Design in Practice/"Design i praksis" new book

"Design i praksis: designledelse og innovasjon" (in Norw.), exhibited in Norli bookstore, Oslo, October 2010. Photo: Birgit Helene Jevnaker.

31.10.2010
This autumn, we, Per Farstad and myself, have finished our new book with Universitetsforlaget.

APPROACHES FOR DESIGN AND INNOVATION. The book is dealing with creative challenges and opportunities for designing and innovating in projects with others in realworld situations. Ten transdisciplinary work approaches are introduced for projects of many kinds - in service or product development, concept development, innovation and design. We suggest the work approaches are potentially relevant across several design disciplines and other making and planning disciplines including management, and especially in the current situation where both design and management fields seem to be under scrutiny and transformation.

PERSPECTIVES ON CREATING SOMETHING. No doubt, there are currently many new or latent problems surfacing in and across projects and organizations. From many years of work practice, studies and teaching, we have learned how students as well as scholars and practitioners are often striving with both innovation and developmental work including the conception of something new and different. Or how to actually renew and strenghten something already proven to sustain its actual or potential values? These are among the questions we explore throughout the book, drawing on research and experiential insights from realworld examples.

DESIGN ISSUES AND COLLABORATIONS. The book builds on the premises that platforms and collaborations for good designing are something that is constructed and unfold in practice. It thus delineates and discusses a number of design and developmental issues and seeks to provide new or synthetized perspectives, work methods/tools, and knowledge that we suggest can help something new or existing to become attractive as well as viable in practice. This is however a continuous and often complex challenge but one that we as humans can work on - with and for others.
Any experience, comment and suggestion that can help us to improve this, is welcome. birgit.h.jevnaker@bi.no

See more on Universitetsforlaget

DESIGN is discussed in New York Times by Janet Rae-Dupree (4 Oct 2008) noting that design is more than packaging and so forth. The article also introduces design thinking, an emergent hot topic in some design milieus, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05unbox.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22Janet%20Rae

YET WHAT IS NEW IS NOT pointing to the wider meanings or discussions of design or design thinking per se. Rather, what appears new is the new crossover cultivating of design-oriented activities in "new" or "old" contexts. The article gives some insight into this by referring to the new educational approaches such as unfolding at Stanford's new socalled d.school.

D.SCHOOL. New York Times reports that the d.school is not set up as a new trad full education for designers. Instead, it is providing joint design courses for interested students across the school's existing fields but also a grad opportunity. The rise of new design-oriented courses for students coming from a variety of backgrounds may thus affect several breeds of students getting entirely new experiences, which is interesting from a design management and innovation perspective.

D+B COURSE MoD OSLO. Providing new learning initiatives as a joint collaborative offering for crossdisciplinary groups of students is something we are exploring also at Norwegian School of Management (BI) , e.g., through an ongoing collaboration on Management and marketing of Design (MoD) with the Design Faculty of Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) offered from January 2007 onwards. The particular collaboration with design teachers and students at KHiO is involving its three design educations and at BI it involves two bachelor courses and two of its departments (Innovation and Economic Organization, and Intercultural Communication). It has been offered for at least around 100 design and business students each January since 2007. See http://modoslo.blogspot.com/2008_01_06_archive.html