Vol. 2: design-management.de

I’ve already mentioned this in an earlier posting that the 4th iteration of the German Design Management Forum will take place in Cologne, Germany on November 9–10th.

This is the fourth conference of a series which emerged from an initiative at the KISD (Köln International School of Design) under the lead of Prof. Brigitte Wolf and myself back in 2002. Ever since conference topics ranged from “Is Design Management Education relevant to the Design Management Profession?” over “Advanced Strategies For Design” to “Leading With Design”. With the support of PARK and WDR this year’s central theme is: “Are There Any Limits For Design” (English Press Release, PDF) and it deals with the various fields and disciplines the design profession is entering these days.

What I personally like about this theme is the idea that we will clearly (or hopefully?) discover/talk about limits of the profession indeed, because I think too much has been written and said recently what design is capable to solve. While I think design is a powerful discipline and is definitively getting more important in several areas in society in the future I do also think that it will only succeed to be accepted on a wider (which means ‘Business’ these guys wearing grey suits ;-) basis when seeking for “overlaps” instead of creating silos.

Accordingly I’m happy to see the following workshop topics to be held simultaneously on Saturday, Nov. 10th:

– Design as an Initiator of New Business Fields?
Jens Krause from the Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology of the Leeds University (Great Britain) will clarify what we can learn from current research on social network architecture with animals and humans and apply this to restructure organizations.

– Customer Co-design:
Users in the computer game industry have become designers and decision-makers. Thomas Zeitner, managing director of Electronic Arts in Cologne, will present examples and existing possibilities of ”customer co-creation”.

– Explorative User Research:
Clemens Marek, director of ergonomics at the Ford plant in Cologne, will reveal how findings from a systematic acquisition of insights of user behavior and characteristics affect the planning, development and design in the automobile industry.

– Integration of Communities in Design Processes:
Today, communities exist everywhere and cover every aspect of human activity. For television programs they have been a decision parameter for a long time. Axel Beyer, director of the television entertainment at the WDR Cologne, will report on his experiences with the phenomenon ”community building“, based on examples from television entertainment programs.

My role that day will be to moderate the workshop on “Explorative user Research”. I’m absolutely looking forward to this session, because I think this is exactly the area where methods from the design discipline (ethnographic research, case study research, rapid prototyping, etc.) can enhance/extend/infiltrate the classical business domains like marketing or engineering which still do follow a top down approach when it comes to identifying customer needs (to be clearly separated from customer wants!).

For all the administrative stuff please visit the virtual conference brochure where you will find all the relevant practical information. After all I think the EUR 285 .– are well invested for such an event. So hope to see you there and if you’d like to please spread the news as there are some tickets left (as far as I know)!