This is Whitney Janae Noelle Brooks.

Growing up in a city like Detroit which has gone through major redevelopments, both in terms of governance and physical landscape, has shown Whitney the importance of creating products for the community, with the community. As an industrial designer, Whitney Brooks’s work focuses on solving omnipresent problems that have become almost transparent for that community and others. Positive friction in our daily activities leads us to reflect on our decisions and how they benefit or detract from our ideal form of living. Negative friction takes our attention and time away from what we feel is our priority to complete and engage with. Her goal is to balance both positive and negative friction by creating products that amplify times when you should make conscious decisions and draw your attention away from tasks that can be performed easily and efficiently.

From a bed-making tool to a serene tea-inspired watch, Whitney visualizes products that address problems affecting you now, like aging in place, and products that will impact future generations, like Genzen with a cradle-to-cradle life cycle that ideally creates zero waste and zero trash. By involving local community members in the research, brainstorming, and feedback phase of product development through interviews, ideation sessions, and continuous product testing, you ensure that the product not only addresses the initial problem it was created for but it doesn’t create any additional negative friction in other situations. As she continues designing consumer goods in the future, she works to ensure that the experience of using those products is both delightful and positive from their creation to their disposal.