Susan Merritt and Calvin Woo, owners of the Design Innovation Institute

The husband and wife design team of Calvin Woo And Susan Merritt have launched the Design Innovation Institute, a nonprofit formed to enhance design innovation through the practice, study and collaboration of multiple design disciplines across traditional (architecture, interior design, graphic) and nontraditional (research, planning, policy making) boundaries.

In September, an inaugural event at IKEA drew more than 75 design, business, political and education industry leaders to learn about DII and its mission as well as the impact IKEA design and marketing processes have on consumer behavior worldwide.

Woo runs CWA Inc., a marketing, graphic design and environmental design consultancy and Merritt is a professor of graphic design at SDSU’s School of Art, Design and Art History.

“We are looking forward to raising awareness and funds for our mission,” the couple say. “With the help of partners like IKEA we will be able to implement tools that foster design collaboration. This will include the development of DII’s Web site (DesignInnovationInstitute.org), which will include a database that people in all facets of the design and scientific worlds can access to exchange ideas and information.”