Innovation and the Prosperity of Nations

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The Ministers were, as usual (and perhaps understandably), given to this narrow understanding of design, though they were also guilty, in the case of Malcolm Wicks, of corralling ‘rock and pop’ and the design industry into the all-encircling pen of ‘creativity’.

In design in general, and even in product design, the key dynamics are interaction design, service design and research methods. And surely these newer disciplines hold more promise for UK plc than traditional industrial design, which has already been mastered by China plc—where designers are also proximate to the factory shop floor. To their credit, service design was mentioned by Thackara and Moggridge, though interaction design was surprisingly absent from the latter’s discussion.

The Summit demonstrated a somewhat limited imagination about the power and nature of design. In his very engaging talk, David Kester cited the typography of the Yellow Page as an example of good design. And so it is. But did it really answer the problem? Possibly at the time, but the real design solution to finding and evaluating local services has been much better solved by a combination of searchable databases, the Web, ubiquitous Internet access, mobile devices, and GPS.

This is the scale at which design solutions should be conceived. And Professor Myerson is right that “design is not the whole story.” This level of thinking requires equally high levels of investment (and much else beside). It is not clear that this will be forthcoming from UK plc, which as Bill Sermon observed prefers “watching the competition”—and thus avoiding risk.

At whatever level design is focused, there is another challenge that was highlighted by the initial Summit keynotes. What motivates and inspires us to design? Creating a successful business? Giving UK plc a future? Saving the planet? Or fulfilling people’s needs? While these are not mutually exclusive, they are sufficiently confused to leave the role of design and designers more fuzzy than at any period in the modern era.

Much of this confusion is a result of contemporary politics and government policy, which have lost any concept of rational problem identification or problem solving—key aspects of designerly thinking. If the current government really wants to promote innovation, and thereby design, it needs to go beyond the insipid measures, such as public procurement, to which Alistair Darling alludes. Darling’s previous position was as Secretary of State for Transport, where he could have had an enormous impact on innovation and design. Instead he presided over the slow death by inaction and taxation of the British transport system, while the Chinese were building maglev and high altitude trains, finishing Chek Lap Kok airport, and launching manned rockets.

One of the ways of invigorating or re-orienting an economy is for governments to be ambitious, invest substantially, and lead from the front. This was true of Eisenhower’s ARPA and NASA initiatives, which were at the root of the Internet and communications satellites, as it was of Kennedy’s manned-rocket-launching and moon landing programme—which also had a profound psychological and cultural impact.

Gordon Brown and other Ministers in the current UK administration may say the right things about design, but they lack real ambition or leadership. Instead they are raising up design and creativity and hoping to bask in their untarnished glow. Designers need to avoid being tarnished by association.

Provided by Core77—The Industrial Design Supersite