Intersections blog

Highs and lows?

Thank you for coming to Intersections and for all the great questions. Please let us know your general thoughts on the conference here, or you can post against particular sessions, which are listed in the Feedback category.

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Session: Day 2: Panel: New Connections

Panel: New Connections

Richard Seymour, Peter Saville & John Thackara. Chaired by Jeremy Myerson

Session: Day 2: Clive Grinyer

The silence of design

There is no doubt that society’s understanding of design is changing and so, therefore, is the role of designers. From dominant creative leaders to softly intuitive messengers of insight, interface and interaction, designers have become better able to capture and communicate the core components of their work and apply them to wider contexts. But the opening of the design process to all through concepts like co-design and real time user feedback raises new questions about the role of anyone called a designer. The archetypal design being is comfortable in his or her studio; isolated from business, politics and people; eagerly waiting permission to facilitate a better world; and designing when invited but impotent when not. This talk by Clive Grinyer questions our model of design and looks at how designers must step into the world and show their value.

Session: Day 2: Richard Seymour

Leviathan: the rise of the polymath

Reflecting on his discipline-busting career, Richard Seymour will argue that designers should adopt a wide-spectrum approach to the future. He will begin with a historical perspective, and then put the case for spotting the gaps between existing skill sets and making new connections.

Session: Day 2: Business thread: What can design bring to strategy?

Business thread: What can design bring to strategy?

Chair: Kevin McCullagh
Richard Eisermann, Jonathan Sands & Ed Silk

Strategy is a word managers and consultants use when they want to sound important and expensive. To a large extent, overuse has emptied it of much of its meaning.

As a growing number of designers like to call themselves strategic, what do they mean? What is the know-how involved in design strategy? What are the strengths that designers bring to strategy building and what new skills must they acquire?

Session: Day 2: Culture thread: But is it art?

Culture thread: But is it art?

Chair: Vicky Richardson
Allan Chochinov, Matthew Collings, Peter Saville & Richard Shed

There is more to DesignArt than million dollar price tags. The boundary between design and art is blurring in a number of ways, as traditional distinctions become more porous. Art was not supposed to be functional; and design was about solving other people’s problems, not self-expression. Now Julian Schnabel designs furniture; and a new generation of designers are more interested in self-expression or making critical statements, than designing for markets. Meanwhile as art retreats from aesthetics, consumers buy Alessi products to display as objets d’art. What do these developments tell us about the shifting cultural context around design and art? Is a significant new luxury market opening up for designers? What can designers learn from artists?

Session: Day 2: Panel: Management

Chair: Jeremy Myerson
Sir George Cox, Andrea Siodmok

[Originally entitled Management: stupid by design to be delivered by Stefan Stern, but Stern was unable to participate due to transport problems.]

Session: Day 2: Peter Higgins

Lines, words, pictures and sound

Peter Higgins will reflect on his journey from architecture school, through the BBC to designing media spaces. He will focus on the intersection between architecture, narrative and communication media and ask whether a new genre is in the making, as well as the new know-how involved. If there is a value in this potential crossover he would like to investigate who should support it, and how it may be achieved.

Session: Day 2: Interactions thread: Can good design be ‘co-created’?

Interactions thread: Can good design be ‘co-created’?

Chair: Nico Macdonald
Joe Heapy, Austin Williams + Lynne Maher

Inspired by Wikipedia and Linux, a new area of socially commited designers argue that products, and particulaly services, are best designed in collaboration with users and other stakeholders.

Is the open-source software model applicable to other areas of design? Is the primary aim to co-create high quality services, to shape behaviour, or encourage ‘social engagement’? If everyone can design, what is the the role of professional designers?

Session: Day 1: John Thackara + friends

As designers, are we guilty of killing the planet?

John Thackara + friends

John Thackara will argue that eighty percent of the environmental impact of products and buildings is determined at the design stage; and the ways we have designed the world force most people to waste stupendous quantities of matter and energy. But, for John, playing the blame game is pointless; the best way to redeem ourselves is to become part of the solution.

Session: Day 1: Panel: What is the new know-how in service design?

What is the new know-how in service design?

Chris Downs, Heather Martin & Gillian Crampton Smith

Services have been around for centuries, but service design has recently become a hot topic. So what are the core skills of service designers and how do they differ from those of interaction design? How important are traditional design notions such as craft, beauty and visualisation? How should service design quality be assessed?

Session: Day 1: James Woudhuysen

Mission creep – the limits of design

James Woudhuysen will place the future of design in a wider social and political context. Design now has new stakeholders, in addition to designers and clients. More than ever, it has fresh tasks to fulfil, and greater expectations to meet as politicians envision a creative economy. This in turn has led to design developing greater ambitions. So how far can design go and what are its limits?

Session: Day 1: Business thread: Are design schools the new B-schools?

Business thread: Are design schools the new B-schools?

Chair: Jeremy Myerson Prof. John Bates, Janet Abrams & Christoph Böninger

Business Week has pondered that tomorrow’s Business school might be a design school; and it is now possible to do an MBA in design strategy.

Is this anything more than hubris after a decade of designers being feted by business? Should designers really go head-to-head with the MBAs? If some should what is the key know-how that they must acquire? Shouldn’t designers stick to what they know best?

Session: Day 1: Interactions thread: Interaction blur

Interactions thread: Interaction blur

Chair: Nico Macdonald
Daljit Singh, Durell Bishop & Andy Altmann

Interaction design is a relatively young field, but already a very broad one. Its pioneers came from graphic and product design, architecure and programming backgrounds. Practioners design for different platforms including: the PC, mobile devices, the web and games; and a confusing vocabulary has emerged including: interface design, digital media design, service design and experience design.

What is the best way of understanding the discipline? Are interaction designers of different hues all essentially applying the same skills to different ends? If not what are the key distinctions?

Session: Day 1: Culture thread: Fashion connections

Culture thread: Fashion connections

Chair: Vicky Richardson
Sarah Maynard, Tom Savigar & Ignacio Germade

Fashion is no longer the sole preserve of either fashion designers or clothes. Fashion designers tailor car interiors, graphic designers craft trainers and Prada has collaborated in the design of a mobile phone. Why is the rest of design developing more of a fashion sensibility? Will we see more graphics, products, and interiors by Fashion designers? What have other designers got to learn from fashion designers?

Session: Day 1: Tim Brown

The challenge of design thinking

Tim Brown is a key promoter of the much debated concept of ‘design thinking’. He will argue that designers are having a greater impact in the private and public sector by tackling new and more complex problems, which require new cross-disciplinary methodologies. He will also suggest that this emergent area of design demands a different approach to assessing its success.

Session: Day 1: Frans Johansson

Innovation at the intersection of disciplines and cultures

Frans Johansson will outline lessons for design from his best selling book, The Medici Effect, including the central theme that breakthroughs happen when we make new connections at the intersections of ideas, concepts and cultures. For him, these places where different cultures, domains and disciplines collide allow established concepts to clash and combine; and dramatically increase the chance that groundbreaking ideas will be generated.