Countries that wish to increase their competitive advantage have turned to design as a mechanism to add value to the goods and services that their indigenous companies produce. Recognising that those companies that use design are more successful than those that do not, they invest significant time and effort in promoting and supporting companies to overcome the barriers to its effective use. Their goal is to increase the demand for design.

Increasing demand is only one side of the equation however; it is just as important that there should be a broad and deep supply of designers who can provide services to business to help them add value to their products and services. Without them, an economy can be starved of a key input that helps to differentiate the goods and services it produces.

A range of interrelated issues governs the supply of designers who provide services to business. The role of education is critical, as is the aspiration of the individual and ultimately the market for their services. But there are also a number of other more subtle influences such as the role of the industry support bodies, the nature of continuous professional development and the business empathy of designers themselves.

This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of the sector and makes recommendations about how to build on those strengths in order to stimulate one small but important part of the economy that can create added-value to the economy as a whole. Given the similar barriers faced by the sector in Northern Ireland and Ireland, it makes sense to adopt a cooperative approach to optimise the potential of the sector.

Aidan Gough
DIRECTOR, STRATEGY & POLICY
InterTradeIreland

Download study (PDF, 568k)

In an uncertain present who would dare to say they knew what the future held? Ireland played host last week to Bob Johansen from The Institute for the Future. The Institute is an independent, nonprofit research group specialising in ten year forecasts by integrating micro and macro trends. Big multinational companies and leading governments use the insights they get from Bob and his colleagues to shape strategy and investments. After all, with a 70% success rate over 40 years; these are the guys with the right pedigree and track record.

Bob holds that 2009 will be a “springboard year”, one of great opportunity. While clearly a lot of organisations are just doing everything that they can just to survive there are clear trends that smart companies and entrepreneurs are taking insight from that will pay off within the next 10 years. 2019 will be a much more connected time, your Bebo and Facebook friends will be there in real time helping you shop, keeping you planet friendly and talking you out of the fattening pizza that looks good but your friends know doesn’t fit the diet. It won’t be all busy bodies either, safety data, traffic info and statistics will all be available, local to you through the miracle of geo-positioning and in-vision displays. Start investing in those language lessons too, multi-linguists are going to be powerful people. All that connectivity isn’t going away and your multilingual Twitter feed is going to be part of the instant data river your life is going to swim in.  There is plenty of room for the small and nimble player to create value once Cyberspace disappears like a shadow and integrates with the everyday life.

Just a few weeks ago I was talking about “The age of speed” and how technology evolves so quickly in this century. I was talking about Microsoft Surface and being one step closer to teleportation. But technology evolves a lot faster than we can imagine.

A group of students from MIT Media Lab in Long Beach California, transformed the Internet into a ‘Sixth Human Sense’. They developed a wearable computing system which can turn any surface into an interactive display screen. The system relies on a webcam as an input device and a small projector with a mirror as the output device.

Here are only some of the functionalities of their system:

• Creating a frame by using your fingers tells the camera to take a photo.
• You can project the photos that you took on any surface and use your fingers to browse through them, rearrange them or resize them.
• You can browse through menus.
• You can search locations on a map.
• You can draw on a wall just by using your fingers.
• You can even call your friends by dialing their number on the palm of your hand.
• On the way to the airport you could check if your flight is delayed or not.
• You could know the time just by drawing a watch on your wrist.
• You could project information about any person you meet.
• And even watch a video of the news that interest you in the newspaper.

If you want to find out more and see how the system works, here are two videos that show its functionality:

Students transform the Internet into ‘The Sixth Human Sense’ – Video1

Students transform the Internet into ‘The Sixth Human Sense’ – Video2

For a while now everybody is talking about this century as being the age of speed, but most of us don’t even begin to imagine how fast technology is evolving.

Who would have thought even a year and a half ago that we would be able to use a table in order to plan a project; or split a bill in the restaurant; or even share photos between devices; or plan a trip. Microsoft Surface is able to do this and much more.

Microsoft Surface

At the same time who would have imagined that we are this close to discovering teleportation?

According to LiveScience, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland have come pretty close to achieving Star Trek’s main way of transportation: teleportation. So far they achieved to transport the information from one atom to another across a distance of a meter.

The JQI team explains that teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement that only occurs on an atomic or subatomic scale.

The experiment that they conducted uses two identical ions (A and B). Ion A is afterwards irradiated; a process that can be explained as “writing in its memory the information that will be teleported”. Immediately after, both ions are “excited by a picosecond laser pulse” in order for each of them to emit a photon.

The photons are then captured by a lens and they will interact at a beamsplitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions are entangled. At that point, ion A is measured, revealing exactly what operation has to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A’s information (see illustration).

It is important to note that the information disappears from ion A when this one is being measured and appears on ion B. This is why the achievement is distinguished from any other kind of communication and is classified as teleportation.

You can find out more about this achievement in the original article from LiveScience: “Teleportation Milestone Achieved”

This past week in Waterford we took a group of companies and individuals from the WIT Research and Innovation Centre through a user-centered design workshop. During our workshops, we intend to teach organisations simple tools to better understand their customers and their needs. One of my favourite exercises is the day in the life photo journal. Participants are given a pack of photos taken by a person through the course of one day. With only the photographs to work from, small groups distill detailed information about that person. It is amazing how much insight can be gained in ten minutes from a few photos. Many people learn more about a stranger than they do about those folks they each lunch with on a daily basis.

How much more simple can you get than handing out a few disposable cameras to your users? I have included a copy of our brief to complete the exercise, as well as the worksheet from the workshop.

Photo Journal Brief (Word, 42K)
Whose Life Worksheet (PDF, 119K)

Th UK Design Council recently published a rich qualitative study of design in action at eleven leading global organisations.

The study looked at the way design is used in these firms, how designers work with staff from other disciplines and how the design process is managed to deliver consistently successful results. How is design managed across complex, global, product and brand portfolios … we asked leading design teams how they select and organise their designers, and when they bring designers into the product or service development process. We also wanted to find out what skills today’s designers need in order to succeed.