Education Research Industry servicesDesign incubation /

Multi-disciplinary collaborations are now recognised as a central driver for innovation. Eighteen months after its establishment, C4D (Centre for Competitive Creative Design), has facilitated the bringing together of often polarized disciplines, to produce vibrant and interesting synergies from which radical thinking and results are created. This book demonstrates the outcomes of a selection of those collaborations.

Should you wish to be a part of this exciting adventure, whether you wish to give a lecture or a course leader wishing to instigate collaboration or you are a prospective student, we would like to hear from you.

Dr. Alison Prendiville, Deputy Director of C4D, Course Director of the MDes Innovation and Creativity in Industry at LCC.

a.prendiville@lcc.arts.ac.uk

Introduction

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Dr. Alison Prendiville

Introduction

A Year in the Life of the Centre for Competitive CreativeDesign (C4D)MDes LCC and Cranfield University PrototypingMDes Prototypologies WorkshopMDes Service Design LectureNanotechnology Workshop ‘Basecamp’ CollaborationInnovation Through Collaboration

Collaborative Research

Exploring WellbeingNew Media and Community Spaces Conveying Complex Information Quickly and Effectively

Content

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London College of Communication Reducing Household WasteProduct ReformattingFood RemindersAdding Value to a Throw-away Clothing Culture‘Wedo’ - Paper Waste Solution

Royal Academy of Engineering Nanotechnology Exhibition at Cranfield University

Cranfield University

Industry Sponsored Major ProjectsDefining and Characterising Product ExperienceMeasuring Design Effectiveness

Contact Information

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“Higher education courses should better prepare students to work with, and understand, other specialists”

Cox Report: Preparing Future Generations 2005

C4D is a Cox funded dynamic partnership between LCC, University of the Arts London and Cranfield University. The collaboration brings together two unique cultures that explore opportunities for converging the best of design communication, interaction and visualization with engineering, health and management.

The exhibition showcases a year of LCC’s collaboration with Cranfield through C4D. The examples of work are based around education and research. Both institutions run an MDes in Innovation and Creativity in Industry course, which attracts different kinds of students with a diverse range of skills. This exhibition demonstrates the synergies of the partnership, and also acknowledges and reflects on the cultural differences that exist between the two institutions and how we learn from each other.

A Year in the Life of the Centre for Competitive Creative Design (C4D)

A Collaboration between LCC University of the Arts and

Cranfield University

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The Master of Design (MDes) is an example of a collaboration whereby two Master of Design courses, at different institutions, converge to work and share ideas throughout the year.

The Group Design Project brought together MDes students from Cranfield with backgrounds in science, engineering, management, and product design to work with LCC’s students’ whose creative profiles range from architecture, film making, product design, graphics and social science.

The focus of the projects centred on exploring shopping experiences within Covent Garden and Milton Keynes. The students were grouped in multi-disciplinary teams and were required to reflect on their team’s behaviour as well as apply design research methods to the area of study.

MDes LCC and Cranfield University

Group Design Project

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The course acknowledges prototyping as central to demonstrating, expressing and testing ideas for problem solving for products and services. Prototyping is interpreted in the widest context to refer to drawing, models, or films that capture and represent a product, system or service.

All the course work is project-based with design research methods and prototyping as fundamental to understanding user behaviours and creating user scenarios to move the design process forward.

Prototyping

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Cranfield University with Professor Larry Leifer

The MDes Students from both Universities had the privilege to participate in a prototyping workshop at Cranfield with Professor Larry Leifer, the Head of the Stanford D School in California; prototyping, a central feature to the MDes course at LCC, was explored in rapid succession through exercises which built on the approach the students are encouraged to take in their design work.

MDes Prototypologies Workshop

Cranfield University with Professor Larry Leifer

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The MDes students from both Universities came together at LCC to receive a lecture from Steve O’Connor, a Director at London’s IDEO, on creating ‘Desirable Services’.

IDEO is a global design and innovation consultancy, with a strong emphasis on inter-disciplinary design collaboration within their design practice.

MDes Service Design Lecture

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London College of Communication with Steve

O’Connor from IDEO

A one-day workshop was held with Dr. Rob Dorey Head of Microsystems and Nanotechnology from Cranfield University at the London College of Fashion. The aim of the event was to explore ways to visualize and engage the public in nanotechnology for the Royal Academy of Engineering Exhibition in June 2009.

The workshop was started with a presentation lecture on nanotechnology and its potential interactivity.

Students from LCC and London College of Fashion (LCF) were placed into 3 multi-disciplinary teams each with 6 participants.

The teams selected two technologies from the lecture and brain stormed around their active feature, future applications and their representation in an interactive display.

Nanotechnology Workshop

Brainstorming between LCCLondon College of Fashion

and Cranfield University

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The online Wiki project management tool ‘Basecamp’ was used across the institutions in order to develop and progress ideas for the design of the exhibition. Dr. Robert Dorey was able to comment on the scientific appropriateness of the visualization and the interactive component of the exhibition.

The purpose of the exhibition was to demonstrate a selected number of active features from the following nanotechnologies:

Ultrasound transducers Detection of approach by people

Photo-detectors Detection of approach by people

Pressure sensors Touch detection

Energy harvestorsPower systems from ambient vibration

Light emitting devices Emit light

Piezoelectric speakers Sound generation

‘Basecamp’ Collaboration

Using Project Management Tools to Further Develop

Nanotechnology Ideas

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Creativity Innovation Collaboration /

Innovation

Acceptability with products

Accessibility of products

Thinking and perception

Services, knowledge management and experiences

Organisations, new processes, eureka moments

Cranfield Research Clusters

LCC Research Clusters

Innovation Through Collaboration

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The following examples are C4D projects which have been undertaken in collaboration with Cranfield Health and the School of Applied Science, with the departments of Micro-systems and Nanotechnology and Manufacturing.

The examples shown have led to the submission of research bids and or new collaborative student projects.

Collaborative Research

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C4D and Information Environments (IE) at LCC ran a two-day EPSRC funded workshop, as part of the Innovative Media for a Digital Economy programme, which brought together different stakeholders from industry, health, local government and academia to explore the opportunities for visually based innovative media and their potential for enhancing wellbeing and health within ‘community spaces’.

The workshops were designed to open up discussion and elicit opinions from the participants around wellbeing, health, new emerging technologies and their applications in each of these instances.

Exploring Wellbeing, New Media and Community Spaces

Multi-disciplinary Conversations

The workshop also aimed to investigate methodological

opportunities for increasing the understanding of appropriate

participatory design processes, which are necessary to develop and apply effective visually based digital

technologies for the enhancement of wellbeing and health. The workshop

acted as a forum to identify gaps in knowledge, to generate ideas

and demonstrate opportunities for collaborative working.

Workshop participants were from the following institutions

and organisations:

C4D LCC and Cranfield University, IE LCC, Jason Bruges Studio,

Circle-D, Lewisham Council,University of Sussex and

University of Brighton.

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Complex engineering information is difficult to communicate. In spite of

this, simple graphics can convey the information quickly and effectively.

This project is a result of a collaboration between PhD students

at Cranfield’s School of Applied Science and a Post Graduate student

studying visual communication at LCC. The aim of the collaboration was to understand, process and

visualize complex outputs generated by a multifaceted product service

system, and the vulnerability of that system. The intention was to use

visual communication techniques to represent the variables and values

of different elements of the project, creating a quick and direct interaction

with numeric values instead of painstakingly looking through vast

tables of data.

Conveying Complex Information Quickly and Effectively

Ian Carr In context, the display would be used to inform decision-making, presenting and tracking the progress of a service system over a period of time. The set of final visual displays will be presented as an interactive dashboard, which would change and animate as the values within the service system change; this would provide the decision maker with a continuous up to date visual representation of the current status of their project.

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Creative context /

The Master of Design (MDes) programme at LCC is structured to develop creativity, design knowledge and inter-disciplinary team working to enhance the student’s understanding of the wider application of design thinking and strategy to product service systems and services within the private and public sector. The course philosophy is embedded in context based design research methods and processes. The emphasis of the ‘Creative Context’ unit is to explore the role of design in addressing some of the major challenges facing society in the 21st Century.

The following four projects focused on a question quoted in an article in The Guardian in January 2009, “Why are we producing so much waste and what could become of it?”

The aim of the brief was to investigate issues related to reducing, re-using, or treating waste as a resource to reduce the level of waste generated within the home in relation to the areas of food, paper and clothing. The design projects were supported by theory relating to the social sciences and corporate social responsibility.

London College of Communication

Reducing Household Waste

Creative context /

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We have lost value for food - bigger and faster is better - and we are removed from what a regular food portion actually is, with research showing a clear correlation between food waste and increased obesity.

Returning to the days of the ‘Ministry of Food’ and using natural portions as inspiration - such as an egg - I propose we reformat existing food, implementing portions into everyday life, using visual aids, given by the NHS.

For example - cereal ‘tennis ball’, cheese ‘bar’, mince meat ‘card deck’, macaroni ‘ball’, rice ‘cup’, and so forth.

All food-stuffs will simply be broken up in the various cooking and preparation processes, with the intention, that these images will begin to embed in our memory (much like a slice of bread) and society will start to portion naturally, with confidence.

Product Reformatting

Andrew Millar

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A third of all food bought in the UK ends up being thrown away. This is the equivalent of buying three bags worth of food, walking out of the supermarket and throwing one straight into a bin. £6 billion of this £10 billion annual food wastage comes from food being left uneaten until it goes off and is discarded.

By using a variety of different design tools and techniques, this project tackles the problem by identifying the main target groups, and the social and behavioural factors behind why so much food is wasted.

The prototyped solutions are a result of not only considering the role of the consumer but also the corporate responsibility of UK supermarkets to try and reduce the amount of their produce ending up in landfill.

Tom Ashworth

Food Reminders

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The concept is to provide an Online Wardrobe service that incorporates and entire social network to encourage input and open-source discussion and collaboration in fashion. Users can simply look into their online wardrobe for a new look instead of to the high street. Clothing maybe borrowed or swapped depending on the individual, and the contracts made between users. Items are redistributed again and again across the network, uniting users and histories. Revenue is generated through advertising and through the possible sharing of data with the site and clothing manufacturers. The fashion industry can also use the network to monitor trends and be encouraged to produce less quantity but more quality of garment and of memory.

Donagh Ó hArgáin

Adding Value to a Throw-away Clothing Culture

Statistics show that high street clothing stores and their practices

have created an ephemeral culture and attitude to disposing of clothing

and fashion which has a severe impact on our environment and

waste processing.

Giving longevity to clothing and adding value are the most important

aspects in promoting reuse and recycling in the fashion industry.

Waste is reduced considerably in this way and a new attitude to shopping

and behaviour created.

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We are constantly being reminded to recycle paper. The issue is that a lot of this paper ends up in landfill as it’s such low quality, it won’t sell. Instead of recycling, we should be using less paper in the first place.

Wedo is a new system, which eliminates the need for paper receipts. Through RFID technology, the receipts are stored on a cornstarch-plastic card, which can be organised online. Not only does this reduce paper waste, it increases the functionalities of a receipt.

Wedo explores the whole supply chain; suppliers, retailers and customers coming together to reduce paper waste in a holistic service design experience.

‘Wedo’ - Paper Waste Solution

Veronica Massoud

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“The technical and social complexity of nanotechnologies demands a genuine dialogue between scientists and the public...”

Extending the boundaries of design-led innovation /

Students from LCC’s MDes course and BA Interactive Design, worked with Masters’ students from the London College of Fashion on visualizing nanotechnology for the Royal Academy of Engineering Exhibition that was held at Cranfield in June 2009.

The result was an interactive display, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Engineering Exhibition at Cranfield.

This collaboration has been further developed into an EPSRC Research bid.

Royal Academy of Engineering

Nanotechnology Exhibition at Cranfield University

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Developing design-led innovation through industry collaboration /

Energetic practices in bed provide eneergy that can be used to power naps

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Creating and developing opportunities with industry /

Cranfield University

As part of their final degree the MDes Innovation and Creativity students at Cranfield have worked on a number of live industry sponsored projects with the following companies.

Industry Sponsored Major Projects

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The last decade has witnessed the growth of a more sophisticated customer. There has been a radical shift in consumer needs and desires. The approach to merely satisfy the consumer is insufficient. Today, the transfer of power has moved from the manufacturers and retailers to consumers who are well connected, freshly facilitated with the Inside scoop and latest information. The improvement of Price, service, quality and design are not sufficient to determine success. The consumer is not only quality conscious but emotionally driven. These customers see products and services, but value experiences.

Ford have acknowledged the development of a sophisticated and of a more emotionally consciousconsumer who is now experience aware. Those products that evoke subjective feelings motivateconsumer purchases. It seems then, that to attain loyalty from consumers, the need for integration of emotional appeal in new product development. The challenge lies in evaluating these emotional innovations.

Defining and Characterising Product Experience

Thesis by Tania Dsouza

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Measuring design effectiveness has plagued designers and the creative

industries for years. Design is a discipline that is immensely subjective

and hard to quantify. Companies and businesses are often dubious

or reluctant to use creative services because they simply cannot quantify the process or the thought process

of the designer. In current economic conditions, companies are striving to

achieve a new competitive edge,something creative and imaginative

which will provide them with a business advantage.

Measuring Design Effectiveness

Thesis by Alison King Design, it has been researched, can help companies gain this new advantage and help them compete on an advanced level. Finding out what makes effective, successful or valuable design can help reduce the uncertainties companies have to make substantial investment in design. It would also allow companies to understand and have some control over design, allowing them to quantify the process to understand what contribution design can have to business success.

Within the research four criteria points were discovered, which were discussed to make the most successful design. In collaboration with Imagination, a new method was created to evaluate what makes successful design and how to measure design effectiveness.

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If you would like information on the MDes Courses or on working with C4D please contact:

Dr. Alison Prendiville Course Director MDes ICI at LCC & Deputy Director of C4D: a.prendiville@lcc.arts.ac.ukwww.lcc.arts.ac.uk

Mike GoatmanCourse Director MDes ICI at Cranfield: m.c.goatman@cranfield.ac.uk

www.cranfield.ac.uk

Contact Information

Cranfield University

London College of Communication

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