DESIGN feature RESWEDISH DESIGN RESEARCHSEARCH JOURNAL SVID, SWEDISH INDUSTRIAL DESIGN FOUNDATION #2.13 FOCUS: DESTINATION Borås shows the way REDESIGNING THE KINGDOM OF CRYSTAL A POWERFUL PATRON SWEDISH DESIGN RESEARCH PubLISHER RESPONSIBLE UNDER SWEDISH DESIGN RESEARCH JOURNAL IS PUBLISHED BY SWEDISH PREss LAW JOURNAL covers research on SWEDIreportageSH INDUSTRIAL DESIGN Robin Edman, CEO SVID design, research for design and FOUNDATION (SVID) research through design. The EDITORIAL STAFF Address: Sveavägen 34 Eva-Karin Anderman, editor, SVID, magazine publishes research-based SE-111 34 Stockholm, Sweden [email protected] articles that explore how design Susanne Helgeson Telephone: +46 (0)8 406 84 40 can contribute to the sustainable [email protected] Fax: +46 (0)8 661 20 35 Lotta Jonson, development of industry, the public E-mail: [email protected] sector and society. The articles are RESEARCH EDITor: [email protected] Lisbeth Svengren Holm, original to the journal or previously COVER: www.svid.se [email protected] published. All research articles are Workshop in ”Glasriket” Printers: TGM Sthlm assessed by an academic editorial Fenela Childs translated (The Kingdom of Crystal). ISSN 2000-964X the editorial sections. committee prior to publication. Photo: Conny Olander NB! From now on, the research section of Design Research Journal will be published in electronic form by Linköping University Electronic Press. All research articles published from 2009 and onwards will also be available from the beginning of 2014. See www.ep.liu.se. CONTENTS Borås – a magnet for more than fashion fans 4 A visit to the new Swedish School of Textiles in the centre of Borås. Destination design: Regional makeovers 9 Sweden’s famed glassmaking region needs some new ideas. Design and destination – how do they fit together? 20 Four questions to five designers and/or design reseachers. A powerful patron 24 How to increase design research funding: the first article in a series. Three design researchers hope for more challenges 27 What happens after the thesis? Interview with three design researchers. Design is a dynamic process 31 Introduction by Lisbeth Svengren Holm. Effective approaches for innovation support for SMEs 32 Julian Malins & Melehant Nil Gulari Arguing for design thinking interventions … 40 Ulla Johansson Sköldberg & Francesca Jill Woodilla Co-Design: Fundamental issues and guidelines for designers … 48 Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe & Dee Hennessy The Encyclopedia Hands: From design thinking to design making 58 Karin Havemose Books, News Items, Conferences 65 Commentary: Design for democracy and public policy information 71 Sara Modig of ModigMinoz AB, previously a project manager of Sweden’s national innovation strategy. 2 Swedish Design Research Journal 2 | 13 editorial Challenges contain opportunities esign is a creative work process that starts in the present but is also about the future. The starting point is actually the future users. Working with Ddesign linked to a destination – a city, a society, a region, one end of the country, a Kingdom of Crystal – is about designing and developing attractive places where people want to live and work or visit. Now and in the future. History – that collection of experiences and knowledge – can form the founda- NDÉN-WELDEN tion of a design process and also help to formulate needs that today’s users cannot U express themselves. LINE L Over the past year we have worked with a programme focusing on design and RO : CA O destination in the Kingdom of Crystal region in southern Sweden. How can the T Kingdom of Crystal be developed with the help of design? We have travelled around PHO Eva-Karin Anderman, the region and met with municipal politicians, residents and design students. At Program Director, Swedish a recent lunch discussion one of the design students said he had not known much Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) about the Kingdom of Glass, that he had not had any relationship with it. But he had now been shown photographs and heard stories about the past, when the small glassworks were filled with people and the large ones were the major employers. His view – both of the present and of the future – had suddenly been changed. We have a joint responsibility to show today’s young people the tradition, history, expertise and experience that are the heritage of the Kingdom of Crystal and other crisis-hit regions. But we also have a responsibility to show what fantastic future scenarios history can contribute to. True, changes can involve a large employer being replaced by many small ones. Or that the knowledge used in the past to produce household utility wares will tomorrow help to develop and produce smart glass for public spaces or buildings. In this issue you can read, among other things, about how Borås, which despite (or perhaps thanks to) major structural changes, continues to be a city which pulsates with design, creativity and strong links to the industry that once existed there. Though now in a completely new guise. In conjunction with doing the design programme for the Kingdom of Glass, SVID has also implemented an process like the one we did to develop the strategic research and innovation agenda we described in the previous issue of Design Research Journal. One of the methods we used in our process was to ask the people we met to step five years into the future for a moment and describe an experience they then had in the Kingdom of Glass. And then to write it down on a postcard addressed to someone they like. After having read all the postcards we received, I fully believe in the future of the Kingdom of Glass. And that this future will contain splendid stories that are worth telling, experiencing and creating. The challenges also contain the opportunities. Eva-Karin Anderman Swedish Design Research Journal 2 | 13 3 feature Borås – a magnet for more than fashion fans Borås is currently a shining destination star on Sweden’s design map. Longing gazes are turned towards the city in Västra Götaland County inland from Göteborg. Just two decades ago Borås was in acute crisis as a result of its dying textile industry. How was that negative trend turned around? How was the textile industry turned into a resource? What does Borås have that other places don’t? To be a recognised centre of design Borås were working in the textile and early on, lost the struggle? it is not necessary to have a big-city clothing industry. But times changed, “Business. The ability to make location. Borås is living proof of and the 1970s saw the first shipment deals. Borås had invested not only in that. However, many other factors of machinery from the Borås factories making textiles but also in making are necessary. The combination of being sent to manufacturers abroad. clothing and in the retail trade. This enthusiasm and decisiveness is probably Jan Carlsson witnessed the textile crisis meant that the companies here could needed in this context. In addition, from close at hand. continue to exist and develop, even many stakeholders – business leaders, “The clothing industry is a good though the production itself was politicians and people linked to various device for measuring a country’s stage somewhere else. But by itself this institutions – must be able to cooperate. of economic development, a cheap does not explain why Borås has now They must also have a history on which investment, and a good way to compete. become a design city ahead of others. they can jointly build. A textile industry was what third-world To explain that, we have to look at “To understand what’s happening countries could start up first. And additional factors. Above all, three today we have to look back in Sweden was one of the first countries important components are necessary time. Go back to the beginning of willing to sacrifice its own industry to for a place to develop as Borås has industrialisation – yes, even further,” gain cheaper imported clothes,” he says done.” says Jan Carlsson, a textile engineer cynically. Those factors, Carlsson says, are: with 40 years in the industry and “I remember how a congress of the ability to manage production, currently coordinator at the Swedish the Swedish Cooperative Union in the knowledge of the market and the School of Textiles. 1970s attempted to rescue the textile ability to do business, and good design industry by deciding that it should – that is, awareness of quality and TRAVELLING SALESMEN focus on producing a basic wardrobe style. Awareness of the city’s cultural It was trade that made Borås the hub of for people. It was actually a success. I heritage (and residents’ sense of being its region. As early as the 16th century, worked at a company called Lapidus rooted in it) has allowed the first two farmers stretched their incomes by then, and we supplied 250,000 garments conditions to be met. The Swedish wandering around and selling their per year for a while. True, some of them School of Textiles’ development into a handiwork. Later, that handiwork also were made in Finland, but still.” knowledge-intensive and trendy hotspot included textiles made on the farms. So how did Borås manage to survive has allowed the third to also establish a Sweden’s first weaving mill was founded the textile industry crisis despite the secure footing. in Borås in the mid-19th century. The bad odds? Whereas its competitor, the textile industry grew and in the 1960s city of Norrköping, which had also had An IntEREstING DOORstoPPER two-thirds of all industrial workers in a thriving textile industry from very The story of how the Swedish School of 4 Swedish Design Research Journal 2 | 13 feature N SO N JO TTA TTA LO : O T O PH The Swedish School of Textiles at the University of Borås Textile education in Borås began in 1866 with the founding and fashion with the aim to “strengthen the CTF as an arena of the technical school of weaving (Tekniska Väfskolan).