Off again-to Boston-in my quest for design understanding

DMI Design/Management Annual 34

Design Complexity and Change

October 18-20, 2009, Cambridge, MA

A great experience - top-notch presentations, a mixture of practitioner and academics (but not academic theory!) Lots for me to think about and explore further.

My overall learning from the conference:

1. Sustainability was not in the title, but every presentation (with the exception of one or two) was about sustainability. Presenters were tacking the bigger issues that will result in a sustainable world. àThe wickedest problem is complexity, and the role of design is to make complexity simple.

2. Design thinking was acknowledged by everyone as a fad discourse in business, and therefore of little use to the design community in their work. àWe should be using hybrid (multidisciplinary) discourses.

3. Social media are not a fad, rather, the web as a platform is a disruptive force. à The Business & Design Lab must find ways of connecting and making visible our individual and collective work.

4. Facilitation is an important competency for designers. à The Business & Design Lab must teach group facilitation skills (for agenda-less meetings!) to our students (and ourselves!)

And of course it was fun to be back in Cambridge and see some of the changes to MIT since I was there as a student in the mid-1960s.