Last year, we brought you Thirty Conversations on Design — an ambitious scavenger hunt for the essence of design through the minds of 30 of the world’s greatest living design thinkers and tinkerers. Now, the Little & Company team is back with Thirty Conversations on Design 2010, this time asking a new crop of 30 two pivotal questions:

“What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?”

In my mind, [MacGyver] was the original design thinker. He had the most minimal resources, severe constraints, but he had results that he had to get to and his solutions were often so simple [and] elegant and always worked.” ~ Emily Pilloton

We’re thrilled to see this year’s edition coming closer to our own conception of design as a holistic, cross-disciplinary process. This year, the roster of talent has significantly broadened to encompass all kinds creative heroes — from writer and TEDster Daniel Pink (Undo, Redo) to humanitarian designer and Brain Pickings darling Emily Pilloton (Do More With Less) to action sports legend Tony Hawk (For The People) to typography wunderkind Jessica Hische (Group Bonding).

If I had to pick one thing, I’d have to pick hummingbirds. Because they just show you that evolution has an excellent, excellent sense of… I don’t even know what the word would be… humor? Ambition? Needless ambition! I like the needless ambition of hummingbirds.” ~ Stefan Bucher

We’re a little disappointed with the awkward and antisocial — unembeddable, unshareable — video player, but the merit of the substance far outweighs the shortcomings of the package.

The single design that has inspired me the most are Apple products. They took what was considered to be a business-only design — the computer — and made it fun and exciting and useful in your everyday life, and also something you are proud to own and you’re proud to display.” ~ Tony Hawk

We encourage you to explore all of them, but a special shout-out is due to our friend Tina Roth Eisenberg (better-known as Swiss Miss) for her wonderfully insightful query into how cultural differences have influenced design.

This is 2010 and we still have a huge part of our world population that doesn’t have safe drinking water. So what I would love to see is that design combined with engineering help solve problems like this.” ~ Tina Roth Eisenberg