hope project actively translated participant choices into real-time visual musical scores. By mapping hope attributes to chords, rhythm, and melody, a live band performed the collective, experimental music of the exhibition's audience.

• The accountability gap in design education. As a faculty member at Parsons, Rinat addresses the split between the theory of "design for good" and the messy reality of execution. She argues that standard academic design thinking often leaves prototyping and testing to the very end, missing the vital skills of real-world implementation, business case development, and multi-team collaboration.

• The organizing cadence of a year. To juggle a global teaching schedule, running her studio (The Creative Lab), artistic output, and raising her son Luca, Rinat rejects daily micromanagement. Instead, she structures her life by dividing the year into quarters, allowing herself to intensely focus on one major priority at a time while setting strict, non-negotiable boundaries for family.

Resources

• Rinat Sherzer's Official Website – renatsherzer.com

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – https://amzn.to/4geMQgv

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin– https://amzn.to/4aukCdW

• The Bloody Taboo with Power to Change the World (Rinat's TEDx Talk) – https://www.ted.com/talks/rinat_sherzer_the_bloody_taboo_with_the_power_to_change_the_world

• AIGA Design Podcast Feedback and Voicemails – podcast@aiga.org