Design Council calls for change in how design is categorised

Basically, design is more closely related to science, engineering, technology and maths than it is to art… especially in terms of what it offers the economy and society.

(I happen to agree, but what about you?)

Design Council chief executive David Kester has called for a change in the categorisation of design education. In a speech delivered at the Liberal Democrat Party conference fringe in Bournemouth yesterday, Kester called for design to be more closely linked within Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. Stem subjects are regarded as strategically important to the UK economy and are ringfenced in terms of research funding. Earlier this year, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, former rector of the Royal College of Art, called for design to be included as a Stem subject, saying, ‘The dots aren’t being joined up. Engineering and technology are rated, but design isn’t. The big issue now is making design a Stem subject.’ In his speech, Kester also called for a sustainability element to be embedded across education, and for the nature and value of creativity to become an integral part of all learning. He said, ‘Our educators have a responsibility to bring hard business and technological skills together with creative problem-solving capabilities.

link: Design Council chief executive calls for design education change | Design Week

Christopher Frayling wants education funding change – Design Week

Design Week reports on an initiative I think is long overdue:

The outgoing rector of the Royal College of Art, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, is set to mount a campaign to persuade Government to rethink its categorisation of design education.

Frayling has signalled an intention to go to ‘the highest level’ to talk to the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to argue for the inclusion of design as a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Stem) subject. Stem subjects are regarded as strategically important to the UK economy and ‘ringfenced’ in terms of research funding.

Frayling’s move has been prompted by a cut in research budgets for some of the UK’s major design higher education institutions, including the RCA, University of Sussex, University of the Arts London and Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication (www.designweek.co.uk, 5 March).

Frayling points out that although the RCA ‘dramatically’ improved its positioning for the Research Assessment Exercise, it had its funding cut. ‘What’s interesting is that Mandelson spoke [last week] about the importance of research in the creative industries, and days later funding is cut,’ says Frayling. ‘The dots aren’t being joined up. Engineering and technology are rated, but design isn’t. The big issue now is making design a Stem subject.

‘Everyone understands the relationship between science and manufacturing, but what they don’t get is design as the crucible of the creative industries. Government thinks that it is a lightweight subject, about styling and art, that it isn’t grown-up stuff,’ he adds.

James Dyson feels that the Government’s ‘arbitrary division’ of engineering and design is short-sighted. ‘We need to move away from the old stereotypes: engineering as difficult, design as fluffy. Our best design engineers are both artistic and scientific.

‘Investment is required across the whole spectrum: science and engineering, but creative thinking and new ideas too,’ he says.

A spokesman for the Higher Education Funding Council for England says, ‘It may be that in multi-faculty universities, design is carried out as engineering. We protected the science subjects but didn’t move the money from the arts. In fact, [overall] funding for the arts has gone up. We’re not questioning the role of the arts in the economy, but there’s a limited pot of money.’

Design Research Grant Uses

• Nottingham Trent University’s research budget has increased. Research projects include a robotic snake, developed with Merlin Robotics

• Some of the Royal College of Art’s research budget is ploughed into the Helen Hamlyn Centre, which works on patient safety, inclusive design and workplace design projects

• University of the Arts London uses part of its research budget to support knowledge-transfer projects between design and industry, according to Professor Keith Bardon, UAL Pro-rector, Research and Enterprise

Design versus innovation? A pointless debate

A friend and fellow design teacher from Texas asked me recently how I decide what to post on my personal blog, and what I post on this blog aimed at design students. My answer was going to be “I post the controversial stuff or my personal thoughts on my personal blog, and non-controversial, link-based stuff here”. I’m going to experiment. What follows is intended to provoke a response and debate. The views are personal and don’t necessarily represent those of my colleagues or my students (and in many cases won’t). And who knows, in a few months (or even minutes) I may have changed my own mind…

Are design and innovation different things? You’ll know (if you’re one of my students) that I see the two as one and the same, and maybe I think that design that isn’t innovative (by which I do not mean stylistically innovative) is probably struggling to be design at all. If it doesn’t make a difference, I’m not sure I’m that interested anymore, which is why a lot of the design that gets plastered in design magazines and colour supplements bores me. “Ooh look, someone’s designed a new chair. Wow.” Give me “Wow, someone’s designed a new way to get kids interested in science. Ooh” any day. Or designed a new way to improve health care. Or designed a new textile that protects people from infections in hospitals. Or designed a new way to help Alzheimer’s patients maintain dignity, or their families keep track should they wander off. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Yet for many, design is about style. It’s about the interesting application of type, the shapes that can be formed with precious metals, the feel of a cloth, or the pattern.
Actually, I’m happy about that. To a point. I like a nice bit of typography myself and this morning spent an entire bus journey examining the type on four ads that seemed to suggest to me that letter spacing is out of fashion. My problem is with those who think design is just about those things. The graphic designers who designed the ads I saw on the bus this morning seemed more concerned with style than content – the were pretty much unintelligible, but they were, admittedly, pretty.

This “design versus innovation” is an old debate and I stumbled on an article by Bruce Nussbaum from 2005. To place it in context, Hilary Cottam had just received the award of Designer of the Year which caused an outcry because, shock horror, she doesn’t actually design “things”, instead she got the award for tackling problems in health care and prisons.

That the controversy and debate happened in Britain is particularly disappointing, as arguably the concept of “design thinking” was born in the UK. But it’s still seen as a little bit beneath the traditionalists. For me, the issue has its roots in the juxtaposition of art and design. The two are not the same thing, but in order to enter design school you still need to go through “art training”. Some argue, quite persuasively, that this is essential in order to develop certain techniques. The problem is, as evidenced in this debate, that it also develops a certain way of thinking. And the way of thinking that is essential for good art is not necessarily the way of thinking that is essential for good design.

Colin Burns, former IDEO head in the UK and a Professor of Design Innovation at the University of Dundee put it like this:

“You don’t have to go to art school to do that. There is still a hegemony of what I call muser-led design in this country – the idea that whatever happens to inspire the designer is the solution. It’s insulting to call people like Hilary Cottam an impresario when she is so obviously creative in all those aspects of design. I’m fed up with the whole “I went to art school so I’m a designer” view.”

(“Muser-led design”. I like that!)

Or, to put it another way, as I asked Lauren Currie the other day, why do we still see the ability to draw a naked woman as the primary qualification to be a designer?

This false link between art and design extends in to the media as well. It’s interesting that design articles in The Guardian and The Times always seem to be in the arts and entertainment sections. An upcoming “reality” Apprentice-like programme on the BBC called Design School features Phillippe Starck in the Sir Alan Sugar/Donald Trump role, much to the dismay of many who think this risks further pigeon-holing design (though we could be pleasantly surprised). Via Twitter I exchanged a few interesting comments with Kate Andrews about the need for design to be seen as a business or social science, not an art. The moment you see it as art you risk forgetting the point, or the people. (Note there’s a difference between seeing design as an art, something to be done well, and as Art, a form of self-expression. It’s the latter I’m really bothered about)..

The “art school” approach to design is damaging design, Nussbaum appears to say:

(L)ots of designers feel they should not be sullied with the tarbrush of “innovation.” Innovation is a term too aligned with big business and corporations. But as a design advocate who fought for years to get designers to get over themselves and their obsession with framing their profession in terms of art, I can’t help but feel haplass in this debate. Just when victory is near, when design is finally being accepted for what it can do, people are denying its power, whining about the nomenclature and clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The debate isn’t over, but the design thinkers are winning, if “winning” is indeed the term. As Qin Han reminded me yesterday, it’s not about one way of thinking versus another, both can exist. Like I said above, there’s a place for “old” design. Take a look at this, featured on Reporting Scotland in March 2008. It’s a radio tag designed to keep track of Alzheimer’s and autism sufferers.

Spot anything that might be a problem?

Here’s the tracking equipment you presumably would have at home:

And this is what you’d use to go and find your lost relative:

Now it’s easy to laugh. If these were prototypes, you could imagine they’d eventually be “prettified”. Except they’re not. These are the actual bits and pieces. Frightening…

But hang on.

Here we have an example of the old design way of thinking. The technology is developed by engineers, scientists, whoever. And then we, the designers, say, “Give it to us. We’ll make it look nice!” Or maybe the engineers say, “let’s give it to a designer to make it look nice”.
Either way, that’s underestimating the power of design. And drawing a very crude dividing line between “innovation” (coming up with the system and producing it), “engineering” (building it) and “design” (making it look nice).

The “new design” way of thinking that Nussbaum was writing about in 2005 (that’s a long time ago) would say that “design” is all those things, including designing the support service that helps those caring for people with Alzheimer’s or autism, the training, the equipment and so on. It’s all designed. Seeing design as the bit that’s tagged on at the end, as critics of Cottam’s award did in 2005 (see Vicky Richardson’s and Mark Dempsey’s comments in this 2005 Observer article) is wrong. It’s bad enough when other people do it, but when designers themselves do it?

Take another look at those pictures above. Imagine how a jewellery designer could be involved, or a textile designer. Not in making the bracelet device pretty, but in helping people understand how objects like this need to contribute to someone’s identity.
Why do Alzheimer’s patients remove things like this device, but keep a brooch around their neck? It’s not because one is ugly and the other is pretty. A jewellery designer who has been taught about identity and value, as well as how to actually make jewellery will be able to contribute from day 1. (As indeed would a textile or graphic or web or interior designer). A jewellery designer who only knows how to make the pretty, well they’ll be asked to take that pile of crap and gild it. Seems to me like a waste of a degree.

So going back to Qin’s quite correct comment, that there’s room for both “old” design and “new” design (using Nussbaum’s terms) I wonder if really the debate shouldn’t be about one or the other, or both coexisting, but about how the two are integrated. I think we do this quite well at Dundee, and I think it happens elsewhere. Looking at our Master of Design programme, it’s clear that we’re producing graduates who are oblivious to this whole debate in the way that we’re all oblivious to the question “hydrogen or oxygen? which makes the better drink?”, because the question’s just bloody stupid. You need both to make water. (and you can’t drink hydrogen). Or “eggs, milk or onions for dinner?” Why can’t you just make an omelette? (Suggestions for better analogies welcome…)

My point being, that if the design industry continues to have this debate it’s not going to be around for long, in its current form at least, because as the service design industry demonstrates, there are young people out there who think such navel gazing is pointless and don’t even bother getting involved. They just get on. And degree and graduate programmes need to produce graduates who aren’t going to be happy decorating other people’s turds. (Again, help with the analogies welcome)

Design without innovation isn’t design. It’s decoration. And innovation on its own is pointless without application.
Together, innovation and application, you get “design”.

But that is all my opinion. What’s your take? Is service design really design? Is the world really a better place if someone comes up with a cool new shape for a kettle?

Comments, arguments etc welcome!

A design manifesto from the World Economic Forum

Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week (one of the few non-design publications to take design seriously, and arguably one of the few publications full stop to take it seriously) was at the World Economic Forum in Dubai, where design was discussed. The result? A new design manifesto:

Throughout history, design has been an agent of change. It helps us to understand the changes in the world around us, and to turn them to our advantage by translating them into things that can make our lives better. Now, at a time of crisis and unprecedented change in every area of our lives – economic, political, environmental, societal and in science and technology – design is more valuable than ever.

The crisis comes at a time when design has evolved. Once a tool of consumption chiefly involved in the production of objects and images, design is now also engaged with developing and building systems and
strategies, and in changing behaviour often in collaboration with different disciplines.

Design is being used to:

• Gain insight about people’s needs and desires
• Build strategic foresight to discover new opportunities
• Generate creative possibilities
• Invent, prototype and test novel solutions of value
• Deliver solutions into the world as innovations adopted at scale

In the current climate, the biggest challenges for design and also its greatest opportunities are:

• Well-being – Design can make an important contribution to the redefinition and delivery of social services by addressing acute problems such as ageing, youth crime, housing and health. Many designers are striving to enable people all over the world to lead their lives with dignity, especially the deprived majority of the global population – ‘the other 90%’ who have the greatest need of design innovation.
• Sustainability – Designers can play a critical role in ensuring that products, systems and services are developed, produced, shipped, sold and will eventually be disposed of in an ethically and environmentally responsible manner. Thereby meeting – and surpassing – consumers’ expectations.
• Learning – Design can help to rebuild the education system to ensure that it is fit for purpose in the 21st Century. Another challenge is to redefine or reorient the design education system at a time of unprecedented demand when thousands of new design schools are being built worldwide and design is increasingly being integrated into other curricula. Designers are also deploying their skill at communication and visualization to explain and interpret the overwhelming volume of extraordinary complex information.
• Innovation – Designers are continuing to develop and deliver innovative new products at a turbulent time when consumer attitudes are changing dramatically thereby creating new and exciting entrepreneurial opportunities in the current crisis. They are increasingly using their expertise to innovate in new areas such as the creation of new business models and adoption of a strategic and systemic role in both the public and the private sector.

So what do you think? What would you add? Take away? Alter?

You can read my views over on my personal blog.

William McDonough: Designing Cradle to Cradle

The Sustainability Forum last night in Dundee proved interesting… Among other things we watched this video from TEDTalks – William McDonough on sustainable design.

You can download these videos (and subscribe to new ones) from iTunes to watch at your leisure (HD and standard definition). Most, if not all, are well worth watching. I’ve got the lot stacked up on my AppleTV for idle moments…

Designers asked to tackle MRSA by UK government

Design Week is reporting that five UK design consultancies are being sought by the Department of Health and the Design Council to collaboratte with scientists and healthcare professionals. They will be asked to develop “innovative design-led hospital furniture and equipment that could improve cleaning and reduce patients’ exposure to healthcare-acquired infections”.

The programme, called “Design Bugs Out” starts with a briefing on 2 September and will focus on research in three hospitals, identifying key problem areas.

Having identified five key areas, each team will be asked to focus on one and given a £25,000 grant.
After the closing date for submissions on 10 October, final teams will be announced ten days later and given seven weeks to develop prototypes. Winning designs will be exhibited next summer.

Why is public signage failing? – Design Week

Interesting article from Design Week:

The phrase ‘to have lost one’s way’ is often applied to people who have become anxious, confused and vulnerable. Although meant metaphorically, it’s no coincidence that to literally lose one’s way – to become disoriented – also causes tension to rise very quickly. In public spaces, such as hospitals, car parks and stations, this is the last thing users want, yet poorly designed wayfinding systems often compromise safety and may even increase the risks of criminal behaviour.
Blind alleys, dead ends, poor sight lines and disappearing trails all leave people floundering. As the Home Office’s guide to designing out crime says, good street lighting and wayfinding measures, clear sight lines and a minimum of secluded or isolated areas go a long way towards making people and places less vulnerable.

‘In designing spaces we want people to feel safer and be safer, and wayfinding is important in this,’ says Jake Desyllas, director of wayfinding and pedestrian movement specialist Intelligent Space. ‘By moving people around in a certain way, you can increase the number of people who are viewing a space, as well as the potential for people to enter it at any given moment. Even if no one is actually coming in through a doorway, the fact that they might makes a space feel safer than, say, an alleyway which nobody can suddenly enter.’ The need for a calm, safe flow of people is especially important in environments where tension may already be high, such as hospitals.

At Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, for example, the Accident & Emergency department suffered a rise in crime five years ago, especially in violence towards staff. An analysis by Intelligent Space found that incidents were talking place in the treatment rooms – the worst possible place – largely because people entered through the wrong entrance and were then drawn by natural light and activity into a medicallooking area. Poor wayfinding and signage also led to rising stress levels, increasing the likelihood of aggression. Intelligent Space created a new wayfinding system and resited the reception area so that it provides greater ‘natural surveillance’ by staff; the number of incidents subsequently fell by around 80 per cent.

Car parks are another trouble spot…

(Read the rest online or in the current issue of Design Week)

The future of design – podcast

Design Week has released a new podcast featuring interviews with industry representatives on the challenges facing the design sector in the future. Well worth listening to – click the link to download in iTunes or visit the Design Week podcast website if you haven’t got iTunes.

Design fails to target MPs – Design Week

Design Week reports that

A report published today by the Associate Parliamentary Group for Design and Innovation says the design industry is “failing to take advantage of the Government’s renewed interest in the creative industries”.
The report states that only 22 per cent of MPs are “very familiar” with the Design Council, while more than half have never heard of the Design Business Association.

It goes on to speak of a “communications gap” and a lack of engagement between designers and MPs.

The report recommends that individuals and consultancies lobby local MPs to get issues raised with the Government. “No one in the sector is actually lobbying on behalf of design, and the only effective way to do that is through the MPs themselves,” says report author Joanna Shaw. “It is far more likely for a design organisation to get a meeting with a minister if they get the support of an MP first, and MPs are more likely to be in their positions in the long term.”

The Design Council welcomes the report, but says, “Our experience is that key design industry organisations do have an active dialogue with Government and also work with [us] to provide coherence to Government on major policy issues. This is not to say that much more couldn’t be done and we will continue to work hard to ensure that design and designers have a powerful voice in Government.”

The report also calls for the reinstatement of “ministerial design champions” in Westminster.

For what it’s worth, I had a long chat with my local MP on the phone the other day about design’s role in the economy, and the value of design research in particular…

Design will see us through the downturn, says Sorrell

From Design Week:

Sir John Sorrell is promoting design as a force for good that will see the UK through the economic downturn it currently faces.

“I believe that the greatest creativity happens in adversity,%u2019 he says. “And I believe creativity in adversity is the key to success. I believe in the power of design to solve problems and [foster] innovation.”

He continues, “Design for me is the powerhouse of the creative industries. It is the catalyst that restarts the economic engines of nations.”

As chairman of the London Design Festival, Sorrell was speaking in London last week to an audience of LDF partners and media. He said the sixth festival, scheduled for September, will “take place in a very different context to the past five”.

“The past ten years have seen a pretty good time %u2013 and the past five years a boom time %u2013 for design,%u2019 he said. %u2018This time, there is doom and gloom around, but when the going gets tough, design gets going.”