Filed under: interesting, opendata | Tags: context, crime, data, design, justice, madwd
I’ve recently been adding thoughts, material and presenting in London as part of the ‘Making a difference with Data’ campaign. The initiative is campaigning for good, open data that can be used to shape our society. A bit more about the campaign;
“The Making a difference with data project has launched a new website, which will play a key role in realising its aim to spread understanding about open data and transparency in local public services.
madwdata.org.uk says it will show how citizens can use information obtained from public authorities to campaign and influence policies and decisions that affect local communities.
It is encouraging people to get involved by sending information, case studies, links to stories, participating in online and offline forums, responding to blogs and following the project on social media.
In line with the government’s policy for public authorities to become more open and transparent, the project aims to raise awareness about how individuals and organisations can obtain information from organisations including the police, NHS and local councils.” – http://www.rssenews.org.uk/articles/20110222
Tidy Street
I was inspired to see a new project called ‘tidystreet’ kick off (via Good). A Uk Neighbourhood in Brighton, is recording their electricity use and recording it in the form of a giant inforgaph on the street.
“Each day the participants’ electricity usage over the previous 24 hours will be marked; and each week participants can choose to add another comparison line that will show how their electricity consumption compares to another region in the UK or even a different country. We hope that the residents, in collaboration with a local graffiti artist, will produce an engaging artwork that will stimulate the street and passersby to reflect on their electricity use.”
So far, energy use has been cut by 15% on the street prompting me to think about how we could visualise and project crime information into local communities. What effect would it have?
Looking back at the Oakland Crime Map which provides (just about) real time data, it is a shining example of a good, comprehensive data set that can be used to provide real time interaction with the city. Just as the joy of stats programme had shown the creators driving down the streets and the relationship of topography from higher up areas – less crime, to visible aesthetic change in the environment on the lower level streets and higher crime levels, how could we begin to embed data into our everyday lives. Would knowing an area had high levels of knife crime stop you from walking down a street or make a community want to gather together and fight the statistic? Could it bring together local authorities/gov/police to make environmental changes to the surrounding area, perhaps a bigger recognition of environment, re-designing and planning areas as opposed to spending money in treating problems as they happen?
Food for thought, but again I am going back to how we can use data to look at effecting change in the everyday. It begs questions about how data can be accessed and interpreted into useful information for communities and the public to use. Over the next month I’ll be posing more of these questions, and looking at existing data sets, their positives and negatives within the field of crime and justice. To cap off you can listen to some of my thoughts after the London conference recorded by Nicky Getgood on how design and context can help make data useful in people’s lives.
Filed under: event, interesting, social innovation, Uncategorized | Tags: camp, design, develop, innovation, scotland, social
Social Innovation Camp
Guess what?
Social Innovation Camp is coming to Scotland in June, and it’s your chance to submit ideas and take part in a fantastic weekend of people building, designing, thinking up new ideas that use the web to do something good, this year around the theme of Social Isolation. Here’s what they say;
“From 17th-19th June 2011 at Informatics Ventures in Edinburgh, we’re bringing together some of the best of the UK’s software developers and designers with those at the sharp end of social problems.
They’ll have just 48 hours to build some web-based solutions to a set of social problems – from back-of-the-envelope idea to working prototype, complete with software. But first off, we start with a call for ideas: we want to find the most exciting ideas for how the web could change stuff that really matters.”
You can find out more on the official website, and how to submit an idea. It was two years ago when I was about to graduate I put one of those back of the napkin ideas in for entry.
MyPolice at Social Innovation Camp
It ended up winning the weekend and receiving a level 1 award from FirstPort which gave it legs and funding to introduce the concept to the policing world. The idea was MyPolice, an online feedback tool for the public to talk to the police. Simple but now we’ve finished our first pilot and we’re moving onto phase 2 of the build.
So if you’re thinking, ‘nah, I’ll take part next time’, don’t! Submit an idea, even if it is a one liner, and get yourself along to the Informatics Forum to take part. It is a fantastic event and a great, no strings attached space to be creative and build some potentially life changing software/service/product.
Filed under: event, inspiration, interesting, Public Sector Design, service design, social innovation, Transformation Design, work | Tags: alliance, asset, change, design, glasgow, gov, government, health, nhs, public, scotland, scottish, sectir, transformation
Coproduction challenge
This morning Snook were kindly invited to take part in Assets Alliance Scotland, an event being jointly held by the Scottish Government, Scottish Community Development Centre and the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland.
“We in Scotland should be proud of our tradition of community involvement and community action and public service delivery’s role in supporting this activity to flourish. However, in the last few years we have developed a model of public service delivery based on a ‘treatment’ or ‘doing to’ approach, which often fails to recognise communities’ and service users’ own strengths and assets and which instead engenders a culture of dependency that, in turn, stimulates demand.”
Before attending the event, I had made a clear connection in my head about how closely this aligned with the work of Liz Sanders.
“Designers will no longer only design for people, they will learn
to design with people. Co-designing will require new forms of
communication to support the collective creativity that arises between
designers and everyday people.”
Working with frontline staff and users as the experts in their own eco-systems/services is a big part of the work I am doing right now. I bring their thoughts and imaginings to life. We take the most optimistic stance we can; an issue can always be solved, there are assets all around us that help to solve a problem or build a brighter future.
The morning was kicked off with Harry Burns, who a participant described his delivery as ‘not usual for a Scottish gov type’. Perhaps, he was right. It was fantastic and inspiring to hear someone talk about a ‘social movement’ rather than a new set of targets or paper/policy being delivered from the government. What really caught my attention was Dr Burn’s citing of the great union activist, Jimmy Reid. Reid’s inaugural speech as rector of Glasgow University in 1972, has really influenced Snook, ( hat tip to Mike Press who highlighted this speech during his keynote at Create Debate.
“A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement.
This is how it starts, and, before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat pack. The price is too high”
“It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.”
Interestingly Dr Burns steered clear of the Big Society agenda and favored the words of Jimmy Reid. This line always brings it home for me;
“A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings”
Sometimes I feel a deep sigh coming on as I soldier through different public sector systems, hoops, and documents. I think sometimes we forget, at the end of the day, we’re all people.
On the people side, after the keynote, participants were invited to browse projects which linked with an asset based approach. I showcased the Getgo Glasgow project and how we mobilised a community to see past their issues and ‘obvious’ solutions to problems in their community. I talked to participants about the power of visualisation and an optimistic mindset. I also showcased other pieces of work such as the Future Library Project and the Innovation Cards.
To add more detail to the visionary approach of Dr Burns, Andrew Lyon of the International Futures Forum set the task of imagining what Scotland’s Asset Alliance priorities should be – what actions need to be taken and what are matters of urgency.
It was an interesting discussion. Andrew graciously let everyone voice their opinion at the end of the event. The discussions taught me that we need a framework to house some of this work and break it down into how to ‘do asset based work’. It was obvious that there is already a huge amount of asset based work being done, and it has a history. Perhaps, it’s not always under the label of an ‘asset based approach’ but known as ‘community development’. I’m not saying we ‘teach a granny to suck eggs’ as one participant in my group warned against, but we create a menu of options which breaks down an asset based approach, a framework to house the knowledge gathered through the AAS which is easy to access, understand, share, and importantly learn from and put into practice. For example, a range of options on how to engage with people in communities and connections to people who are experts in this field would be beneficial.
The group deliberated between a top down approach, and whilst I agreed that you need government buy in, I think the last thing that is needed is another strategy/policy document on an asset approach that promotes meaningless, tick box targets. If we’re going to talk targets under the assets agenda, then I think we need to think really carefully how that is conveyed.
Technology curve of adoption
I felt that we could look at the curve of adoption for technology and think about how ‘early adopters’ are the users who begin to write the ‘playbooks’ and ‘how to guides’. Perhaps the AAS would take this role on board and begin pulling together existing networks and organising information.
I noticed the Alliance pulling together ongoing work, and past work, branding it as ‘Assets based’ to build a community of practitioners in Scotland, and develop a framework to house this knowledge. However, I did mention there is a huge need for more interaction across different sectors. Some of the conversations around ‘person-centeredness’, ‘co-creation’ and ‘assets’ are not only relevant to health but to everyone. Our lives are are a holistic combination of services and complex interactions that overlap different sectors on a daily basis.
Importantly, as a chameleon amongst different sectors, this kind of work and demand-led idea is appearing across all sectors, not just health. Take Skills Development Scotland 2010-2011 Corporate strategy, an organisation I worked alongside last year. They talk multiple times over about co-creation and demand-led services, which I think align closely with asset based and coproduction movements and murmurs going on around our country.
Snook competition on assets
The most poignant thought for me at the end was about listening. A participant talked about asking others what assets mean to them and learning from this feedback. This struck a chord with me and I was happy that Snook had given out a small task for participants to capture assets in their community and email the photos back to us. We’re looking forward to peering through them and posting them online, feel free to get involved even if you didn’t pick up a leaflet.
Finally, the reason for this task, and what gets me every time at events like this is the need for a vision. Andrew Lyons had asked us what the AAS will ‘look’ like, yet I saw no hint of visual thinking or communication. This goes deeper than graphically facilitating the discussions that were taking place but the way in which we go forward in discussing the future of the AAS, and the approach we use in the future for the development of our public sector and country.
We need to share projects, the how to, and do it visually. A picture speaks a thousand words and breeds a common understanding which if applied in context of the AAS could mean a shared vision for the meaning of assets, the alliance, and perhaps as Pat Kane called for at Political Innovation camp a few weeks ago, a shared vision for our country. Big talking, but, something keeps hitting a nerve of late at discussions like this. Words like transformation seem to be super seeding ‘change’, ‘improvement’, ‘efficiency’, It feels there are some big ‘shake ups’ that need to happen. With Andrew asking us about urgency today for the AAS, something niggles me even more. I have a feeling the time is now, we need to move fast.
Filed under: event, Public Sector Design, service design, social innovation, Transformation Design, Uncategorized, work | Tags: conference, design, organisation, servdes, service, servicedesign, snook, sweden, transformation
Snook in Sweden
Another Snook adventure under our belt ; this time in Linkoping, Sweden. The occasion? Servdes. Traveling through some thick snow I made it to the conference, this time under the theme of Exchanging Knowledge.
“The Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation, ServDes, is the premier research conference for exchanging knowledge within service design and service innovation…Service design as a field has established itself as a strong discipline, through efforts in practice and academia. However, publications have mainly focused on establishing service design. There is a growing need for original research on service design. The ServDes conference is an answer to this call…”
In short, it was in-depth and fun. Making it the best event I have taken part in this year. However, I struggled with the delicate balance between practitioners and researchers. This was a recurring theme in some of the discussions I had about academia and practice can can link up and communicate better. As an active practitioner, I’ve just left academia ; finishing a Masters on Embedding design in the public sector which was more action research and reflection than it was academic. For me, this works, because at the end of the day, I want to make change happen. Personally, I’d rather work with academics to document and theorise the work I do on the ground. I’m wondering if Servdes will become the catalyst for making this connection smoother?
Snook were invited to present the case ‘Service Design: social innovation is our motivation’. The presentation reflected on a project, Getgo Glasgow, undertaken last year at the Glasgow School of Art. It depicts some of the issues the design community is facing when undertaking social design/innovation projects within design education. My presentation considered some of the shortfalls in the project ; time frames, delivery and ethics. How do designers leave a project like this ethically? Have we considered the consequences of sending young designers out to engage with communities/users. A film is on the way but for now, you can view the presentation.
The presentation aligned with Don Norman’s views published on Core 77: ‘Why Design Education Must Change‘.
“Many problems involve complex social and political issues. As a result, designers have become applied behavioral scientists, but they are woefully undereducated for the task”
This brilliant yet critical article picks on design education for producing undereducated designers who are ‘woefully ignorant of the deep complexity of social and organizational problems.’ In the case of GetGo, the community now have money in the bank and the project is really happening. Wyndford, where the project took place, is small area that are now mobilised as a community. We designed a process not necessarily a designed solution. The result ; Green Gorillaz wasn’t really designed, it was a half baked idea which was the bi-product of design methods and skills being used to work co-creatively with a community.
My presentation actually sparked some interesting conversations about interdisciplinary work, collaboration and the reality that designers are not experts in everything. It pays to know when and how to ask for help. The question and answer session revealed that students struggle with some elements of this type of project. For example, being equipped with the skills and know how to create intangible outcomes that are implementable. This is something we are aiming to get to grips with through our venture: Making Service Sense.
Highlights for me included Daniela Sangiorgi’s talk(s) on ‘Transformative Services and Transformation Designbuilding‘. It looked at building capabilities inside organisations to use and understand design to produce better services. This was an area I felt was overlooked in Berlin at the SDN10 conference and was only just touched upon by Philips. It mimics efforts made by Engine in their Hoop model and echoes sentiments from Martin Neumier’s Designful company which I reflected on for the last 12 months with a public body in Scotland on how to really use design thinking to create better services for the people of Scotland and more informed, people centered policy.
What Daniela put forward echoed closely with some discussions from the workshop run by Anna Serevalli and Anders Emilson. They held a workshop on Social Innovation which looked at the criticisms and plaudits by Geoff Mulgan of design in social innovation. Some of the points our group discussed were;
- Design(ers) should be a-political
- We need to create designful organisations and transform thinking
- We should look to open source community for inspiration
- We should be pushing for delivery and implementation
- Designers are facilitators not experts
Eva-Maria Hempe followed some of the capabilities discussion with, ‘Health and social care services for people with complex needs: The role of contextual knowledge for the design process’ and showcased a really interesting project. More interestingly for me, was the pyramid at the end of her slides on Design capacity versus Design obstacles which I’d like to look more into and see designers considering this.
There were other really good presentations, far too many to mention, in short, a couple more were Marc Stickdorn’s presentation on students and tourism, showcasing how quick and effective service design can be. Also, Simon Clatworthy’s talk on Touchpoint cards was to the point and got some cogs turning about how we could use the template as a basic model to create our own more personalised cards for say tourism, or methods in Service design.
Finally, to end the conference, Global Service Jam was launched by Markus Edgar and Adam St john. It will bring together different countries from all over the world next year to develop new services in under 48 hours and then share them online. They’ve had a fantastic response already and if you want your country to be part of it, then I suggest you get in touch with them.
And not forgetting the unconference day, organised by Design thinkers ; an impromptu, insightful and busy day of talking, doing, and drinking coffee.
I ran a workshop called #swesno, which looked at using design thinking and methods to tackle social issues caused by Snow in Sweden. Wearing santa hats, to get us all in the mood, one group tackled loneliness and isolation with the opportuniy of untapped engergy of kids playing outside in the snow, whilst the other group looked at the issue of ambulances getting stuck in the snow. There will be a another blog post to follow on the outcomes of the workshop. The storyboarding method and pushing people as a vehicle through a new service design worked incredibly well, and took a group of participants 3 hours. They started from scratch, developing and blueprinting new service concepts which the Swedish authorities could implement.
The day capped off with the launch of This is Service Design Thinking. If you haven’t purchased it, do it. It is a very comprehensive textbook which has been co-created by the design community. I am very happy for the authors and am sure both Jakob Schneider and Marc Stickdorn are relieved to see their hard work come to fruition.
To wrap up, these conferences aren’t always just about the learning but are also about the friends you make. It was lovely to make some new European and continental friends and catch up with old ones. It never ceases to amaze me how friendly, open and collaborative the Service Design community can be. Snook are humbled to be part of it.
Huge thanks to Fabian and the rest of the Serv Des team for making this event possible.
Here’s to next year and bigger and better snowball fights...
Filed under: event, interesting, Masters in Design Innovation, Public Sector Design, service design, social innovation, Transformation Design | Tags: design, event, gsa, innovation, servicedesign
Create:Debate
I’ve been putting together a final show for the Masters in Design Innovation I have just about finished. On Monday I handed in my thesis and this Monday I will be presenting the work to examiners. It has been a really tough year balancing everything and I’m really happy to invite you all to Create Debate: A design Innovation symposium at the Glasgow School of Art. You can sign up here.
Presentations;
Professor Irene Mcara Mcwilliams will open with an introduction
Professor Mike Press, Associate Dean of Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, will discuss ‘Design as an affirmation of values’
Jim Fleming, Director at Wider Aspect Innovation ltd, will discuss Some learnings on Innovation Best Practice
David Hicks, Managing Director of Border Crossing will discuss ‘The new economic context – from resources to resourcefulness’
Stuart Bailey, Product Design tutor at the Glasgow School of art will discuss changes in design education
Innovative Idea Generation:mixing user value,design and higher education by Joe Slavick
Intergeneration and technology by Basako Okay
Listening to locals: A user centered approach to rural retailing by Laura Franzini
Brand DNA – Does employing social media tactics enhance or risk brand development by Amy Marsh
Effective Collaboration in Multi-disciplinary Teams by Angela Fernandez Orviz
Follow Me!: Mapping the city with user generated contents by Heji Jeong
Improving connections in textile recycling by Sara Pateraki
Embedding design in the public sector and changing our thinking by Sarah Drummond
Filed under: event, Public Sector Design, Transformation Design | Tags: cocreation, codesign, coproduction, design, event, london, nesta, servicedesign
- Nesta right here right now launch
Last week, I found time to go to the NESTA Right here Right now Launch: Taking Coproduction into the mainstream. The event, focusing on taking coproduction as a marginal idea into the mainstream is the third of a three part series of reports from a collaboration between the New Economics Foundation and Nesta.
Re-reading NEF’s coproduction pamphlet, published two years ago I was struck by Edgar Cahn’s words on the term being hot on the lips of politicians, on both sides of the atlantic. Now more than ever, with our ‘big society’ and having to do ‘more for less’ it’s time to push Co-production in the mainstream. If you’re not sure what Coproduction is I suggest mulling over the three Nesta reports but for a summary of it’s inception;
“The term ‘co-production’ was coined originally at the University of Indiana in the 1970s when Professor Elinor Ostrom was asked to explain to the Chicago police why the crime rate went up when the police came off the beat and into patrol cars. She used the term as a way of explaining why the police need the community as much as the community need the police.”
Going back to Nef’s publication, this is a stand out for me;
“Neither markets nor centralised bureaucracies are effective models for delivering public services based on relationships. The author of System Failure, Jake Chapman, explains why, with market systems, ‘you can deliver pizza but you can’t deliver public services’. Market logic applies to narrow deliverables, but misses out the crucial dimension that allows doctors to heal, teachers to teach and carers to care: the relationship with patient, pupil or client. Centralised bureaucracies, public and private, find it equally hard to grasp these essentials.”
Following the discussion after the launch of the final Nesta Paper, the above quote from 2008 is very poignant. Designers ask three questions. What, how and why and what I’m experiencing from many of these co-design publications is people asking the how?
I often see elements of design as the process to drive this ideology. To me, the design process seems like the glue that will hold these together, and as a way of driving a co-production manifesto.
The question and answer session showed that this how question is where we get stuck. Garath Symonds who works at Surrey County Council sat on the panel as someone who has pushed this way of working on a local level. Questions were fired at him and his reply was,
“Just do it”
If the audience could have clapped, I feel there may have been a small ripple of applause. Gareth was someone that takes risks and gets this. I have always seen so many parallels between what I’ve done as a service designer and coproduction. Putting users (n.b users also mean staff) at the centre of service design and delivery. The mindset of co-creation (often seen in work I’ve been part of) as a vehicle to develop services and push towards co-production. Co-production is not just a design process and I would never say design is the panacea, but I believe expert facilitation attributed with a design process and involving different experts and frameworks at different stages, would be a good way of driving this process. I’ve seen services and social enterprises produced by designers that embody much of what co-production is about and reach a stage of dellivery. I’ll talk about some other points but Nick Marsh of Sidekick picked up on a great ‘that’s a thing’ point about the dependency of users on public services.
- Nesta Co Production
The publication had quite a few recommendations for taking co-production into the main stream.
1. Build the key features of co-production into existing services
2. Change the systems and structures that underpin public services
3. Make it everybody’s business
4. Shift the role of frontline staff
5. Get the best out of ‘personalised’ services
6. Put the right incentives in place
7. Build co-production into the commissioning framework
8. Give priority to prevention
9. Encourage flexibility and collaborative working
10. Measure what matters
11. Launch more prototypes in new sectors
12. Embed co-production as the ‘default’ model through a ‘Co-production Guarantee’
Some tough challenges, co-production works as a small scale project, and something very local, but public services face huge challenges, not just in the way an organisation is structured but in their processes and mindset they will need if they want to adopt co-production as a way of doing.
The publication summarises with future thinking moving away from tick box processes to a more human way forward. The big question is, who is going to take this forward?
“This is a new kind of public sector, with complex relationships rather than complex metrics at its heart.”
And how the hell are we going to measure this? Some of the final words of the event focused on co-production being an inherent value, and to me this rings a bell for something I’ve been considering for a long time…that it’s perhaps not a way of doing, it’s not a process, it’s a way of being.
The idea does perplex me (in a good way) but it’s something I want to be involved in, and I believe in it, it’s just finding a language that can dilute it into a process that will aim to achieve the outcomes it strives to deliver. To finish with the final words of the event,
“Perhaps this is not a policy, but a movement”
Filed under: Masters in Design Innovation, Public Sector Design, Transformation Design, work | Tags: change, design, experience, interviews, led, organisation, people, professionals, service, transformation
Embedding design interviews
I’ve been a bit quiet as I’m blogging away on a closed platform, I’m not allowed to share everything I’m up to, but I can cross post occasionally.
I’ve been doing a round of interviews/chats with some fantastic people and just wanted to summarise who I’ve met so far. This is a thank you from me for all your time and knowledge!
The topics ranged from how to embed design in organisations, how project teams might work, encouraging a culture of innovation, systems thinking, meta design, and reflection on what makes up a designer, to name but a few.
Below is a selection of interviews completed so far;
Dr Anne Marie Mcewan (The Smart Work Company)
Nick Marsh (Side Kick studios)
John Wood (Goldsmiths, Meta Design)
Ruth Kennedy (professional agitator of too many things to mention, but all great)
I will be disseminating these over the coming week and pulling out useful case studies and advice for how to embed design in organisations. And meeting some new (and old) faces next week in London.
I’m free (ish) next Monday to Wednesday if anyone is around for a drink.
Filed under: inspiration, interesting, service design | Tags: books, design, list, reading, service
Service Design Books
Jeff Howard has released a great new ‘wee’ project. I received an email from him a while back asking for some book titles that sit on the Snook shelf which perhaps are not directly related to service design but are of interest. There had been some lists floating around the internet in the last 12 months but Jeff’s list make’s it rather easy to navigate.
Jeff says,
“Good books on service design are few and far between. I’ve put together lists in the past and so have other designers but unless you’ve actually read the books it’s tough to see the connections sometimes. Service designers draw inspiration from across disciplines and that means that a raw list isn’t always enough of a roadmap for people to triage unfamiliar reading.”
It was a difficult question because I gather influences from a huge variety of sources but I’ve popped a couple on like Co-design, Simplicity and the Design of Business, and will probably be adding a few more titles soon.
Take a look, it’s looking like a good collection.
Filed under: Masters in Design Innovation, service design | Tags: design, education, service, servicedesign, thinking
Snook are talking about service design and education as special guests this week on the Coten Project. Andy Polaine asked myself and Lauren as both service design practitioners and myself still being a student to give our perspective on service design education.
The Coten project is a collborative online research activity exploring service design in higher education for 2010 and will see a whole range of different special guests writing essays/creating podcasts/being interviewed and discussing this topic. The guests are then to answer a week’s worth of questions and engage in discussion with the 100 participants.
Looking forward to the questions and hopefully you enjoy the video, let us know what you think.
Vodpod videos no longer available.Filed under: interesting, work | Tags: art, design, drummond, glasgow, guardian, media, Mypolice, news, police, press, sarah, school
guardian media paper sarah drummond
Funny old thing, media. The last year has seen me and various projects/partner in crime feature in articles amongst some pretty big names like the BBC, Herald, Guardian. On Wednesday this week, nothing could quite prepare me for the shock I got when I opened the Society pages of the Guardian and saw my face (a very large face) looking back at me.
Thanks to Gordon Cairns who wrote it, I was pleased with it and picked up on all the right things I wanted to get across about Mypolice. However, I have learned to not let your friends govern your ‘interests’ but for the record I am actually fascinated by zombies and romero classics, and through being featured here have made friends with zombie escape plan on twitter.
You can read the article online here.
“A career in product design may not seem an obvious choice for someone who wants to do something for the benefit of others – “to make a dent in the world, to make things a little better”. She admits that it wasn’t even clear to herself why she should have chosen design rather than, say, education, law or politics, until a recent conversation with a student. “She said that to do a degree in politics and economics was just regurgitating theory, but by going into the creative industries you are allowed to be creative about your solutions to these problems,” Drummond recalls.”
I’d like to thank Lori Smyth for the above as we shared this thought over coffee in Dundee last month when I was there giving a studio unbound talk.
If you can get hold of Wednesday’s paper, do, it will make you chuckle. I am sultry, I am pensive and I am, in the words of Mike Press, somewhat alike to the Nescafe Gold woman.
Inside the head of a designer 
