AHO WORKS STUDIES 2012-2013
Design Studies
Designer’s Century
tion, could be the driving force that launches
the next industrial revolution.
How is all this affecting the role of the
designer? At a conference in Los Angeles
in 2006 delegates started talking about the
notion of the “superdesigner”, who oversees
the entire product development process and
participates seamlessly throughout. By using
3D-printing as a production method, the
designer can follow the product all the way.
Manufacturing issues must be resolved as
an integrated part of the design process to a
much greater extent than before. The change
can be compared with the transition from
print to online newspapers; the product that
is designed and produced will be only one ver-
sion of a potentially limitless number of var-
iants, iterations or improvements. This could
give room for niche products and small-scale
local production, or licenced products for
domestic manufacture.
With extreme complexity and sky-high
performance requirements, new approaches
to product development processes, services
and systems are needed, where possibilities
and problems are dealt with simultaneously.
We see these complexities and new approach-
es being explored in extreme industries, like
shipbuilding and the production of marine
installations. IDE is making significant con-
tributions to this through interdisciplinary
design research initiatives such as the Ulstein
Bridge Concept project and the new Ocean
Industries Concept Lab in collaboration with
various partners from the maritime sector
Within interactive design, we see that
design stretches from the development of
games, where excitement, motivation and
surprise are important elements, to the use of
game-style techniques in the health service,
for example. The smartphone that you have in
your pocket can log, map and gather data on
many different aspects of your life, and com-
bine them into an understandable whole, tai-
lored just for you. In this way it can help you to
live more healthily, run faster or change your
behaviour over time, if that is what you want.
Interactivity is what enables us to understand
and use these advanced tools. We are already
seeing that people prefer interactive solutions
that excite, assist and simplify. In other words
interactive design is now a key success factor
in tomorrow’s digital world.
Within service design, we are seeing that
the expertise that IDE has built up over the
past decade in collaboration with, among oth-
ers, Telenor, Norsk Tipping and Gjensidige, is
now being applied to public services. As part of
the Design for Public Services (DOT) project,
IDE is now joining collaborative constellations
within health and other public services. Where
the question before was what money would
mean for society in 2020, we are now starting
to ask how we will relate to our general prac-
titioner in 2020, or what will a hospital be like
in 2020? This has a number of implications for
