design

These are some of the key questions that guided the year-long research project for Creative Many Michigan just completed by KerrSmith, co-led by OCAD professor and sLab researcher, Helen Kerr, together with a team including SFI-sLab alumni, Zan Chandler and Kelly Kornet.

The statewide organization, dedicated to developing creative people, creative places and the creative economy for a competitive Michigan, received funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to work with KerrSmith to update and expand on their 2014 Creative State Michigan research.

The Pivotal Role that Creative Industries Play
Recognizing the pivotal role that creative industries play within the broader economy, this comprehensive investigation and analysis of employment and wage data focused on 12 creative industries over the period of 2011 to 2014. They included: Advertising; Architecture; Art Schools, Artists and Agents; Creative Technology; Culture and Heritage; Design; Fashion, Garment and Textile; Film, Audiovisual and Broadcasting; Literary, Publishing and Print; Music; Performing Arts; and Visual Arts and Craft. The report also includes profiles of the creative industries in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor and Flint.

Anticipating the Future
In addition to conducting a comprehensive investigation and analysis of employment and wage data for 12 creative industries over the period of 2011 to 2014, KerrSmith made use of multiple foresight research methods in order to uncover the emerging issues that will have an impact on the employment landscape globally, within the U.S. and across the state.

We identified 5 important shifts taking place and their implications for the creative industries in Michigan.

• The Nature of Work is Changing. Stable, full-time employment is no longer the only viable model for work.
• Automation and Digitization. Digital information and computational power have led to automation in many work spheres, including “white collar” domains.
• Seeking Meaningful Work. Many workers, especially younger ones, believe that a company’s mission is as important as its fiscal mandate.
• Diversity and Inclusion. These key drivers of innovation and prosperity also support thriving creative economies
• Transferable Competencies. Future-ready work skills such as sensemaking, experimentation, and adaptive thinking mirror many of the inherent competencies of those in the creative occupations.

Recommendations
The 160-page report, researched, written and designed by KerrSmith (including extensive information graphics), aims to establish the value and significance of the creative economy of Michigan both now and into the future. We put forth a series of recommendations to bolster Creative Many’s mission to develop the creative economy for a competitive Michigan. They include acknowledging the foundational importance of art, culture, design and creativity in creating the preconditions for prosperity, resilience and social cohesion in Michigan; building a healthy and vibrant art, culture, design and creative ecosystem throughout Michigan; and deploying art, culture, design and creativity in re-imagining the future of Michigan.

This ambitious research project was also supported by the Kresge Foundation, Masco Corporation Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Ford Foundation, Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Detroit Creative Corridor Center and Prima Civitas.

A PDF of the full report can be downloaded from the Creative Many website at: http://www.creativemany.org/research/2016-creative-industries-report/

In this paper published by Austria-UK media journal TripleC, we propose a platform for a new form of the book, the sBook, which is a combination of the codex book and the e-book. The sBook combines the advantages of these two formats of the book as well as some additional features that we have designed for this new hybrid book.

We describe one possible form of an sBook, which is a codex book that has been “smart tagged” so that the book directs one’s Enabler to a Web site that contains the digital form of the text of the codex book. The Enabler could be a desktop or notebook computer, a PDA or a smart phone such as the iPhone. As a result the sBook system - consisting of the codex book, the Enabler, and the Web site -- is readable, searchable, networkable, updatable, smart and promotes “active reading”. The book is very readable because the sBook still retains the codex format of ink on paper. Because the “smart tag” directs the reader to a Web site with the digital text and room for comments by readers and updates by the author, the sBook is searchable, networkable and updatable. Finally by incorporating a recommender system installed on the Enabler the sBook can match its content to that of the reader’s research and information interests. The recommender system can also search the Net for pertinent information. This paper explores some of the possible applications of the sBook and its impact on authors, readers, publishers, booksellers and libraries.

(CC) Creative Commons Licence, 2009

tripleC 7(1): 88-93, 2009
ISSN 1726-670X
http://www.triple-c.at

The world of healthcare is constantly evolving, ever increasing in complexity, costs, and stakeholders, and presenting huge challenges to policy making, decision making and system design. In Design for Care, sLab researcher Peter Jones shows how service and information designers can work with practice professionals and patients/advocates to make a positive difference in healthcare.

Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
Published: May 2013
Paperback: 376 pages
ISBN 1-933820-23-3 (print)
ISBN 1-933820-13-6 (digital)

Healthcare delivery and experience innovation is the new core competency of organizations that will survive the current healthcare transformation. Design for Care is an outstanding addition to current best practice in the field."
—Sam Basta, MD, MMM, FACP, CPE, Founder of Healthcare Innovation by Design

In Design for Care Peter Jones provides

• Current presentation of compelling healthcare design and information issues, integrated by representative case studies, to help designers, managers, students and teachers better understand the field
• Education and stimulation to innovate and design better services from a total systems perspective in current healthcare practice
• Help for readers to understand the complexities, emerging opportunities, and uncertainties as indicated from the collective experience of leading edge design and research thinkers

Abstract

This paper reveals the surprising and counterintuitive truth that design is not always at the forefront of innovation; it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the success of products and services. The authors argue that design must harness emergence, for it is only through this bottom-up and massively iterative, unfolding process that new and improved products and services are successfully refined, introduced and diffused into the marketplace.

They articulate the similarities and differences of design and emergence, developing the hypotheses that an innovative design is an emergent design, and that a homeostatic relationship between design and emergence is a required condition for innovation. Examples of how design and emergence have interacted and led to innovation include the tool making of early man; the evolutionary chain of the six languages: speech, writing, mathematics, science, computing and the Internet; Gutenberg’s printing press, and the contemporary techniques of collaborative filtering that underlie the meteoric growth of today’s largest Web-based services, including Google and Amazon.com. In closing they describe the relationship between artificial and natural systems, noting that a critical trait of every successful design and living organism is its telos or purpose.

Download PDF

• http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/article/view/1360
• http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17493460601110525?journalCode=saif20#.UzRVH16gYY4

DOI

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17493460601110525