new design thinking? can service design save the world?

NextD Journal RERETHINKING DESIGN 27

New Design Thinking? Can Service Design Save the World?

Gill Wildman Co-Founder, Plot United Kingdom

Chris Downs Managing Partner, live|work United Kingdom

GK VanPatter Co-Founder, NextDesign Leadership Institute Co-Founder, Humantific Making Sense of Cross-Disciplinary Innovation

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NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design New Design Thinking? Conversation 27

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1 GK VanPatter: It’s great to connect with you both. What’s shaking there in London? Lots of exciting stuff going on? Gill Wildman: Hi, GK. How great it is to talk with you! And how great to be provoked into taking the time to think about what is going on. It’s such an interesting time for me. In short, I haven’t felt as satisfied as I am now to be a designer at any other point in my design-erly existence. As fluffy as that may sound, there’s a palpable difference now. Whereas in the past you were asked to do something and deliver something, now it’s much more ‘what can you bring to this situation?’ and ‘what ideas do you have around making sense of this?’ I can now bring my training and approaches into so many different contexts and complex situations. I just can’t wait to get to work! In answer to your question, London’s interesting at the moment for lots of reasons. (Of course, it’s not the only place where interesting things are happening. All big cities gather interesting forces, but other places are compelling, inventive and innovative, too). The Olympics have brought a buzz, as well as other large-scale regeneration projects like Battersea Power Station (and many smaller ones), or the BBC’s Innovation Labs. Right now the annual London Design Festival is attracting new talent across the country, or even people in design organizations moving around. There are many more small-scale activities, which generate excitement and change. From the Plot’s-eye-view there are interesting changes in what people are asking us for. Clients from a more diverse range are asking less for artifacts and ‘things’ and more for approaches, contributions to thinking, processes and direction on the complex problems they are facing. They are more than happy to be actively doing the ‘work’ together, and as a consequence we are doing much more with them, rather than for them. It’s a satisfying way to work – no more throwing ideas over the wall. And much more collaborative imaginations brought into the mix. Joint (abductive) reasoning to create possible directions at all levels of engagement. It’s a whole new level of participation which feels more honest, more direct and, actually, more meaningful. It feels like a great time to be in business! What’s it like there? Chris Downs: Thank you very much, GK. Its an honor to be connected! Yes, you are completely right. There is a real buzz here at the moment – and not just in London. The North East seems to be the place to be right now. With the DOTT07 (Design of The Times) festival and ONE North East’s DIEC (Design Innovation Education Centre) project, we have an entire region throwing itself behind design as a tool for social, economic and environmental change. In response to this we have just opened our second office up there in Newcastle. I always imagined our second office would be in New York, but Newcastle is working out just fine for us! But location aside, yes, there is a lot of exciting stuff going on. Live|work has been flying the service innovation and design flag for nearly five years now, and 2006 has seen a marked change in client behavior. We have never been approached by so many new clients – especially ones that genuinely understand how our version of design can


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support them. To be completely honest, in the early days clients understood us by thinking they were buying interaction design – and once we had their trust, then we had to migrate our projects towards service design. But more recently people are approaching us straight for genuine service innovation and design. We are also seeing an exciting change in the nature of our clients. We have always worked with design teams within a client organization, but are starting to be brought in by strategy or business development teams – people who might traditionally have looked to management consultancies for support. And this is happening across both private and public sector organizations. We’re seeing real evidence of design thinking, methods, and processes being applied in more and more diverse settings. So yes, lots of exciting stuff in lots of exciting places! And what about New York? You haven’t been sitting quietly yourselves!?

2 GK VanPatter: We manage to keep ourselves busy over here. In May, we celebrated the 5th anniversary of Humantific. Elizabeth and I have been working together since 1997 so together we have been operating under the innovation acceleration banner for nine + years. I have been around considerably longer. As a team we have been active in the realm of organizational innovation for many years and certainly long before the current round of infatuations with design thinking and innovation arrived. For us this has always involved working not only at the project level but also at the organizational capability building or readiness level. In that nine years we have seen numerous business cycles come and go. Understanding what remains the same in the marketplace is as important as understanding what changes, I think. Certain types of knowledge (process) have long shelf lives while other types of knowledge (content) expire rapidly. Since the press has a constant need for stuff to write about, they seem to drive hunger for new, new, new. But really, many large organizations are still grappling with fundamental innovation related issues that have existed in their midst for 5 or even 10 years. We have the luxury of spanning several realms of operation even though we are a small team. Some of our clients know us from the innovation business and others from the understanding business. Some know us in both. We have always enjoyed operating in both worlds that we see as directly interconnected. Here in Manhattan there is a street in the East Village with many small Indian storefront restaurants on it and the joke is that there is only one kitchen. That model is not too dissimilar from our company. We have several different ways that we can talk about what we do. Behind the scenes we know how all the dots are connected, but client organizations do not always understand that initially. Most often clients are looking through the lens of their own needs. Of course, we find the interest in innovation of any kind to be on the rise during growth cycles so right now we are seeing that interest increase yet again in this cycle. In each new round innovation seems to be framed up in slightly different ways. It is no secret that the rise of interest in so-called design thinking innovation has been part of what is fueling business for the design consultancy industries today. I think many firms are still trying to figure out how to get a piece of that pie.


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Here in New York the economy has made great strides since 9/11 and we are all happy about that, of course. It’s a great place to be and we still enjoy it. The energy is as inspiring as always. I am so happy to see that you two are operating in the strategic space as recently I’ve been reading some posts on the Design Observer site. There was a “Innovation is the new black box” thing posted over there and some of the responses and the lack there-of were rather depressing. http://www.designobserver.com/archives/008049.html#50 There are some folks out there in the marketplace, who are strong advocates of design containment and reduction rather then expansion and rejuvenation. Honesty it baffles me why more senior folks in the design community don’t speak up when these forces appear front and center in our midst. When I see that going on I often wonder where the design community leaders are. Many design community leaders still have not grasped the important role that internet writing, blogging, publishing is playing in the public perception of design today and in the marketplace today. Sometimes I honestly wonder how much of the community is out working in the strategic space on the fuzzy front end or whatever we want to call it. Hey, I’m so glad that we know you two! From your perspective there in the UK, how much of the design industry is focused on traditional forms of design? How much of the community there has any interest in the rerethinking of design? Gill Wildman: There are lots of days where I believe that there is no such thing as a design community. For instance, the continued assumption that the unpaid competitive pitch is the only way for a client to choose between designers is one I find odd. It sets us up to fight. Then design agencies rush to join in by slugging it out against each other. Even when they are owned by the same parent company! Then this competitive attitude extends to “thought leadership” positioning in journals and blogs. The result? A fight goes on that isn’t actually about what design now is or isn’t, but about who is right or not. As Sigourney Weaver says in Aliens: “You don’t see them ***ing each other over for a percentage.” So I was just answering your question, and feeling how this lack of community affects us in many ways — and then I get a chance to work with a bunch of designers and developers for an intense week at the BBC Innovation Labs as a mentor. Despite the nominally competitive context, they are all collaborating with each other to hone their early-stage ideas. I’m relieved. I’m reassured that we have much more in common, irrespective of where we come from, or where we work, through some form of design-thinking DNA. Perhaps design conversations just work best when designers are sitting next to each other. It’s all about people interactions at this microeconomic level. So what I see at a more macro level is that any interest in the ReReThinking of design seems to depend upon your status within design services. If you’re, say, Head-of-Designerly-Intelligence in a Soho agency you may be more likely to get to go to the


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events where people get to talk about design. And you might think that this is an interesting direction, and something good to talk to groovy clients about, but it’s not really your core business. If you’re a grunt in any product, web, graphic/communications design studio, it’s enough to be doing whatever you’re asked and to just shine at it. That is, until you become Head-of-Designerly-Intelligence yourself. I would say there’s a fragmented 90% doing design as we know it, and another loosely connected10% being intrigued to find new ways to use it. Many are swapping notes and methods, especially on www.servicedesign.org. Some designers are particularly defensive and antagonistic to any thought of design extending beyond making with materials, or for deliverables in web print and manufacturing production. Sadly this is echoed on the Design Observer site. There are others who are inquisitive, or simply have a sense of where they would like to be working. Often this comes with a sense that they would like to be tackling the bigger problems that surround us. It’s also not as simple as positioning yourself as old-school or new-school design. While there is a distinct difference between pre-web and post-web agency cultures, there is still evidence of a limiting sense of purpose or ambition there, too. And that’s probably why we still don’t have widely purchasable, affordable hydro-cars, and people are still designing kettles — because, of course, we always need more kettles, don’t we? There is a palpable difference between agencies who adopt a reductive approach, and those who are interested in, and motivated by, moving somewhere new in their thinking with a generative approach. Being challenged by bigger and more complex ideas certainly spins my wheels! And I don’t feel alone. Perhaps my personal history means I can see why John Thackara makes sense with his design factors, and why Bruce Mau turns his attention to long-term problem arenas. I started my working life as a community development worker and seeing the same issues still in existence — of poverty and limited access to services — it makes sense to me to take design thinking into other areas. I want to see how it works in a less thing-interaction and a more people-interaction setting. This is informed by a combination of community development approaches and design management perspectives. So it seems obvious to me that the iterative nature of design — trying out ideas and developing new responses — can work in a context that is based around people and service, as well as the shaping of, and marking of, materials. Whatever we do affects people, and the closer the work gets to making impacts directly on people’s lives, the larger the humility quotient needs to be. Equally, taking a human-centred approach works everywhere. This is usually where people become fearful that we are talking about design by committee. We most certainly are not. We are talking about being inspired by users before any designing takes place, involving them in a process, and evaluating the ideas with them to see if we get the results we (and they) need and desire. An approach that mediates the interests of business, technology and people needs design in its many forms to translate the needs of all parties, and ensure the user gets to be heard.


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In both commercial and public-sector work these approaches seem to work again and again. So when we work with the National Health Service looking at creating conceptual models-of-care, and service-structures, we can point them to design methods to help them discover who their users are. We can help them add to their own understanding of what they need from a service; and get good quality feedback about it. We can help them become connected with their client/customers/patients on a deeper level. We don’t even pretend to think we know how to do their job — unlike some of the management consultants they see — but we do know how to engage with them and their thinking in making their work work. You have to want to solve real-world problems, and I agree we could use some more senior and junior voices to join in! Chris Downs: Firstly, congratulations on your fifth birthday. I’m just sorry I’m not in New York with you to enjoy it! In the UK, how much of the design industry is focused on traditional forms of design? I would hazard a guess at around 99.7%? There are a lot of them about, and people like us (pushing the ReRethinking of Design) probably aren’t making their lives any easier – as you encountered in the Design Observer debate. As for the rest of your question, I’m not sure I completely understand it. You wonder why “…more senior folks in the design community don’t speak out.” Speak out about what? About the fact that such a small percentage are actively involved in the ReReThinking of Design? Why should anyone speak out about that? It is up to the designers to decide whether they continue to operate in the traditional forms of design or whether they step up to strategy. Isn’t it all we can do to set examples and be open about our methods, processes and experiences? Or are you more specifically referencing your response to Larry Keeley’s perspective? If that is the case then I have to admit that I didn’t quite follow the argument. I found that I generally agreed with Larry’s description of the relationship between innovation and design. And I didn’t pick up on his suggestion that innovation belonged to management consultants? I thought he was saying that some people are able to successfully move from design (not exclusively) to innovation, and that those designers who chose not to move, and to stay where they were, would benefit from this. I could well be wrong. I’m a designer. I’m not so good at reading!

3 GK VanPatter: I guess I would have to agree with Gill on the issue of whether or not a real design “community” even exists at this point. I sometimes wonder myself. There is no question that some of what goes on out there gets nasty sometimes. As Gill suggests, that applies to many things beyond competing for work. Competing for thought leadership is also very much in the mix today. We see this often from the vantage point of NextD as we are out there as advocates of change. In the context of NextD we have had to rise above the politics many times in the best interest of moving forward, but it can be difficult with so many competitive forces in the air. We try not to lose our sense of humor. At the same time there is no question in our minds that some of what is going


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on today without too much opposition from the design community will inevitably have long-term implications. After engaging in many of these conversations, I am well aware of how complicated this can get as many of us are using the same words but talking about different universes. From your comments so far in this conversation, it appears that Gill considers herself to be in the design business and actively engaged in its reinvention. It appears that Chris considers himself to have left the design business behind and is now in the innovation business. When Chris talks about design, he seems to be talking about not a reinvented design, but design as it once was and still is in many circles, as your percentage guesses indicate. This appears to be the same design that Larry Keeley seemed to be referring to in his Design Observer “Innovation is the New Black Box” comments. Is this correct Gill and Chris? Gill Wildman: Well, design is where my I first found my voice. About ten years ago, I was tired of being at the tail-end of lots of decision-making that closed down on potential solutions too early. I floated upstream and trained in Design Strategy & Innovation, which I have been using for a while. (Brit understatement.) So I’m not sure which side of what fence I sit on. Where design thinking is at its most powerful, it is all about using design methods in an innovation context. There we can use abductive reasoning and ostensive definitions. “Is it like this? Or is it like that? Now what would that be like? . . .” It’s not rocket science, but it is very pragmatic, very creative, and very valuable. My foundation in design training underpins what I find I need to do in practice. At Plot, I get to map complex stakeholder demands and relationships, to visualize discussions, to interpret ideas, to develop prototypes for feedback. At each step there is visualization of context and process. So there’s a lot of story-making in the work we do from defining the story of a business to developing stories of the value propositions of new products and services. Design is a label that’s illustrative in many ways, but it brings a burden of expectations. “So what is it that you design then?” Well, I haven’t made anything traditionally tangible for a long while. There’s been lots of reframing of the issues, designing of processes, facilitation, proposition development, user-group consultation, researching, mentoring, a documentary film, and many other activities that could be given all sorts of pseudo-brand names. “Hey, today let’s call it co-productive transformations TM!” I’m keen on keeping our language clear and uncluttered by jargon. I call it “listening to what clients are hearing”. What is it that they heard? Is it anywhere near to what you think you just sold them? I think that’s exactly your ‘different universes’ point. At Plot, we call ourselves “strategic design & innovation agents” to map out the ground we cover. As we all attempt to work out a language for these new approaches, it’s about as good as anything else I’ve seen. But I’ll be the first to admit it if I see something better!


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Part of me engages with this progression from design to innovation-land — sign me up now for Larry’s Innovation Finest — but we need to go even further than that AND I’m still a designer using designing as a tool. But that doesn’t mean I just make kettles, though, because I work in the space that asks whether you need a kettle or something else entirely. I’m certainly not interested in being the stylist for the next layer of consumer landfill or the next layer of cognitive load. There are other ways in which new design practices and questions can result in bigger wins. What do I mean by that? Here we have to move beyond “design effectiveness”. Design effectiveness simply (simply!) optimizes the strategic relationship between innovation and design. Innovation answers the “what should we do?” question. Design answers the “how should we do it?” question. In the twenty-first century we really need to be framing “Why?” questions, as in “Why would you want to do that?” (More Larry David than Larry Keeley. .) This is about articulating new flows of value, with impact at different scales. And here is the kicker – towards new purposes. For instance, . . . How do you design sustainable business models that reduce impact through new forms of economic webs? How do you work across traditional incumbent industries to draw together the apparently opposed strands of future new markets and existing businesses? How do you imaginatively unbundle and rebundle different forms of value into new offerings that deliver for real people and still tick the profit boxes. How do you design systems of linked benefits and value creation in small economic webs, that create new market areas in underserved populations? “Why?” is what really spins my wheels. Chris Downs: Does a design community exist? Design can be such a troublesome term and it shows up perfectly in trying to answer that question. Design has many very strong and positive communities – each representing their own design ‘tribe’. The problem is that there are so many – sometimes incompatible – tribes under the ‘design’ umbrella. So when you ask whether there is a design community, my first thought is to which tribe you are referring? There is an awful trend in the UK towards television ‘home makeover’ shows where ‘designers’ inflict hideous interior themes on their victims. These self-obsessed, uncompromising and erratic creatures call themselves ‘designers’ – and are probably what 95% of people think of as true representations of designers. Are they in this community that you are referring to? I think the term ‘design’ is so broad now that it is impossible to create one community that represents them all. We (live|work) would like to think that we are an active and positive part of a few design communities that together describe our tribe. NextD, Doors Of Perception, ServiceDesign.org, UK Design Council, The RSA, Core77, CPH127, The DBA, as well as academic communities including Interaction Ivrea, the RCA, and KISD (Cologne) all represent different parts of who and what live|work is. I think it is impossible for any one


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of these communities to cover the depth and breadth of design. Are you suggesting that there aren’t enough? Or that they are the wrong ones? Or that one particular one is missing? Or that they need to all align with each other? Gill is completely right about the free pitching phenomenon and the Design Observer ego fights. Design at all levels has to stop being so introspective, protective and defensive. Stop fighting for top spot A, for consensus on who is right, and for glory amongst peers. I think at times, designers care more about having an impact on their peers than having an impact on the world. There are so many more important and interesting things for designers to spend their time an energy on – like using our skills to get people to use more while owning less, to create more social cohesion and make our client’s businesses relevant and sustainable. I don’t think we have ‘left design behind’ at all. But it does highlight an interesting situation. We all have design backgrounds and have always considered ourselves designers. When we set live|work up, we chose to describe it as a ‘service design’ consultancy. While we were trying to do something very new and different with service design, we still called it design and we engaged with our design communities and academic institutions to help define and develop this new discipline. So we believe that we have been an incredible active force within many design communities and have worked tirelessly to move our little corner of design on. However. . . . Two things started to emerge as live|work and the service design discipline formed. Firstly, we recognized that some of what we were doing was innovation and not design. (I don’t want to use this conversation to define the difference. We should all understand it by now!). Secondly, when you approach a client with a design conversation, you end up speaking with the design department. When you want to talk about innovation, you speak with strategy teams and the board. We use design in everything we do. We design services. We also innovate services and will sometimes lead a conversation with innovation, which will follow with design. So, no, I don’t think we have left design behind. I think we have provided a new outlet for it with service design! We are mature enough now, though, to speak both innovation and design, to provide both services and to know the difference between how they are understood by our clients. And this is how we should be looking at the future of design. Not from the inside, but from a client or user perspective. How about we conduct a user-centered approach to designing design? I guarantee the results wouldn’t be what most designers want!


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4 GK VanPatter: Many of our readers are design education leaders. Are either of you finding that what you do in practice is reflected in graduate school somewhere today in the UK or elsewhere? If so, where? If not, why not? Gill Wildman: No, not really. And maybe it’s unfair to expect that they do. There’s evidence of great people and work coming out of places like Interaction Ivrea, IID, The RCA, and small pockets of activity like in Dundee, but I quickly bump into the limits of my knowledge. There are some great people coming out of academia, so something must be working. I taught a class in a business school recently, which opened my eyes to what they could find agreeable/acceptable. I can’t wait to see what the D-School at Stanford does. I’m actually really sad about the fact that I don’t see what I would like to see, and I can’t answer your question as to why. I’d like to point that question to a few people in academia, though. What I’d like to see more of is design education that focuses more on interdisciplinary working, collaboration, context driven design, and more socially oriented forms of designing. These are the lasting skills for designers. Learning Flash and Photoshop can take a back seat, as they are rapidly replaced with other software. I get to see a lot of technologists and business people who haven’t been taught to work together, and designers who don’t either, but they’re all great at sitting in front of screens and cranking out code or visuals. I’d love to see business people get a chance to make prototypes of their work, rather than finished powerpoint or excel files. Chris Downs: Gill, I think you need to hang out with me a bit more! My simple answer to your question, GK, is a resounding yes. I think there is an entirely new breed of designer coming through the ranks, especially here in the UK. We teach and lecture regularly in many design courses and chair the jury in the RSA Design Directions student design awards (www.rsadesigndirections.org), and it is here that we are witnessing a marked change in how young designers approach their profession. In many ways, I think we are already behind in our thinking with service design, as they appear to be forming their skills around ‘issues’. I’ve seen it so much recently that I have started referring to them as ‘issue designers’. They are coming from all the usual design school suspects - The RCA, Glasgow School of Art, Northumbria University and Goldsmiths, but also less well known such as the University of Lincoln. These designers are not centering themselves around a discipline such as graphic or industrial design, instead they are attaching themselves to issues such as sustainability, mobility, social cohesion and even trade import and export. They are arming themselves with design thinking and using it to tackle these ‘wicked’ problems. What is particularly interesting is that many of these graduates are moving through the ranks very quickly. We are coming across them as equal collaborators in their respective organizations.


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What needs addressing, though, are the environments from which they are springing. In almost every case, I think their ambition for design and their thinking is outstripping the capabilities of their teaching staff. We have seen a crippling decline in ‘studio culture’ in design education over the last 10 years or so as design educators rushed to tool up with expensive and pointless ‘Mac suites’. We have seen the heart being torn out of design education (team working, problem solving, experimentation in a hive environment) to be replaced with software training. However, many of the students (the better ones) seem to be rising above it. I still think they lack some crucial design understanding. (Why can’t I find a student who really understands what a prototype is and what it is for?). An awful lot of students think that design is having an idea . . . and then making a presentation of it. But it can’t be all bad, as I think issue design will have a very real and positive role to play in our futures. And perhaps we shouldn’t try to make education fit? Perhaps it needs to be off-track for this amazing and exciting new breed to emerge? Creativity often thrives on adversity.

5 GK VanPatter: From your vantage point in the universe, how innovative is the design education community regarding its own reinvention? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very innovative? Gill Wildman: 2? Please shoot me down if I’m wrong. Chris Downs: 3?

6 GK VanPatter: On the same scale, how innovative is the design practice community regarding its own reinvention? Gill Wildman: 1. They’re too tied to old business models that don’t work. Chris Downs: 1?

7 GK VanPatter: OK, I am going to ask you to put on your sense-making hats again while we add to the complexity of the marketplace picture. On behalf of our young readers in graduate school, I am going to ask you to help with some sense-making here. Young people in graduate design school today looking out into the world see lots of complexity. They see the academic community claiming in community discussion lists such as PhD-Design to be out in front of and leading design practice. Some in that community even suggest that practice has lead design off course and out into the weeds. Looking into the marketplace, young people see many design firms repositioning out of the design business and into the innovation business. Simultaneously, they see some old guard innovation experts positioning design as outside the innovation business. In parallel, they see the new business press, particularly in America, touting


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design as their new undiscovered country. Simultaneously, they see opportunistic business school leaders and business magazine editors positioning themselves as design experts. In parallel, they see the new design innovation story being largely written by folks outside of design. In that version of design’s future they see design being positioned primarily as product creation and as subservient to business. From your perspective(s), what is going on there? How do you make sense of that picture? Gill Wildman: There are several things going on here, mainly to do with positioning. Each stakeholder has a product. Academics have schools to populate and conferences to perform at. Design firms seek to de-commoditize their offer. Old guard innovation experts have workshops and books to sell. New business press seeks audience and circulation. Business schools seek to differentiate themselves. The apparent complexity is "just" what a market looks like. . . But as often as not, a positioning can mask "what is really going on" because a positioning is only one aspect of building an offer in a marketplace – and it is always a "current positioning". It’s a means to an end, for now. . So what is interesting here? 1. There are many markets in which design/innovation shows up. The audience for a magazine has a different dynamic than the audience for a school. With a school, design/innovation is curriculum; with the business press, design/innovation is content. They may overlap. The school and magazine may be part of the same service ecology, but their needs are not identical. Each marketplace has a need to interpret and translate the domain differently. Similar forces act on not- for-profit, and third-sector activities. 2. The fact that so many stakeholders feel a need to take a position with respect to design/innovation. It’s perceived as powerful stuff so everyone wants some relationship to it. It’s where the future comes from. Design businesses positioning themselves as innovation businesses seem to me to be simply a sign of the growth of this domain, but the ecology is as yet unclear. As a parallel, for example, in 1959 there was just one term for a computer programmer. By 1968 there were two, by 1988 there were five different types, and by 2001 there were 27 different and precise terms for the different types of people who programmed stuff for grey boxes. It’s about diversity. We need a whole range of different types of designers. It’s an evolutionary thing. And older innovation gurus need to assert their rights to a place in that ecology. 3. The positions they take and the consequences of those positions. I don’t believe that academics are “leading” design practice, but I can understand why they think they are. They are in a place to explore things that those of us subject to


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different commercial pressures can’t easily occupy. We need them to be doing what they’re doing. It’s a precious space for long-term imagining. However, what they can’t provide is the learning from real-life practice that happens when you are actually doing it. Working with people — grumpy, critical clients — teaches you tons about bringing people along with you. Groups of disenchanted tenants on a housing project will teach you how to make sure people are involved well in decision-making processes, and how people see things differently. You can’t learn that from a lecture or a book. It has to be worked through over a sleepless night and small step-by-step successes. With the business press, I’m a little bemused at their apparent fervor. It’s been a year or two flowering, and I don’t see much having changed. It seems to be tied in to imaginary stories about “what if we had our own iPod?” They can nearly smell the profits, but they don’t know how to get there. Despite all of the column inches, no single designer-savior can deliver their imagined IPod equivalent for them and their shareholders – unless they start to use designers and design practices well. This is more than simply a stable supply of an unfamiliar commodity skill set. I will believe MBA schools are taking design seriously when they talk about the people at the end of their supply-chain models like they understand them; when they make space for developing shared languages that do not simply reduce to finance; and when they make iterative working processes a priority and key business skill. 4. The market space for new entrants From what Chris is saying, there are new designers who are changing the space already and not fitting into the existing space. I’ve seen this happening, too. The market space is dynamic. It is not fixed. There are new opportunities opening up all the time. And you don’t have to be reactive to what business people think design is this week or next week. You have a chance now more than ever to write your own script. It could be in making bold new things, or imagining the future of this or that. You may find yourself happier working with people or working alone; working with strategy or working with the fine detail. But you can fall into the trap of being limited by whoever you find yourself working for at the moment — so you need to keep aware of what you are good at and are for. Find some people who think like you do. They’ll be out there, and they’ll be happy to connect. And find some people who challenge you (to test your vision). It’s taken me years to work this out for myself. Have a great time working out yours! Chris Downs: Wow! How exciting! I wish there were so many possibilities when I graduated. On one hand, you are right. It is a complex space and might be difficult for some young graduates who just want to settle down into a design job. On the other hand, you are illustrating just how far design has come in the last decade or so, and as a consequence, just how many opportunities there are for new graduates.


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I would urge them not to worry about who is ‘in front’ in leading design practice, as I have already said. I think it is the graduates who are taking a lead! I don’t believe, however, that the academic community is necessarily taking a lead. I know too many very talented and experienced young designers who want to go back to study to consolidate or shift their thinking who can’t find the right course or institution. They all have the same request; “I want to find a course that supports me in exploring the design space I am interested in. I want it to expose me to a wider context, deepen my understanding, and most importantly, connect me with a new peer network.” If academia is leading design, then why is it that these prospective students can’t find the right institution? Why are they looking at policy studies courses, or the more progressive MBA programs? Why has Bruce Mau had to set up his own institution? Why is live|work having to consider developing its own in-house MA course? (Watch this space!) There is too much contrary evidence there to suggest that academia is leading anything. But I don’t necessarily think the design industry is either. I genuinely believe that the push is coming from the new talent pool. We should keep our eyes on them as I think they are going to change our futures right under our noses. And for the record, I think that is great! So my advice to a recent design graduate would be to embrace and enjoy the complexity. Get out of college and get a job. Don’t hang around in your school’s new ‘future design blah innovation blah lab.’ Don’t prostitute your services for free to get a toe in the door at IDEO, UnderstandingLab, Plot or even live|work. Go and work for a hospital, the government or a credit reference agency. Hold on to the unique skills and perspective you have as a designer and apply them in strange but fruitful environments. You can, and will, make a real difference there.

8 GK VanPatter: I know that you are both leaders in the realm of “service innovation,” but lets stay with the bigger picture for a few more minutes. Around the world we are seeing every country waking up to the realization of being impacted by globalization in one way or another. That realization is driving significant new interest in innovation, “creativity” and design in the business community. Feeling the forces of globalization, the response from the design communities in many countries has been to conduct studies of its community capabilities to determine its strengths, weaknesses and unique attributes. In response to globalization you have a “Keep British Design Alive” movement created by the Design Council there in the UK. In addition there have recently been several new studies published. They include the 124-page “Design a New Design Industry: Design Skills Consultation” study by the Design Council / Design Skills Advisory Panel.” http://keepbritishdesignalive.com/ Another was the 58-page “Cox Review of Creativity in Business: Building on UK’s Strengths,” commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of Budget 2005, and has been led by Sir George Cox.


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http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/cox_review/coxreview_index.cfm Among the many comments in the Cox study are these:

• The competitive threat is not to manufacturing alone. • The build-up of skilled capability in the developing nations is equally a threat to

the service industries • What is impressive and worrying about the emerging economies is not where

they stand today, but how they are positioning themselves for the future. • The premium that will be placed on creativity in the 21st century should give the

UK a flying start in the race for competitive edge. You are both on the front lines of practice there in the UK. What’s your take on the “Keep British Design Alive” movement? As practice leaders, how do you view these “creative community” studies? How useful are such studies, and to whom are they useful? From your perspective what purpose do they serve? And the most difficult part: Do you believe there are attributes to the UK design industries that are unique, definable and defensible in the marketplace today? Gill Wildman: I believe I understand the intentions behind “Keep British Design Alive”, but as a set of messages it smacks of nationalism and gives the wrong impression. For one, that there is a distinctive British design practice, and two, that it’s worthy of preservation. It sounds like the remnants of a colonial mentality that British Design is superior and will stay that way. How’s that? For goodness sake, we’re all talented, interconnected, and becoming more sophisticated in how we do what we do. This protectionist way of thinking wouldn’t look out of place in the nineteenth century! Let’s get real here. The fact that people in the UK have the lifestyle we have is a direct legacy of slavery, colonialism and economic dominance through centuries of post-rationalizing our sense of superiority. How can we possibly expect that China and India will remain a production base for outsourcing to? Can we seriously expect them to work for less money? To stay low in status in the hierarchy of important economies? And would we even want to? I seriously wouldn’t. What makes us think that we have a natural right to be better? As John Thackara says on his blog, “Indian Ph.D.s, I was told, have also reduced innovation processes that took 24 steps in the US to seven steps in Bangalore. They are cheaper and better.” So these smart guys are going beyond design as craft, and moving swiftly into the nuances of innovation processes with great success. It makes me feel like we’re a provincial cousin here in the UK where far too few companies and organizations are asking for new processes. And that’s exactly where the repeatable and sustainable benefits of using design really start to kick in. I’m fully supportive of boosting the education and skills base of all countries. It is only by collectively designing our way out of the very visible global problems we have that


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we stand a chance in the future. It doesn’t help to separate ourselves off with old notions of identity in our small island mentality. I’d be interested in a movement that sets out to make our interconnections more visible. I’m also aware that these kinds of reports depend upon who you consult in the process. There are many on the “Keep British Design Alive” consultation list who represent ‘traditional’ forms of design, and none who are from any new form of redesigned design, such as service innovation. I would also have liked to have heard from business and public sector people to understand what they would like to see in the way of skills from their design providers. You ask about creative community studies. Well, they do get some interesting conversations going, and we all get excited about the potential impact they may have. But change is a snail. The potential of influencing government to act by way of tax breaks is a small breakthrough, but there’s a lot more to be done. What I’m much more interested in are what Cox calls “perceived barriers expressed by business,” and what we need to do to overcome them. He lists them as:

• A limited understanding of where and how greater creativity could be used to business advantage.

• A lack of confidence that the investment, in terms of time, money and disruption, will give a return.

• A lack of knowledge of how to go about it, or where to turn for help. They are a great starting point for what’s broken here. This is where an active study should be done. It’s a good space for the Design Council to be operating in. What I’m unconvinced by is a proposal for a series of design centers. Such building-based initiatives only create places which have to be paid for, justified, filled and managed, rather than interventions which can take place inside the business or organizational premises, where the work is actually going on, making any design activity grounded, realistic and appropriate. In community development practice there is a term ‘detatched.’ It means the person with the development agenda goes out into the area and works in pubs, cafés, halls, premises – indeed, wherever the people are. Perhaps a ‘detatched’ approach might be a good starting point. The list of barriers Cox mentions is a sharp reminder that it’s hard for non-designers to engage with getting the ‘form’ of design they think they want, or indeed need. Many other priorities seem to be more important. And when they do, they discover you can’t simply throw a designer into any business or organization and it all works perfectly. They need to become aware of how to be receptive to design, and to create the conditions for design to work effectively. Many organizations we see struggle with that. I absolutely don’t believe there are attributes to the UK design industries that are unique, definable and defensible in the marketplace today. It is naïve to hold on to the belief that we are more highly skilled than China or India. Our cultural differences are strengths, but they are not reasons for a sense of nationalistic superiority. I sincerely hope we stop thinking like that.


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Chris Downs: I have to say that I am confused and slightly embarrassed by it all. Firstly, I am embarrassed by the claims that Britain is (or should be by rights) some kind of global design leader. I’m afraid it feels to me a little bit like the imperialistic beliefs that fuel our football hooligans. ‘Britain is great and has a right to greatness!’ It is difficult not to be personally ashamed by this as I have to work regularly with international colleagues and clients. And once I am over the embarrassment, the confusion sets in. Just remind me, why do we suddenly need to ‘keep British design alive?’ Is it lying in a hospital bed somewhere in the midlands on a life support machine? I’m confused because the Design Council report annually on the successes of the UK design industry and the positive and valuable impact it has on clients and the UK economy. I just don’t find this statement helpful and I don’t necessarily believe it. Why should an international client invest in the services of a UK design company now while its representative body is telling them that it is probably on its last legs? I feel that I have to explain to my international clients that we are in perfect health, that we’re still a safe investment and that we still have respect for their design credentials. But above all, I feel annoyed. I’m annoyed that when you scratch beneath the surface you see that what they are really saying is that they want to start a national design accreditation scheme – to become to design what RIBA is to architecture. In order to make their case – a need to ‘professionalize’ the design industry – they are resorting to publicly rubbishing it. I find this insulting. I’m not insulted by their desire to start an accreditation scheme, but by the fact that they appear to be masking it with the whole ‘if we don’t do this, we’re doomed’ approach. Do they really think we’re fooled that easily? Fine, start an accreditation scheme. Go ahead. I think it is the last thing we need, but so what. But please, please, please be open about it. And stop telling people how valuable we are and how important we are and then telling them that we’re dying and that the world ought to look up to us because we’re the best. Once those messages sink in, no accreditation scheme is ever going to revive us. To answer your other question about whom the reports are for, well I know who they are not for! They are not for people in the design industry who are putting every hour of every day into keeping their business and their corner of British design alive! They certainly aren’t helping me, any of my clients, any of my designers (present or future) or any of my peers (either here in the UK, nor those lesser designers from overseas). I think the only purpose these reports serve is to justify the existence of their commissioning parties. I think they are probably the only people who have time to read them! And finally, unique, definable and defensible attributes of the UK design industry? I can’t believe that a situation has arisen where that question is actually warranted. No, absolutely not. Do you? I just don’t think it makes sense to think of design from a nationalistic perspective any more. Just like all professional services, it is a global discipline now. But I would really like to know your perspective on this, GK. As a trusted observer of the British design industry and one of the few people who have genuine insight into the future of design from a global perspective, what do you make of it? And do you have any advice for us here?


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9 GK VanPatter: Thanks for sharing your insights on these difficult subjects. Before I try to answer Chris’s question from the NextD perspective, let me ask quickly about the general perception of the UK Design Council in the design community there. Observing from this side of the pond, Design Council remains a bit of a puzzle to us. We see the Design Council publishing white papers and positioning itself as out in front of and leading the UK design community. Is that the general perception among leading practitioners like yourselves? From your perspective, is the UK Design Council actively involved in shaping and articulating the present and future of design? Gill Wildman: Chris and I will likely have very different perspectives on this. I once worked for the Design Council so I have inside knowledge of some of the constraints that influence what Design Council does and how they do what they do. We also work with them from time to time and know they do some good work, but getting to hear about it from outside of the organization is traditionally difficult. It’s a very particular type of publicly-funded organization (and as a result does not interact with a specific membership). It is more of a champion for design (rather than designers) in business, education and government, and has been evolving how it does this over many years and influencing leadership.

Some of the criticism I hear about the role the Design Council adopts suggests that it is no longer needed, that people ‘get’ design. The reality is that they don’t. Most people still think that design is styling, whether it’s ‘prettying up’ some text and pictures or putting a package around the final product ideas. Most people wouldn’t dream of bringing designers into their teams at an early stage. Yet the evidence is that those that do it well seem to make innovative leaps and bounds and lots of cash.

Let me try to answer your question in a different way. If you were to ask me what I think public design organizations should be doing today, I would say this:

It’s a simple role. I would like public-funded design organizations to:

• Generate a greater awareness of the power of bringing design thinking and approaches into their situations, and the way in which people need to work with designers to get the best from them

• Create, stimulate and open up opportunities for new forms of design work to take place

• Release resources for highly visible experimentation in new forms of design, and • Actively share the knowledge resources they have now

No one organization can take credit for leading or directing where design goes, but they are all in the position to stimulate what takes place and share the wealth of knowledge they create and attract. And leading isn’t the point.

A very different perspective comes from another publicly-funded body, the BBC. Having been around for years making valuable content for UK audiences – and having this paid for by UK citizens through the annual license fee – the BBC’s attitude is that


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people in the UK have already paid for it, and their challenge is how can they get the content they have out to people as fast as possible, and to make it easy for them to find exactly what they want.

I'd like to see public design organizations doing more of this. And once they have, they should get out of the way as fast as possible so that people and designers can get on with making innovative responses to the complex or the mundane or the unique needs we all share. Chris Downs: I think it is fair to say that the Design Council is a bit of a puzzle to us, too. We’re fond of them and glad to have them around, but there is definitely a confused relationship between them and the design community. They have helped live|work immensely in many ways. They have provided a platform for us to bring service innovation and design into a wider public arena, they have published articles that have helped validate the market, and they have commissioned projects with us. So while what I am about to say might sound critical in places, I want to make it clear that it is because we are ambitious for the Design Council’s potential and that we are very grateful for their efforts in helping establish our discipline and our market. First of all, it is my understanding that they don’t actually belong to the design community. They’re not ours. Although they sport the ‘D’ word in their title, they are not here to serve the design community directly. They are here to serve industry through design. I don’t think that is widely understood and it is why they have potential to fall short of expectations. So no, I don’t think the perception is that they lead the UK design community, but that is because that isn’t their purpose. Instead, they represent, support and communicate the forefront of design to private and public sector organizations that might benefit from using it. They appear to do this in a variety of ways, including papers, programs, workshops and campaigns such as the ‘Keep British Design Alive’ initiative. And while I might not agree with this particular campaign, there is one area of activity where we believe they are operating at the vanguard of design thinking and practice (globally) and that is through their Red Unit. We are huge fans and advocates of the work of this small team and recognize many of their attributes in our own practice. What I like about them is that they are incredibly ambitious for the application of design in unusual spaces (public sector services), while at the same time attempting to put their experience out there as a discussion, as work in progress. They are an investigation into the future of design – a ‘foggy’ project – and they are letting us all watch as they pick their path through the unknown. They might not always manage this perfectly, but I believe their intentions are honorable!

10 GK VanPatter: OK, I can see we are not going to get any politically incorrect answers on that one! This is completely understandable if you are both doing business with Design Council. If part of their job is to promote your companies and your specialties, I can surely understand. To build on the distinction that Chris was making, those editing Wikipedia this week describe the Design Council’s mission as follows:


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“The Design Council is a British organization incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as an independent charity, but effectively a government agency (or, in the jargon of the UK government, a "non-departmental public body"). It "enhances prosperity and well-being in the UK by demonstrating and promoting the vital role of design in a modern economy", and targets business, education and public-sector bodies. It receives around £12 million of public funds each year.”

It’s probably not too far off to describe Design Council as a government-sponsored publicity agency for the UK design industry. Herein lies part of the problem when it comes to the question that Chris was directing at me earlier: How might the UK “ design community” come to grips with globalization? Among other things, coming to grips inevitably includes understanding how globalization has, to a large degree, collapsed the old concept of local knowledge that you can build walls around. Much of what the Design Council has done historically and still does today is based on the concept of local knowledge. Tied into the presumption of local knowledge can often be found a specific set of strategic and operational dynamics that are not particularly pretty. You have both shared some great points. Yet there is still something fundamental missing and unexpressed here, an often occurring undercurrent that is difficult to get to in a sense-making way. Ironically, perhaps this current connects to much of what we have thus far discussed. I’m the old guy in the room so I guess it’s up to me to talk about this. Let me try it this way: A fundamental challenge that the government-sponsored local promo organizations inevitably face (as do local membership-based professional associations and even local graduate design schools) is keeping up with change in the global community, whether we call it innovation leadership or not. The tricky, psychologically difficult part for all of these institutions is acknowledging that there might be innovation leadership occurring outside of their doors. Some do a better job of that than others. As Gill pointed out earlier, there are a lot of politics around thought leadership today. Let me step back for a moment so I can attempt to briefly describe the complicated picture that we see hidden in plain sight. Over the years, through the vehicle of NextD and elsewhere, we have talked with many thought leaders across various disciplines. In doing so, we have identified something in the big picture sense that we often see occurring as we work across the disciplines in a journalistic way. It can most positively be described as a knowledge phenomenon of sorts. (I have referred to this phenomenon several times here in this journal.) We named it Repeating Starting Points. It is a phenomenon that is found most often occurring across knowledge disciplines where what is going on in one discipline might not be known in another. Of course, few of us have knowledge of history and cutting edge developments across every industry, every discipline. So to some degree it is a natural phenomenon acknowledging the complexity of the modern world. In this context, reinventing the wheel is sometimes inadvertently positioned as new unchartered territory. We have seen this occurring across the realms of education, problem solving, innovation, and numerous other areas. In a highly complex marketplace with many fields of knowledge increasingly overlapping, Repeating Starting Points seem inevitable. Here I am describing the conventional type of Repeating Starting Points (A). I’m sure there are some graduate students out there studying such patterns.


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The mind bender is that a hybrid version of Repeating Starting Points can sometimes be found within broad or narrow disciplines as well. It is somewhat of an aberration in an interconnected age, but it occurs nonetheless. Rather then being driven by lack of knowledge awareness, Repeating Starting Points (X) is more often driven by politics in one form or another. Underneath Repeating Starting Points (X) is a dynamic that I’m sure you are both familiar with since you work with large organizations. I am referring to the so-called “Not Invented Here” dynamic. In WikiPedia a short and somewhat colorful definition of “Not Invented Here” can be found as follows:

“Not Invented Here (NIH) is a pejorative term used to describe a persistent corporate or institutional culture that either intentionally or unintentionally avoids using previously performed research or knowledge because the research and developed knowledge was not originally executed in-house. . . . In many cases, Not Invented Here occurs as a result of simple ignorance, as many companies simply never do the research to know whether a solution already exists. Also common, however, are deliberate cases where the organization's staff rejects a known solution because they don't take the time to understand it fully before rejecting it; because they would have to embrace new concepts in infrastructure or terminology; because they believe they can produce a superior product; or because they would not get as much credit for finding an existing solution as inventing a new one.”

Part of the not insignificant irony today is that “Not Invented Here” can be found not only in corporate client organizations in need of innovation help, but in many sectors of the design industry as well. Ironically, in an era where many in the design community are talking about the importance of co-creation and collaborative innovation, the truth is that Repeating Starting Points (X) can be found in many of the government-sponsored local design promo agencies, in most of our vertically-organized professional design associations, and in many graduate design schools. In government-sponsored agencies “in-house” is agency administration, internal departments and external nationally operating companies. In professional associations “in-house” is administration and local membership. In graduate design schools “in-house” is typically administration, faculty, students and officially sanctioned outsiders. For a moment, let’s think together about what it would be like to combine “Not Invented Here” with the nationalist notions of supremacy and the cutthroat slugging it out traditions of the UK consulting marketplace that Gill mentioned earlier. What would that strategy look like? Surely that would not be a pretty picture. I noted that Chris praised the Design Council’s Red Unit and seemed to stress their good work and noble intentions. While I have no doubt that both are true, I think many of us were quite astonished by the tone and nature of the “Transformation Design” white paper that Red Unit recently published for it was, whatever its intention, surprisingly aggressive and myopic. I certainly would not point it out as a shining example of global awareness, global thinking or global leadership. It reminded me very much of a few


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years ago when a younger and eager Al Gore misspoke and made the preposterous claim that he invented the Internet. “Transformation Design” seemed to be designed for local play, but its overly aggressive “invented here” orientation and tone completely undermined its global credibility. Clearly someone in senior leadership at Design Council should really have known better, but the truth is there is a lot of this kind of stuff still going on out there. Although we encourage young people in graduate school to adhere to proper research protocols while engaged in the realm of academia, the truth is in the “adult world” of the marketplace Repeating Starting Points (X) is widespread. This phenomenon is still occurring in spite of the fact that such initiatives are increasingly transparent globally. Waking up to that global transparency can be a hard lesson for those still operating in the old ways. The widespread existence of such patterns in the design industries is one of many indicators that seem to suggest the design community is still very much struggling to come to grips with globalization, the significant collapse of locally-played fields of knowledge and what that means in terms of rethinking old modes of action and behavior. The degree of change underway in the marketplace far outstrips these old school presumptions and this kind of now old school thinking. With so much emphasis in the community and in the press on being perceived as being first as opposed to being respectful, robust and correct, raising the bar is going to be difficult. Ultimately much of this comes back to design/innovation leadership. For the design community, it is still the very early days of change. It’s going to take some very wise and savvy leadership in many of our design-related institutions to end the era of myopic locally-played visions, to chart a new way of leading and being in the local and global communities. By new way I mean new enlightened actions and behaviors rather then just enlightened talking. In many ways this is fundamentally about coming to terms with what it will take to walk-the-walk to embody the principles of design innovation leadership, not the design of the past but rather design leadership of the present and future. It is a model that has not existed previously so no one knows exactly what it looks like. Some of us who have been around the block a few times certainly know what it does not look like. Right now there is not a whole lot of that new thinking, behaving and modeling going on out there. Frankly, it saddens me to see all of the nasty politics going on in the community and so unnecessarily. Certainly the political backwaters of the design industries are not for the faint of heart. With all of this in mind, I think it’s safe to say that we will not all be linking arms and marching into a unified future. Let’s be honest about it. The future has become as competitive as the present day marketplace, but hey, let’s remain optimistic. In our own initiatives we have found that it really takes a lot of effort to rise above and keep moving forward in constructive ways in spite of the politics going on outside in the “community”. Once one is aware that such vibes exist, it is much easier to move beyond those negative energies. That is what we have always done and continue to do here at NextD. In the big picture sense that’s what is most important to us.


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Since Chris asked me about my take on globalization I’ll add a couple of additional comments here. I’m guessing that I might have just answered your question, at least in part. Let’s switch hats and look at this from the policy perspective rather then the promotion perspective. Promotion seems to translate primarily into poetic veils. Setting policy is closer to being real about the challenges that exist. Setting policy is a different kind of problem solving. While many consultancy leaders prefer the business strategy of painting rosy pictures, policy makers have to be prepared to look beyond the rose-colored glasses, whoever happens to be supplying them. I’m no prophet, but as far as I can see the days are long gone when thinking about design from a nationalistic protectionist perspective made sense, if it ever did. We have been talking with folks working on government policies in several countries so I know many design leaders out there are trying to figure out a rational response to globalization. Every country on the planet is feeling the effects. From what I have seen so far, it is common to find that nationalistic protectionism is the first idea on the table. There is no question that there is considerable fear out there, but after a healthy reality check most move on to other ideas. Of course, it is highly unlikely that democratic, capitalist governments will legislate local business organizations to shop locally for design services, and I doubt if local incentives will ultimately make much of a difference. The business community aggressively shopping for and engaging design services is not going to go away. The ramifications of all that will have to run its course, and right now the market is in the relatively early days of that cycle. I know there are some design firms already trumpeting the collapse of that model, but realistically it is too early to make such claims. The volume of design-related work already in the hands of “off-shore” firms is huge. We think a good place for policy makers to begin is to recognize that many modes of design now exist. It’s almost impossible to have a meaningful conversation about design today without some kind of sense-making overlay, and the discipline overlay no longer makes much sense. Part of the problem is that when the Design Council is promoting “Keep British Design Alive,” I am not exactly sure which design they are referring to. It is likely that some aspects of design in the UK are healthier then others, as Chris’s comments seem to indicate. In its “Keep British Design Alive” campaign, I’m guessing that Design Council is most often talking about Design 1.0. It’s important for all involved in policy creation to understand the relatively simple notion that each segment of design (Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and the numerous permutations in between) has their own challenges today. It is difficult to plan any kind of “help” when “design” is thought of as one big lump. It’s not rocket science to suggest that we need some meaningful sense-making around design in order for policy makers to even begin to think about where and how to help. In many countries there are big numbers at stake so it’s worth taking five minutes to understand. We find that within minutes of introducing the Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 sense-making construct, participants pick up on it and start using the terms. It’s really quite easy. Once introduced to it, participants find it impossible to go back to the old way of thinking about design.


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To us, that defuzzing of design is part of the good news. In the world in which we operate sense-making plays a critical role in innovation acceleration. We believe a second good place to begin is to figure out how to get closer to the actual conditions of Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. (This basic design research is often overlooked.) I have discovered in my own NextD journey that there seems to be a number of forces present in the marketplace that serve to distract and disorient from the reality of design’s complex true story. Those distraction forces include the new business press, the traditional design press, the government-sponsored promo agencies and even the consultancies. Basically the design industries are awash in promotion. Often what you are reading is promotion of the promotion. The story of the business press discovering design, for instance, is an interesting one, but that in itself does not represent anything near the totality of the design story today, nor does it represent solutions for the many challenges facing Design 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0. As a sense-making person who has been around a long time, I sometimes wonder if designers, like humans who become disassociated from their physical bodies, have lost track of themselves. Instead of understanding ourselves in the real and creating our own stories, many of us seem to be happier taking on the stories written by others who are on the outside looking in (or on their way in). Unfortunately, I believe this is done without fully understanding the consequences. To cut to the chase: If we put on our design research hats for a moment, there is simply no way for anyone to get anywhere even close to an accurate reading on the state of design from reading the new business press, the traditional design press or the “white (promo) papers” coming out of the local promo government agencies. Policy makers grappling with real world problems facing design have to be prepared to do their fact-finding elsewhere. That is part of the complexity of the globalization story. In some parts of design, in Design 1.0 in particular, globalization presents many serious challenges as work increasingly is either being commoditized by technology or is moving to so-called “off-shore” countries. Many in the Design 1.0 space believe all that is required is more promotion to get business people to better understand design. That approach conveniently leaves out the responsibility for designers to change. Of course no one really knows what it means to have China bring 400 design schools online in the next ten years. Let’s also keep in mind that in high contrast to the protectionist initiatives such as “Keep British Design Alive,” many western academics are employed in China and in India helping to build competitive capabilities there. The world remains messy and complicated. Last but not least, we believe a third good place to begin is to recognize cultural strengths. Often those strengths can be translated into authentic strategic advantages. This is different then manufactured advantages geared to local audiences. In spite of globalization, many deeply rooted differences between countries remain. As you both well know, cultural differences often have great impact on thinking. How is Canada, Denmark, Germany, and the UK thought about in the global marketplace? What really are their authentic differences, and how can you translate that into real strategic approaches to next design? Many countries are trying to connect those dots.


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How to make sense of the problem and opportunity conditions is what baffles policy makers in many countries today. Needless to say, being globally aware of what is already in the works is part of any good fact-finding research effort. To be brief, we advise countries to get their policy brains around a three-strategy approach. Forget about protectionist thinking and get working on constructing what design and innovation needs to become in the 21st century. To enable and support the growth of the emerging Design 3.0 space takes very different kinds of efforts then defending and or trying to grow the traditional Design 1.0 space. Inevitably this involves some retooling of our design educational institutions. While many design schools keep pumping out graduates geared up for working in the Design 1.0 activity space, that space is bleeding, morphing and shrinking and has been for some time. It is likely that only a fraction of that space will remain in its present form. The bottom line is that most countries and increasingly many design firms will have to figure out how to work across all three modes. I hope the above answers at least part of your question, Chris. I will probably write more about this in NextD Futures, a compilation book that we are working on in our spare time over here. In that edition we hope to share some of the synthesis from the NextD experiment. As you might know, I hope to take a break from this journal after the completion of Issue TEN. The plan at the moment is to update the site and ask a few others in various countries to contribute or participate as guest editors. With all of that said, let’s change directions slightly and turn ourselves to a last question. I see that the Emergence 06 / “Service Innovation” conference is coming up at Carnegie Mellon so I want to ask you both about your thoughts on that, but first I’d like to give you some context for this last difficult question. In our own travels and discussions, we have noticed authentic differences emerging between how design innovation is thought about here in the US and how it is thought about elsewhere in the world. There are different institutions and people driving change and discourse around design innovation in various parts of the world so naturally authentic differences can be found. For a number of reasons too unwieldy to go into here, the American perspective is at the moment dominated by a focus on design innovation as consumer product creation. It’s no secret that those advocating that view of the future for design have deep roots in the realm of industrial/product design and product manufacturing. Their “in-house” is directly tied to that industry. The “future is consumer product creation” camp is out there in the local and global marketplace actively promoting this view of the “future”. Not surprisingly they have found supporters in the business community eager to find the next iPod. There is no question this already represents a huge business. Here is what that much heralded view of design’s future looks like as it appeared in the American publication, Business Week:


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“Here’s how it works at P&G [Procter & Gamble]: Kotcha [VP of Design] contacts P&G Divisional Heads, asking for a list of possible opportunities designers might address. Recently, the head of home care said it was time to look at bathroom cleaning.”

Bruce Nussbaum with Robert Berner and Diane Brady, Get Creative / How to Build Innovative Companies, Business Week, August, 2005

Of course, in the bigger picture sense there are many people in the global community of design who have no interest in this interpretation of design’s future. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia at the moment, we see the design community interested in different and sometimes larger issues. We invited both of you to join in this NextD conversation because we consider live|work and Plot to be great examples of how not to think like the American design community. Apart from focus differences, one of the things that we notice is that many seasoned designers are increasingly interested in diversifying beyond the old “waiting for the brief from others” model seen in the Business Week example. Earlier in this conversation Gill said, “Innovation answers the ‘what should we do?’ question. Design answers the ‘how should we do it?’ question”. It is possible that we are using words differently, but from our perspective this represents the old model. In a nutshell, this encapsulates the transformation underway. It is one we have been writing about since we launched NextD Journal in 2002. In fact, its existence is the very reason why NextD was created. The transformation of Design 1.0 to Design 3.0, from participating in “How” to participating in “What, How and Why” is underway and needless to say it’s a bumpy road. There are folks out there who would much prefer to keep design in its more traditional “How” focused place in the world (consulting) order. This leads me to my question about the services innovation/design space. John Thackara recently wrote this about service design:

“Is service design the next big thing after e-everything? If the recent surge in books and conferences is a guide, service design is at least a meme – if not yet a mania. The trouble is, it can't possibly be new. Seventy percent of the UK economy is 'services', for goodness sake, so someone must have designed them. Service designers look foolish when they claim to be inventing a new profession. What is new is an interest in existing public services as potential subjects of re-design.”

In problem solving terms, proposing service as a form of solution is just that: proposing solutions out in front of the problems. Again, in problem solving terms it’s a form of solution looking for appropriate problems. Stepping outside the “mania” around the services innovation activity space, thinking from a process perspective, we ask: What kinds of problems are service innovations a solution to? Apart from the hype, do the types of problems that service creation is a solution to have anything to do with the real problems facing the world? Are service solutions geared to be solutions to business problems/opportunities, social problems/opportunities, world problems/opportunities,


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all or none of the above? From your perspective, can service design / service innovation really save the world? I thank you both for taking the time to participate in this conversation. The floor is all yours for final comments. Gill Wildman: Wow, GK, you got a whole load off your chest, there. ;) It’s great to let it rip, no? A bit like the moment at the end of the night when you take off your taxi shoes (girlspeak for precarious heels)! A big sigh of relief. John Thackara is right on the ball when he says service design is not new. It’s just not very developed or sophisticated. If you have a look for Lynn G. Shostack in Harvard Business Review and books by Bill Hollins, you’ll find there are people who have been grappling with it for some time. But there was always a traditional split between, on the one hand, strategic marketing and their concerns, and on the other, operations management and their concerns. You'll find them in different sections in the bookshop. And to our collective mind here at Plot it seemed obvious there was a "missing middle" – something to do with designing. Yes, in the 90’s some of the branding and corporate identity guideline fever touched on aspects of service, but not in an explicit, systematic, or even tangible way. And yes, the wider developments of web software drove some awareness of website behavior. But websites were always better conceived of as services, and it's taken ten years to get rid of the "site" metaphor. Remember "e-commerce" and "CRM"? Antiquated at birth. Clumsy rubbish. Right now there are higher expectations from people, i.e. us. We need service companies to do it (rather than to simply differentiate themselves) and this is about seeing value in use. So a new market for service design is opening up with plenty of space for competitors, cooperators, and collaborators. It’s an exciting time, and hence the Emergence conference. Hopefully it does not develop into another boring thought leadership land grab. Flavor of the month only lasts for a month. And if people just do warmed-over product design, seeing service as a manipulation of a different set of materials, imagining a service as a static, linear, automate-able design domain. . . Can service innovation design tackle bigger issues beyond creating commercial benefits? How? Hmmm. This is all about the purpose of innovating, and how service innovation design informs that. Why innovate? We believe service innovation design approaches can be used across a variety of "wicked problem" domains that are traditionally perceived as too hot politically, where the relationship between actors, purpose, action, information, and value require careful exploration, orchestration, and choreography. You know, health, education, justice. . . Innovation always has to have a purpose and a scope of action. It has to be for something, and it has to try to do something. It has to create meaningful change in some area of life. That is to say, innovation plays a role in a bigger story, and this story is all about people, and what they value. (At Plot we often call this "The Plot". It is easy to lose.) The service innovation design approach emphasizes fidelity, realism, pragmatism, and flexibility. This makes a subtle, yet profound, difference to the way that innovation's


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role plays out, because the service innovation design approach has to start and end with active people — not governance-framed "citizens'; not economically-framed 'consumers'; not commercially-framed 'customers'; and not even cognition-framed 'users' — just people in their everydayness, and their challenge, whatever it is. So while service innovation design offers up a number of tools for different ways of seeing, thinking, and doing — not all of which we can cover here and now —the initial benefits of the service innovation design perspective lie in how it depicts people as active shapers of their life-world, and not as passive consumers of stuff. Hence, for instance, Thackaraʼs distinction between"actors" vs. "users". Service innovation design encourages you to take a genuinely people-centered, empathetic approach, beyond even the user-centered design methods popularized by best-practice product designers. User scenarios often frame people in a passive role as part of some machine ("the system"). People show up as talented thumbs in texting scenarios. They turn up as talking wallets in retail scenarios. They turn up as walking luggage in airport scenarios. At the worst level of practice, people get transformed into a kind of material inventory to be processed. The messy reality of people's everyday life and dynamic need-states get smoothed out or abstracted. Whole sets of preconceptions sneak in unnoticed, framing the innovation brief. For instance, in publicly-funded healthcare scenarios, certain classes of people come to be seen as "naughty" in that they don't behave as the system assumes. The consequence is that service energy is diverted into making the "naughty people" conform, or they get written out. But this neglects and devalues the value and values they bring with them as they are – the value they create anyway and the role they could play. We worked with a fragmented and resource-stretched NHS group with the aim of minimizing this for them. We did this through a service concept, Opencare. It aimed to de-medicalize their model of care by extending and re-positioning it as "a living service," i.e. a service for people that enhanced life and adapted to their changing needs, rather than one that set them up in a career as a patient. So we make a distinction between delivery and performance. We see service as performance, not delivery. The delivery metaphor situates all the value "system side", as if it were stored there, waiting to be unpacked. Following the logic of this metaphor, this value is then poured out (in carefully rationed doses) into passive users, who are then said to have consumed it. In contrast, the performance metaphor sees value as co-generated between people and the service system . The "person side" brings as much, if not more, value than "the system" to the situation. Or the system responds to amplify and extend the potential value in their encounter. In short, service innovation design:

• Reframes how people are seen, depicted, and valued, and so • It prioritizes different things (people-defined purposes over system defined

purposes), and so • It allows you to explore what the service system needs to do, how it should be

doing it, and what changes need to happen because


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It factors the problem space differently. It starts with here and now and works with what is there already in place. It explores a "could be" rather than defaulting to a fantasy "should be". But there is nothing here that doesn't scale up and down as necessary. What could be done? What about the challenge of developing solutions for locations with no remote power where people don’t have essential services like incubators? What about a service where the things people do everyday makes some valuable input across a range of areas – a gym where the machines create energy, and the power generated is fed back to a national or localized gird? So what’s stopping us? Here is a grounded starting point and a set of techniques for creating change that can be applied with all manner of large scale socio-politico-economic questions – or small socio-politico-economic knots. Sometimes (but I suspect not often) the response needed to a challenge may even be "They need more and better quality stuff!" In our time, all forms of new propositions are possible that can and will generate cash and value to people and society. So what are we waiting for? I see nothing but great opportunities that can generate wealth and multiple benefits for different audiences all at the same time. When Ray and Charles Eames drew their diagram about the space where client, society and design office concerns overlap, and where designers can work “with conviction and enthusiasm,” their medium was furniture, film, exhibitions and architecture. Now new technology exists. Utopian visions of decentralized and distributed services are now feasible, viable, and still desirable. Working with technology startups focused our thinking on what people with new technologies (nano, fuel cell, biosensors, opto-electronics) were thinking about doing, and the potential for how they could be used. But it was unlikely that they had ever heard of, say, Buckminster Fuller even. Do service design solutions have anything to do with real life problems? Yes. Whether we get to "solve" them is another thing. Most of life is about managing, not solving. How we go about doing this is in part dependent upon who "the client" is, how they frame their needs, what they are trying to do, and how "designing" shows up for them. What might a designer not be able to tackle? Design can play a part in saving the world, but not alone, and definitely not as the star of the play. The issues are too complex to be John Wayne. They need the collaborative participation of all others involved in and connected to the outcome. Another Plot saying is "Design is a social process." I have a particular perspective on this as I’ve worked for commercial, public and voluntary organizations and have seen their strengths and weaknesses. I expect to work now in a way that at worst does no harm, and at best makes some meaning, creates some value in human terms. It’s a part of what satisfies me now – to bring together this hybrid experience and explore the world outside of product-centered visions. As a designer, any client gets the best out of me when I bring all of me to the work, including my values. I want to see a civil civil-society, where the short term gains of single-bottom-line-raw-naked-capitalism are understood for what they are. Even accountants know it has always been about more than the money! They know that bottom lines are more than profit, and recognize intangible value (e.g., goodwill, relationships) must be accounted for.


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One of the reasons why designers don’t often get to work in this area is that by the current nature of the practice (and here’s my epiphany in this conversation), I believe most designers are still waiting to be invited to the game! The age of the designer passively waiting for the dream client and dream brief is now over! That's official. If "designer" means anything now, I hope it comes to stand for the kind of activist who can grapple with the scale, complexity and interdependency of world issues. Just pick one, and then initiate new things that bring people together to work. Don't wait for the clients. Just get on with it. To address some other of your concerns. . . I loved your remark about repeating starting points. If I put my cynical head on, it makes me think that it acts as a tactic for making sure nothing really changes in an organization. As a behavior pattern it works to limit the scary stuff of actually doing something new, by making sure we do the same stuff again and again. The culture of the organization can encourage it (like having short-term contracts) so that no one stays too long, and every few years the same things happen since there’s no organizational memory. You can make it so internally competitive that people spend all of their time so distracted by playing games that they forget what they are there for. Not Invented Here. Another phenomenon I’ve noticed is its deranged twin: the “internal = bad, external = good” equation. This is where in-house design teams are perceived as being less skilled, more stupid somehow, than external agencies and suppliers, who are considered to be more interesting, more talented, more worthy of the best project work, and just so much more sexy. Soul-destroying. Internal design groups have their additional pressures. Often they are working for an internal market in the form of different business units, and having to sell-in their services, rather than being in the driving seat. The UK Design Council. It does not promote UK design businesses, but ‘design’ as a whole to industry, government, education. It's a pressure group — like Friends of the Earth, but without a popular membership. Now that's a tough trick to pull off well. And don’t forget, there’s only a handful of designers there before they have to move on, and a whole lot of administrators and policy specialists. Re-reading the Cox report, I feel he is keenly aware that businesses and organizations out there would benefit from a deeper level of design understanding, and the value of design. It's a move I would endorse. There are still too many people who don’t know what design can do for their business or organization, and don’t know how to engage a designer. I understand your point about business aggressively shopping for design. Yet I know that this practice of getting companies to competitively pitch against each other before the nature of the real work is understood is actually self-defeating. If you looked at it from a hard-nosed perspective, any gains a client had from getting ideas presented at the pitch stage are hugely outweighed by the fact that the real issues will not be fully explored. Unless it is a credentials-only pitch, the designers and clients will have committed themselves (even unconsciously) to a way of thinking. The result is that it shuts down any possibility of fresh, thoughtful, informed viewpoints. Or even "innovation" which is what they pay us for. It’s a way of commissioning that needs to die out soon. Framing the Brief. One of my big headaches is about the briefing process, and how often


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this can set all kinds of limitations and assumptions into the scope of what designers can bring to the table. It’s about how the work is framed. If clients who are aware of design as 1.0 ask for a thing (say a kettle), they expect to get that thing and ideas about what it might be like. If they have an awareness of 2.0, it’s about their company's version of the IPod. If only the frame were to be set around the issue in question, and its challenges, rather than a presumptive interpretation of the solution in the form of a-thing-to-be-delivered. . . .If clients can get their heads around the process of identifying what the issue is, rather than translating it already into the form the solution should take, we might start to have some great results. It’s all about the framing of the work. Because you don’t actually know what it is until you do the work. For example:

• “Lack of cheap housing” rather than “make me a low cost house” • “Resolve a transport infrastructure that is poorly used” rather than “design

some signs and make some leaflets about the transport system” • “Create a design strategy for unifying a dispersed, fragmented healthcare

service” rather than “design us a uniform and a logo” • A “response to lighting personal workspace” rather than “make us a new task

light” We’re traditionally bound by what we are asked to do through the brief, but increasingly we find Plot clients are happy to develop the briefs together with us. Design Innovation. You describe the US perspective on design innovation as consumer product creation. The UK perspective is different and complex. There’s still confusion within business about the difference between incremental improvement and innovation. In the UK, we have a history of eccentric inventors (often socially awkward men in fetching pullovers), and the word invention also gets confused with innovation. The UK Department of Trade and Industry definition mixes it all into a soup:

“Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas. These ideas improve the way we do things and the things we make: the things that allow a business to remain competitive. Some ideas are small and iterative; others can create an entire paradigm shift.”

For me, I see the design-innovation paradigm as far less about evolutionary levels, and more about different fields of scope such as an approach, a process, or a result. I see it as a practice, and as a practitioner you get better over time and through the experience of encounters with others. Like karate. Like yoga. The fundamental elements of design as a practice are core to making innovation work. As more groups move into this area, differences in how design innovation is thought about emerge, naturally developing different perspectives as we define the edges of this type of working. You have your way of explaining the transitioning of design approaches. Others talk about design as D1, D2, D3. You know, I can never remember what they mean! People have limited patience for understanding what it is we do so complex definitions of design seem to encourage glazed-eyes. Maybe that’s why we find that with non-design trained clients we don’t use the d-word in what we do, but talk about it as innovation and refer to the design thinking approach and design methods that underpin the way we do it.


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What I do know is that this design-informed/design thinking approach works powerfully in all sorts of new contexts. It engages people in a deep way, and leaves them with new ways of working that are repeatable and sustainable. By joining in with their project teams of experts, we get them somewhere they wouldn’t be otherwise. No black boxes of processes they can’t manage when we have left the building. No mystique. At Plot we work not only on the output (whatever that may be), but also the way people work together — the organizational/cultural dimensions of the work and the commercial or non-commercial opportunities of that work. We explore the people dimensions of the work and the technological enablers. That’s not design, but it is designing. It is innovation in practice. Thanks for inviting me to the conversation, GK, and Chris, we must hang out more. It’s been as good as taking off your taxi shoes, and more. I’ve got a lot off my chest and a lot out of our conversation. Thanks, guys. Chris Downs: GK, I’ll try to answer your last question first and work my way through your thoughts. Can service innovation and design really save the world? You know you have really puzzled me with your closing remarks. If I didn’t know you any better, I would guess that you were being dismissive and perhaps disrespectful of our efforts to make a difference to design and to the world we operate in. But I do know you better, so I prefer to guess that you are hoping to provoke an interesting response. The question is, of course, ridiculous, and I’m not sure who has claimed that service innovation and design can save the world? But the reason I am reacting like this is because why we are doing any of this matters very deeply to me and everyone at live|work. Our (quite probably repeated) starting point was this: We wanted to use our design training and professional experience to inspire, enable and support responses to the real social, environmental and economic imperatives of today instead of contributing to the manufacture of future landfill. We called it service innovation and design. So, no, I don’t think it can save the world. But it has saved a handful of designers from answering client’s economic ambitions with socially and environmentally disastrous products. And along the way, what we say and think might not be considered ‘thought leadership’, but I would have to say that I really don’t care. It most probably is not new either – and I still don’t care. We are making as positive a difference as any of us are capable of through our actions, though, and that I care about. I have to say, though, that as a huge fan of John Tackara (he is one person we regularly refer to as the biggest influence in the idea of starting live|work), I think his comment about service designers looking foolish by claiming to invent a new profession is misplaced. It sounds like a remark directed at us, as we regularly talk about pioneering this new discipline. But we always talk about the fact that ‘of course services have been designed’ in the same way that products had been designed well before the 1920’s. However, just as in the birth of modern industrial design, there is a pioneering group of designers who are applying some skills and principles in an otherwise little explored space. It has been happening for a long time, but it just hasn’t been the focus of design effort.


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It is this effort that I want to pick up on. You seem to make reference to a whole host of published thought – to the business and design press, to comments made by design observers and to white papers. You also make reference to a ‘mania’ surrounding service innovation and design. GK, I thought we all understood that anything published is nothing more than entertainment, inspiration or a conversation. It is not, nor will it ever be, the truth. Yet you appear to take it very seriously. I would urge anyone that has got this far reading our conversation to stop now. Stop thinking about using design as a tool for positive change, and get on with doing it. The only thing that is ever truly achieved in publishing is the boosting of the author’s ego. We (myself and the team at live|work) do a lot, think a lot, talk a lot and do some more. We are a truly reflective practice. Because of this we are always unearthing new (to us) ways of engaging our design minds with new people, in new spaces and in new ways. Now some of these ‘new’ things might not be new at all. They might be happening in another location, or might have happened in another time. But we do our best to check to see whether it is truly new or not, if only to see if there is anything to be learned from the others. I don’t think we really care if it is new new or a repeated starting point – as long as it works. We see lots of people repeating our words. In your question you make reference to the up and coming ‘Emergence’ conference at CMU. Well, it has taken me so long to reply, that the conference has already happened and almost every presentation referenced us or our well-publicized points of view, methods, processes, ambitions, etc. This is great. We are very, very happy to contribute to the global consciousness of the discipline. It was a conscious decision by us early on that we would be open in an attempt to move the discipline on more effectively. But it means we can’t be precious about words or ideas. We just have to make sure we are brilliant at using them. And this is what appears to be missing from the conversation. Thought leadership? What does that do? Who needs it? Action leadership, surely, is what we need. You have a strong case that the Design Council’s Red Unit might not be very good academic publishers. Transformation design was almost certainly ‘not invented there’. However, I have not seen anyone use it in such powerfully effective and exemplary ways. They have taken an approach and made real social change with it. They have since reflected on the process and made that public. I think we are in an age where ‘original authorship’ is an outmoded concept. Being first with an idea means very little. Being the person who is moving the idea on in the most productive way right now – they are the new champions. And I think this is a positive thing. The concept of creative commons spreads well beyond the written word or printed image. So phrases like ‘repeated starting points’ and ‘not invented here’ are becoming quite positive ideas. Anyway, to try to conclude, there is a lot of theory out there. There’s even more ego (especially in the design community). The only thing I am interested in is people who are smart enough and open enough to apply design to the world’s social, environmental and economic imperatives. We and our peers were ‘design trained’ to tackle many of the problems and opportunities that were set in the 1920’s. However, there are a few of us out there – live|work, Plot, RED, for example – who are using our design training and experience and applying them to contemporary issues. We have worked with incredible success with public service transport providers in the


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North East of England in a bid to create more citizen-centered transport services. We have also worked with a wide stakeholder group in the development of new services that help people on long-term incapacity benefits become more socially and/or economically active. We have also helped a large credit checking agency create a $2 million service out of old data they have been holding for ten years. Our methods, processes, and more importantly, our point of view appear to be applicable to many different applications. Public services, private services, data-based services, networked technology services, services that re-think our use of resources, services for sustainability. . . .I’m sure the list will go on as we are presented with more opportunities to apply ourselves. As with any sane person, I don’t think we alone can save the world, but I’m confident that we are not adding to the mess at the same rate that we might otherwise have. This small community of service designers are really trying to make a difference through their practice, and if along the way they are willing and able to share their experience with their peers in order that we can make more positive change more quickly and more effectively, then all the better. Is what I’m talking about Design 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0? I’m afraid I don’t know. That stuff is just beyond me. GK, thank you for making me take time to do this. It has been incredibly thought provoking and has really helped me place ourselves back in the context of our old peers. We have been so focused on our work that I hadn’t thought about our wider community for ages. What I’ve started thinking is that there's a lot of debate about whether or not you can separate design from innovation. Can you do a [NextD Journal] feature on whether ego can be separated from design? It’s the one thing no one talks about in design school. It is the one thing that will, one day, force me to leave the industry I have loved since the age of 14. I think I am going to take six months off from reading about design now and just focus on doing it. It’s more productive and less draining. Thanks again.

11 GK VanPatter: I’ll take this opportunity to convey to you both that we are planning a series of small scale Design 3.0 discussion events in Europe and perhaps elsewhere. If we did not have our practice to run, we would just go off and do a little tour, but duty calls. As soon as we can get to it we hope to have informal events in the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Hong Kong and perhaps India. Some readers have already written to express interest in this regard. Certainly in our own experience we have found there to be a growing appetite for all kinds of sense-making activities in the design community. Considering the degree of change in the marketplace, this is not so surprising. If any readers out there would like to host a Design 3.0 event, feel free to write to us at info at nextd dot org. Of course, we are certainly inviting other practice leaders who are operating in and around the 3.0 space in various parts of the world. We can see that community is growing. Based on some of your commentary here, I am not sure if this would make sense for Plot and live|work, but I will extend an invitation to you both nonetheless. Let me know if you would like to be included in the UK Design 3.0 discussion event.


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Gill Wildman: Yes to the event. Of course! Get those candidate dates ready, and we'll do some thinking here. Chris Downs: I would be very, very interested in being part of this. I hear you say that so many examples of 'new design thinking' are still in the Design 2.0 world that I am curious to know what constitutes Design 3.0. No matter how many times I look through the presentations [on the NextD website], I still struggle to know who is practicing Design 3.0 and what does it look like? Perhaps no one is yet? Anyway, I would love to be involved. We'd be happy to host one of up to 20 people? Let me know what you think and if there is anything we can do to help.

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