Ana Mengote Baluca, IDSA

Designer/Educator, Pratt Institute Ana is a Designer on a mission to use Design as a tool for building a more socially equitable world. Always curious, she’s a believer that good design comes from asking the right questions. She feels the most alive when she’s finding solutions at the intersection of Design, Data, Business Strategy and Social Equity. She aims to shed light on the importance of economic accessibility as an often overlooked aspect of Design. Privileged to have grown up in Asia, the US and Europe, her experience as a third-culture kid has always been a major driver of integrating cultural heritage and sensitivity in everything she works on. As the Creative Director and founder of lowercase innovation, she has partnered with Girls Congress and the US embassy in the Philippines to host innovation workshops for local universities, has launched a multilingual open data lake, and is actively working on multiple other projects, while studying to get her LEED accreditation and preparing for a Master’s program in Economics.

Activities for Ana

20/2X Recognition | 2023

Ana demonstrated outstanding leadership as Chair of IDSA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council (DEIC).

Conferences Committee | 2023, 2024
DEI Council | Chair | 2023, 2024
Speaker | International Design Conference | 2022

Designing for All Users

This session is a departure from the contemporary trendy design philosophies that ask design teams to focus on a niche market, and center design with one user in mind. It introduces and explores a multi-user approach to designing and creating systems, services, and objects based upon Service Design principles that would challenge the designer to consider not just the end-user of a product, but all the humans that contribute to its whole life cycle.

This presentation will provoke the user to think more critically about current design philosophies and offer a new design thinking tool to create more holistic design systems that are more intentional with their impact.

DEI Council | 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
20/2X Recognition | 2021

Ana Mengote Baluca, IDSA, is Creative Director of the agency lowercase innovation, a Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, and a leader on IDSA’s DEIC. She contributed to the Spring 2021 issue of IDSA’s INNOVATION magazine with the article “Colonized by Design” and to IDSA’s 2021 Race in Design event on Understanding the AAPI Experience.

Current events surrounding Asian Americans and constant reflection about her identity were big motivators for Ana to be more intentional about her work. “I’ve become more mindful about how I spend my time and energy, specifically choosing which projects are more impactful in a purposeful way that are worth pursuing,” she says.

Now in her third year with lowercase innovation, marking the final year of her “exploration phase” of creating without client constraints, Ana aims to launch a few products and brands under lowercase innovation in the years to come. She’s also working on a coffee table book that wraps up the pop-up exhibition she just completed: bagay at buhay in New York City.

“I want to continue being an educator to support the next generation of designers,” she says, and has partnered with other institutions outside of Pratt. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for her.

Speaker | International Design Conference | 2021

Activating Designers as Design Activists

This presentation offers a quick list of actions for designers to take at every stage of their career to be active participants in design revolutions that are happening right now. It is meant to empower the audience to take design a bit more seriously by highlighting how our work builds the environment and culture around us.

We’ll start with a quick introduction and history on how design is a very social and impactful field and continue with a few case studies of designs that have changed the world. We’ll continue with an honest review of the state of the world at the moment and reflect on design’s contribution to making things worse or better. The main part of the presentation will be a series of action items that designers can implement in their practice and work environment that can hopefully ripple to bigger changes in our greater community.