In-house or out: embedding design
As little as a year ago it seemed that in-house design teams, in both the public and private sector, had practically vanished. So had senior civic roles in design: Leeds City Council was often named as the last remaining local authority to employ a Civic Architect. With a handful of notable exceptions – Apple and The Guardian, for example – it seemed to have become conventional for organisations to buy design services in from outside consultancies.
Last month the Design Council reported a 10% growth in in-house design teams since 2005, while also, quite suddenly, we are witnessing a growing trend for “embedding” design within the structure of public and private sector organisations. This means that anything from a private telecommunications provider to a local authority housing department, which might previously have subcontracted discrete design tasks, might now have designers on staff. Rather than apply their discipline narrowly to specific issues and projects arising – to corporate publications or product development, for example – these new recruits are usually paid to have a holistic view of the organisation; to apply so-called “design-thinking” to its whole structure and all its functions. In many cases, the designers’ role is described quite elusively as “service design” or as a source of unspecified but strategic problem-solving capability.
While many designers will cheer at this new recognition of their deep strategic value, the dislocation of design from patently designed things – from publications, presentations, products and so on – does make design hard to explain.
Is embedded or holistic service design new, or a new name for something that designers have always done for organisations? Along with embedded anthropology and artists-in-residence it is fashionable, but has the interest in embedding design happened for specific social, political or economic reasons? If it has, what are they? How likely is it to stay with us as the wind changes?
In practical terms, what is the job description for an in-house designer with a holistic brief? How does an organisation intent on embedding design go about recruiting designers? How is the effectiveness of staff designers paid for their holistic view to be measured? How does the design of services, structures and strategy respond to cost-benefit analysis? How is the language barrier between designers and other specialists to be overcome? How are creativity and innovation to be managed within large and often cautious or risk-averse organisations?
RSA Design & Society has organised a small, expert seminar to discuss all of this in a couple of weeks, conceived with the National Policing Improvement Agency as part of their bold investigation into the best strategic uses of design by organisations seeking improvement and innovation.
We’ve got Lynne Maher from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement on the language issue; Tony Coultas of Skills Development Scotland and Ben Reason of live/work doing point-and-counterpoint on the virtues of in-house teams and external consultancy; Lucy Kimbell from the Said Business School at Oxford drawing analogies with artists-in-residence; and Simon Roberts of Intel and the Ideas Bazaar on embedded anthropology and social science.
Look out for the transcript of what looks to be a fascinating conversation, dowloadable from the Design & Society pages of the RSA website at the end of May.
Long live the in-house team
18 December 2008: I’ve just returned from an overnight trip to the Netherlands where I and other international guests were generously dined by Aldermen of the City of the Hague at the launch of Design den Haag 2010-2018. This ambitious project, subtitled Design and Governance, aims to deliver a report and recommendations to the European Commission in 2018 for its role in the use and commissioning of design. This by means of biennial partnerships with five European cities – Berlin, Stockholm, Rome, London and Paris. London is scheduled for 2016. The objectives are put forth with his usual combination of thoughtfulness and bravura by the wonderful Ed Annink, coalescing as an ambition to “give direction” to the multiple and collective creative ability in Europe.
From my perspective, the difficulty of the concept is that it is all framed in the context of cultural policy. The appendix pertaining to cultural policy in the UK is a history of the Arts Council. When at first I was puzzled by this very one-sided view of design as part of cultural policy – here design is fostered much more vigorously by protagonists of the innovation and creative industries agenda – I realise that for the Dutch, as Simon Schama described at glorious length in The Embarassment of Riches, the concept of culture is stretchy enough to have economic implications, and economy includes the wealth that is culture. Some Brits might argue that, but the Dutch seem to know it deeply.
As if I needed persuading of the potentially beautiful alliance of design and governance, we were treated to a visit to the Museum of Communication, once the PTT Museum. Graphic design enthusiasts will know that the PTT organised from the 1920s until the early 90s the most sustained public design programme the world has known. A testament to that almost extinct concept of the in-house design team, where the sense of the values of design are shared beyond designers to the wider community on the payroll. Apple and the Guardian are the outstanding teams bucking the trend. Penguin comes and goes, London Underground regularly reassures me.
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