Chris and Ken,
Designers are being reinvented.The implications are profound. Many people
are suggesting We will change from a hierarchical business structure to a
networked business structure. From Capital resource focus to a human and
information focus. From a stable environment to a dynamic and changing
environment. From learning specific skills to learning broader competencies.
From an internal perspective to an open and external perspective. From a
national world view to a global world view. From designers doing it
themselves to designers participating in open innovation to co-create from
product focus to experience focus. Work is increasingly the application of
knowledge and manipulation of information.
I am surprised at the speed of growth in the LinkedIn Groups that I
established. They are growing now at about 3,000 new members per month and
have about 14,000 members. The Industrial Design Group has about two thirds
senior design managers. I am beginning to see new opportunities to draw on
the wisdom of these groups in a more organized way. For example I plan to
use the polling feature to ask interested members to prioritized a list of
about 15 design skills for graduates as a tool for planning curriculum.
Your colleague Cigdem Kaya seems to be developing a model to move from a
crafts based development model to an innovation based model. She has a
underlying assumption that the innovation based model is better. The crafts
based model has some good features. For example it results in products
refined over a long time that may work better for users. It may also have
less environmental impact because our problems seem to be related to
industrialization and lack of local connection and responsibility. The value
is delivered direct to the crafts person at a local level rather than
concentrated in a few people at the top of the industrial tree. Value may be
more democratically distributed. Perhaps if social networks replace
industrial model for production western designers will be moving back to a
model closer to crafts production that existed before the industrial
revolution where creation is shared and incremental but the community is
global. Perhaps still a small community.
Rob
On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Rob Curedale wrote:
>
>> The area of collaboration is one that interests me. Many people are
>> suggesting that we will be moving from from designers doing it themselves to
>> designers participating in open networks to co-create.
>>
>
> I feel that's right on the money. The exciting thing for me is all the
> possible models which might emerge and the hope (given the appalling results
> of our banking monoculture) that they will all flourish.
>
> My colleague Paul Atkinson is developing a Future Manufacturing research
> group based on his recent work on how designers and software engineers can
> create systems for consumers to generate their own unique products eg
> http://www.automake.co.uk/about/index.html
>
> Some of the ideas are about selecting from a progression of semi-random
> mutations but others are about consumers manipulating the product within a
> constraints model which is a very advanced version of Von Hippel's "Toolkits
> for User Innovation". This thinking is partly informed by his other research
> interest as a historian where he has studied the Do-It-Yourself movement
> which includes a great variety of creative practices as well as the more
> obvious home improvement stuff.
>
> We also have a visiting researcher here from Istanbul Technical University,
> Cigdem Kaya, who is investigating how designers can "incite" change in the
> lives and work of makers. She started out working with small traditional
> workshop manufacturers and household craft workers in Turkey but has also
> found a lot of resonance with post-industrial craftspeople in Britain,
> people who are seeking work or satisfaction from learning and using
> traditional craft skills. In both cases there is a general level of routine
> or "me too" practice which can be seen in most of the work done by such
> people, but what interests Cigdem is the effect of introducing somebody with
> a strong creative ethos and skill to their environment. She has evidence
> that the intervention of a designer can leave a lasting change in thinking
> and practice, long after the designer has disappeared. I've seen this in my
> own professional work with industrial craftsmen in the specialist
> vehicle-building industry. Her work and Paul Atkinson's asks a pointed
> question, "Who is the designer?"
>
> And since you mention reward systems, my belief is that we should not even
> think about that. The world of open sharing seems to create its own
> unpredictable models for success, for instance how many economists would
> predict that you could publish a magazine and ask people to pay after they
> had read it? I subscribe to the wonderful online journal "City Cycling" and
> I regularly click on the "donate" button to give them UK2 because of the
> great content such as Sam Fleming's recent article on the moral and
> psychological climate in which cyclists and motorists encounter each other.
> http://www.citycycling.co.uk/issue45/issue45page5.html
>
> To bring the question home, why do we all give our time and knowledge free
> to this forum, instead of keeping it for our employer's exclusive use?
>
> Thanks Rob
> Chris
>
> ...............................................................o^o
> Professor Chris Rust FDRS
> Head of Art and Design Research Centre (nearly finished that)
> Head of Art and Design (real soon now)
> Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
> +44 114 225 6772
> [log in to unmask]
> www.chrisrust.net
>
> Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future
> of the human race. - H. G. Wells
>
--
Rob Curedale | President | Curedale Inc | 22148 Monte Vista Drive Topanga
Canyon CA 90290 USA | tel: +1 310.455.2636 studio | cell: +1 616.455.7025 |
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