Concept Design - How to Solve Complex Challenges of Our Time - A Book Review
Back in 2007, when we were participating the Index Award conference in Copenhagen (as Ville was nominated for the award), we got this fascinating book in our hands called Concept Design – How to Solve Complex Challenges of Our Time [August 2007, published by FORA, the Danish Authority for Enterprise and Construction’s division for Research and Analysis].
Concept Design is defined as an approach that "combines the competences of business, design and social sciences and lays in the intersection of these three areas of innovation". This holistic and systemic problem solving model has since followed us and it has proved to be an effective framework for interdisciplinary design practice where social sciences and socio-cultural knowledge are successfully applied to basically any innovation process, strategy or project, to tackle the wicked problems out there.
The big takeaway is that in our incresingly complex world it's becoming a prerequisite for successful designs, products or services to pay close attention to all three key aspects of innovation – culture, design and business – when defining the problems and creating the solutions.
Below is a digest of the key points:
Why Concept Design is needed
"Today’s companies are seeking answers to the question “what?”. What should companies focus on? What problems should the companies’ innovation solve? In the past companies wanted answers to the question “how?”. How do we develop a new product? How should it be designed? How should it be marketed, and how should the company be organised to achieve the best solution?
When companies seek advice and answers to how questions they can turn to consulting engineers, designers, advertising agencies or management consultants. Until recently, this has provided a reasonably clear division of labour between different consulting offerings.
In terms of answering questions related to what a company should innovate and produce, companies haven't had an obvious place to go. For that purpose consulting engineers, design companies, advertising agencies and management consultants could all be involved. However, none of these companies are single-handedly able to answer the question “what”. Hence, we are witnessing industry break-up and gliding."
Key competencies required for Concept Design
"A new concept is a solution to a problem that has not yet been solved or which so far has been solved in an unsatisfactory way. A concept can be a single product, a single service, or a combination of different products and services. New technology can be an important part of a new concept, but a concept can also be created by making surprising new solutions based on well-known technologies or non-technological knowledge.
Creating new concepts and carrying out concept design require at least three different competences that must be combined in a new and untraditional way. The required competences are business, design, and social science.
Business competences are necessary for identifying the validity of the concept in the market as well as potential consequences for the company’s business model. Social science competences are necessary to interpret cultural trends, to observe user behaviour and to uncover user needs. Design competences are important when transforming new knowledge on user and market needs into functional and aesthetic products or services.
A successful concept can be measured on several parameters. For example, on whether the solution is a business success or if it solves social or environmental challenges. Successful concepts are not necessarily based solely on their functional characteristics. The experience of the solution can also provide the concept with its primary value."
Model for Concept Design work
"Concept design work is abstract, strategic and multidisciplinary in contrast to the entirely traditional design solution which is often concrete, non-strategic and non-multidisciplinary. Therefore there are 3 dimensions to the model: Abstract – Concrete, Strategic – Non-strategic, and Multidisciplinary – Non-multidisciplinary (image below).
Concept Design proposes a very broad approach to problems solving: What should the company work with in the future, and how can it meet future societal and cultural challenges of which one can only see a glimpse of today? In other words a very abstract approach to a problem. The work is also strategic as it must always relate itself to the company’s business strategy. And the work is multidisciplinary in that it requires at least 3 competences: business, social science and design."
Three different types of Concept Design companies
"Based on the concept design model, 3 concept design company archetypes can be established, each based on its own business strategy type: a) holistic concept design company, b) design-expert concept design company, and c) strategic concept design company.
For the holistic concept design company it is crucial to work across the entire model ranging from top right-hand corner to lower left-hand corner. The design-expert concept design company focuses on solving traditional design challenges on a very high level, but when it is deemed relevant, the design-expert concept design company will also make the client aware of the opportunities inherent in concept design. The strategic concept design company emphasises concept design and does not necessarily possess the competences to work with concrete design solutions. In most cases, the strategic concept design company leaves it to others to create concrete design solutions, instead concentrating on the development of new concept solutions."
You can download the Concept Design book from the FORA’s site. Highly recommended.
The post was originally published on the Endless Curiosity blog.