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'Design thinking' taking hold in Australian business sector: ABC news headline 

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Design & Innovation Consultants

Thoughts

Research: seeing design

Research: seeing design

22 March 2013

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust

The innovation white papers of developed economies (notably of UK, USA and Australian origin) recognize an inability to compete with other countries on manufacturing and labour costs, and have turned their attention to creative or innovative industries, such as design, to help drive business and create value.  People are increasingly satisfying their aspirations through consumption yet not evidently reaching a position of wellbeing and contentment, the ideal lifestyle.  The complexity of the economic, social and political world we live in no doubt contributes to a feeling of disenchantment and disregard for the collective interests of society. 

When designers put pencil to paper (or the digital equivalent!), they may be shaping the lives of others with a single a gesture, a line to divide city boundaries, to subdivide a lot, to put up a wall, to insert a door, to add a shelf, to locate a wire.  Given the complexity of the way we live, the responsibilities and opportunities professional designers face are enormous.  Our current lifestyles are unsustainable and in order for the creative industries to play a role in delivering more sustainable alternatives, it is crucial to make some headway in understanding the complexity of the interplay between context and human behaviour contributing to lifestyle. 

Research: interpreting design

Research: interpreting design

22 March 2013

Few people reach complete self-actualization in their lives or homes.  How far we climb up Maslow’s hierarchy is dependent on a complex interplay of the physical, emotional, social, and aesthetic forces we have experienced…  As near poets we can be creators… we set aside all images labeled 'ideal home' or 'ideal place'…  On the domestic level, especially, some place like home must reflect the best of each of us uniquely, not the best of someone else. Israel, 2003

Design research can help us delve deeper into the process of finding individual personhood through becoming an independent and capable creator and maker; someone who can be generally self-sufficient and resourceful, and what is more – is able to adapt their environment in response to and in order to shape changing desires, wants and needs.  Taking a different vantage point reveals qualities of an autotelic person in a way that, when combined with the creative practices of place-making, may add weight to the beneficial potential of research into moderated consumption practices and more sustainable behaviour.

Research: repositioning design

Research: repositioning design

22 March 2013

The focus of design anthropology is on connecting the process of design to the meanings and functions designed artefacts have for people.  Design anthropology does not place separate emphasis on values, or design, or experience, which are the domains of philosophy, academic design research, and psychology, respectively.  Rather, design anthropology focuses on the interconnecting threads among all three, requiring hybrid practices.  Tunstall, 2008

Design anthropology challenges taken for granted assumptions about the way we live.  As an approach to analysis it is relatively new, and predominantly uses anthropological research methods in combination with the process of design and elements of psychological investigation.  Such data gathering and analysis may include; analytic approaches such as traditional ethnographic field studies/surveys, empirical observation, participant diary/self-documentation, interviews, case studies; and creative or ‘experimental’ approaches, such as sketching (concept + analysis diagrams), flow charts, mind mapping, brainstorming, focus groups, model making and photo-montage.