David Kester, chief executive of the Design Council has long been a fan of Designer Breakfasts. Because his remit is to speak to government, potential clients of designers and the press – not to designers, we were pleased at this rare opportunity to find out what the Design Council is doing to benefit small design businesses.
Fresh from a visit to China, David told us about a young Chinese design entrepreneur, only five years out of college and already employing 50 people. A Chinese entrepreneur owner-manager who was failing to sell his new heart monitor – the feedback was that it looked terrible and was
probably untrustworthy – found this design company on the Internet. His investment in design with them has brought him massive good fortune. The product needed designing to make it truly innovative. David noticed that the audience didn’t gasp as manufacturers would have done.
Designers see things differently – as David’s audience warming showed: those of us with watches were told to hand it to a neighbour without looking at it. The neighbour hid it while the designer described it. Everyone reported 100% accuracy in the descriptions. Well, said David, only 25% of a non-designer audience could do that.
David’s next story was about a big employer with a big problem: NHS and MRSA. The Design Council’s Designing Demand programme brings strategic designers in to think about complex problems. It was interesting to hear how the designers’ approach was so very different, more effective and cheaper than the NHS’s previous strategy. Initially, designers talked to real workers like nurses, doctors and porters, not just to managers.
The project was informed by an open innovation process, which involved all key contributors at an early stage, including manufacturers, technologists, maintenance, users and policymakers. Designer Breakfasts heard about open innovation used on design projects from Maxine Horn of BDI in February 2010. She described it as a safe space where ideas can be generated and discussed.
The creative thinking and open innovation process resulted in great savings in time and costs. It’s being absorbed into NHS processes: a move away from complexity, silos, inertia, risk aversion and conflict and towards simplicity, engagement, momentum, experimentation and collaboration.
Key to this is that designers and manufacturers kept their intellectual property and shared the profits generated by their designs.
David concluded by saying that design happens in the space between creativity and innovation. It is the element that makes innovation happen. It is also the element that happens at every stage along the process, as Maxine pointed out in February. For every creative idea that makes it through the process to innovation and commercial reality, there are many, that get left behind.
In the short amount of time left after this captivating story, one strong comment stood out. Andy Paterson-Jones suggested that the same process should be done for designers, as for the NHS, to develop a ‘new language of innovation’ that is more accessible and understood by clients. Design is difficult to buy and perceptions of designers in a business encounter are often way off the mark. The challenge is to develop better communication and understanding of what we do.