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
>>
>>
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