Design Management Journal最新文献

The purpose of this article is to report on an ongoing suite of research that aims to develop a design-led approach to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) understand their innovation readiness. At present, a number of tools are available to organizations when carrying out an audit to determine their innovation readiness; however, none of these methodologies have been connected to the practice of design-led innovation. This article begins to address this gap by presenting a review of a 12-hour intervention carried out in collaboration with a fund-management organization located in northeast England as part of a European Union–funded research and innovation program, Creative Fuse. The article utilizes a qualitative approach guided by case study principles, semi-structured interviews, and action research to reflect on the proposed design-led approach to assessing innovation readiness. Advantages and challenges to the approach are considered with the intention of developing a practical approach to assessing innovation readiness within SMEs, which builds on design principles in order to rapidly outline the opportunities and potential barriers facing organizations when it comes to identifying areas for future innovation.

This article focuses on a specific form of collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners: co-design. Generally, the strategic use of co-design is considered to be beneficial because, among other reasons, it better aligns outcomes to user needs. In addition, active stakeholder participation engenders new network developments and strengthens existing links. Despite this, the extent to which the co-design approach could be used to foster new knowledge and/or practices is hardly explored. Thus, our research applied co-design methods to organizational practices and examined how they may bring about benefits for academic researchers and practitioners collaborating in the context of not-for-profit organizations. According to our findings, all stakeholders considered co-design to be useful, as it helped them achieve desirable outcomes in a more inclusive and collaborative manner. The findings confirmed a number of benefits, among them confidence building. The size of organizations did not appear to affect the process or the outcomes. While most knowledge co-created through these types of projects tends to be practical in nature, new theoretical knowledge was generated through critical examination of the process/results as well as through individual/group reflection. We consider this aspect to be particularly useful for other researchers and practitioners interested in applying co-design principles to the not-for-profit sector.

Why is it so hard to interact with government services? The public sector has become citizen centered in designing and collaborating with the community to improve service. Even though governments invest in efforts to ensure public administration is aligned with the needs of the community, services still fail to meet the standards provided by equivalent private-sector organizations. Citizen experiences fall short of expectations due to inadequate performance evaluation for the delivery of integrated and well-designed services. Public-sector performance measures must assess and include the impact that services have on citizens. This article describes the extension and further development of the Experience Effectiveness (XE) Measurement Framework. If properly utilized, public-sector organizations can implement the framework to evaluate the effectiveness of citizen experiences based on human-centered, universal, and systems-thinking heuristics. Through a multiphase mixed-method design, we test the XE Framework and its operational development with two projects in the Innovation Lab for the Canadian Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. The case studies demonstrate that the XE Framework clearly differentiates the quality of the experience and identifies areas for improvement. Results also indicate that the bureaucracy distorted the creation and delivery of the service citizens received. Organizational culture, climate, structures, and values significantly shape the outcome and provision of government services, which raises further questions about design and innovation in public administration and the role of accountability.

This article investigates the influence of product design practices on new service development processes of manufacturers that are moving toward service provision using a multiple case study conducted with four companies. Technological developments, a competitive business environment, and diverse customer demands have forced manufacturing firms to pursue growth strategies through new service development. On the other hand, studies on design, particularly the interplay between product design and new service development processes, in this shift are scant. This is significant because a manufacturer's transition from only selling products toward delivering services requires the simultaneous management of practices that reflect their histories of product design and processes that comprise service design and development. As a result of the analysis, three themes emerged regarding the influence of product design practices on new service development within the context of manufacturing: (1) accumulation of product design expertise, (2) increased customer loyalty through high-quality products, and (3) design problems as tools for fostering innovation culture. Each theme is thoroughly discussed with examples from the case study companies. Consequently, this article highlights the interplay between product and service design processes and provides insights on how established product design practices would assist a manufacturer in service provision.

Customer experience (CX) is a differentiation strategy often chosen by companies. But several aspects can hinder the realization of this strategic change: Existing routines, strong silo thinking among departments, and other circumstances work against the creation of a holistic CX. There is very little guidance in the literature about becoming more customer centric in practice. Within design practice, customer-centric thinking and working are key aspects. Therefore, this article addresses the question of how a design approach can facilitate a company's change process from the abstract strategic direction of focusing on CX to a way of working in practice. The article is based on a practice-led case study of an airline company where the first author worked from within the company to test solutions directly in daily practice. We conclude that in order to move from the strategic direction of a CX focus to an applicable proposal, designers can support both top-down and bottom-up processes. A trial-and-error approach and boundary objects can be useful in finding emotional triggers for employees to reflect about their own roles.

If research findings remain unknown, they are unlikely to improve design processes and outcomes. While design scholars have lamented the lack of research utilization by practitioners, some designers have derided their efforts. While scholars have outlined strategies to decrease the research utilization gap, these are largely one-sided suggestions and have lacked widespread implementation and testing. As such, a great deal of information likely remains out of the hands of those who could use it when making decisions that have real-world implications. To determine a common understanding and collective direction surrounding design research utilization, this article synthesizes existing literature from social science, business, and information management, along with relevant findings from two national surveys. Using this evidence, this article proposes a model framed by economics and aimed at decreasing the research utilization gap prevalent in design. It calls for action on the part of both research producers and consumers and highlights specific issues, including topic selection, information translation, dissemination efforts, increasing awareness, value identification, and factors of action. The goal is for all parts of the design community to share in the responsibility for informing each other, thus growing our collective knowledge.

This article provides a case study of a UK university working in close partnership with Parker Hannifin Corporation (PH), a Fortune 500 U.S. manufacturing company, to develop new innovation practices. We discuss how industrial design has been introduced as an in-house function to one of the company's divisional headquarters, in Gateshead, UK, through a collaborative research partnership over three years. Case material from four projects is presented, which illustrates a progressive, negotiated adoption by the company of the capabilities of industrial design as an essential component of a customer-centric innovation approach. It has involved developing the organization's own confidence about the value and fit of industrial design through a series of projects and regular reflection on what is working well and not so well and what is raising concerns. The approach described provides an alternative to attempting to develop and implement a preformulated grand plan for design.