The design council has released a study of how 11 leading organisations use and manage design. Design has become an integral part of these organisations, from designing graphics, communications, services, user experiences and new consumer concepts.
The study includes Virgin, BT and LEGO among others - these are brands which understand design and the benefits design can bring to their organisations.
In a new guide for the Design Council, Bill Hollins has highlighted this point as one of the key challenges service design faces as an emerging discipline. “Understanding the importance of design” has been a particular topic for debate here at thinkpublic for some time. Identifying the specific skills a designer brings to an organisation, understanding the specific benefits it brings and being able to express this is essential if design is going to continue to influence other industries.
Dec 13th, Marc Fonteijn said:
It looks like this is a very relevant discussion that is attracting a lot of attention lately. We had the much or less the same talk at the office today with someone from an bachelor education institute.
Dec 18th, Paul Thurston said:
This morning Alice and myself were doing observation on hospital wards, some front line staff we spoke to had been involved in previous improvement projects before and understood the process we were talking about. There was a definite understanding of design techniques such as observation, prototyping and testing.
If design thinking can become the standard way of doing service improvement in large public organisations like the NHS then it can defiantly work elsewhere.