ABOUT

How can we ensure the future of the design industry, if we don’t understand the full range of critical factors that underpin its current success? To try to get as accurate and inclusive a picture as possible, the Design Values project is looking at how UK design industry can reach its full potential though mapping the expectations, values and skills of the designer.

A series of action research events were held in conjunction with the Innovate UK Creative KTN Design Special Interest Group to facilitate design thinkers and designers in uncovering why this is the case. Innovative design facilitation tools were developed and used to help both designers and non-designers alike quickly externalise their views and values.

The Design & Design Values report, produced with the support of the Innovate UK Creative KTN, explores the project findings, and highlights the tension between design and values, and raises many questions around what design needs to remain effective in the future.

On the surface the creative industries appear healthy, producing £71.7BN GVN in 2015, an abundance of innovative work and utilising a wide range of talent to do so. This very success is leading us to oversell certain aspects of design, such as the skills and quantifiable outputs of designers, yet to chronically undervalue and sacrifice important intangibles such as the ability of individual designers to communicate well, build the trust that creative work requires, and to be effective in the future.

The design industry is bending over backwards to meet the social and economic needs of our society. Designers must better communicate the value of this, to ensure the understanding, support and investment it needs in order to do so.

A new and more inclusive language is needed around what design is and “does” in order to ensure that educators, business and government alike understand its true value – and how to create the best environment for design to deliver.