New Articles on Transformation Design

In the last week, two good articles discussing, though not mentioning "Transformation Design," have appeared. Have a read...

The first, sent in by Berkeley Stewart, is from the International Herald Tribune:

"...The recession will also create opportunities for designers to help us to adjust to economic austerity. Consumers will still want to score sustainability points, but to save money while doing so. The new cadre of "service designers," who apply design thinking to help organizations structure themselves more efficiently and behave differently, will be called upon to develop new business models to address this. One example is the recent flood of "rentalist" services, whereby you acquire the right to use, say, a car or bicycle, for period of time rather than buying it outright.

"The economic crisis has also squashed any lingering doubts about the urgency of finding new ways to address acute social problems more efficiently - from caring for the expanding elderly population, to improving the management of over-stretched health care services. This newfound realism is already benefiting the emerging breed of "social designers."

"Another question is whether designers are ready to respond to these challenges, as "service" and "social" design involve very different skills to conventional design practice. The 20th-century notion of the lone "designer-hero" (there were depressingly few "heroines") shaping his projects from start to finish was always illusory, but the new approaches to design require far greater collaboration, not just with fellow designers but with experts from other disciplines like economists, social scientists, anthropologists and programmers too. Designers also have to make the leap from a material culture where their work generally had a definitive outcome, such as an object or image, to one in which they are applying design thinking to analyze problems and develop solutions that are neither visible nor tangible."

The second, sent in by David Bausola, is from Businessweek:

“Innovation” died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve. It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketeers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything “new.” It was done it by an obsession with measurement, metrics and math and a demand for predictability in an unpredictable world. 

"Global networks of trusted relationships working within ecosystems/platforms (think iTunes/iPod/iPhone, Nike Plus, Facebook, Threadless, Zipcar) will make up our socio-economic and political worlds. It is already underway. The concept of “Transformation” takes these changes much further. It implies radical transformation of our systems—education, health-care, economic growth, transportation, defense, political representation. It puts the focus on people, designing networks and systems off their wants and needs. It relies on humanizing technology, not imposing technology on humans. It approaches uncertainties with a methodology that creates options for new situations and sorts through them for the best quickly.

"Most importantly, “Transformation” accepts the notion that we are in a post-consumer society, defined by two groups of economic players: manufacturers and consumers. “Transformation” deals with a new Creativity Society, in which we are all both producers and consumers of value."