Design and Society

Chairing: InterSections: design know-how for a new era

I will be chairing the 'Interactions' thread at the InterSections conference in NewcastleGateshead (in the north-east of England) next week. The conference, subtitled 'design know-how for a new era', is a collaboration between Dott 07 (announcement on its site), Northumbria University School of Design (event listing on its site), and the Design Council (event listing on its site), and ties into the Designs of the time: Dott 07 Festival, and will take place at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, NewcastleGateshead.

The conference is lead programmed by my colleague Kevin McCullagh and promises to be the most significant design conference in the UK since SuperHumanism in 2001. See his Welcome post on the InterSections conference Weblog, which I was involved in setting up. (Considered comments in response to blog posts are welcomed. And if you have your own blog you can also 'trackback' to posts on which you want to comment.) I publicised the event quite extensively a few months back, and I am pleased to note that a number of my colleagues from the UK, Europe and the US are also attending (some have listed themselves on the Upcoming.org event entry), and I hope we can create the kind of smart, thoughtful discussion I have found over the last ten years at many conferences in the US and Europe. For better or worse the conference sold out about a month ago, though I am aware of one return that is for sale...

My seminar sessions are 'Designing interactions, media or experiences?' with Daljit Singh of Digit London; Durrell Bishop of Lucky Bite; and Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates, and we will be asking 'What do designers from different backgrounds and who are designing interactions to different ends, consider to be their core skills?'; and 'Can good design be 'co-created'?' with Future Cities Project director Austin Williams; Dr Lynne Maher, Head of Innovation Practice at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement; and Joe Heapy of Engine, and we will be asking 'What has design got to learn from the open-source software movement and 'wiki-nomics'? and 'While everyone is a designer, isn't it the job of professional designers to champion good design?'. See the full programme and the list of speakers.

Read on at Spy: Panels: InterSections conference

'The science' doesn't mandate a particular policy

FT columnist John Kay's recent critique of the concept of scientific consensus (Science is the pursuit of the truth, not consensus, John Kay, Financial Times, October 9 2007) [shared bookmark] (in response to a Michael Schrage's article Science must be more political, Financial Times, September 25 2007) has prompted a number letters to the paper. Prof E. Brian Davies, of King's College London, is correct that one may need to act on science that is less than certain (Letters One cannot wait for total certainty, October 16) -- because science is never certain. People who look for certainty in science are as naive as those who believe that scientific insight maps directly to a particular policy action. Prof Davies notes that "the Royal Society advises the public and the government about what it considers is likely to happen if some course of action is, or is not, taken", and Royal Society Vice-President David Read argues that a scientist's role should be "analysing the best evidence available and presenting that to inform the policy debate" (Letters Scientists will inform - and will not retreat to their labs, October 15). But more naive thinking slips into disingenuous action when we are ordered to adopt a policy, such as reducing individual energy consumption, because it is mandated by 'the science'. The appropriate approach is, as Kay suggests, for scientists to focus on evidence, and to debate in good faith; for policy makers to pursue the "calm, civil, even-handed analysis" noted in Clive Crook's review of Bjorn Lomborg's new book (An inconvenient Danish pasting, Financial Times, October 15); and for everyone to steer clear of the misanthropy that informs so many climate change activists.

Engineers' products are often decried

In a recent article in the Guardian Jonathan Glancey argues the decline of Britain's engineering culture and argues that its industrial future is threatened by a lack of skilled workers and a glut of postmodern apathy. (Extinction of the engineers, Jonathan Glancey, Guardian, October 15, 2007)

It is no surprise that, as Glancey observes,"we have come to believe that we are a nation of consumers rather than producers". Every political grouping, from the Tories via New Labour to the environmentalists, is obsessed with people's consumption, and uninterested our primary activity as producers and problem solvers.

And this lack of interest in engineering in the UK isn't simply a product of an ill-informed or out-of-date public image of the engineer (Tim Feest, Letters, October 16). For all of New Labour's celebration of innovation and creativity, little praise is reserved for the modern marvels created by engineering and its associated professions: from aeroplanes to power stations, automobiles to mobile phones, and the amazing infrastructures that support them. Instead, the debate around these wonderful engineering products focuses from the outset on their role in 'destroying the planet', despoiling our environment and degrading our health.

Who would want to be an engineer when instead of being celebrated for helping solve society's problems one is more likely to be ignored, and have one's own creations treated as problems?

See my related article London: still stuck in a jam, Nico Macdonald, spiked, 19 March 2007 which addresses this theme in its conclusion

Protesting about online protest

Apparently, all it takes to start a notable campaign today is to setup a Facebook group (about 5 minutes) and have 130 people click 'Confirm' to join it (Consumers start online campaign to boycott Kettle Chips, Guardian, October 9). [Number of members taken from story. There are now many more – no doubt as a result of the story appearing in the print media.]

At the risk of being a grumpy old radical, I can still remember when supporting a campaign involved spending countless school lunchtimes arguing with my fellow students why they should sign an anti-Apartheid petition, giving up teenage Saturday mornings to debate nuclear disarmament in the local high street, and ditching homework to join a 100,000-strong marching for jobs in London. If I had been old enough I would probably have joined the Grunwick picket line.

While the Grunwick campaign ultimately failed, I can guarantee online campaigns (or consumer boycotts) won't build substantial support for the Kettle Foods workers' attempt to unionise, as trade unions have undermined their credibility as defenders of job and fighters for better conditions. Let's not pretend, as so many old radicals try to, that there is a technical fix online to an 'offline' ideological problem. Otherwise, we risk undermining the potential of our wonderful technological creations when these campaigns fail for good old-fashioned political reasons.

A year-round festival of design

In recent Editor's Comment (The festival was a success, but let's keep up the debate, 26 September 2007 [paid sub may be required]) Lynda Relph-Knight claimed that the iDesign event during the London Design Festival was "London's first big conference on digital design".

Its backers at the London Development Agency patently listened when they trawled opinion last year about the future direction of the festival... [The LDA has extened funding to] London's first big conference on digital design... The iDesign event, organised by Dynamo London and New Media Knowledge, was one of the highlights of this year's festival.

In 1996, as most people who were engaged with design and the Web at the time will remember (as they were there), Kevin McCullagh and myself programmed 'Designing the Internet' with the Central Saint Martins MA Communication Design, putting the design firmly with the digital. Later that year the Typographic Circle, Society of Typographic Designers and Chartered Society of Designers hosted Windows on the Digital Future. In 2000 Jakob Nielsen, Kevin McCullagh and myself programmed Design For Usability, attended by over 400 people, putting Web usability on the agenda and helping lay the foundations for a now flourishing industry.

None of these events relied on the London Development Agency or other state bodies for funding. Like the London Architecture Biennale – on which the Festival is increasingly encroaching – they paid their way with ticket sales and commercial sponsorship.

Now that digital design has been embraced across designland, and digital design events are everywhere – from This happened show and tells to the Future of Web Design conferences – it might be appropriate for the London Development Agency to support coordination of information around these and other design events, so we can have a year-round festival of design, with the London Design Festival as the icing on the cake. I have proposed such an approach to the London Development Agency's Creative London division. It is time to raise it again.

Published as a letter entitled iDesign wasn’t the first digital design conference in Design Week, 17 October 2007 [paid sub required from one week after publication]