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Hi John, Thank you for the insight from the site you pointed me towards, it seems like awards is a "good old boys network kind of thing. Have you come across any effective way of measuring the benefit of design contributions? Best, Soren -----Original Message----- From: Charles Burnette [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 2:41 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: design awards and meassuring design quality Soren and John: Having been a juror in several awards programs as well as an observer Let me offer the following: Design awards are primarily promotional programs aimed at making design more visable to potential clients and the public, and to make designers feel better about themselves if they win. (For those who lose it is usually a defensive, expensive, devisive and hurtful experience.) As John points out the design promotion organizations use awards programs to promote design, often very effectively ie: The BBC televised program in England and the IDEA/Businessweek collaboration in the states. Despite the effort to build solid information on important dimensions of design quality (such as usability, market success, etc) to guide the jury (as IDSA has attempted to do) submissions are usually hard to compare on an objective basis, and they certainly don't profile the field with any accuracy. (IDEO for example has such a good strategy for winning awards and for self promotion that you can tell which are their submissions without identification - they also happen to be very good designers.) Conclusion: the best design award program is the one that can garner the most favorable publicity for design, designers and their promotional organizations. Best, Chuck On 1/10/05 4:30 PM, "John Feland" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Soren, > > There was some research I dug up in my literature review by some > accounting professors at Northeaster University that looked that the > relative utility of many design performance measures based on surveys > of design managers at a DMI conference. They found that Design Awards > were of little utility in measuring performance. > > There was also a report by the Design Council in the UK that used > design awards as a way to identify "designerly companies." They used > this loose label to correlate to stock price and found a positive > relationship. Not an academically rigorous examination, they imply > causality. > > John > > > > On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, Soren > Petersen wrote: > >> Hi Group, >> >> We had a discussion here in the office today about which design >> awards are the most significant/prestigious (we were especially >> talking about the "Good Design Award" out of Chicago). Does anyone >> have thoughts about ranking and the influence/importance of design awards these days? >> >> >> >> Best, >> >> >> >> Soren >> >>