How Do We Create Value for the Design Community?

This is the ques­tion I am try­ing to answer this week­end. The Design Man­age­ment pro­gram at SCAD is con­sid­er­ing cre­at­ing some type of pub­li­ca­tion. One of my class assign­ments is to fig­ure out the best way for this to be done.

I am very inter­est­ed in how we can cre­ate val­ue in the design com­mu­ni­ty with knowl­edge shar­ing — par­tic­u­lar­ly by means of inter­ac­tion through online net­works.

This pre­sen­ta­tion shows the val­ue in shar­ing knowl­edge across vir­tu­al plat­forms. Work per­for­mance dif­fers based on one’s net­work and access to resources, with high­er con­nec­tiv­i­ty result­ing in improved effi­cien­cy over time. Com­pa­nies that rec­og­nize and reward net­work­ing activ­i­ties (both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly) have a greater per­cent­age of rev­enue from prod­ucts gen­er­at­ed in the last year, greater speed as far as time to mar­ket and greater end cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. This equates to val­ue.

“Com­mu­ni­ties of Prac­tice are groups of peo­ple who share a con­cern or a pas­sion for some­thing they do and learn how to do it bet­ter as they inter­act reg­u­lar­ly.”     — Eti­enne Wenger

Check out Com­mu­ni­ties of Prac­tice: Learn­ing as a Social Sys­tem by Eti­enne Wenger.

It also appears that the key to get­ting the most val­ue out of some of these online plat­forms might be inter­act­ing reg­u­lar­ly — mak­ing it part of a dai­ly rou­tine. Can we cre­ate this type of Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice for SCAD Design Man­age­ment?

“The rate at which indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions learn may become the only sus­tain­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, espe­cial­ly in knowl­edge-inten­sive indus­tries.”     — Ray Sta­ta, Chair­man of Ana­log Devices

If the rate at which we learn is impor­tant in com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, an online plat­form could be seen as more valu­able than a print­ed pub­li­ca­tion. This is def­i­nite­ly some­thing to con­sid­er.

Anoth­er book for ref­er­ence is Peter Gloor’s Swarm Cre­ativ­i­ty which deals with COINs.

A Col­lab­o­ra­tive Inno­va­tion Net­work (COIN) is a cyberteam of self-moti­vat­ed peo­ple with a col­lec­tive vision, enabled by tech­nol­o­gy to col­lab­o­rate in achiev­ing an inno­va­tion by shar­ing ideas, infor­ma­tion, and work. Peo­ple work togeth­er in a struc­ture that enables a flu­id cre­ation and exchange of ideas. It may look chaot­ic from the out­side, but the struc­ture of a COIN is like a bee­hive or ant colony, immense­ly pro­duc­tive because each team mem­ber knows intu­itive­ly what she or he needs to do. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to state that COINs are the most pro­duc­tive engines of inno­va­tion ever.

Anoth­er mem­ber of my team shared a pre­sen­ta­tion that breaks down the val­ue of design into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories.

Eco­nom­ic:
prof­itabil­i­ty, inno­va­tion, com­pet­i­tive­ness

Product/Brand
dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed visu­al image
qual­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, integri­ty

Strate­gic
increas­ing mar­ket share
cre­at­ing new mar­kets; cre­at­ing val­ue

Per­son­al
makes life eas­i­er and more effi­cient
easy to under­stand
easy to access
user con­trol – design­er as enabler; flex­i­bil­i­ty in meet­ing a spec­trum of needs
sense of plea­sure and appro­pri­ate­ness
capac­i­ty to derive or inter­pret as own
sense of mean­ing

Social
con­text of pro­duc­tion: tech­nol­o­gy, insti­tu­tions, design­ers, eco­nom­ic val­ue
con­text of use: sys­tems, mean­ing, users, util­i­ty

This not only tells us about the val­ue of design, but also how we can cre­ate val­ue for the design com­mu­ni­ty.

There are still a lot of ques­tions left to be answered about cre­at­ing val­ue in the design com­mu­ni­ty. How can our pub­li­ca­tion (or website/blog) stand out from oth­ers? Who can con­tribute arti­cles or posts? Who con­trols this, or should there be no con­trol in favor of an open net­work for shar­ing? Do we care about eco­nom­ic val­ue, such as prof­itabil­i­ty? Will SCAD as an insti­tu­tion be involved, or the Design Man­age­ment pro­gram, or should this pub­li­ca­tion be a sep­a­rate enti­ty entire­ly con­trolled on its own?

What do design­ers val­ue more: infor­ma­tion that is care­ful­ly select­ed and per­ceived as high qual­i­ty, or a high quan­ti­ty of infor­ma­tion received imme­di­ate­ly and the abil­i­ty to choose what is impor­tant or rel­e­vant to them?

Here are some ques­tions I pose to my fel­low design­ers:

• How do you cur­rent­ly access knowl­edge about design?
• Do you share knowl­edge about design? If so, how?
• Do you put greater val­ue on the abil­i­ty to access up-to-date infor­ma­tion often, or do you pre­fer to receive care­ful­ly select­ed infor­ma­tion more peri­od­i­cal­ly?
• Do you per­ceive print­ed sources of knowl­edge as being more or less valu­able than dig­i­tal for­mats?
• What design or design man­age­ment top­ics are you inter­est­ed in?
• What do you think is miss­ing in the design com­mu­ni­ty? How can we cre­ate more val­ue for you?