simon’s blog

Some interesting education projects happening in the UK. We need to see more of these!!

The Real Work Experience is a project that works with design graduate to build their capacity and awareness of social design

Consurgo is a social enterprise that provide a platform and space for recent design graduates to meet with professionals and discuss their future…

I just stumbled across this report by the Centre for Knowledge Societies. It describes itself as an essential business tool with a focus on India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Brazil.

I can’t full access the report yet but I have asked to order it. Between now and then I would recommend that you review their site.

Slow is an emerging discussion coming out of the Slow Food movement over the last number of years. The principles of Slow appear to resonate with many people and we now have discussions on Slow Food, Slow Cities, Slow Design, Slow Fashion etc. I gave a presentation on Slow Design this weekend at a “Slow is Beautiful” event in Drumalis house in Larne, Northern Ireland. The event was a weekend of discussion and debate around the theme of Slow and how it relates to various aspects of peoples work and lives.

In my discussion I wanted to focus on our relationships (as designers and consumers) with products and how these relationships can allow for dialogues around slow. I also drew on the various perspectives of people such as Ezio Manzini, Carolyn Strauss and Alastair Fuad Luke to question the emerging principles of Slow Design. I wasn’t interested in providing answers as much as hopefully opening questions….

Among the other speakers were Alma Clavin who gave an insightful presentation on the connection between the ecological design of urban spaces and well-being. Alma is currently writing up her PhD at Oxford Brookes on this topic and had many interesting perspectives to offer. Another speaker was Jules Pretty that gave a magnificent talk (without notes or slides) on the context of place, memory and human connectivity to the earth.

Slow is an interesting theme. It draws much debate because of the various literal and semantic interpretations of slowness. Some people have drawn parallels to the principles of “transition” and have suggested that slow may lack the sense of urgency required to deal with the potential dilemmas of climate change, emerging communities and resource depletion. What I like about the principle of slow is that it can transcend the resource allocation and conservation perspectives of sustainable design and open new opportunities for creativity and humour.

This is a copy of my presentation..

In 2008 you will be able to listen to the thousands of testimonies which have been collected, and add your own testimony to the site. In the meantime, take a look at the project, the team, and some interviews that have already been made.

i like this

I recently presented a paper, on behalf of Ecodesign Centre Wales, at the 10th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona.

This conference, in partnership with the Design Society and the Institution of Engineering Designers (IED), brought together representatives from education, government and industry with an interest in sharing new perspectives on design education.

The theme of the conference was ‘New Perspectives in Design’ and the questions underlying the theme included:

• How can educators better reflect industrial perspectives?
• What is the modern student’s perspective on design education?
• Can we consider our curricula from a future perspective

You can read the paper that I was presenting here

Some issues that are increasingly important for sustainable designers are perspective and context. These issues have been raised by many practitioners and researchers and the most widely discussed topic relates to “western” designers that are born, raised, educated and employed in a particular country designing solutions for the “developing” world. The design intent of offering solutions becomes fragmented by context. For example, how can a designer explore relative value(s) in any depth?

This is an important issue for sustainable design education in Western design schools – how do you develop perspective and provide context for those students looking to design solutions for development issues. Organisations like Designers Without Borders and Milan Polytechnic develop collaborative design projects. I was struck by the simplicity of the Nokia design blog/project that explores the relative value of objects through user submitted images. Check it out – http://fivedollarcomparison.org