Reposting this sent to Elizabeth on July 18.

Elizabeth:

These days I don't have much time for or interest in debates but you might be interested in some 
of the material that is available for free on the NextD site. In case you might not know: we first 
presented the Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 sense-making framework at the AIGA national conference in 
2005, after several years of community based research and the sharing of that research through 
NextD Journal.

You can see a few screens from that presentation on the NextD site:

http://nextd.org/media/qt/NextD_Design3_0.mov

You might also be interested in this AskNextD document from 2005 that remains available on the 
site.

See: 
AskNextD 
Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
Making Sense of Design Now!

http://nextd.org/03/index.html

Interest in the Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 framework continues to rise as many countries (government 
leaders etc) are trying hard to create responses to globalization for their design communities. We 
continue to be asked to present Design 3.0 in numerous countries. To be brief there certainly are 
behavioral aspects to Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 as it is a process perspective.

The US is presently dominated by a couple of product centric 2.0 graduate schools with high 
profiles, loud voices and ties to the American new business press but there is a lot more going on 
beyond that narrow and somewhat retro picture. Since NextD is global with subscribers in forty 
countries we tend to have points of view that are quite different from much of what is going on in 
the marketplace here. Certainly in Europe and other parts of the world designers seek a different 
future for design realizing that creating more consumer products, however user centered they 
might be, is seldom the solution to the many challenges facing our planet. For this reason we 
seek, along with others in the global design community, a better, more meaningful future for 
design. 

To be sure this future might trample on a few old expectations regarding design that tend to exist 
inside and outside the design communities. Some might prefer design not to be in motion. This is 
part of what makes the picture today rather complicated and often politically charged. Speaking 
up and getting involved in this change is not for the faint of heart.

Yes it is true that design is finally in motion as are other communities as the impact of 
globalization is underway big time and hitting everyone. The folks who attend business school 
seek to change by not only participating in design but by leading and redefining the design 
thinking space. Forward thinking designers are already in motion beyond that 2.0 space and for 
very practical reasons rather then academic ones.

There is a strategic space race going on and design has been (extremely) late waking up to that 
party well underway all around us (especially design education). This is an entire subject unto 
itself.

The strategic space race (not academic discourse) is forcing all kinds of hybrid alliances and skill 
shifts that have not existed before but that's what makes today particularly interesting. The shift 
around anthropology is only one of many underway.

Since Design 3.0 involves designers moving beyond the brief business and getting more involved 
in the fuzzy strategic space it naturally follows that many skills and tools useful on the fuzzy front 
end where challenges and opportunities are framed are very much in demand right now as the 
brief business activity space continues to shrink through commoditization.

I notice that discussions in this forum tend to be focused on the designer as individual but if we 
move our focus from the individual to the collective it is safe to say that in five years many leading 
design oriented firms will look very different from how they look today. Most leading firms already 
have hybrid toolboxes that include tools, methods and knowledge from inside and out side of 
traditional design. That is a done deal and already old news. Some started early in this direction 
others are more recently waking up to such possibilities. We continue to believe that aligning with 
human-centered others makes a lot of sense today and provides a terrific alternative to other 
innovation approaches. We can help each other. If the goal is to be human centered some cross-
disciplinary alliances make more sense then others.

From a behavioral perspective Design 2.0 tends to be what we call outbound focused on the 
behavior of users with the intended outcome to be a product or more recently a service. Often in  
2.0 graduate (and postgraduate) schools there is little or no inbound awareness of the teams own 
behavior being taught, no cross-disciplinary behavior being taught. In Design 3.0 we are 
interested in not only user behaviors but also the behaviors of the cross-disciplinary team and the 
outcome might be many things that are not products or services.

It is not difficult to see how knowledge and methods from anthropology, organizational 
psychology and other fields might be useful as the services offered by design companies and 
innovation companies change to meet the needs of organizational clients and the planet. One can 
look at that shifting as a threat or an opportunity and the reality is it might turn out to be both. 

In any case, from our perspective the bigger picture controversy or struggle today is more about 
the strategic space race and less about design versus anthropology. If design education does not 
better address the challenge of how to equip designers to operate and lead in the strategic space 
it is unlikely that design will survive in a form that will be capable of sustaining the community let 
alone expanding it. Some parts of our design education community have still not yet woken up to 
that challenge and it is easy to get sidetracked into many other discussions.

While Nussbaum is out advocating change in his community lets not get so distracted that we fail 
to ask ourselves: What are we doing to advocate change in our own community? In 2002 we 
decided not to wait for the graduate (and postgraduate) schools to wake up to these challenges so 
we started NextD. Outside of our practice we continue to travel around to try to raise awareness 
around some of these issues. 

Recently I presented a brief 30 minutes on Design 3.0 and 30 minutes on Sense-Making 
Innovation at MIX in Las Vegas and in Chicago at the Design Management conference there. If you 
are interested Elizabeth you can view these online at least in part: (They are similar presentations 
captured in two different ways.)

Don't look for us to present at Design 1.0 or 2.0 graduate schools or conferences as we are 
seldom invited to participate there.

MIX07 Here is a short review posted on a blog.
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?527

DMI Conference
http://www.dmi.org/dmi/html/conference/branddesign07/19thpresentations.htm

MIX07 Conference
http://sessions.visitmix.com/

This is likely not exactly what you had in mind but hopefully this is useful to you Elizabeth.


GK VanPatter
Co-Founder
NextDesign Leadership Institute
New York

NextD
Design is Changing! Are You?
http://nextd.org
...