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Home » Learning & Events » Designful Innovation

Design Meets…Public Policy

2013-11-20 by cense

Design Meets: Public Policy
Design Meets: Public Policy

On Tuesday November 26th, the team at Pivot Design Group and fellow organizers are hosting Design Meets…Public Policy in Toronto. Tuesday’s event is the latest in a series of meet-up style design-oriented events that combine brief presentations from subject matter experts and a lot of discussion on the role of design thinking in shaping the topic.

Our Principal, Cameron Norman, will be among the presenters at this event speaking on Health Publics, Healthy Policy. Cameron will be joining historian Bruce Bell, professor and head of the Inclusive Design Lab at OCADU Jutta Treviranus, Jamison Steeve the ED of the Martin Prosperity Institute, community organizer Bruce Chau from Web Not War and Microsoft, and democracy provocateur Dave Meslin.

Tickets are free and available through Eventbrite. Get them soon as this will likely fill up quickly.

 

 

Filed Under: Design, Events Tagged With: design, design thinking, events, health, public policy, Toronto

Defining Design

2013-11-17 by cense

Flying high
Designing for possibility

What is design? Design lays at the heart of any endeavour to create something with intention. One of the best and most concise definitions comes from Greg Van Alstyne at the Strategic Innovation Lab at OCADU:

“Design is creation for reproduction”

 

At essence of this definition is the intent to develop a plan — a blueprint perhaps — to create something that can be reproduced. This may not happen, as many architectural delights will attest, but at least there is an ordered sense of planning to how things could be that is proposed in light of systems, craft, available skills and knowledge, need and vision for what could be.

Here are some other ways to think about what design is:

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist” – Buckminster Fuller

“Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order” – Victor Papanek (1985)

“Utility enhanced by significance” – Nigel Cross (2011)

“Design in its simplest form is the activity of creating solutions” – Frank Nuovo (n.d.)

“The application of forethought to action” – Race & Torma (1998)

“Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end” – Sir George Cox

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose” – Charles Eames

“Design is to design a design to produce a design” – John Heskett John Heskett (2005), in Design: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press: New York, NY

“Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something.” – Paola Antonelli (2001), curator of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art, New York, in A Conversation About The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

“Design is an expression of the purpose, and it may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art; design depends largely on constraints and it is a method of action (there are always constraints and these usually include ethic)” – Charles Eames

“To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master” – Milton Glaser

C”reativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep” – Scott Adams

“Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy” – Erik Adegard

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – Steve Jobs (2003), as quoted in Rob Walker, “The Guts of a New Machine”, The New York Times Magazine, 30 November 2003

“Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself” – Donald Norman (2002), The Design of Everyday Things, Introduction to the 2002 Edition

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist” – Buckminster Fuller

 

Filed Under: Design, Theory Tagged With: definitions, design, OCADU, SLab

The Mindset, Skillset, And Toolset Toolkit

2013-05-28 by cense

A well-worn toolkit for navigating complexity and designing innovation
A well-worn toolkit for navigating complexity and designing innovation

Ever had a problem that was complex, even wicked in nature?

If so, this blog might be a place for you. Complex problems are ones that have multiple possible causes that often overlap, have time delays and involve many different forces, agents and circumstances. Some problems (like wicked ones) are barely solvable, but they can be addressed.

One thing they can’t be is ignored.

Human societies are more complex than ever and the organizations, networks and teams that come together to address social, environmental, health and enterprise problems require approaches that work with complexity, rather than deny it.

The CENSE blog is designed to provide those working in human systems with a set of tools to enhance the skills for change and support a mindset of systems thinking that can support social and service innovation.

If you are interested in the mindset of complexity and innovation, check out the CENSEMaking blog. There you will find longer thought pieces on issues that illustrate complexity, highlight design, and reflect on the challenges of both in the context of social innovation.

This is the toolkit space. Stay tuned for regular updates on strategies, tactics, tools and techniques from psychology and behavioural science, program evaluation, design thinking, systems science and strategic foresight.

We welcome your thoughts, comments, shares and suggestions anytime.

 

 

 

 

Photo Toolkit by Nick Farnhill used under Creative Commons Licence from Flickr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Complexity, Design, Psychology, Research + Evaluation

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