Design Transitions

Inspiring Stories. Global Viewpoints. How Design is Changing

Authors: Joyce Yee, Emma Jefferies and Lauren Tan
Foreword by Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO

Design Transitions

Authors: Joyce Yee, Emma Jefferies and Lauren Tan
Foreword by Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO

Discover where design practice is today – and where it will take us in the future.
Design Transitions presents 42 unique and insightful stories of how design is changing around the world. Twelve countries are represented from the perspectives of three different communities: design agencies, organizations embedding design; and design academics.

Design Transitions takes you across the globe in search of the most innovative design practitioners, and their answers to the question ‘How are design practices changing?’ From small practices to vast corporations, the renowned to the lesser known: these are the stories of people working at the fringes of the traditional disciplines of design. They have opened up their design worlds to reveal the methods, tools and thinking behind their inspirational work. Some of the organizations and individuals featured includes: Droog, BERG, Fjord, thinkpublic, FutureGov, Hakuhodo Innovation Lab, DesignThinkers Group, INSITUM, Optimal Usability, frog Asia, Ziba, Banny Banerjee, Ezio Manzini, Carlos Teixeira and Adam Greenfield.

Design Transitions is divided into three sections:
Section I: Changing Practices features 25 stories from design practices in a range of disciplines.

Section II: New Territories features 5 organizations introducing and embedding design approaches into their core practice and operations.

Section III: Viewpoints features 12 interviews with leading design academics, offering additional insights and a critical perspective on the key themes that have emerged from our case studies and interviews.

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Book Sample

See a preview of the Design Transitions book.

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Book Sample

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How We Captured Stories

Read about our process to capture stories of how design practices are changing from around the world.

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All
Crowdsourced⁽²⁾
Discussions⁽¹⁾
Field Experience⁽²⁾
Workshops⁽¹⁾

Design Transitions Project WebsiteScreen Shot

Sharing stories as we went along

Crowdsourced

Idiom

Minas Gerais Office of Strategic Priorities

Field experience

Insitum

Discussion

DesignThinkers Group

Workshop

Buy the Book

Buy the book directly from BIS Publisher based in the Netherlands

Amazons around the world UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Japan

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Buy directly from the publisher site
BIS

Waterstones (UK)
Blackwells (UK)
Foyles (UK)

Authors

JOYCE YEE, PhD is a senior lecturer at UK's Northumbria University's Design School, teaching interaction, service and design methodologies across undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

EMMA JEFFERIES, PhD is an independent design consultant and founder of Design Doctors.

LAUREN TAN, PhD has worked as a designer in various capacities in graphic design, management consulting, service design and social design.

Authors

Joyce Yee

Joyce Yee, PhD

Joyce Yee

JOYCE YEE, PhD is a senior lecturer at UK’s Northumbria University’s Design School, teaching interaction, service and design methodologies across undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Joyce holds a Master of Arts in Visual Communication from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (UK) and was awarded a PhD in Design from Northumbria University. She has over 10 years working experience in a wide range of academic and professional environments as a graphic, interaction and service designer. Joyce has published regularly since 2003 and her research is bound by a common theme of exploring and identifying how designers develop and improve their own practice. Design Transitions enables Joyce to continue her interest in codifying the value and role of design beyond its current professional boundaries. More information on her research and design interests can be found at www.designdictator.com

Emma Jefferies

Emma Jefferies, PhD

Emma Jefferies

EMMA JEFFERIES, PhD is an independent design consultant and a dyslexic troublemaker. Her natural habitat is out in the wild, consulting with global innovation and design teams in places like South America, Asia and Europe to improve the way they innovate. Working under the name of The Design Doctors, she pulls together networks of great minds from academia and industry to support the further development of design’s role in the innovation space. She holds a Multimedia Design degree and an internationally award-winning Design PhD from Northumbria University, UK on enhancing visual practices. Emma’s dream is to create a new living global ecosystem, in which innovators and governments come together to explore, rethink and provide new local solutions to the challenges faced by people with dyslexia. More information on her activities can be found at www.emmajefferies.com

Lauren Tan

Lauren Tan, PhD

Lauren Tan

LAUREN TAN, PhD has worked as a designer in various capacities in graphic design, management consulting, service design and social design. She has more recently been involved in building design capabilities for innovation in not-for-profit organizations and in government. Lauren holds a Bachelor of Design Honours degree from the University of Technology Sydney and a Master of Business degree from the University of Sydney, Australia. In 2012 Lauren was awarded a PhD in Design from Northumbria University, UK. Her research investigated the Design Council’s Dott 07 (Designs of the Time 2007) design programme looking at the changing role of the designer. Design Transitions continues Lauren’s passion for observing, writing and sharing innovative uses of design in our complex world.

Reviews

John Thackara, Founder, Doors of Perception
"Transformation is easy to talk about but hard to do. The young firms in this lively book are reshaping design across the board - by doing it, not (just) by talking about it. It's a welcome and energising read."

Brenton Caffin (Director of Innovation Skills, Nesta and founding CEO, TACSI)
“Using design to address social challenges is now a truly global phenomenon. Important questions must be asked of design itself as the discipline seeks to make sense of its new role in the world. Design Transitions then is a timely and commendable resource.

Marc Stickdorn (Editor and Co-Author of "This is Service Design Thinking", Co-Founder of smaply and ExperienceFellow)
“I recommend this book to everyone working in the field of design, everyone with an interest in a new understanding of design, and everyone who is looking for examples that design is not (only) about aesthetics, but about a much broader picture.”

Reviews

“Transformation is easy to talk about but hard to do. The young firms in this lively book are reshaping design across the board – by doing it, not (just) by talking about it. It’s a welcome and energising read.” – John Thackara, Founder, Doors of Perception

“Using design to address social challenges is now a truly global phenomenon. Important questions must be asked of design itself as the discipline seeks to make sense of its new role in the world. Design Transitions then is a timely and commendable resource. – Brenton Caffin (Director of Innovation Skills, Nesta and founding CEO, TACSI)

“Design Transitions is an important snapshot of design’s new-found maturity and strategic importance. The collection of viewpoints from across the globe shows it is a worldwide and irreversible phenomenon. Highly recommend to anyone interested in understanding where design is heading in the next decade. And that should be everyone.”
– Dr Andrew Polaine (Co-author: Service Design: From Insight to Implementation)

“I recommend this book to everyone working in the field of design, everyone with an interest in a new understanding of design, and everyone who is looking for examples that design is not (only) about aesthetics, but about a much broader picture.”
– Marc Stickdorn (Editor and Co-Author of “This is Service Design Thinking“, Co-Founder of smaply and ExperienceFellow)

“This book looks at contemporary design practices, with a particular emphasis on service/social design, and current design thinking, based on profiles of companies and interviews with specialists. One of its many unique aspects is the truly global span that it achieves in terms of its research and analysis. It is also written in an accessible style while embracing a range of issues and developments. Design Transitions is an essential read for all students and practitioners of design.”
– Review by Professor Mike Press (Professor of Design Policy, DJCAD,Dundee University) on his blog

‘It is common for books of this sort to discuss issues on an abstract, utopian level. Design Transitions, however, tries to balance theory and everyday design practice, and it succeeds.’
– Review by Rosa Te Velde on the ‘What Design Can Do’ blog.

FutureGov asked their design team and their twitter network to respond to the 7 ways in which design practices are changing. For example, on the transition which highlights how designers are doing things differently – leading to a major shift in the business models of design practices, challenging the current economic and social paradigm, a comment made by Anna Cook, Design Strategist is ‘Because of the rate of change, our tech skills will become less important. Our adaptability, inquisitiveness, and creativity more so.’
– Review by Ben Matthews on the FutureGov blog.

The change DNA: design facilitates transition (and vice versa). In this post, Dounnia, a strategist working in Agentshap NL (a Dutch government agency advising on Sustainable environment and (energy) innovation) shares her reflection of the book launch in Hotel Droog, Amsterdam.
– Review by Dounia Ouchene on Faciliteer Atelier (In Dutch) (Translation in English using Google Translate)

Contributors

42 Incredible Stories | 30 Organizations | 12 Experts | 16 Countries | 6 Design Disciplines

Contributors

The book captures 42 stories from a range of contributors around the world. Here is the amazing list.
Droog / BERG / Superflux / PHUNK / Fjord / live|work Brazil / User Studio / WorkPlayExperience / thinkpublic / FutureGov / We Are What We Do / Snook / Uscreates / STBY / Hakuhodo Innovation Lab / DesignThinkers Group / Idiom / INSITUM / Optimal Usability / frog Asia / designaffairs Shanghai / Claro Partners / Asilia / Zilver Innovation / Ziba

Novabase / ISVOR / Radboud REshape / InWithFor & The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) / Minas Gerais Office of Strategic Priorities

Robert Young / Tom Inns / Banny Banerjee / Paul Rodgers / Mike Press / Lucy Kimbell / Carlos Teixeira / Ezio Manzini / Cameron Tonkinwise / Andrea Siodmok / Xin Xiangyang / Adam Greenfield

News

Press, events, and other information

Press Release, Press Images and Vimeo Channel
Download our Press Release and Press images (10mb folder) of the Design Transitions book. If you required further information, get in touch. Visit our Flickr site for images of our recent launch events in Amsterdam, London and Malaysia. We also have a Vimeo channel featuring videos of our talks and panel discussion relating to the book.

News about Design Transitions
Click on the 'READ MORE' button to read about where the book has been and where the book will be next. We have been invited to share our insights in different places in the past two years: Sydney, Bangkok, Oslo and Kuala Lumpur. The book has been on 'tour' across different countries, enabling us to have conversations with interesting and diverse set of audiences. We have also been interviewed for the Designer's Review of Books on our motivations and process of writing the book, been featured on the Design.nl and the What Design Can Do sites.

Design Transitions on Tour

Posted on April 27, 2015 in Events.

Over the last year or so, we have been talking to audiences about the book and using it to kick start conversations and generate new insights into some of the questions raised by the book. Here are the list of events and external links to write-ups of the events. These conversations have been key to helping us bring together a few ideas we’ve had on where our next focus should be. We will soon be announcing the focus of our next book soon!

Brave New Worlds – Findings from the Design Transitions presented to the Service Design and Innovation academic community at the ServDes Conference, 9-11th April, 2014. You can download our paper here.

Design Transitions in Oslo – Joyce were invited to present at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design’s (AHO) inaugural alumni event on the 5th of June, 2014. The event was a celebration of AHO’s past as well as looking forward to its future by inviting past alumni back to share their experiences. Joyce’s talk focused on the four trends for the future of design practice emerging from the book.

Design Transitions in Malaysia – KBU International College hosted a workshop and panel discussion ‘Design Transitions: Conversations on How Design is Changing’ in conjunction with their final year show for Graphic Design and Interior Architecture students on the 12th of July, 2014. Joyce hosted the panel discussions which included a range of well-established design practitioners in Malaysia: Asri Ahmad (Rifaie Chua Sethi), Farah Azizan & Adela Askandar (Studio Bikin), Eric Cruz (Leo Burnett), Joseph Foo (3nity), Kal Jofferies (Tandem Fund), Dr Nurul Rahman (Universiti Sains Malaysia), William Harald-Wong (William Harald-Wong & Associates).

Design Transitions launch in Sydney Design Transitions launch in Australia, Sydney , 11th November 2014. Hosted by Deloitte, Australia as part of the Design as Strategy series put on by Deloitte in partnership with Good Design. Lauren Tan hosted the discussion with special guest Chris Vanstone from TACSI. Here is a more detail write-up of the event by Meld Studio.

Design Transitions in Bangkok – Joyce was invited to share insights from the book at the Thai Centre for Design in Bangkok on the 12th of February 2014. She talked about how design is changing around the world and what it means for Thai designers. A Thai summary of the talk which can be translated into English using Google translate.

Drop us a line. Follow and contribute to how design is changing.

Follow us on twitter (@DesTransitions) or contact us directly (@jsheau, @dremmajefferies, @laurentan). Click on the 'READ MORE' button to send us an email. We have a Design Transitions Vimeo Channel featuring discussions and talks given during the two book launches in Amsterdam and London.

Design Transitions

Read

Book Sample

See

Sharing stories as we went along

Crowdsourced

Idiom

Minas Gerais Office of Strategic Priorities

Field experience

Insitum

Discussion

DesignThinkers Group

Workshop

Buy the Book

Authors

Joyce Yee

Emma Jefferies

Lauren Tan

Reviews

Contributors

Design Transitions on Tour

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