After 15 years of design research as a growing and now dominating force within the business of developing products and services of real value for the consumer, the question about what’s next is beginning to rise.

As the power and methods of design research is becoming known by everybody who wants be sure to make money in a world of ‘more products faster’, it is obvious that we all need to find the next tool or weapon in the battle to develop the next big thing, before the competition.

Here’s my bet, and I’ll be blogging a bit about that for a while, because I think it is explosive… Corporate Collective Creativity. With design research as a standard process we need to look for a new creative potential to release. We believe that potential could easily be the vast research and innovation resources that exists within every company – but that usually stays largely untapped due to a variety of organisational, psychological and even physical reasons.

Most senior designers have years of experience with being two things: design developers – and facilitators of processes that synthesizes the right framework for the innovation work. Almost always painfully ignorant to the specific project designers gather information from the market and from inside the client’s organisation … where they often find many of the answers already – inside the organisation, right under the client’s nose, usually, though, well hidden or just not actively seeking to become of value. Simply because the organization does not recognize the value or is able to facilitate it.

If the corporate world can learn to activate and cultivate the vast research and innovation resources inside their organisation, the speed and precision of development can be seriously increased. We believe they can learn that from us and our colleagues in the design business.

Feel inventy and collaborative today? If you have awesome ideas for innovative, eco-efficient products it’s time for action. While climate gurus debate a greener world in Copenhagen these weeks Quirky walks the talk. During the summit, you can submit your wildest, sustainable product ideas to the site – without the usual fee of 99 USD.

Or you can discuss or vote others’ eco-effective ideas closer to production. Even improve them to gain co-ownership. Unlike other community-based idea sites, such as Dell’s ideastorm or Starbucks’ mystarbucksidea Quirky shares profits with you if your product vision makes it to production. 12 cents in your pocket for every dollar your product makes.

So, what are you waiting for? Experience the power of co-creation and crowd-sourcing before you try it out in your own business.

The balance between efficiency and creativity doesn’t come easy. Creating a corporate innovation culture takes time, focus, and talent. Killing it doesn’t. Most companies know that by experience. Even the ones with lots of innovation mojo can loose it when creativity  is over-managed.

No doubt, creative processes can be optimised significantly by lean-thinking. Only problem is that creative processes – to some extent – are expected to produce unexpected output aka innovations or inventions.  So if you apply e.g. Six Sigma in the design lab, in the exact same way as in the logistics department or in manufacturing – what do you think will happen?

Business Week’s 3M’s Innovation Crisis makes some real good points on the art of managing innovation and creation – without loosing it. Worth spending a couple of minutes on.

We’ve developed a few iPhone apps since the AppStore opened July 2008. Just out of curiosity and for the fun of it. Our latest app is Fit to drive? –  designed to increase awareness of drinking and driving.

We’ve had a lot of debates too – also with sceptical clients that still consider iPhone and apps a passing trend – let’s wait and see if that lasts. No reason for iPhone optimised websites either. Hey, approximately 2/3 of total mobile surfing happens on an iPhone. Go to the café next door, ask two people – one with iPhone and one without – whether they have been online with their phone. The iPhone user will say yes, the other is likely to say no.

Our feeling is that it will not only last, but skyrocket. Apple currently dominates this new market because it created it. App-thinking defines the future for a lot of services delivered on mobile platforms. More than 2 billion apps  downloaded, turnover beyond EUR 2 billion and –  60 million iPhones sold according to TechCrunch. This tells us that those who still don’t believe in apps, better start believing.

What is more, if you add the numbers of iPod Touch sold, it becomes the fastest growing  hardware platform in consumer tech history. The iPhone, the apps and the unbeaten user experience of the iPhone have created a new opportunity space. Of course, leading today is not the same as leading tomorrow but it does make the other tech kings shudder.

Creating a successful app-store isn’t as easy. Google and NOKIA are trying hard. Apparently even the Danish AppStore grosses more in a single day than  Android Market in a year. What about Ovi?. Long way to go but together with Apple they’ll create a whole new category of on-line experiences.

Our point of view? iPhone or not, don’t miss the train – deliver your existing or new service via a mobile app. It’s key to your future.

Robot geeks, check out Botjunkie, or as a starter, Fast Companys great line up of Boston Dynamics amazing running, walking, climbing ’terminators’. Cool stuff. I’m gonna buy one of these guys asap. Maybe the RHex on the video below who seems to be the perfect role model and buddy for my Husquarna AutoMower®.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a colleague of mine, Tine Park, who’s just returned from facilitating a workshop on hospital innovation in Chicago at EPIC 2009, an international conference on the application of ethnography and human-centred design in industry.

At Designit, we’ve been working at a Danish hospital with service innovation for a year now. And Designit’s EPIC workshop indicated that one challenge is universal for hospitals: humanising healthcare.

Participants of the workshop – among others healthcare professionals and decision-makers from the public and private healthcare sector in the U.S. – said there was a need to: 1) improve communication between staff and patients so that that patient’s understand their situation and role, 2) make people feel welcome and safe 3) meet the needs of users as individuals.

In other words, they expressed a need for increased focus on the person. The individual. Ensuring the system fits the user – and not the other way round. Create real solutions for real people – that is also the need identified at the workshop and most certainly by our fieldwork in at Odense University Hospital in Denmark.

So how do you do this? Well, it’s important to say that this doesn’t have to cost the earth. As an innovator / design thinker, you need to show respect for the complexity of hospitals and the constraints. You must accept hospitals’ evidence-based culture – then identify what to test and create the right test change conditions. Many small, incremental innovations can, when gathered, have a big impact. It’s not about changing everything overnight, but slowly starting a new mindset and a movement.

Another crucial point is commitment. As a decision-maker at a hospital, you need to ask yourself: are you really committed to this change process? Will you support it throughout the organisation – even when you meet opposition?

Interesting to see that the need for humanisation in the healthcare sector is more widespread than we’d thought. Hospitals are most definitely not immune to change, you just need to understand the dynamics and design your innovation process accordingly.

Just some thoughts from the field…

At a seminar in Copenhagen the other day, Joe Pine from Strategic Horizons told about ‘services you didn’t ask for’ which triggered some thoughts on service experiences in general.

At Designit we’re currently quite focused on the global trend towards self-service and DIY. Self-service – in most cases – actually also happens to be something you didn’t ask for, and rather insisted on not having. But new divisions of labour between service provider and service buyer are here to stay, so it might be worth thinking about!

All sectors and markets experience a shift in user behaviour and service perception towards a preference for self-service and DIY. Not only for user but also for service provider this means new opportunities.

Even ‘mission critical’ industries like health care will become self-care in a couple of years from now. Take prescription drug vending machines for example. Chance is, that we’ll end up prefer self-service. And be surprised how self-service-capable we are – at least if the self-service experience is well designed and with user-capabilities in mind.

Within DIY activities the trend also shifts and creates new markets. Have a look at these two examples. Why not source back your typical DIY tasks (if you are a male) to a service provider. Here is the EasyCarWash offer reinventing carwash experience: Park your car at work, book a wash and enjoy a hand-washed car when you leave the office. A standard car wash consumes minimal water and costs approximately €15 so its benefits are both economical and environmental!

Or book a multi-handyman on the internet and get all the stuff done that used to require serious DIY-skills or two or three different professions + coordination. We tried it and it works! Next thing, I guess, will be a mobile hairdresser in the Copenhagen office saving time and probably cost too.

New, reinvented ‘service agreements’ between the service giver and service taker is the future. These new services are services that you did’nt ask for, but end up loving them and recommend them to your friends. Their logic is irresistible – and that’s why they’ll grow and change the game in the sector.

So, all you big established service providers with dated business and service concepts – rethink, get into the new game – or loose it!

Businesses and organisations often overly invest in short-term initiatives, instead of identifying the problem and developing solutions – the key to which is multi-skilled, stakeholder involvement.

One example is cycle helmets. Today, after more than 10 years of public campaigns with little impact, people are starting to don helmets. Why? A new product design approach is supplementing the public campaigns.

New design solutions make people want to wear a helmet. BELL, for example, has moved away from the typically unattractive cycle helmet to a tough and attractive piece of sports equipment. Yakkay has taken it a step further by placing the visual focus on fashion instead of safety. But their success isn’t just the result of good design, but also years of public campaigns. In other words: it’s a combined effort.

The lesson? Involving all stakeholders early on in multi-skilled, collaborative process will result in hitting target faster and more accurately. If the public health campaigners had teamed up with designers 10 years ago, we may all have been cycling more safely and stylishly for years now.

Consumer behaviour is changing as a result of the economic downturn– but how? I’ve observed how it’s affecting the eyewear sector.

Before the downturn hit, this is what eyewear consumers were doing:

1. Flashing money
Eager to flash the cash, consumers bought frames that looked expensive.

2. Standing out
Consumers bought flashy, expressive frames.

3. Changing styles
Consumers bought expressive and expensive frames because they could afford to buy new frames if they grew tired of a certain look.

And this is what eyewear consumers are doing now:

1. Choose sides
Brands that are neither cheap nor expensive are suffering as the middle ground disappears. So choose sides.

2. Stand out – intelligently
Consumers don’t want bling – but intelligent details and technical solutions that add value to their choice of frame.

3. Think longevity
Your consumers want design that lasts longer. Prepare for a return to rounder, friendlier shapes and less expressive colours.

As always – in recession either classic products or true innovation will prosper. Nobody wants more of the same.

Environmental requirements and resource shortage provoke designers and engineers to rethink before creating yet another new design. Surprisingly, limits often result in innovative and even cool-looking solutions. 

ecofont, invented by Dutch communications agency Spranq, is a needed rethink of typo and the prevalent ‘typo-fashion’ approach. The basic idea: to transfer the concept of a hole-beam (or a Dutch holey cheese) to a font and thereby set new standards for ink consumption, while creating a new, powerful visual expression at the same time. 

Right, fonts are tiny, but trillions are printed every day. What I like particularly about ecofont is the statement that everything matters and makes a difference. It insists that everybody, even typeface designers, can contribute to the global aspiration for eco-efficiency and responsibility. 

Hopefully, ecofont – besides bringing down the large amounts of toner and printing ink that is used every day to create ordinary, ‘massive’ art works – will spark more rethinking in ‘massive’ graphic design.