The Crisis of Success in Design/Innovation

The Crisis of Success in Design/Innovation.: "I'd like to speak tonight about a crisis—a crisis in design. Of course, design has had many crises. There was the crisis of acceptance. Business just wouldn’t give respect to design. There was the crisis of money. Designers were paid miserably for their work. Then there was the bubble crisis. Tech collapsed and work disappeared.

Today, we have a another crisis—the Crisis of Success. Everywhere in every sphere, people are asking the question, Can Design Help? Why is the answer to so many problems today design?"

(Worth reading in full.)

How to be a student 1: The art of listening to a lecture

From The Guardian, 16 October 2007. Click the image for a larger version.

Diplomas to become 'the qualification of choice'

From the BBC:

Diplomas could become the 'qualification of choice', says the Schools Secretary Ed Balls, raising the prospect they will replace A-levels.
Mr Balls has announced new diplomas in academic subject areas - science, languages and the humanities - for 14-19 year olds in England.

[...]

Diplomas, a new type of qualification intended to bridge the divide between academic and vocational learning, are to be initially introduced from next year, in a limited range of vocational subjects.

[...]

'If diplomas are successfully introduced and are delivering the mix that employers and universities value, they could become the qualification of choice for young people,' said Mr Balls.

[...]

The success of diplomas will depend on how they are recognised by employers and universities - and Universities UK stressed that the new qualifications will need to 'genuinely provide an appropriate progression route on to higher education'.

A statement from the Russell Group, representing leading universities, also cautioned that 'we are concerned to ensure that the diploma sufficiently equips candidates with the skills and knowledge they need to flourish on our courses'.

There have already been 14 diploma qualifications announced, with the first five - construction and the built environment, creative and media, engineering, information technology and society, health and development - beginning in autumn 2008.

All of the diploma qualifications will include a basic skills element, in English, maths and information technology.

I had a small role to play in the development of the creative and media diploma, being part of the working party that put it together, writing a report on access to HE that (I hope) was influential, and making a suggestion about the way the curriculum was illustrated in one report that, I gather, helped quite a lot of people make sense of it. (It's a small thing, sure, but probably the most useful thing I did!)

When I started on the project I had my doubts about the idea of a diploma that set in stone from the age of 14 that someone would 'be a designer' - or an actor, a film director, an editor, a radio engineer etc. But when I saw the curriculum I was pleasantly surprised. Unless it's changed since then, it wouldn't mean kids dropping English and History to do art and design (and as I've said before, I think we need more people on design courses who took those subjects instead of art) but would instead mean a much better arts-based curriculum all round.

My big worry remains, however: if your school decides it's going to offer the construction diploma but not the creative and media one, does that mean your chances of entering the latter sector are worsened? It's a bit like schools that 'specialise' in things like IT or (god help us) sport. I can just imagine how happy I would have been as a child if my school had specialised in sport...

So I'm with the Russell Group on this - the qualifications have to be proven before they're taken seriously. In my report to the working group I predicted it would take a lot for art colleges to overcome their usual prejudices for students from the right Foundation Courses and 'feeder colleges', and suggested ways to do it. I hope they took my advice.

Sustainable design resources

Ecolect is a new and interesting site dedicated to sustainability. It contains lots of news and resources that should be useful to anyone (and why isn't everyone?) interested in sustainable design.

Mac OS X Leopard Server looks like a potential VLE winner

Apple announced the release of Leopard, the new version of the Mac OS, this week.
What hasn't got so much attention is 'Leopard Server' which has two features that make it particularly appealing as an educational tool.

The first is 'iCal server' (above) which seems a simple way to handle room and equipment bookings in a transparent way - anyone with iCal or a standards-based calendar program could see when that data projector was being used, for example, and by whom.



But here's the potential killer: a Wiki server.
Most wikis suffer because they look awful and are really tricky to edit, but Apple's solution looks like it has great WYSIWYG editing tools. The potential for collaborative research sites, student writing/research and VLEs is massive - I can see this being much better than systems like Blackboard, for example.

Worth checking out if you're into that sort of stuff.

Harry Potter = Star Wars?

Click the image for a larger version

A Vision of Students Today

BBC gives mixed signals on Mac compatibility

Two bits of interesting news today from the BBC. Firstly, BBC content will be available free of charge from some wireless hotspots in the UK. And secondly, thanks to a deal with Adobe, it looks like Mac and Linux users will be able to use the iPlayer to download programmes, something that only XP users have been able to do.

Except...

But Mr Highfield [the BBC's director of Future Media and Technology] said the BBC had not committed to offering the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users who want to download and keep content on their machines for a limited period.

He said: "We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux

"It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."

Erm, no. It comes down to equality of access for a service that is funded by a license fee. Something that is enshrined in the BBC's charter.
I pay the same £10 charge every month for the BBC as an XP user. Saying it comes down to cost per person is like saying Sony TV users are a different breed from Samsung TV users. The BBC (and Highfield specifically) have changed their tune on this before - telling reporters that they couldn't offer Mac users a download service because of Apple's 'restrictive' DRM system while plumping to use Microsoft's platform-specific and therefore even more restrictive system.

Why has the BBC got someone so obviously ignorant about IT matters as the head of 'Future Media and Technology'?

Talk to your daughter before the fashion industry does

Here's an interesting campaign from Dove, though as David Airey points out, Dove are owned by Unilever who also sell SlimFast slimming aids...



He also mentions that

Unilever’s subsidiary based in India, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), markets Fair & Lovely Skin Cream and Lotion, the largest selling skin care product in India. Fair & Lovely is being promoted as a ‘fairness face cream’ that will lighten your dark skin. Through their advertisements, Hindustan Lever spreads the message that a light skin is better than a dark skin.

No, this ad is not a joke:





Perhaps you had the same response to that that I did, but as David points out, is it any worse to want to lighten your skin than to darken it through tanning products and treatments? That's a tough one and I don't know enough about the cultural issues to venture an educated opinion. Is skin lightening an attempt to beat racism (and therefore a result of racism) or simply a cosmetic desire?

Teaching kids financial responsibility with Barbie

Seriously - does anyone think this is a good idea? "I love shopping with a credit card - you never run out of money!"

Yes, the earth moved. Proof at last!

You see, this is what academic research is all about. Sorting out age-old arguments!

"The Quirkology team has joined forces with Professor John C. Brown, Astronomer Royal for
Scotland,to provide an answer to the age-old question "did the earth move for you?"
The answer, it seems, is always yes, but we have gone all the way to find out just how far."

Work out your prowess here.

Design Council cuts sustainability - Design Week

Design Council cuts sustainability - Design Week:

"The Design Council is to axe its sustainability project leader post, Design Week has learned.

The decision comes as a surprise, following assertions that sustainability is ‘the defining issue’ for the organisation at its ‘Wake up to sustainability’ event, held at the London Design Festival only last month.

Design Council chief executive David Kester declined to comment on the decision, held by Clare Brass, but said that sustainability would underpin all of the organisation’s programmes going forward. Although sustainability will not have a dedicated programme, Kester says, it will be a common element to its programmes for business, skills and public outreach.
The programme for the integration of design into business, Designing Demand, the skills programme, in conjunction with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and Designs of the Time 07 are key areas where sustainable design will be ‘embedded’ into the Design Council’s work.

‘Design is a driver for change, but the things that will make a real difference will be shared business, education and policy thinking,’ says Kester. ‘It’s about joining things up.

There is a market for environmental businesses and products. It is the clever designer that is involved from the start.’ But while programmes like Dott have a clear agenda to promote the role of design in providing solutions to environmental and sustainable challenges, there is concern that without a dedicated function, sustainability will simply become an ‘add-on’ to Design Council programmes."

Certainly integration is the key to sustainability - but without any leadership on how to do it, surely it will remain a goal with no actual outcomes? A stupid decision on the face of it.

(Via Design Week.)

Designers don't design

Bruce Nussbaum:

"Design in the Times is still mostly about style, aesthetics and fashion. Glitzy, cool stuff with skinny models and empty, but beautiful homes. ... The entire evolution of design out of simple form to process, methods, strategy and more just isn't in the newspaper. Even the business side of fashion, which is huge, is barely covered. Ditto for architecture. [...]

Part of the problem is that the business section of the Times doesn't get innovation. Doesn't understand the true and changing nature of innovation (beyond the speed and performance of technology)"

I'm not sure it's just the New York Times, or even the media in general, but extends to the design industry itself and is replicated in a lot of design education. Only recently I was involved in a heated debate with some people who refused to engage in a process of enquiry to find user needs, instead insisting on being given 'a brief' that simply told them what to do.

'Design' to most people really means 'the crafting' in a process that many are ignorant to. I don't think we can blame journalists for getting it wrong because it's easy to see the design industry's own publications focussing on that angle, and many students and teachers too. We focus too much on developing 'crafting' skills and not enough on thinking skills.

As I often point out to graphics students, the easiest way to see the difference between real design and what the industry likes to call design is to compare the annual D&AD awards with the Advertising Effectiveness Awards. One rewards aesthetics, the other rewards results. The former is all about affect, the latter effect. Both are called 'design'. But one thinks design is something done by art directors and artworkers, the other realises design is a process that starts and ends way after the Mac Monkeys have done their bit.

Maybe it's time we redefined the word because quite frankly, like Nussbaum, I'm getting fed up with the confusion but - unlike Nussbaum - I'm seeing it in the design industry and education. Journalists are only taking their cue from us.