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Issue 4 – Octobr 2010

SHARING EXPERIENCE EUROPE

POLICY INNOVATION DESIGN

eDITORIAL

ReseARCHDesigning Programmes in Contexts o Peace and Security –Derek B Miller, Lisa Rudnick and Lucy Kimbell

INTeRVIeWsDesign Policy and Promotion MapChile, Croatia, India and South Arica

ReseARCHNational Design Systems – Dr Gisele Raulik-Murphy

CAse sTuDYDesign Advisory Service (Canada)

sPeCIAL RePORTSEE Project Activities and Results

see LIBRARY

DesIGN POLICY CONFeReNCe



SEE BULLETIN Issue 4 www.seeproject.org 3

THe see PARTNeRsHIP

Tis SEE bulletin is produced by Design Wales as parto the activities o the SEE p roject, which is operatingrom September 2008 to June 2011, co-nancedby the European Regional Development Fundthrough the INERREG IVC programme.

SEE is a network o eleven European design organisations working to integrate design into innovation policiesat regional, national and European levels.

Design Wales / UWIC – University

o Wales Institute, Cardi

Cardi, UK

Design Flanders

Brussels, Belgium

Danish Design Centre

Copenhagen, Denmark

Estonian Design Centre

Tallinn, Estonia

Aalto University

School o Art and Design

Helsinki, Finland

ARDI Rhone-Alps Design Centre

Lyon, France

Centre or Design Innovation

Sligo, Ireland

Consorzio Casa ToscanaPoggibonsi, Italy

Silesian Castle o Art & Enterprise

Cieszyn, Poland

BIO / Museum o Architecture and Design

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Barcelona Design Centre

Barcelona, Spain

eDITORIAL

More and more, we are seeing that designapproaches are not only being applied to productdevelopment, manuacturing and technology, butto a growing array o other domains such as thepublic sector, social innovation and sustainability projects. Tis broader understanding o designis illustrated in this edition o the SEE bulletin,

with design techniques being applied to scenariosas specialist as international security and peacekeeping. Our research article has been a collaborativeeort between the United Nations Institute orDisarmament Research and the Said Business Schoolat Oxord presenting a ground-breaking projectcalled SNAP (Security Needs Assessment Protocol),

which invited designers to examine issues way beyondtheir usual remit: mine clearance, post-conict

reconstruction and assistance to ormer child soldiers.Similarly, our article on National Design Systemshighlights that over the course o the SEE project

we have observed how design policies have beenevolving and now place growing emphasis onsocial innovation rather than ocusing narrowly oneconomic competitiveness. Tis also encompassesa shit towards a holistic approach to addressingsystems ailure rather than market ailure, whichused to be the accepted rationale or designintervention by governments. By applying theory rom National Innovation Systems, investigatingNational Design Systems could enable researchersto identiy insufcient interaction betweencertain stakeholders, which may be contributingto industry’s limited use o design resources.

Te Design Policy and Promotion Map alsoreveals the prolieration o design policiesacross the globe, with developments in Chile,Croatia, India and South Arica. In SEE projecteorts to engage our national and regionalgovernments, we have expanded our portolioo activities and present our latest initiatives orproviding input or design policy-making.

Despite all these new applications, we cannotorget design’s roots, and the case study onoronto’s Design Advisory Service oerssupport in industrial design, brand strategy,landscape architecture and interior design.

As usual, we present a selection o publicationsrom the SEE Library that we have ounduseul in producing our project research.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue o the SEEbulletin and welcome any comments you might have.

Dr Gisele Raulik-Murphy and Anna Whicher

RESEARCHTHE SEE PROJECT

Designing Programmes inContexts of Peace and Security

While design is seen as having something important to contributeto helping organisations achieve their goals in relation to social andbusiness innovation and sustainability, as yet there have been ew eorts to bring design approaches to activities in the elds o peaceand security. Tis article reports on a recent event that broughttogether specialists rom design, cultural research and those

working in peace and security programming to discuss the value,opportunities and challenges o bringing these approaches together.

Derek B Miller and Lisa Rudnick, Senior Researchers and Project Co-Managers, Security Needs Assessment Protocol at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), and Lucy Kimbell, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Design is now commonly seen to have importantcontributions to make in helping organisations achievetheir goals. Tese contributions are oten situated inthe broad ramework o social and business innovation,sustainability and, to a lesser extent, public service.

In the UK, or instance, several specialist service designconsultancies are working with public-sector organisationsto (re)design services in healthcare, education and socialpolicy. Engine worked with Kent County Council to developa Social Innovation Lab to bring design-based practicesto policy-makers working at the regional level seeking toinnovate.1 Consultancy TinkPublic worked with a headand neck cancer service in the National Health Service usingstudies o patient and stakeholder experiences and co-designmethods, which led to suggestions or many improvements.2 Consultancy Participle has been designing and running amembership service in the London borough o Southwark

which aims to help people s upport each other to live on theirown by providing help with day-to-day practical tasks.3 InDenmark, a cross-ministerial agency called MindLab bringsdesign-based approaches to co-create public services withcitizens.4 Internationally there are more such examples.

One public-sector area that has yet to harness the potentialo design is the politically charged and wickedly complicateddomain o peace and security. However, that domain toohas recently been breached. Tis summer, building o aninitiative at the United Nations Institute or DisarmamentResearch (UNIDIR) called the Security Needs AssessmentProtocol (SNAP) project, a conerence was co-hostedby UNIDIR, Saïd Business School at the University o Oxord, and the Center or Local Strategies Research at theUniversity o Washington. With scholars and practitionersrom design, cultural research and peace and security, theconerence opened new conversations, mobilised ideasand institutions, and made a rst pass at establishing aninternational agenda into this challenging unknown.

DesIGN sTePs INTO THe uNKNOWN… AGAIN

Designer Charles Eames was once asked the question: ‘Whatare the boundaries o design?’ His ot-quoted response was:‘What are the boundaries o problems?’5 Tat vision andambition are laudable. But his response is also provocative,because it encourages designers to enter p recarious new

worlds, to press ever outwards into borderlands thatcannot readily be imagined or understood at rst glance.

It is air to wonder, however, at what point designersare stepping through the looking glass only to s tand on

worryingly unamiliar shores where their training or action,and the implications o it, are uncertain. Internationalpeace and security may well be just such a domain.

We believe that the current trend or involving designersand design-based approaches in designing public servicesto deliver public policies creates new opportunities, whilesimultaneously raising some important questions that mustreceive attention. Te impulse or positive social contributionneeds to be tempered by p reparation or responsible action.

Turning observations into themes for discussion at the

Glen Cove Conference on

Strategic Design and Public

Policy, USA.




RESEARCH RESEARCH

Contemporary design activity illustrates the bold strideso designers into public policy and ever urther away romtraditional concerns such as products and communication.Tere has been a ‘social turn’ taking place a mong designers,and in the design eld itsel. Design is good at pushingoutwards, charting new courses and harnessing creativity,and that attribute is live and well in this new moveinto the domain o peace and security. However, a new temperament might also be needed. Eames’s quip may be charming, memorable and provocative, but a shellchair could never cause an economy to collapse, a peacenegotiation to ail, nor an armed conict to reignite.

OPPORTuNITIes IN PeACe AND seCuRITY

Tere must always be a healthy dose o humility indeclaring any activity a ‘rst’. Even with due diligence,it is always possible that an initiative might exist beyondthe periphery o one’s sight. Yet still rom that cautious

stance, at this juncture it appears that the SNAP projectis the rst ‘programme design service’ attempted ormatters o international peace and sec urity. It bringstogether two elds – cultural research on the one hand,and service design on the other – that have hitherto beenunconnected in addressing matters o security and peace.

Te point has recently been underscored by the 22ndBiennial o Industrial Design (BIO 22) being held atthe museum o Architecture and Design in Slovenia.Te organisers o BIO 22 have selected SNAP as one o the ‘good-practice examples’ in the eld o serv ice andinormation design to recognise the innovation in bringingthese elds together, despite challenges rom within theUN itsel and some conusion and ambivalence by donorgovernments about the value o thinking in this new way.

Te potential that SNAP helps illuminate invitessome questions about the sort o encounter thatdesign might have with peace a nd security.

First, it raises productive questions about contemporary design practices and education. SNAP invites designersto start thinking about such topics as practices o mineclearance, post-conict reconstruction, disarmament andthe demobilisation and reintegration o ex-combatants(DDR), and services needed to assist ormer child soldiers.Tese kinds o activities at the local level typically involve anational government, a UN agency working in that country,local partners and (oten multiple) local communities.

What would designers need to know and understand in orderto engage such problems eectively and ethically? What kindso skills and knowledge would be needed, and what kind o education and training might provide this? Te ‘designs’ orlocal action o this sort have traditionally been the product o political debate, advocacy and some research. Tey have notbeen the product o, or example, prototyping, modelling,co-creation nor local strategies research into the ways andmeans o local social systems to help such processes along.6

Secondly, organisational processes, such as the ones that we see at the UN and elsewhere, tend to stie ratherthan encourage innovation. Herbert Simon, well knownin design circles and inuential in thinking aboutdecision-making processes and organisational behaviour,coined the term ‘satiscing’ to describe the tendency o organisations to orgo optimal decisions in avour o merely satisactory ones that sufce. oday we nd thatmega-organisations like the UN are ‘ailing to satisce’.

We think that design can help.

We are persuaded that design – when reposed on seriousand cooperative cultural research – has somethingimportant to oer peace and s ecurity programming

when ‘good enough’ is no longer good enough.

GeNeRATING LOCAL KNOWLeDGe FORTHe DesIGN OF LOCAL ACTION

Te Security Needs Assessment Protocol (SNAP) is theprototype or a programme design service to help UNagencies rst to generate local knowledge and then to apply it as a strategic asset in the design o local action. Bothsteps are highly cooperative with local c ommunities, withthe ormer having a proound theoretical commitment togenerating knowledge of a place , not simply about a place.

Tat might sound banal. One could even be orgivenor assuming that this is the way things are done in therst place. Yet it is not. Despite agreement about thevalue o local knowledge (o the cultural variety) amongour UN interlocutors, generally speaking agencies stilllack an institutional orientation to the generation o such knowledge, or its systematic use in the creation o designs or local action. Further, there appears to be noreal ramework or method employed to translate localresearch ndings systematically into action on the groundin partnership with local communities, nor a d esign phaseavailable in the project cycle in which to do this. Despitevast resources dedicated to ‘monitoring and evaluation’o projects and programmes on peace and security, thereis presently no comparable commitment to the design o projects and programmes. Tis lack o attention withinthe UN and international system generally is a signicantbarrier in the application o SNAP specicall y, and theapplication o design generally. Overcoming this is ‘Job 1’.

Tis realisation led to a growing interest in proessionaldesign by the SNAP team, and in the eld o service designin particular. Tere SNAP discovered that ethnographic-styleresearch was already used to inspire and shape service designthrough an exploratory process. Trough working with theUK/Norway-based service design and innovation consultancy live|work,7 SNAP became increasingly persuaded that someo the approaches that proessional designers bring to servicedesign could help not just our work in peace and security,but perhaps the work o other UN agencies too. Couldthe use o design lead to more eective policy outcomes?

Tis journey took us (Miller and Rudnick) rom policy goals, through adaptations o cultural research, to design.Here we ound ourselves on a common ooting with ourthird author (Kimbell), who was able to combine detailed

knowledge o design with social s cience research generally.ogether, the three o us beca me interested in a numbero questions that have become the basis or shared andindividual work. Among the most immediate are:

Tese questions led the three o us to co-organise a three-day workshop in June 2010 on Strategic Design and PublicPolicy, together with Gerry Philipsen o the Center orLocal Strategies Research at the University o Washington.

By inviting specialists rom three proessional domains –design, cultural research and policy-making – we wantedto establish i there was interest among p articipants tobring together cultural research and design practicesto try to develop better programmes in the context o peace and security. Our seasoned participants broughtknowledge and experiences rom several communities,including designers rom the UK, India and Denmark,

cultural researchers rom Ghana, Israel and the US,and UN and national policy-makers with experience o operations in countries such as Rwanda and Haiti.

sTRATeGIC DesIGN AND PuBLIC POLICYCONFeReNCe

Te rst two days helped participants develop a sharedsense o the three proessional domains represented a t theevent through short presentations and synthesis exercises.

We began the rst day by learning about the key problematics. Proessionals with eld experiencein humanitarian action, development and peace-building illustrated challenges and keenly articulateda sense that existing a pproaches are not working.

On the second day we ocused on design and culturalresearch, two areas that were relatively new to policy-makers and to each other. Te discussion o design drew on research in design theory, operations management andservice design, demonstrating a shit rom a concern withproducts to a wider interest in social and organisationalaction. Te discussion o cultural research underscoredthe importance o learning about local ways and meaningsor engaging in social and organisational action acrosscultural contexts, and considered how participativeactivities in such contexts can be not only ineective buteven harmul to local communities, when inadequately culturally inormed. In addition, the SNAP team shared

challenges and obstacles encountered in the conduct o their work in Ghana, Nepal and within the UN itsel.

On the third day we put our central question to the test:Is collaboration between these three proessional groupspossible, viable and benecial or programming on peaceand security? o see, we broke into small interdisciplinary teams (one designer, one policy practitioner, one culturalresearcher) to explore the utility o using a strategic designprocess to generate local knowledge or local action. Atera brieng by UN experts, participants were asked toexperiment with how cross-pillar cooperation and expertisemight be used to consider a pressing real-world challengein post-conict stabilisation issues: the ‘reintegration’o ex-combatants, hypothetically in Sierra Leone.

Christian Bason, Director of Denmark’s Mindlab, describes some of

the complexities his group faced when imagining new approaches

to designing a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration

programme.

W ha t can des ign – as pra

c t ised b y

1. pro ess iona

l des igners – br ing to t h

e

des ign o programmes in peace

and

secur i t y con te x ts ?

W ha t can cu l tura l resear

c h t heor ies and

2. me t hodo log ie

s br ing to t he des ign o

suc h programmes ?

W ha t can po l ic y -ma kers – wo

r k ing in

3. peace and

secur i t y – learn rom bo t h

o t hese fe lds, in com b

ina t ion, to

be t ter des ign loca l l y mean ing u l a

nd

genera l l y more success

u l programmes ?




CONCLusIONs

In the discussion that drew the event to a close,participants suggested next steps as an agendaor strategic design and public policy 9:

Te workshop gave us an opportunity to identiy some key ideas to take orward in dierent ways.

From a design perspective, it is clear that the user-experience-centred design approaches well established in elds suchas product or service innovation may have somethingpowerul to oer peace and s ecurity programme design.But this does not represent a plug-and-pla y situation.Careul study is needed into the as sumptions shapinginsight generation and co-design methods (or example),especially when ethical stakes are high, knowledge iscontested and interpretive bases may be unknown.

From the point o view o improving policy outcomes,there seem to be clear indications o potential to takeorward SNAP’s rst eorts i we can nd the rightagenda, and the right partners with institutional capacity,the reexivity to experiment and learn, and the courageto change existing (and oten ailing) systems.

At the start o a new decade in which local problems are evermore global, the local is bec oming more and more relevant.Proessional designers’ claims to have special means to elicitusers’ ‘needs’ and generate insights inspired by ethnographicmethods, and to co-design with users, need to give way to a more nuanced understanding o what design-basedapproaches can achieve. While Eames’s vision o boundarylessdesign is seductive, it behoves those o us involved in strategicdesign to ask what designers’ practices assume about whatmatters to people and what eects social action might have,or whom, how and why. Responsible design requires it.

Combining design processes and methods with cautiousand reexive cultural research, drawing on long traditionsin the social sciences that a sk hard questions about how and why things happen, can, we believe, lead to improvedprogrammes in peace and security. But this will not bea natural process. Tat, too, needs to be designed.

See http://localstrategiesresearch.washington.edu/index. php/project-overview/local-strategies-research/ for further description and details of local strategies research.

[1] Social Innovation Lab or Kent, http://socialinnovation.typepad.com/silk, accessed 26

August 2010.

[2] Bate, P. and Robert, G. (2007) Bringing user experience to healthcare improvement:

The concepts, methods and practices o experience based design, Oxord: Radclie.

[3] Southwark Circle, www.southwarkcircle.org.uk/, accessed 26 August 2010.

[4] Mindlab, www.mind-lab.dk, accessed 26 August 2010.

[5] Hermann Miller, An Interview with Charles Eames, www.hermanmiller.com/discover/

an-interview-with-charles-eames, accessed 12 August 2010.

[6] See http://localstrategiesresearch.washington.edu/index.php/project-overview/local-

strategies-research/ or urther description and details o local strategies research.

[7] Livework, www.livework.co.uk/, accessed 12 August 2010.

[8] Derek’s lecture on this topic can be heard at www.unidir.org/bdd/fche-activite.

php?re_activite=384, accessed 25 August 2010.

[9] The report is available at www.unidir.org/pd/activites/pd9-act337.pd, accessed 25

August 2010.

RESEARCHRESEARCH

Participants were not asked to design a reintegrationprogramme itsel, but rather to articulate thekinds o knowledge and processes that might beinvolved in moving rom a top-down ‘best-practice’approach employed by the UN to a ‘best-process’approach. o what extent would this cooperativeconversation necessitate skills rom all three elds?

Discussion revealed how even such a short exercise servedto make the challenges o designing such a programmemore tangible. One designer, or example, pointed out how designers will design anything, and are willing to tackle aDDR programme as readily as a consumer service. Anotherdesign person with a background in anthropology saidthat he was accustomed to translating social science-basedresearch or the purposes o design, but the ethical issuesraised by co-designing with ex-combatants had orcedhim to reassess how oten issues o power a nd trust weretaken or granted in his own work. Te case o DDR in

West Arica, he said, was really a whole new world.

For some o the cultural researchers, the design processhad parallels to how they designed and understoodresearch, although the goals were admittedly dierent.But the relationship between research and design waso particular concern, and was shown to be in dire needo attention by researchers and designers alike (andpreerably together). As participants grappled acrossproessions with dierent ideas about what counts as‘the local’, how this directs one towards dierent kindso ‘knowledges’ and what this means or ‘participation’,questions emerged about what needs to be known or whatkinds o decisions or actions. Tis wa s no small matter.

For some o the policy-makers, attending to a process in which a programme was designed was an importantnew way o thinking about how to go a bout their work.Existing proessional work in UN organisations tendedto ocus around best practices and guidelines that havebeen shown to be insufcient on the ground. 8

Several cross-cutting issues captured the attention o the group as a whole. Work being done in participatory research, action research and other related elds madestrong echoes across the disciplinary divides, but alsogenerated new questions, especially about accountability and the nature o participation. Conceiving o a designprocess as an enquiry or exploration, in which anunderstanding o the problem emerged by engaging withdierent stakeholders, rather than a top-down, step-basedactivity with the starting point dened by a particularactor, illustrated not only how dierent denitions o design could shape how people went about design, butalso the dierent roles available in the design process.

It was widely agreed that there is enormous potential – andeven a necessity – in attending to local knowledge toconstruct local action by undertaking rigorous and ethicalcultural research that can be employed in new ways by reimagining design, and lining up the eld o design withpeace and security. But the UN needs to commit itsel organisationally to design and innovation to better direct itsmassive nancial and political commitments, and ultimately to serve the Member States and their populations.

Suppor ting coopera tion

1. to de velop

ne w methods, tools and practices to

learn more about each other’s wa ys of

working.

De veloping resources

2. for

cooperati ve action.

Promo ting a wareness 3.

of strategic

design and its value for public polic y

and programming.

Pursuing solu tions

4.for social

betterment through social action.

Derek B. Miller and Lisa Rudnick of UNIDIR lead their SNAP team

in southern Nepal, in cooperation with Rajesh Jha from Purbanchal

University. The topic was reducing the involvement of children in

violent activities as Nepal recovers from 14 years of civil war.

P h o t o s : N i k h i l A c h a r y a




INTERVIEWSINTERVIEWS

Design Policyand Promotion Map

o get a global perspective on the growing number and increasing maturity o design policies and promotion programmes and ollowing up the good eedback rom the previous issue o our Bulletin, this eature presents statements romdesign practitioners rom ve countries. Each interviewee provides an overview o developments in their country and outlines how design ts into various governmentstrategies, in order to build a prole map o the state o aairs around the world.

INDIAIn February 2007, the Government o India approved the National DesignPolicy. Tis policy alls under the auspices o the Ministry o Commerceand Industry (Department o Industrial Policy and Promotion). Design hasalways played an important role in India’s social sector. raditionally, designinitiatives have ocused on artisan empowerment and social uplitment throughentrepreneurial training and product diversication. In March 2009, ater theapproval o the National Design Policy, the Central Government constitutedthe India Design Council to undertake various unctions as outlined in thepolicy. Currently, the Council is ocusing on initiatives in three major areas:

(1) benchmarking Indian design education; (2) studying and recommendingtax incentives or investment in design-related R&D in industry and research

institutions; and (3) design promotion and the implementation o a gooddesign-selection system by introducing the ‘Ind ia Design Mark’ (I-Mark).

Te overall intention is to oster the culture o value additionthrough design or the nation’s economic and social growth.

Professor Pradyumna Vyas

Director, National Institute o Design, IndiaMember-Secretary, India Design Council

www.nid.edu

CHILE Although there is no ormal national design policy in Chile, it is possible toidentiy a national design system made up o design education, promotion,associations (notably the Asociación Chilena de Empresas de Diseño QVID,the Chilean Association o Design Firms), awards (Premio ChileDiseño)and biennales. As wine is a national product representing Chilean identity,it has recently been the subject o an experiment using design to innovatein terms o product and process. From exclusively applying design to labelsand packaging, design now operates in the rst stages o the value chain,so increasing process efciency, competitiveness and exp orts. Te challengeremains to apply this advanced strategy to other sectors. In the context o (1) increased government support or SMEs, (2) increased expenditure onR&D, science and technology and (3) innovation being recognised as across-cutting government strategy, design has played a contributing role.On the one hand this provides the discipline with great visibility at nationallevel, while on the other hand it is contributing to developing the area, whichmay be aecting the ormalisation o a dedicated National Design Plan.

Carlos Hinrichsen

DirectorSchool o Design DuocUC

www.duoc.cl

Andres Villela

Director o Industrial Design andInterior DesignSan Carlos de Apoquindo CampusSchool o Design DuocUC

CROATIATe Croatian Designers Association (CDA) was ounded in 1983. In 2004, itlaunched the Croatian Design Centre (CDC) with the aim o establishing adialogue with business and government. Te idea was to present the importanceo this design mediator to the government to include this institution in thenational system. Its rst task was implementing design in the urniture industry,given that Croatia possesses a wealth o wood and, despite the appropriatetechnology being available, it exports mostly raw wood. Te project broughttogether designers and manuacturers to devise prototypes or the nationalurniture trade air and to connect manuacturers with retailers to orma previously non-existent chain o distribution. Consequently design wasincluded or the rst time in the government development strategy or theurniture industry. Despite an awareness campaign a bout the economic valueo design, understanding o design was not sufcient at top government levelto approve the drat o the National Design Strategy in 2007, a collaborativeeort between designers, businesses and academics. In 2007, this led to thestagnation o CDC activities due to a lack o budget. oday, only the CDA is theofcial design institution acting as a non-government, non-prot membershiporganisation, which receives some unds rom the Ministry o Culture.

Tatjana Bartakovic Jallard

Former CDC Director (2004–2009)Mirjana Jakusic

Present CDC Director (2010)http://dizajn.hr

Map available at: www.seeproject.org/map

SOUTH AFRICATe Department o rade and Industry (DI) has developed a National IndustrialPolicy Framework or South Arica. Te Department o Science and echnology (DS) has established 23 d iscipline-dedicated ‘echnology Stations’ across South

Arica, mainly linked to Universities o echnology. In notably the automotiveindustries, new product development and engineering and rapid prototype stations,very valuable active product design assistance is available. Individual provincesare responsible or their own policy developments: or example the Western CapeProvince has developed a Design Strategy, while the Gauteng Province has developeda Creative Industries Framework. Gauteng Province has also completed the rst drato a comprehensive Innovation Strategy. Te Gauteng Innovation Hub is a megaproject or high-technology R&D. In 1967, the DI established a Design Institute

with the mandate to be the national Design Promotion Body based in the South Arican Bureau o Standards (SABS) in Pretoria. Te Design Institute has developeda design promotion strategy to guide its activities, projects and global outreach.Te Design Institute spearheaded research into the need or design promotion inSouth Arica and was also the project lead or the South Arican IDA World DesignReport. Globally design is developing so ast that the conventional models o designpromotion are becoming obsolete. Te SABS Design Institute is urging or a policy that makes provisions or constant adaptation to new circumstances and technologies.

Adrienne Viljoen

SABS Design Institute Manager& Icsid Arica AdvisorIcsid Board 2003–2007

www.sabs.co.za

World Design Survey: South Aricanndings available at www.icograda.org




RESEARCHRESEARCH

National Design Systems

By applying theory rom National Innovation Systems, the notion o NationalDesign Systems transers established theory to the design d omain and advocates thatit could enable researchers to better inorm policy-making by identiying insufcientinteraction between stakeholders, which may be contributing to the limited use o design resources in national economies.

Dr Gisele Raulik-Murphy, Design Wales / International Institute of Design Policy & Support

o date, the development o design policies and programmesacross the world has mainly been characterised by theexploitation o design or economic development and marketcompetition. In this context design policy emerged romindustrial policy, and government intervention was justied

in cases o market ailure. When industry ailed to takeadvantage o design resources, government intervened withprogrammes that promoted design among companies orthat helped them to identiy and mana ge design resources.

However, as we have been witnessing during the SEEproject’s liespan, design policies have been evolvingas a result o discussion, research, observation o othercountries’ experiences and interaction with otherpolicy elds – in p articular, policies or innovation andsustainability. wo main changes can be observed :

Shift towards social innovation rather than focusing solely on economic competitiveness. Te discussion aboutbroadening the rationale o design policies is gainingincreasing attention. Te potential to have a positiveimpact on the quality o lie o the population is now seen as a requirement or design policies in Europe.

Shift towards a holistic approach addressing systemic failures

rather than market failures. raditional understandingo the rationale or design programmes has ocused onaddressing market ailures, or companies’ underinvestmentin design due to their lack o understanding about thisdiscipline or their lack o belie in its value. As a result,programmes have been narrowly ocused on encouragingcompanies to use design and providing assistance to ensurethe successul application o design or their businessobjectives. However, this approach is proving too narrow.

As well as encouraging companies to invest in design, it isimportant to ensure that other elements in the system arealso avourable or design investment. Tis is the systemicapproach: where it is necessary to recognise that policiesor design need to address the whole system and not only the isolated use o design by individual companies.

A shit in the rationale or design intervention requireschanges in the policy approach. o address possible systemicailures it is crucial to understand how the system operates.In the search or reerences that could help us to address thischallenge we looked into analogous disciplines, in particular

innovation policy, a eld which has been addressing systemicailures through the study o National Innovation Systems.NIS challenged the ocus on market ailure, directing the‘attention o policy makers to possible systemic ailures whichmay impede the innovative perormance o industry’.2 Tisapproach was developed in the late 1980s by the researchersC. Freeman, R. Nelson and B. Lundvall, and consolidatedin practice by the Organisation or Economic Co-operationand Development (OECD). It is a ramework or the analysiso the innovation and technological advances that occur in acountry, how it is supported by inrastructure or institutions,its dynamics and how it impacts on economic development.

In a similar manner, the concept o National DesignSystems can be developed in order to challenge the currentmainstream rationale or government intervention in design(i.e. companies’ ailure to invest in and use design orcompetitive improvement) directing attention to possiblesystemic ailures. In investigating these systems, researchersmay be able to identiy, or example, insufcient interactionbetween actors in the system, an imbalance between

privately and publicly unded programmes, mismatchesbetween design support and promotion programmes andother deciencies that may be contributing to industry’spoor use o design. In this broader approach, the s ystemis not ocused on the interaction between companies,design agencies and design programmes (governmentschemes). Instead, it is broadened to include actors suchas research institutions, universities, credit providers (e.g.banks), supply industry, government support schemes(e.g. export programmes) and even citizens/consumers.

In practice we nd that al l these actors interact aroundthree types o design programmes: promotion, supportand education. In addition, in order to perormeectively, the system needs government articulation(policies). Te gure below shows the schematicrepresentation o these elements and their denitions.

Te importance o understanding NDSs is to app reciate that

all these parts must operate in harmony and cohesively inorder to provide an environment in which companies caninvest in design and succeed. Tis may be more importantthan assisting a restricted number o companies to use designor product development. Government policies are in aposition to ensure the existence o this environment throughregulations, intellectual property rights and the competitiveenvironment. In this context the government’s role istwoold: user (due to its purchasing power) and regulator.

Tis concept o National Innovation Systems is already established and widely recognised in the eld o policies orinnovation and technology, and its application to the designpolicy domain seems sensible. Tis would be a signicantcontribution to the development o new policies or design.

o read more about this topic we recommend theOECD publication about National InnovationSystems as well as more recent work that has beenexploring this topic in the design context:

Access to these documents is available in the SEE Library: www.seeproject.org/papersanddocuments

[1] J. Heskett (2010). “Aspects o Design Policy in History”, SEE Bulletin, January 2010.

Available here: www.seeproject.org/publications

[2] OECD (1997). National Innovation Systems. Paris: Organisation or Economic Co-

operation and Development (OECD), p.41.

design policies have

been evolving

the concept o NationalDesign Systems can be

developed in order to challenge

the current mainstream

rationale or government

intervention in design

schmatic rprntation o th baic typ o programm o a National Dign sytm and thir dfnition

• DESIGNPROMOTION:schemesareusuallytargetedatthe

wider public with the objective o raising awareness o the

benefts o design in many dierent ways (e.g. exhibitions,

awards, conerences, seminars and publications).

• DESIGNSUPPORT:programmesareimplementedtoassist

companies in using design or their business advantage. As an

example, these programmes build ‘bridges’ between designers

and industry.

• DESIGNEDUCATION:includesthetraditionaleducation

(degrees and postgraduate courses) as well as proessional

training or designers.

• DESIGNPOLICYcanbedefnedastheprocessbywhich

governments translate their political vision into programmes

and actions in order to develop national design resources and

encourage their eective use in the country.

OECD (1999 ).M ana g in g N at ional I nnovat ion S yst ems. Paris,

Organisation f or Economic Co-opera

tion and De ve lopment.

Lo ve, . (200 7 ). Nationa l design inf r

astructures: t he

k e y to design-dri ven socio-economic

outcomes and

inno vati ve k no w ledge economies. In

(Ed.) I A SDR 0 7 -

Internationa l A ssociation of Societies

of Design R esearc h.

Hong K ong: Te Hong K ong Po l ytec hnic Uni versit y.

Mou ltrie, J. & Li vese y, .F. (2009 ). I nt er nat ional D

esig n

Sc or eboar d - I nit ial ind ic at ors o f int er n

ational d esi g n

c a pabilit ies. Great Britain: If M and Uni versit y of

Cam bridge.

R au li k -Murp h y, G. & Ca wood, G. (

2009 ). Nationa l

Design S ystems – a too l f or po lic y-m

a k ers. Proceedings

of Creati ve industries and regiona l po licies: ma k ing

p lace and gi ving space. Universit y of

Birming ham.

24 Septem ber 2009. Birming ham, U

K .




o date, ten projects have reached this stage o theprogramme and ull its unding commitments.

One o the rst companies to sign up or the programme was Nu-Co Plastics, a small manuacturer specialising inproducing plastic-moulded parts or the automotive sector.Rob Van Alphen, a ormer dentist, purchased the company our years ago. Since then, Nu-Co has demonstrated theability to solve a range o tricky problems or automotiveparts suppliers using technically challenging resins.But, with the downturn in the automotive sector in the

Windsor region o Southern Ontario, Van Alphen wasacing unused capacity in his plant and was contemplatingoptions to leverage the talents o his expertly trained

workers and specialised resources. Trough the DASprogramme, he connected with a senior industrial designer

with experience in injection-moulding processes. Tedesigner introduced him to a strategic design a pproach tonew product development that would help him to answerthe burning question: What else can we make? “Beore, I

would have come up with an idea and gone straight tomaking a part,” says Van Alphen, “…but the way we l ook at things has denitely changed d ue to this process.”

Another project was completed or Protek Paint, a 60-year-old oronto company with proprietary colour-matchingtechnology that manuactures architectural house paints,

liquid industrial coatings and aux nishes.Trough theDesign Advisory Service, Protek connected with one o oronto’s leading brand consultancies, Shikatani LaCroixDesign. Te design team helped Protek to develop apositioning strategy that would enable the company to stand out and to highlight its strengths and productbrands relative to much larger international competitors.

In some cases the strategic des ign opportunity has beenbest addressed by a team o designers rom several dierentdisciplines. Morgan Solar is a oronto manuacturer o concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) systems, establishedin 2007. Its core CPV product has been devel oped orinternational applications in large-scale solar arms, butthe company has a second product in development or

the home solar market. Te Design Advisory Serviceconnected Morgan Solar with an industrial designer

and an architect who both had considerable expertisein positioning green technology innovations to improvetheir commercialisation success. Tis green design teamdeveloped recommendations or visualising and a rticulatingthe benets o Morgan Solar’s product-in-development inorder to attract additional unding and support rom thearchitectural, design and green building community.

DAS is supported by the Industrial Research AssistanceProgram, operated by the National Research Councilo Canada. Funding has been extended to continue theprogramme to 2011 with a urther ten projects. Clients pay a nominal ee or enrolment in the programme and receivethe design audit, strategy and report with recommendations.Discussions are underway to scale up the programme toconnect with a larger number o SMEs in 2011/2012.

For more information visit www.diac.on.ca or email [email protected]

CASE STUDIESCASE STUDIES

Design Advisory Service(CANADA)

Te Greater oronto Area is the third largest centre ordesign in North America a ter New York and Boston.However, there was no inrastructure to encourage the localgrowth industries to work with the design sector. In order toencourage cooperation between the two sectors, the DesignIndustry Advisory Committee (DIAC) considered a numbero models and decided on a design advisory approach.

DIAC recognises the importance o the rst design experienceor small businesses being successul in order to encouragemanagers and directors to see the possibilities o design aspart o a long-term strategy. So in 2009 DIAC launcheda pilot design advisory programme specic to innovation-ocused and growth-orientated small businesses in themanuacturing, construction, green technologies, health care,consumer products and inormation/communication sectors.Named the ‘Design Advisory Service’ (DAS), the programmeintroduces the application o design in a strategic mannerto advance key business goals and it is specically aimed atbusinesses that have not worked with designers beore.

Convincing companies to undertake a design course o actionor the rst time requires a lot o persuasion. Managers a nddirectors o SMEs need to be ully inormed about what they can expect to get and what it will cost them. Only when theinormation is specic to their needs are they prepared totake a small, but important, rst step. In order to addressthese points and build a long-term relation between theSME industry and local designers, the DAS programmeprovides a low-risk intervention between the two sectors.

Te rst step in establishing the DAS programme was aseries o seminars introducing the value o higher-leveldesign strategy and its catalytic role in the commercialisationo innovation. Te seminars were targeted at specicgroups: directors o all the local design associations, SMEmanagers and directors and, importantly, the local Industrialechnology Advisors (IA). Te IAs play an importantrole in the programme as they can make introductionsto businesses that would benet rom the programme.

Te advisory element o DAS starts with a businessdesign audit. Te DAS team leaders meet with theSME to explain the programme and explore the design/business opportunity. Tis is an extended meeting lastingup to a day, including a tour o the business, collectiono materials and other inormation relevant to thedesign audit. Te team, consisting o DAS experts then

write up the design audit and brie or the project.

Ater the client business approves the design audit, they arethen connected with an accredited design proessional withrelevant experience to address the opportunity identied

in the report. Te designer has one week to work withthe business, which is unded by the DAS programme.

Te designer uses the time to develop a strategic approachand recommend a higher-level design opportunity that wouldenable the client to establish a more sustainable marketadvantage. By creating the opportunity or the designersto apply their expertise to specic businesses, the DASprogramme allows both parties to work together and a chievehigher expectations o design. Te intention is that thebusinesses who participate in the programme will continue tobuild their relationship with the designers to complete a ullproject based on the initial strategy and recommendations.Te DIAC programme takes a holistic approach to the designdisciplines and tries to engage a range o designers whereverpossible in order to ully address market opportunities orthe business. Some companies were introduced to industrialdesigners, but other clients were connected with a brandstrategist, architect, landscape architect or interior designer.

o promote and disseminate the work o DAS, an exclusivearrangement with Design Engineering allows the casestudies to be published to a national readership. Te casestudies ocus on the benets o the strategies recommendedand describe the challenge in the context o the industry

sector in which the client business is operating.

DIAC recognises the

importance o the rstdesign experience or

small businesses

Te designer introduced a

strategic design approach to

new product development that

would help answer the burning

question: What else can we make?

Nu-Co Plastics operates a custom built, low pressure

urethane oam moulding line. The technology is used to

produce a specifc automotive part, but it can be adapted

to other uses.

“Beore, I would have come

up with an idea and gone

straight to making a part, but

the way we look at things has

denitely changed due to this

[strategic design] process.”

Van Alphen, President, Nu-Co Plastics





SEE LIBRARY

The SEE bulletin is printed alcohol ree using vegetable based inks on 100% recycled paper made rom post consumer waste.©Design Wales 2010 (ISSN 2044-3226) All rights reserved. Reproduction o parts o the SEE bulletin may be made without seeking permission rom SEE partners, on condition that reerence is clearly made to the source o the material.

This is the ourth o six SEE bulletins to be published between 2008 and 2011.They include research papers, interviews, reports and case studies relating topolicies and programmes or design and innovation rom around the world.

The opinions expressed in the articles are those o the authors and do notnecessarily refect those o the SEE partners.

Publisher: PDR – National Centre or Product Design& Development Research (UK)Editors: Dr Gisele Raulik-Murphy, Anna Whicher, Darragh Murphy& Gavin CawoodDesign: Malin Flynn / Studio Allihopa

Design Wales is delivered by the International Institute o Design Policy &Support (IIDPS)

Design WalesUWIC – Western Avenue,Cardi, CF5 2YB, UK Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 7028e-mail: [email protected]

www.seeproject.org www.designwales.org www.iidps.org

To receive or unsubscribe to SEE bulletinsplease email: [email protected].

9 772044 322004

The Economic Rationale for a National Design Policy

(2010): This research paper by Proessor Peter Swann (Nottingham

University Business School) was published as part o the Economic

Papers series by the UK Government Department or Business

Innovation and Skills (BIS). Examining design policy rom an

economic perspective oers invaluable insight or both academics

and policy practitioners interested in the feld o design policy.

Dyson Report: Ingenious Britain (2010): Prior to the May

2010 UK elections, the Conservative party asked Sir James Dyson

to propose a vision to ‘reawaken Britain’s innate inventiveness

and creativity’ in line with the party’s ambitious goal or ‘Britain to

become Europe’s leading generator o new technology’. The report

oers intriguing insight into the challenges acing Britain with regard

to manuacturing and exporting technology and proposes a series o

fve tasks or tackling the issue.

Innovation Ireland: Report of the Innovation Taskforce

(2010): The Innovation Taskorce was created in 2009 to

implement the Irish Government’s strategy ‘Building Ireland’s

Smart Economy’. The aim is that ‘by 2020 Ireland will have

a signifcant number o large, world leading, innovation-

intensive companies, each having a global ootprint’. The report

states that innovation is a result o the interaction o a range

o complementary assets and includes design in the list.

Regional Innovation Policy Impact Assessment &

Benchmarking Guidebook (2008): Based on the results and

practical experience o eight European pilot projects, this guide

presents an overview o concepts, approaches and the practical

implementation o impact assessment and benchmarking o regional

innovation policy. Published by the Innovating Regions in Europe

Secretariat in Luxembourg, it provides entry points to wider sources

o inormation on conducting impact assessment and benchmarking,

including web material and reerences to key publications.

SEE LibraryHere the SEE project shares a selection o publications rom our online library (www.seeproject.org/seelibrary), which wehave ound useul in compiling certain project outputs like the SEE Policy Booklets. Tis list provides resources on thetheme o policies and policy tools or design and innovation. In this issue we present one academic paper, two government

reports and a guide to regional policy evaluation. We are always looking or more reerences, particularly academicresearch, so i you have published a paper relevant to policy, innovation or design we would be willing to promote it.

Design Policy ConferenceTe SEE project nal conerence will be held on 29th March 2011 in Brussels.Design Flanders is preparing the nal conerence, which will take place in theFlemish Parliament building. An overview o current and uture innovation anddesign policies in the partner countries will be shown as lmed interviews entitledTe State o Design Policy in Europe and Te Inuence o the SEE Project. Best-practice speakers will take the oor to present design strategies implemented by local authorities or better services, energy saving and social innovation, but will alsodemonstrate how an eective government design policy can inuence the economicsuccess o the business sector. Te conerence will be open to all, targeting in

particular policy-makers, design and innovation policy practitioners and researchers.Registration details will be published on the SEE project website. Save the date!

Flemish Parliament building,Brussels, Belgium

Documents

SEE Bulletin Article