FastCompany's 100 most creative people in business

This month, FastCompany magazine publishes the 100 most creative people in business. Of their list they say:

There are no rules about creativity. Which made constructing our list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business a tricky task. We looked for dazzling new thinkers, rising stars, and boldface names who couldn't be ignored. We avoided people we've profiled in the recent past. We emphasized those whose creativity addresses a larger issue -- from the future of our energy infrastructure to the evolution of philanthropy to next-generation media and entertainment. So read on. Enjoy. Quibble. Complain.

Image from FastCompany's website

Scanning the top ten it's great to see two designers feature on the list demonstrating that design clearly contributes to the business's (triple) bottom line.

Apple's Jonathan Ive tops the list at #1 for revolutionising the way we all listen to, interact with, exchange and buy music. Ive was first interviewed by FastCompany for breathing new life into the computer hardware and software industry. He brought not just functionality but sheer delight for many who would otherwise be engaging with a "beige box" everyday.

Design in Apple has propelled the company to generate no less than $US32 billion in sales last year and FastCompany touts Apple as the, "most successful and faithful marriage of business and design." No wonder so many of us look to (and desire) not just Apple products but the behind-the-scenes operations and philosophies of the company.

Apple illustrates that design is yes, user/customer-led, but if an organisation that wants to achieve Apple's success it needs design to be CEO-led. Apple says, "You need a CEO who gets it [...] Something like the iPod is a melding of design and user experience and marketing and pop culture, and you don't achieve that without coordination throughout the company."

The other designer in the top ten is Sandy Bodecker, vice president of global design at Nike. The top twenty adds another three designers to the list: fashion designer, Stella McCartney; architect Thom Mayne; and sustainable design program manager at Autodesk, Dawn Danby.

Check out more details on these designers, and the other 95 creative people who make it on the list at FastCompany's website, which also happens to have a really neat interface and content (eg. Wikipeadia, news and Twitter profiles of each of the 100 individuals).

Call for ideas for mobile phone security

Image from Design Council

This Friday 15th May, the Design Council are hosting a briefing event for creative and innovative ideas to address mobile phone security. There is £100,000 up for grabs to develop such ideas, so register your interest and RVSP here.

Event details

Date: Friday 5th May, 2009

Time: 9am - 3pm

Location: Design Council, Covent Garden

Sustainability, Innovation and Design: A design PhD conference at Lancaster University, 15-16 June 2009

Next month, I will be presenting a paper at the Design PhD Conference, Sustainability, Innovation and Design.

Image from conference website

Here's a bit about the conference from the website:

The Design PhD Conference is a collaborative event between ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University and the School of Design’s Centre for Design Research at Northumbria University. The conference offers an opportunity for PhD students, Masters students, recent graduates and businesses to meet, exchange knowledge and ideas, and learn about the latest developments in design thinking, methods and research projects.

Alastiar Fuade-Luke, who authored the Eco-design Handbook, will be the keynote. Then there will be 6 presentations on current design PhD research which seems to cover a whole range of topics such as a critique of design thinking, design's contributions to improving the livelihood of communities in rural India and a comparative study of national design policies.

I'll be talking about Dott 07 and my research findings. Particularly in line with the roles designers have played, are playing and could be playing in public life.

Hope to see you in Lancaster this summer!

LTA Newsletters

I haven't posted newsletters on the blog before. I wasn't sure if a jpeg would be enough for adequate viewing, but just discovered a big enough jpeg does just fine. If you click on the newsletter image below you should be able to read the April 09 newsletter with no problem (but please note the blue text does not link to websites. That only happens in pdf versions).

Each month, the newsletter provides an update on my research progress, thinking and activity and list links I find that may be of interest.

Please let me know if you'd like to receive monthly updates via email. Contact me at fiorucci@hotmail.com

Touchpoint (service design journal) and other service design knowledge disseminations

The Service Design Network has just released Touchpoint, a journal about service design. Some of the content reviews the Service Design Conference held in Amsterdam last year.


If you are looking for other (more academic) reading on service design....

• The Service Design Network provides a neat list here.

• Service designer and long-time service design blogger, Jeff Howard, also compiled a great collection of service design-related articles, mostly from business and marketing journals here.

• In 2006-7, Lucy Kimbell and Victor Seidel, set up an academic research project called, Designing for Services, which looked at observing and understanding service design in science and technology SMEs. Live|work, IDEO and Radarstation were the design consultancies who participated in the project. I blogged the event on my travel blog here.
  
  D4S produced a blog, short film and publication which brings together multi-disciplinary perspectives on service design (highly recommended alongside Jeff's website to get a good grasped of the state of service design).
  

• The Design Council also have a recommended reading list on service design here. Their Public Service by Design team are also doing timely and excellent work in the area of how designers can add value to public sector services. Some related links on my blog here.
  

Some service design researcher blogs I know of include:

• Qin Han's blog, Design Generalist
• Lauren Currie's blog, Redjotter

Some service designer blogs I know of include:

• Nick Marsh, Choosenick!
• Jeff Howard, Design for Service
• Experentia, Putting People First ('service design' category)

Finally don't forget previous postings on this blog:

• Design-led consultancies involved in service design
• Universities exploring service design (which includes some links to conferences on service design).

Communicating to the Public: Vitae Poster Competition

Last week I visited a sun-drenched Leeds University for a poster competition to communicate PhD research to the public. The event was organised by Vitae an organisation funded by the Research Councils UK (a partnership between 7 UK Research Councils) to help bring commercial skills to postgraduate researchers to increase their employability to industry. If you are a PhDer they have a great site of resources.


Vitae called for submissions of abstracts, which were proposals for our posters. From this, 100 PhD students were selected to design a poster in jargon-free language that a non-subject specialist could read in 5 minutes. This was the key judging criteria.

There were 5 Northumbria PhD students selected to submit posters. I met them and two staff from the Graduate School to spend the day viewing posters, having conversations about research and attending two very interesting presentations.

The first presentation was on opening us up to taking our research out in the public media space. Some ideas were to:

• Make a documentary
• Design a children's storybook
• Approach newspapers and magazines (as journalists are always looking for news)
• Use the internet
• Approach the University press office

The second presentation was about commercialising scientific research. The research was on the ability of our ear to detect the location of sound. The research found that while the ear was good at detecting the location of sound, it could not detect the location of sirens due to their frequency. In times of crisis, we need to be directed by our senses. Fires are the worst because in low visibility, we cannot see green exit lights nor can the ear detect the location of the siren.

This research went on to develop a low frequency siren that could direct people in low visibility. The siren has since been adopted by ships, universities and in vehicular tunnels. The key message here was to encourage us to seek a connection in our research to real-life situations.

But back to the posters... I found the poster exercise and event really valuable. The process of designing the poster meant I had to try and put the bulk of my PhD on one page. Here's a photo of my poster.


The poster submissions were very impressive and there was great variety. From seeing others and the winning posters, I definitely got a good feel for what I could do next time to better engage the general public in my research.

At the event I also found it really valuable to have a conversation about my poster. I had a few requests to talk through the poster and this helped me see that some of my language use could be improved.

If you are a PhD researcher, I would really encourage designing posters to communicate research. Throughout my PhD I have been doing 'one-pagers' to quickly disseminate and share ideas. It's a fun process, it makes you think and it allows people to have a conversation with you about your research which helps refine language and clarify thinking.

A PhD friend of mine once said she felt "really uninspired" sitting infront of a blank Word document. I think we would be less inclined to feel uninspired infront of Indesign or a blank sheet of paper with a pen- ready to sketch, map, draw or even write.

I found a paper recently which assembled An Evolving Map of Design Research and Design Practice of which the author visually mapped design research and then wrote an accompanying narrative. I think this is a great technique to employ and the Dubberly Design Office (where I found the paper) presents some excellent and engaging examples of concept maps to get one started.

At the end of the Vitae event, most of us didn't walk away with prizes (there could only be 3 winners- 1st, 2nd and 3rd!). But we did walk away with exposure to loads of other PhD research and more ideas to better communication our research to the public.

Cornwall, the next region to host Dott

I thought you'd appreciate some lovely photos from Cornwall, the next region where Dott will take place. I was down in Falmouth other week to give a presentation on my research and stayed at the very nice Greenbank Hotel.

I didn't know what I to expect but Cornwall was stunning. And a stark contrast to the city. I love the seaside towns, tiny streets and the surf shops dotted along the High Street which reminded me of Australia.

View from a room

The houses on North Parade

High Street, Falmouth

Cornwall fish and chips