Transformation Design: New paper from UK Design Council

UK Design Council Red has made available a draft excerpt of a new paper on what it calls Transformation Design. Here is an excerpt:

A new design discipline is emerging from groups across the world. It applies traditional design skills in a new way to social and economic issues. It uses the design process as a means for a wide range of disciplines and stakeholders to collaborate. It develops solutions that are practical and desirable. It is an approach that places the individual at the heart of new solutions and builds the capacity to innovate within participating groups.

It could be key to solving many of society’s most complex problems. But the community of practice is small, and its emergence has already caused controversy among those who argue that it’s not design - because here’s the rub: it doesn’t look or feel much like design in the familiar sense of the word. The outputs aren’t always tangible and beautiful, and may be adapted and altered by people as they use them. It is far from the paradigm of the master-designer.

There is not a company or public body that doesn’t have an interest in solving the more complex, ambiguous issues.  At the same time, there is a growing desire among designers, both young and old, to tackle the most pressing problems – for which there is often no clear client, no clear brief and no immediately obvious design solution. The potential market for a new design approach is clear. But is the design industry ready?

This paper is a call to arms. It identifies a growing community of practice and a body of work that begins to set out the characteristics of this emergent discipline. It explores the market and the challenges facing designers wishing to work in this way.

We call it transformation design.

The full excerpt is available here with the complete paper being published in April. This is really worth reading. (Via Experientia blog)

Comments

[Leland M]

Hey Chris,

I would love to read this paper on Transformational Design. Unfortunately the link provided in the comments section is broken. Do you personally have the PDF the link points to? If so, could you please email it to me at:
leemaschmeyer (at) yahoo (dot) com?

Thanks so much.

[Chris Vanstone]

The Transformation Design Paper is now complete and can be dowloaded Here:

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/mt/red/archives/2006/02/red_paper_02_tr_1.html