On Monday just gone we went to a conference as part of Copenhagen Design Week entitled What Keeps You up at Night?

This was the question posed to a handful of leading international companies, and it was there answers to this question that would form the 4-hour conference at The Danish Design Center. It sounded pretty interesting, and it didn’t disappoint.
We were treated to talks from Alice Rawsthorn, Design Critic from the International Herald Tribune; Clive Van Heerden, Senior Director at Philips Design – Design Probes; Francois Lenfant, Manger of Global Product Design, Developed Markets, GE Healthcare; and David Kester, Chief Executive, Design Council UK.

Although each had their own particular spin there was a very evident dominant theme – and we don’t just mean design.

Designing for people, for humanity, is what these companies see as the future of design. As Francois put it, GE Healthcare’s designers’ ultimate goal is human benefit – what better goal can there be?

It was clear to see how designers are being involved in societal aspects today – they’re being recognised as beneficial for governments – even the UK Cabinet has a behavioural insights team. Designers are no longer just called in to make a leaflet look pretty and fold the right way, they are used, as David Kessler said, to nudge social behaviour and encourage changes within society, changes which focus on the fundamental ways we work, play, and live. By focusing on user-centric solutions the hope is that problems we witness in society today can be totally avoided in the future – even before they even begin.

The sobering fact presented to us by Clive was that 70% of populations will live in cities by 2050, highlighting the immense urban sprawl we’ll soon be facing. The way today’s comparatively small cities function, from power plants to water treatments, just won’t work in the future. Bu it’s not just industrial processes and solutions that will have to be redesigned – it’s just as much how society will function and cope with such a huge amount of people being crammed into urban spaces – not to mention the millions of youths that feel neglected by governments and the rest of society. This is where designers can make a difference. They can be involved in entire projects, from start to finish, projects that involve, empower and enrich, projects that range from a closed loop toilet water treatment process to youth projects.

Examples during the conference were;

Studio H

Studio H is a high school design/build curriculum for rural community benefit. Based in Bertie County in North Carolina (the poorest county with one in three children living in poverty and only 27% of 3rd-8th grade students passing the state standard for both English and maths), the one-year programme is offered to Junior-year students and provides college credit, a summer job, and a hands-on opportunity to build real-world projects for the community.

Loops by Participate

Loops is a project involving young people who are typically regarded as trouble by society and the media. They are locked in to their communities and never have a chance to break free from the downward spiral they are so often caught up in. Loops is a social enterprise that aims to expand young people’s purpose and possibility. Piloting in 2009, and now going live in 2 locations, Croydon and Brighton, it is now preparing to roll out nationally.

FARM: shop

As part of a council supported project to help regenerate parts of Dalston, FARM: shop is a groundbreaking urban agriculture centre which will include a community café, an events venue, and workspace, and will offer fresh produce directly traceable to a farm or grown in the shop itself.

It was fascinating and incredibly encouraging to realise these themes were running through every talk regardless what sector or country they were from. Design and society is a theme we’ve touched upon here in this blog in regards to Denmark and there are many, many other initiatives going on around the world – not least in the UK.

They say design can’t save the world, that it can only help, but if these projects and this passion were anything to go by, we’d say design can come pretty damn close.

“Change before you have to.” Jack Welch, ex-CEO GE

This was going to be a tweet, but let’s face it – 140 characters is never enough. Well, quite often, but not in this case anyway.

Over the 1st and 2nd of June, ExpoManagement 2011 is being held in Madrid. It’s the ninth of such meetings, and is designed especially for leaders who anticipate change. It’s a collective meeting of minds, where experts debate ideas and trends, and where those leaders who dare to act, and who are capable of generating new opportunities for driving change, meet to push these changes that can have profound effect on the future. You can check out the programme to the ExpoManagement 2011, although it’s only available in Spanish.

Designit is excited to have two guys heading to Madrid in June, Mikal Hallstrup, and Humberto Matas. The conference is divided into themes, and both our guys will be speaking on June 1st, under Marketing and Innovation. While Mikal focuses on inspiration for businesses, and design experiences, Humberto will concentrate on innovation and people, innovative educational experiences.

Ultimately, both are focusing on the importance of the user; user-centric design for services and experiences that can improve life, and society. Design is not just about a great product, or smart catalogue. More and more we’re seeing design popping up in everyday situations, examining how design can help us make the world a better place.

If you’re in Madrid, and like design, you should definitely check it out!

Yeah, there was no way that was going to be a tweet!

Yesterday we went to The Danish Design Centre’s (The DDC) opening of their new exhibition ‘Challenge Society.’ The exhibition looks at how design can help solve many of the current and future problems of society. As their website says, “The world is transforming, creating complex societal challenges. The future sees fewer hands to care for the increasing number of elderly. The school systems fail, hospitals are down with billions in deficit and the welfare model in general is under pressure. Just to mention some of the future challenges. The situation needs immediate action and new, creative solutions.”

We had a couple of projects on display there, one showcasing our digital communication work as a part of new midwife practices, and a conceptual case for Odense Hospital, reimagining it as a patient hotel concept. While it was great to have Designit represented at the event, it was also the perfect opportunity to hear where others believed design was heading. And boy were we inspired, and happy.

Strategic design has been making headlines all over the place recently, from the ‘creativity crisis’ in American schools to the Danish national design strategy, and as yesterday proved, it’s a bit of a worldwide movement.

We were lucky enough to hear from Chris Luebkeman (Director for Global Foresight and Innovation, Arup), Christian Bason (Director of Innovation, Mindlab), Chris Hacker (Chief Design Officer, Johnson & Johnson), Mikkel B. Rasmussen (European Director at ReD), and Josephine Green (speaker and consultant). Each and every one of them gave inspiring and insightful presentations on how society is changing irrevocably, and how as a result, design and creative processes must be incorporated into just about everything, from packaging to organisational mindsets.

Design thinking has been around for sometime but in the last few years we’ve seen it become a bit of a trend. No wonder really. We are moving out of the economic, mechanistic worldview we’ve had since the industrial revolution and beginning to recognise this flat, social, communal, socio-ecological world we now find ourselves in. Design, a creative, chaotic process, clearly stands as an innovative way through which organisations and businesses can grab a little creativity. The problem here is that through the implementation of design thinking, or any creative processes, through all the management and administration that must be crossed, much of the failures, chaos and mess that creativity thrives on is lost. It’s removed, or minimised to ensure efficiency so that the creative process or design thinking you are left with isn’t anything similar to that you started with.

Today, design thinking – as a term – is on the way out. While we still need this overall mindset (of that there is no doubt!) what we do need to do is to leave behind our hierarchies, our traditional organisational structures, our linear processes that stifle creativity and innovation. We need to focus on the bottom of the pyramid – there shouldn’t even be a pyramid. As Josephine Green put it, we should all be pancakes.

In the socio-ecological world we find ourselves in, the focus is now on the social and the community, and solutions to problems in this world can be found in the social and the community. The focus today is on community needs and social solutions. Solutions which can be found through open collaboration, multiple stakeholders, multidisciplinary innovation, and co-creation.

Co-creation is what Designit does. It has always, from day one, formed the basis of what we do. We believe in user-led innovation – meeting and interacting with those people who have the problem or need on their turf, and including them in the whole process. We don’t have the answer. Our clients don’t have the answer. The consumers don’t have the answer. It’s only by coming together and collaborating that we can find solutions.

Designit believes in collective creativity and we will always believe in collective creativity.

Feel inventy and collaborative today? If you have awesome ideas for innovative, eco-efficient products it’s time for action. While climate gurus debate a greener world in Copenhagen these weeks Quirky walks the talk. During the summit, you can submit your wildest, sustainable product ideas to the site – without the usual fee of 99 USD.

Or you can discuss or vote others’ eco-effective ideas closer to production. Even improve them to gain co-ownership. Unlike other community-based idea sites, such as Dell’s ideastorm or Starbucks’ mystarbucksidea Quirky shares profits with you if your product vision makes it to production. 12 cents in your pocket for every dollar your product makes.

So, what are you waiting for? Experience the power of co-creation and crowd-sourcing before you try it out in your own business.

Environmental requirements and resource shortage provoke designers and engineers to rethink before creating yet another new design. Surprisingly, limits often result in innovative and even cool-looking solutions. 

ecofont, invented by Dutch communications agency Spranq, is a needed rethink of typo and the prevalent ‘typo-fashion’ approach. The basic idea: to transfer the concept of a hole-beam (or a Dutch holey cheese) to a font and thereby set new standards for ink consumption, while creating a new, powerful visual expression at the same time. 

Right, fonts are tiny, but trillions are printed every day. What I like particularly about ecofont is the statement that everything matters and makes a difference. It insists that everybody, even typeface designers, can contribute to the global aspiration for eco-efficiency and responsibility. 

Hopefully, ecofont – besides bringing down the large amounts of toner and printing ink that is used every day to create ordinary, ‘massive’ art works – will spark more rethinking in ‘massive’ graphic design.

Venture company Solar Botanic (http://www.solarbotanic.com/) has officially announced their new innovative product – artificial tree. It has both solar array  batteries and wind generator elements in the leafs.

Press release of the company said that tree looks like the natural one. Interesting that one tree can supply energy to a whole house. Unfortunately there is no prototype yet :))

The interesting thing is the technology “Nanoleaf”. Solar Botanic has already working examples. Leafs consists of photoelectric and termogalvanic elements. A special mechanism turns energy of leaf movement into electricity.

Unfortunately there is no mention of capacity parameters on the website. But it seems that this kind of small power station could come soon to each house (I hope so). Solar Botanic consider that this is not just ecological but also very aesthetic solution.

Now a lot of companies are changing to green solutions. For example IKEA started a new direction. The idea is to make green solutions available to a lot of people. So soon we will go to IKEA and bye solar array  batteries just for 20 KR.

So let’s Designit be a green design company :)))

If you’re looking for a reliable weather forecast, here you are. It needs some product development in terms of long range forecasts, but thumbs up for Gary’s cool invention:)

I saw this on the way to work this morning in central Copenhagen. It’s well-intentioned service design but it simply doesn’t work! Ironically the green recycling bin doesn’t solve the problem; it’s just a quick fix.

Instead, lets adapt solutions to human behaviour. If we apply persuasive design that encourages people to act in a more sustainable way – not to dump their newspaper in the recycling bin after a two-minute read but to leave it in a designated pile for reuse – we will achieve much more. After all, reusing is more sustainable than recycling.

How’s that for morning philosophy!

Flew over Las Vegas a few months ago (landed there too) and got a shock as you do sometimes seeing a city from above. This picture shows just a tiny part of the area of the city, where two million people live. Looks like a city made by a harvesting machine – and 95% of inhabitants work in service or entertainment (not a lot of production going on there).

This city didn’t really exist 60 years ago. There’s a sci-fi feeling to it, maybe because we know that more and more people move to the cities to work in service or entertainment, as manual labour is taken over by machines.

It might well be a picture of our future seen from above…(and with global warming, maybe even the weather in northern Europe would become more like Las Vegas – one can hope:-)

Just some food for thought: there were 262 entries in the competition to design the visual identity for COP 15, the international UN climate conference to be held in Copenhagen in 2009.

My conservative guess is that an average of 25 hours has been used to produce each design proposal for the competition, which revealed the winner this week. That totals 6550 hours.

For the climate CO2 geeks: computers and light for one workstation uses about 500-600 W/hour. That’s 3.275 KWh, equalling approx. 3 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

This may not do away with all of the Antarctic. But if what they want from the conference is more awareness about cutting our power consumption, there may have been more responsible ways of getting the message across.

For the rest of us: one designer hour is maybe worth an average EUR 75. That equals EUR 491.250,- (DKK 3.7 mio – one kindergarden yearly budget) of our little country’s economy spent on producing one winning proposal. There may be more responsible ways of treating the fragile Danish design business. And maybe even better examples to set…

We didn’t win (you may have guessed, we actually never do:-), but personally I oppose public competitions. It’s the least professional way to choose a partner for a long large-scale project and it’s such a waste of time for all the designers that didn’t win. And more often than not – time is what we sell.