Hi Jurgen,
Thank you for your message and inquiry. I spent a year looking at this question 5 years ago. It would be great to see some solid findings in this area. Thus far, they seem to be elusive
In reviewing the studies on the value and impact of design for my own research, I came to 3 conclusions:
1. That the question is may be impossible to answer in any meaningful or valid way. In essence it is asking about the behaviour of a complex highly interlinked eco-system and the value of the contribution of one (badly defined) element of that eco-system whose role interacts with and can be replaced by several other elements. It’s a bit like asking to measure the exact value of sand to the behaviour of weather. All the claims of value for 'design' can be claimed by any other element in the industrial consumer eco-system.
2. All the studies I could find about the value and impact of design were deeply flawed and the analyses and findings did not stand up to scrutiny and many findings, as far as I could see, were false. Most studies had significant experiment bias and assumptions (in favour of design) that were overlooked by the researchers and analysts.
3. The best two comparative measures of design activity seemed to be a) The aggregated annual costs of design teams; and b) the annual value of contracts undertaken.
An example of the problem is a claim that design results in a company producing products that people want (and that this can be measured in terms of company success). Exactly the same claim for the same value can be made, e.g. by the marketing department, the management, the sales department and also to some extent by manufacturing, distribution, retail management, government (in setting the economic climate and use of PR in setting culture).
The UK Design Council has conducted a range of business surveys in which companies self-identify the value of design, and in which share price changes are associated with companies use of design. As far as I can see, all the measures used in the Design Council surveys can legitimately be explained in other ways , or rather they do not validate the claims for the benefits of design that they suggest. They are intended as 'feel good' influencers of opinion rather than justifiable research. Another factor important to be aware of in Design Council reports on the benefits of design is some include engineering design and civil engineering design in ways that are not obvious. The outcomes claimed seem to be almost totally due to the figures relating to the different forms of engineering as the data for Art and Design design fields are relatively small compared to those of engineering design.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Senior Lecturer, Design
Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Senior lecturer, Dept of Design
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia
Director, Design-based Research Unit, Design Out Crime Research Centre
Member of International Scientific Council UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Researcher, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
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-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jurgen Faust
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2011 3:01 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: measuring the impact of design in product development
Hi All,
recently I was asked to get involved in a research project about the value of design in product development. Does somebody have an experience or can direct me to a paper, publication, where somebody tried to measure the impact of design in a product development process?
Thanks,
Jurgen Faust
Prof. DIGITAL MEDIA
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