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Dear Marcus, Thanks for your thoughts. I had not given thought to the issues you point out when I passed the article along. The reason I posted the article from The Economist was somewhat mundane: I was delighted that they reported on the importance of design issues as a normal part of their focus on economics, and business. To me, this is preferable to the way that some magazines feature design once a year in a "let's look at design" picture spread. There are three reasons I like this approach better. First, it locates the design process in the normal flow of management decisions and economic life. Second, it alerts managers to the fact that design issues are meaningful to them as well as to consumers and end-users. The third reason is that most magazines confuse the design process with the artifacts that are its result. The "this is good design" approach confuses design with things. The Economist article shifts the focus from designed objects to the design process. Focusing on the process that creates goods and services clarifies the potential of good design in business. A parallel will make this clear. W. Edwards Deming's work demonstrated that quality is one outcome of good management. A focus on the design process as one series of activities among others demonstrates that well designed goods and services are the outcome of good design. Rather than seeing design as an expensive art best left to experts, this approach makes design a general strategic management responsibility by placing design decisions in the flow of business. This perspective is far better for everyone: consumers, end users, and companies, as well as designers and design researchers. The annual "good design" feature issues that some magazines run is interesting, but the exclusive emphasis on design as a soft news feature rather than a significant had news process has drawbacks. This article represents an important new approach in which design is treated as one of the issues that journalist MUST consider when appropriate, and that is why I passed it along. As I see it, it is far more important to get solid descriptive coverage of the design process in The Economist several times a year than a color spread featuring designed objects once a year. I hope the other news magazines will follow suit and add this to their repertoire. The other reason I posted this was that it described design RESEARCH. That is even less common for a leading global newsmagazine than describing the design process itself. These are my reasons for posting the article. Your comments on the substance of the articles are fair and interesting. It is obvious that simulation is no substitute for experience. At the same time, simulations help people to understand experiences that they have not had. I have to give this some thought before responding. I posted the article as an example of journalism that treats design - and design research - as topics worth covering in the course of normal journalism. Normal journalism at The Economist is serious journalism. This was treated as hard news rather than soft feature material. That makes this an important step. The issues you raise are worth considering in their own right. I am going to look into the subject and think. I think that Wim Gilles, Jacques Giard, and others have discussed this topic in the past, here and elsewhere. I would welcome more insight. perhaps other subscribers have thoughts on the issues you raise. Best regards, Ken -snip- From Marcus Ormerod thanks for the interesting article and the note about design-for-all content. I would want to stress the need for great caution in using simulations to attempt to give a young, non-disabled designer the feeling of being older and/or disabled. I realise that it is not your article Ken, but wanted to point some issues out regarding simulations. There are several reasons why such exercises are not the same as evaluations done by an older person, or a disabled person. 1. The person putting on a simulation suit will not have developed coping strategies and is therefore plunged into a completely different experience to the one they have on a daily basis. The person experiencing the simulation will tend to be overwhelmed by the "novelty" of the unfamiliar situation. In contrast an older person, or a disabled person, will not be concentrating on the experience per se, rather the activity of getting on with their daily life, using the design, etc.. Also the older person, or disabled person, will have developed ways of doing things that best suit them. People who get into a wheelchair for the first time cannot expect to have the fine control over manoeuvring that someone who uses a wheelchair on a daily basis will have. If you predominantly use your senses other than vision to do things then you will have a better understanding of what is going on than someone who has just put on special goggles to blur their vision. 2. The person wearing the simulation suit will eventually be able to take off the suit and return to their daily life, an older person cannot turn back the clock, or a disabled person put aside their disability. This can create tension in disabled people, and older people, who would have preferred to have given their views first hand. But we should not expect these views to be given for free; they should be treated as consultants. People get tired of being asked to join in without a good incentive to participate. 3. Such simulations rarely take into account the attitudinal problems that surround the issues. A social model of disability approach takes the stance that it is society that is the disabling factor by creating barriers to the day-to-day activities of people, rather than any medical condition. the person in the simulation may feel some of the differing attitudes to them whilst they are wearing the suit, but could equally well gain a rich experience form spending some time with disabled people, or older people, whilst they are going through their daily activities. Whilst I acknowledge that designers pick up on certain issues through such simulations, that a non-designer might well miss. I feel that this can be done equally as well without the simulation by studying people in real contexts and listening to them as they express their experiences. Why are we so reluctant to engage with the users of designs that we resort to developing simulation suits. -snip- -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Leadership and Organization Norwegian School of Management Visiting Professor Advanced Research Institute School of Art and Design Staffordshire University