The Role of Design

Neil Alderman
University of Newcastle upon
Tyne Business School
 Outline
• The nature of design and designers
• Design and consumer culture
• Design in industry and commerce
• Design factors in competitiveness
• Design for innovation
• Design case studies
• Conclusions
 What is design?
• A value-driven activity
• Types of design
– Engineering design
– Industrial design
– Process design
– Graphic design
– Architecture
– Interior design
– Ergonomics
 Design concerns
• Function / • Fashion
performance • Image
• Form • Awareness
• Styling • Communication
• Useability
• Materials
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• Things
• Places
• Messages
 The design toolbox
Colours Shapes
Materials Movement
Odours Space
Texture Imagery
Design involves the combination and
interaction of these elements in the
environment of contact with the
consumer, user or other stakeholder
 What constitutes good design?
• Sustainable
• Accessible
• Functional
• Well made
• Emotionally resonant
• Enduring
• Socially beneficial
• Beautiful
• Ergonomic
• Affordable

Metropolis Magazine’s design principles for the 21st Century

 What is a designer?
• Designer as maker
– Concern with material things
• Designer as knowledge worker
• Designer as meaning signifier
– Providing for human experience
• Designer as cultural intermediary
• Designer as entrepreneur
– Opportunistic, defining themselves
• Designer as active citizen / social
responsibility
– Contribution to quality of life
(Press and Cooper, 2003)
 Designing for experience
• Implies putting people first
• Design as ‘the deep art of the useful’
• Designers tend to pursue the possible
• Implies need to design the experience
not the object
• Design needs to understand the process
of consumption
 Design and consumer culture (1)
• Consumption / consumer culture: the creation
of experiences with well-designed artefacts
• Consumption moving beyond material well-
being to a concern with status and symbolic
meaning – ideas of fashion, style and taste
• “The emotional relationship between the user
and product is determined, to a large extent,
by the symbolic dimension of the product”
(McDonagh et al, 2002, 231)

• Design as a medium of communication of

symbols and signs
 Symbolic consumption

Material possessions as
Self Others
symbols of identity

Instrumental meaning Symbolic meaning

Function Expression of ‘self’

Use related Categorical

Self expressive Symbolising group
Makes an activity Symbolising qualities
possible membership and
and values social status

Source: derived from McDonagh et al (2002) after Dittmar (1992)

 Design and consumer culture (2)
• People expect different things from the products
they consume
• Possessions can be seen as part of an ‘extended self’
(Belk, 1988)
• Possessions represent an individual’s ‘material capital’
(Dant, 2006)
• Material objects influence the way we relate to and
interact with society – ‘social and cultural relations …
[are] mediated via material objects’ (Dant, 2006, 290)
• Designers need to understand users and create
meaningful forms of consumption for them
 Properties and experiences of
designed objects
• Function – extends or enhances human
physical action
• Signification – signifies social group
membership
• Sexuality – arouses its user or others or both
• Knowledge – delivers knowledge to its user
• Aesthetics – induces emotion by its beauty of
form
• Mediation – enables or enhances
communication between people
 Designing for diversity
• Design for factors influencing identity
– Age groups
– Social classes
– Ethnicity
– Lifestyle aspirations
• E.g. Sony Walkman -> My First Sony
• Creates a preferred reading of a product
• Alternative readings are possible
• Consumer culture is an active experience
– E.g. Scooters
 Design in industry and commerce
• The Cinderella subject
• VIPP model (Trueman and Jobber, 1998)
– Value – using design to increase product value
– Image – using design to create brand and product
identity
– Process – design as the core of the development
process
– Production – use of design to reduce costs and save
time
• Design spans different domains e.g. marketing
and R&D
 Government promotion
“ The effective use of design is fundamental to
the creation of innovative products, processes
and services. Good design can significantly
add value to products, lead to growth in sales
and enable both the exploitation of new
markets and the consolidations of existing
ones. … The challenge is to integrate design
into business processes”.
Competitiveness White Paper (1995)
Design factors in competitiveness
• Price v. non-price factors
• Difficult to distinguish the contribution of
design
• Difficult to identify success and failure
• Difficult to measure
• Design is integral to processes of creativity
and innovation
1. Innovation
2. Identify
 Design in innovation
• The Dyson DC05
• Designed in terms of function,
ergonomics, aesthetics,
context/environment and maintenance
– Exceed performance of competitors in
terms of filtration, dust pick-up and air
watts
– Smaller and lighter than predecessor
– Easy to manoeuvre, sit on stairs
– Size, shape proportions, balance and colour
in line with Dyson range
– Easy to empty and clean
– Reliable, robust, durable, tough, shock
resistant quality materials
Source: Dyson website
 Design Case Studies
• B&Q - Power Tools
• Challs - International Buster Range
• Herman Miller - Aeron Chair
• JCB – Teletruk

For details see the handout. Source: Design Council

Questions:
• What benefits have these organisations received from the
design projects described in the handout?
• How has design been used to enhance the business?
• What aspects of the development of the products described
here have been addressed through design?
 Design ‘fors’
• Design for manufacture
• Design for assembly
• Design for safety
• Design for maintenance
• Design for useability
• Design for disability
• Design for sustainability
• Design for recyclability
 Product attractiveness
• Attention grabbing and desirable
• Prior knowledge attractiveness
– Maintaining visual similarity for repeat purchasers
• Functional attractiveness
– Looking as though it will perform well
• Symbolic attractiveness
– Reflection of the customer’s self-image
• Inherent attractiveness of visual form
– Intrinsic beauty or aesthetic appeal
(Baxter, 1995)
 Product styling
• Rules of visual perception
– Predisposition to identify pattern
• Visual simplicity – e.g. typewriter design
– Partly driven by technological change as well as
aesthetic considerations
• Cute faces
• Style channelling
– Fin designs on American cars
– Customer demand – Ford’s vinyl roofs
• Visual themes run out of steam
 Designing identity
• Translating the values of the organization into
the corporate identity
• Backlash in 1980s from over-hyping of design
• Branding: the “blending of corporate reality –
products, services, communications and the
interactions among people, inside and outside
the organization – with designs intended to
convey and symbolize that reality” (Walton, 1997,
p.5 quoted in Press and Cooper, 2003).

• Danger of overlooking the quality of the core

product e.g. Planet Hollywood
 Conclusions
• Design can be seen as a core skill
• Design is a significant contributor to
value creation
• Design is argued to enhance
competitiveness
• Boundaries between design and other
activities are blurring over time
• Ultimately, design and the creation of
meaning is a negotiated process