11 Stories about Canadian Design
So as our neighbors to the south prepare for an onslaught of turkey and cranberries, I’ve started thinking about design in Canada, prompted by a Twitter chat with Nora Young, host of CBC’s Spark.
In 2007, Nora ran a two part series on design on Canada’s heavyweight thinking show IDEAS. Called By Design: The Politics of Everyday Objects, the series focused on the design of everyday things (think Don Norman and Henry Petroski).
I pinged Nora about the possibility of a sequel that focused on design thinking and innovation. She’s slammed, but asked for suggestions for covering Candian design on Spark. Feeling cramped by Twitter’s 140 character limit, I decided I’d collect my thoughts here.
DISCLAIMER: This is not at all comprehensive, and there are many other people who have a broader perspective and are connected to more Canadian design communities than I am. But here’s my $0.02 for what it’s worth. I’d love to hear your comments or your own blog posts about Canadian design and where we should pay attention.
First, some articles of faith that underly any really interesting conversations about design for me:
- Design has moved beyond form and function. But people still equate design with style, because that’s what they can see.
- Problem solving and Framing are foundations for strategic design investments (see Design Maturity (pdf)
- Design and innovation are significant areas to drive growth, diversify the economy, and combat recession. But our national design and innovation policies focus on 1) technology and 2) traditional designers creating graphics and products, instead of systems and services. This is unlikely to change, since we’re even worse off than the US, which held a recent National Design Policy session without folks like the Interaction Design Association and IA Institute who represent an important perspective on interactive products and services.
There are multiple angles (and multiple stories) for Design in Canada. Here’s some quick snippets.
- Famous Canadian Designers - Rashid / Mau / Cardinal / etc. - I think this is in some ways the easiest, but also the least interesting, because they already get a lot of press. Do they really need more? More importantly, do Canadian listeners?
- The rise of a new kind of design and design thinking in Canada. “Moving Beyond Form and Function” Roger Martin is reshaping business education at Rotman. OCAD is creating some great new programs. ACAD launched the Institute for the Creative Process. This may be too abstract for a brief segment on a show like Spark, and was my original suggestion for a more in-depth treatment on IDEAS.
- More concrete - the emergence of Service Design. Except I don’t think we’ve seen service design really emerge in Canada yet. Are there any established practices that are based in Canada?
- Also concrete, with substance to make a Canadian angle - the emergence of interaction design/experience design. Ron Wakkary is doing interesting things at SFU. Bill Buxton is now at Microsoft, but spends a lot of time in Toronto. The Interaction09 conference runs in Vancouver in February. There’s a healthy local community in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa with growing numbers in Montreal, Calgary, and Edmonton. Firms like mine regularly work with the Fortune 500 as well as improving the expereience for national and regional public sector websites and services.
- The Quiet Rock Stars of Canadian Design - There are Canadians who have done a lot to shape the global design conversation. Dave Shea, Derek Featherstone, Gene Smith*, Michael Dila, Idris Mootee, Matthew Milan, David Crow, Jon Lax and a bunch of others. I’m not tuned into the industrial designor gaming crowds in Canada, but there’s lots going on there too. * disclosure: Gene is my business partner.
- The Design Drain - there’s plenty of Canadians who make a big contribution to design but don’t live in Canada anymore - from better known folks like Lane Becker, GK van Patter, Steve Portigal to lesser known people like Bryce Johnson, recently moved to Seattle to take a job with Microsoft. UPDATE: I think there’s a negative connotation to drain, and maybe should think of another title - like Expat Design. I’m *glad* Steve and Lane and GK and Bryce are where they are, since they contribute back to the Canadian community along with the global design conversation.
- Design Super Stars - instead of focusing on personalities, focus on products and services designed in Canada. RIM and the BlackBerry. Flickr. Games at Bioware/EA Vancouver. Freshbooks. Wild Apricot. Four Seasons. MEC. Lulu Lemon. Tried but true approach, and I like that it avoids the cult of personality established by Rashid et. al. Could easily be a short segment in regular rotation on shows ranging from Spark to Q.
- Design Failures - one Toroto company hired the famed team at IDEO and invested a ton of money only to launch a product that flopped. I’m not privy to the details, but it’s an interesting direction. Design is not a silver bullet. Maybe not the story to start with in renewed coverage of design…but I like pulling back the curtain on the design hagiography crafted by firms and a press that loves to create a hero myth.
- The Design Deficit - to follow that thought, why are Canadian companies hiring US firms for innovation and design consulting? Do we not have the talent? Or is it the thought that expertise is a function of distance? Funny story on that - at a 2005 library conference in Edmonton, one of the attendees commented that the organizers were very forward thinking to fly in Gene Smith, who publicized the term ‘folksonomy’. It’s true that Gene is a great speaker and sparked the folksonomy conversation that pushed a flurry of buzz about tagging. But he didn’t fly anywhere, since he’s local.
- Historical exposition of Canadian designs - dig into some of the things showcased at The Canadian Design Resource not just contemporary design.
- Designing Growth - look at the economic contributions and opportunities offered by design, both for innovation, growth, and opening up new areas like service design. Tuned to the economic uncertainty of today, growth in times of change is a challenge that can be met by design and innovation. This is the most timely of all the story ideas here. (See Richard Florida’s creative class riff, though he was just on CBC).
So there’s eleven ideas for covering design in Canada. I’m sure there’s lots of others, and apologies in advance for not mentioning people, products, or perspectives I should have…please let me know what I should add by dropping a comment here or posting a link to your own blog. And thanks Nora for the invitation to put in my 2 cents!
Dear Jess,
I just want to address your statement “This is unlikely to change, since we’re even worse off than the US, which held a recent National Design Policy session without folks like the Interaction Design Association and IA Institute who represent an important perspective on interactive products and services.”
Please note that both AIGA and UPA were invited to participate in the Summit. AIGA, in particular, has a large body of designers who work in the interactive space (including myself) and has government-related initiatives. Half of the ballots as part of the Design for Democracy initiative were interactive ballot interfaces, with which AIGA worked with UPA, STC, and NIST. AIGA co-sponsors the DUX conference and has one of the oldest interaction design listservs, AIGA Experience Design Yahoo group. While the interaction design community may not recognize it, UPA has had an extensive history dealing with issues of interaction design and plain language with the US government. It’s presidents have served of government standards crafting committees. It has seeked to introduce legislation.
So the perspectives of interaction design and user experience were well represented in the Summit. While not represented by the organizations that you belong to (assuming you belong to IxD and IAI), neither of these organizations have a history of government-related initiatives or projects, which was one of the criteria for selection. The purpose of the Summit was to craft government policy, not provide a forum for design groups to get together, that will come later as one of the results of the Summit. They will be invited to those forums, but based on their lack of history of government engagement, inviting them to such an intentionally small gathering was not possible, and again the perspectives of interaction design were present in the room (even with the presence of myself).
Thanks,
Dori
Dori,
Many thanks for your response! I’m well aware of AIGA and UPA’s efforts in the interactive space (I chaired a panel at the first DUX, among other things). I suggest IxDA and IAI not because AIGA and UPA don’t have a perspective on interaction, but that interaction and information architecture are so central to national design policy that additional perspective is important and helpful. While the organizations themselves have not been involved in government policy, many individuals have and I look forward to their inclusion in the broader efforts you are engaged in.
In the bigger picture, while I think it’s great that there are national design policy initiatives taking place, I don’t see that policy deeply shaping US (or Canadian) political understanding of innovation in the same way as with the UK’s Design Council or other European policy efforts. Hopefully your work will lay the foundations for that progression in the States.
Jess - contributing to a brain drain while not being shameful can be challenging to ones peers. At that time (mid 90s), some people were critical of me, since I attended government subsidized education, and now was taking that with me to another country.
I say more about the process I went through at http://www.portigal.com/blog/disciplinarity-and-rigour-my-keynote-from-design-research-society-conference/
Especially (as I go into in that presentation) as I straddled a number of different disciplines and professions (computer scientist? usability tester?) in trying to find my way professionally, I just didn’t have options in Canada. There was no “design” in “UI” at that point and certainly no “applied contextual research” - my way in was very technical and I had trouble finding anyone in Toronto, or Ottawa, or Milton, or Oakville, or Hamilton to give me a break so I headed to Silicon Valley where there was a much more forward looking and thriving scene around working with users and technology. But I still had a hard time finding anyone in Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Ramon, San Francisco, Redmond, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, or Cupertino who would give me a break.
I often wonder what would have happened to me if I had taken that ludicrous job that Northern Telecom had offered me - to be a physical yet junior embodiment of two different functions in the organization that were dysfunctionally not talking to each other…would I have ended up moving to Kanata and joining the soon to be world-class design organization they were building? Years later I have met tons of folks who have come out of that group, but what trajectory might I have found? Or would I be still sitting in a grey cube, dealing with meetings, managers, reports, and trying damn hard to keep my job through rounds of layoffs.
I only became a US citizen a few months ago, finally accepting that my brain is fully drained and this is indeed my home. While for years people have asked if I was going back, I never had any clear vision of doing so; never really understanding what professional options were available to me that could match what I have in California. I haven’t ever explored it fully, but it also hasn’t seemed obvious for me.
Sorry if this is too confessional or too Steve-centric; just thought I’d offer a bit of backstory.
Like I said before, I love Steve-centric and appreciate the backstory. I think I have mixed feelings about the opportunities here in Canada. I can’t conceive of a practice like yours outside of Toronto or Vancouver, and even then I’d expect significant travel. The Bay Area still offers a density of opportunity that isn’t found north of the border.
And, a technical thank you as you waded through the hurdles to get that comment posted, and apologies for the continued bad behavior of my comment spam protection…working on it.
Jess: The change related challenges facing the business community and the design community in Canada tend to transcend individual stories however fascinating they might be. :-)
Canada, like many other countries is facing considerable challenges that are being driven to a significant degree by the forces of globalization. Many countries around the world have for some time been grappling with how to adapt to and respond to those forces that continue to sweep the planet and in particular the business communities.
In order to consider in a meaningful way how innovation, how design might play a role in helping countries, regions, cities, organizations meet such challenges and or how governments might support design initiatives and their design communities it is useful to first have a meaningful conversation about the concurrently active states of design as a community of change making forces.
In most countries this is difficult to do since “design” is a broad term being co-opted by many, that can mean many different things. To add to the complexity, many engaged in such conversations today are in government with no design backgrounds. In such conversations there is often an orientation towards being supportive but in equal measure there is often a significant lack of understanding regarding what design is today and what its connection is to innovation. Conversations about design tend to deteriorate rapidly or go around in circles without some kind of SenseMaking framework applicable to the so-called post-discipline era that is now here where navigating by discipline tags alone is no longer very meaningful.
This is not the forum to go into this subject in detail however we would be happy to show you (and or Nora Young) how we engage and help others engage in such conversations in a SenseMaking way.
In our advisory board work with OCAD regarding the creation of the new graduate Foresight & Innovation Program in Toronto the very first thing we suggested was to look at what they had historically been doing, what they had in mind and what others in the global arena were doing through a set of SenseMaking lenses that looks at design not by discipline but rather by the types and scale of challenges being addressed. View through such lenses tends to refocus the conversation rapidly.
In many countries around the world community leaders have already recognized that many of the challenges facing them cannot be solved by creating more consumer products and services. From India to Denmark, to Spain to Canada this realization has been unfolding for some time. Looking out into their communities everyday citizens and community leaders can see quite clearly that creating another product, however human-centered it might be, is often a solution to a problem that they do not have. In spite of this a chasing the next iPod orientation still dominates most high profile graduate design schools in the US. What is occurring in real life is considerably more complicated. It is no secret that typically our societies, our communities, our organizations face a vast diversity of challenges not just those related to products and services. Why then would we seek to confine design to such a limited roll? In whose interest would it be to contain design?
The good news is that design is no longer object bound. There is a new generation of design firms and designers already operating outside of that narrow interpretation of what design is and does. Globally there is a rising chorus of designers who have little interest in the chasing the next iPod game.
To a significant degree this community realization and reorientation has been occurring outside of and out in front of the realizations projected in the American based new business press. Unless you have been reading the American new business press or the Rotman newsletter you would likely already know that the product centric (Design 2.0) orientation is not the future of design and has not been for quite some time. The global design community has long since moved on while the new business press, particularly in the US has in large part not. Don’t get confused by that picture.
Today the most interesting heat being generated in the marketplace is coming from the realization that where leading design firms are already operating is where the new business school leaders seek to build their own domain expertise as part of their recent discovery of the “creative age”. With considerable support from the new business press several business schools are hard at work reinventing themselves in the direction of seeking to own or at least dominate the strategic design innovation space as it relates to the realm of organizations. For example one Canadian business school that only recently discovered the “creative age” sought copyright of the term “business design.” In a hyper competitive global arena where boundaries between academia and consulting practice continue to blur some pretty silly stuff is going on out there. The design community has been slow to process the implications of such maneuvers. Suffice it to say that working with the leftovers will not make for a design revolution in Canada.
The good news is that those who have been actively promoting product design as the future of design have already been superceded by the events unfolding in the rapidly moving marketplace. Those who have been positioning strategy, organizational change, innovation and “design thinking” as domains most suited to and dominated by the newly repositioned business schools have also been superceded by the realities unfolding in the marketplace.
While all of this creates spicy marketplace dynamics more importantly for this conversation is the realization that such a mess represents numerous serious challenges for awakened design community leaders and awakened design education leaders in Canada. In that mix any insightful journalist could find an avalanche of authentic untold stories to write about…what is really going on?…what is not going on and why?
For the design community in Canada the fundamental opportunity is to create its own path to the future. Walking the walk of American-centric Design 2.0, keeping designers in that pigeon hole, will not make a Canadian design revolution.
In creating such a path it is going to be necessary to not only recognize globalization forces impacting local organizations in Canada and the design community itself but also to get outside the dominate framing, tone (Navigating Hostile Territory), and logic coming from and being driven by the American-centric Design 2.0 camp and its numerous strategic entanglements.
Needless to say it will take some foresight, stepping up and courage on the part of the Canadian design community to get outside that now dominant picture. Design communities in other countries are already doing so and I have no doubt that the Canadian design community has the capability to create its own path to the future as well. Whether it can create a Canadian design revolution is a question for another day and another forum. Go Canada!
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GK VanPatter
Founding Editor
NextD Journal
Strategic Design Perspectives
NextD
Design is changing! Are YOU?
http://nextd.org
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Co-Founder
RETHINK THE THINK
Humantific
NEW YORK / MADRID
http://www.humantific.com
GK, thanks for the very thoughtful response. I completely agree about sensemaking and the different aspects of design - that’s what motivated my rough design maturity model (pdf) The model suggests design as an unconscious effort, as style, as form & function, as problem solving, and as framing. I’d be fascinated to see what you and Elizabeth are doing in that regard.
As far as OCAD, the Foresight & Innovation program, the new Strategic Innovation Lab that launched today with Michael Dila and others’ efforts, and the upcoming Mobile Experience Innovation Centre are all really interesting. Definitely lots going on there. At Rotman too, misguided trademarks aside.
And I think there’s many stories to tell - some of which will be deeper or more profound than others, but most of them raising design literacy even if it is just profiling an individual designer who doesn’t fit the popular conception.
Thanks again for taking the time…I’d love to talk more with you about this.
Hi Jess,
and thanks not only for this very enlightening posting, but as well for your recently increased posting activities; highly appreciated!
While I’m still digesting the thougthful responses you’ve received from smart colleagues above in the context of your ‘design maturity model’ I’d simply want to point you to a short report/posting (http://bit.ly/JtDo) about a recent workshop week I’ve done in Switzerland and a framework we’ve used in order to make students aware of the different layers design is addressing (Flickr!: http://bit.ly/11gNl) according to our view.
Hope you find it useful and maybe even inspiring as well (in conjunction with the according blog post)?!
Keep up the good blogging,
Ralf.
Sorry for the late reply sir. I’ll keep it brief.
I will agree that the US looks really good for opportunity, but that does not mean Canada is dry either. We are world leaders in many areas.
You’re right, we have a lot of great people and a lot of cool stuff going on. Historically, we are known as innovators. There is something that makes us different and I’ve worked with people from other countries that keep saying “those Canadians can do some really great stuff.”
We see more of it in the US. There are 10 times as many people and 10 times more opportunity. Doesn’t mean they’re better.
There is a lot of cool stuff going on, it’s just a small number of people that tune into it. Zenn Cars for example. Also, remember the CF-105 Arrow?
There are sometimes things that we don’t get right either, like the concrete barrier on Toronto’s waterfront and the 401 through Milton, ON.
FWIW, most of my neighbours drink Lakeport beer and love a Tim Horton’s double double.