Digital design – coming of age party?

It’s not often that you’ll get me to say. ‘what a breath of fresh air!’, but that’s exactly my reaction to the Design Commission’s new report, Designing the Digital Economy: embedding growth through design. innovation and technology, May 2014.

I think that it’s the position taken about technology and design that is refreshing. Designers are given credit for representing the people’s perspective (user experience) in the past in relation to tangible consumer products. However, there is criticism of their inert reaction to technology – a failure to embrace it in design terms. This is the gap that should be filled, according to the authors, and will stimulate the digital economy that affects people’s lives and working space while the ‘digital revolution’ is about intelligent connectivity through technologies. This stance is summarised by these quotes:

We have also found, that just as technologists would do well to align their practice with that of designers, the design sector should move out of its comfort zone and seek to engage with the possibilities allowed by the digital economy. Page 9

And, because of the inertia, they say:

Programmers and technologists are instead generating product ideas and moving into design territory, which risks undermining the classical design skillset and training. Page 42

Imagine my gasp of incredulity when the report backs the concept of interdisciplinary research. We have suffered tremendously because of the rigid classifications of ‘industrial’ industries. We have not known where to line up: creative, digital, technological, IT, or by sector, advertising, museums, libraries, web, mobile, and so on. The lack of interdisciplinary understanding and credibility has worked against us. We have moaned constantly about this in our book and in many of our blogs.

Hats off to NESTA for working with new metrics to put a monetary figure on the importance of the creative industries for the UK economy (See this quoted in this report, page 17). It’s a sad fact that the decision-makers only take note of financial data so the six times faster growth rate of the creative industries to the general UK, even during the recession (also quoted page 17) has made the decision-makers sit up.

It comes as no surprise to find that the complex skills needed in digital projects are in short supply. On page 28, the sort-after people are supposedly called ‘T shaped’. The types of skill are defined in the following:

... we heard from SMEs who struggled to find the ‘T-shaped’ people who could add real value to their enterprise. For the businesses we spoke to, this meant people with skills in both digital and physical making, as well as the ability to deal creatively with complex working practices.24 This shortage is obviously an ongoing problem for national policy relating to the skills base ...

A more in-depth assessment of the ‘T-shaped’ origin and skills is found in the highlighted section on Page 29 of this report. Here it mentions Microsoft’s Principal Scientist taking this ‘T-shape’ further. He looks for ‘T’ and ‘I’ skills where ‘I’ means innovation that can then be implemented by the individual in collaboration with a team.

The concept of big data is central to the report. As more and more data becomes available online in a supposedly open situation, the value of the data and how it can be understood and ‘valued’, is key to the future. This big data concept affects government, of course, as they are one of the biggest generators of public data. The report highlights missed opportunities and revenue streams from some big data and it sees an important role for designers conversant in digital to make better use of such data through design practices so it makes sense to the majority.

Coupled with this is a general education issue. People now lack the ‘critical socio-technical literacies’ to be able to judge what they are absorbing from such data exposure.

The report covers 4 main areas: digital design clusters, central government and the digital economy, education and research. I haven’t majored on these as I have cherry-picked what has seemed of most relevance to our themes covered in the blog.

I see this as an incredible step forward in thinking and mindsets that can only be good for what has been a misunderstood and under-valued section of UK society – the interdisciplinary workers in iMedia.

On the interdisciplinary note however, I must just say that the report itself lacks recognition of the broader skills relating to user experience that are already being deployed in iMedia teams. The authors seem to forget that the design gap they define has and is being filled by marketeers, HCI people, Information Architects, agency-led perspectives, e-learning experienced developers, and retail experienced developers - among others - who form part of and influence complex iMedia teams. They champion the users and affect the technical paths taken in applications. Yes, the report is targeted at design, but designers do not have an exclusive 'take' on users.

Taking stock of the interactive media industry

For those who have followed us over time, it will come as no surprise that we see that iMedia is still evading recognition as an industry in its own right. Do you see yourself fitting in to the traditional industries of media, technology or telecommunications, for example? iMedia's skills, its impact on the economy, its recruitment concerns, its lack of funding, its educational challenges across all levels of traditional education and its needs, are subsumed into traditional industry definitions in a devastating fragmented chaos.

While iMedia used to be a niche within each traditional industry and given some token attention for innovation, technology changing business models and so on, now it is mainstream in each area but it still hasn't gained collective understanding and rating. The penny hasn't dropped. They haven't joined the dots. They still can't see the woods for the trees. Unfortunately this seems to be true for those responsible for top level strategic research - and not only in the UK.

So, where are we now? Well, KPMG seem to have many of the dots right (literally) with a great infographic on the state of technologies for today and tomorrow that surprisingly isn't industry bound. This really is worth a look whether you follow any of the other links in this blog or not. It is worth a deep look, especially as you can contribute to its polling.

Back to that industry niggle, then. Prompted by KPMG's report into how fast the UK job market is moving in January 2014 and the consequences on skills shortages for the up-gearing, Report on jobs – strong growth of staff placements continues in January’, we took a look at how they are evaluating their definitions of the media, technology and telecommunications sectors. Guess what? They have recognised how pervading digital developments are for each. We direct you specifically to the following KPMG pages out of the three respective sectors:

• The changing face of talent management in the media’
• Tech Monitor UK report reveals strong growth for UK Tech Sector
• The mobile evolution: The challenges and opportunities of mobile

The skills shortage for iMedia has been apparent for many years. We've relied on reactionary youths who have tended to go out on their own to get experience of emerging digital environments. We've ignored traditional attributes/qualifications, set our own tests and standards for recruitment, built up skills through mentoring while fire-fighting innovatory digital demands, and generally re-skilled to suit the workload and clients. Sound familiar? But, enter some sobering thoughts from David Knight, again from KPMG, with The Silver Lining.

The premise here is that the skills shortage is so bad in the UK that the attitude towards more mature people might have to change. They have been a skilled but wasted resource and they'd like to continue working because of the changing pension reality. Do they have skills that can be repurposed for iMedia? Perhaps the contract mentality that drove iMedia at the initial stages might suit? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Can we learn anything from their knowledge and experience? This would certainly be a major challenge for iMedia when anyone past 35 is seen as past it. Food for thought indeed.