Speakers
Daniel Burka
Daniel Burka is a product manager and designer who focuses on solving complex global health problems in simple ways. He is the director of product and design at the not-for-profit Resolve to Save Lives (rtsl.org), where he founded the open source project, Simple (simple.org). Simple is used by thousands of hospitals in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia to manage over 5 million patients with hypertension and diabetes. He also works on the digitisation of primary care in Rwanda.
In 2021, Daniel founded the open source project Healthicons.org to provide free icons to healthcare projects around the world. And in 2024, he and Elyce Cole founded Hard Problems (hardproblems.com)
Previously, Daniel worked in Silicon Valley as a founder of tech startups Digg, Pownce, and Tiny Speck (became Slack) and was a design partner at Google Ventures for 5 years. He co-founded the Canadian design agency silverorange, which is now over 25 years old.
About the talk
Design can still make the world better, if you lead the way
Over the years designers have made big claims about the power of design to better the world. However, we’ve primarily made companies more profitable and optimised ad-clicking. Not all hope is lost. There are places where design really can save lives and improve the world, but you’re going to have to get out of your comfort zone to bring great design where it’s needed most.