A critique of design methodologies appropriate to private-sector activity in development

Abstract

In the corporate world, design has received increasing attention over the last 50 years and is now firmly embedded within almost all aspects of corporate activity. This article explores the role of design in development. Design is widely used and understood within capitalist economies to denote a diverse set of tools, used to maximise market share, sales, and profits, and support market differentiation and brand identity of products. The progress of two convergent design-related threads is charted briefly: the growth, since 1950, of a view that design has a real contribution to make to social responsibility and sustainability; and the increasing evidence of design-like skills being used in development contexts. The article reviews several alternative models that are being developed and concludes with a number of short case studies, which illustrate these models and highlight the potential of their largely process-based methodologies for private-sector activity in a development context.

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the INTACH Trust for some of the fieldwork that has contributed to this article.

Notes

1The definition of industrial design used in this paper is the area of expertise concerned with the conceptual, formal, and material properties of three-dimensional products for consumption, to be produced by industrial production processes (Fathers 2002).

2The original First Things First Manifesto published privately by Garland in 1964 includes the visionary proposal that ‘the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes’.

3The Freeplay Energy Group, originally called the Baygen Power Company, was launched in 1994 to develop wind-up products, based on the principles invented by Trevor Baylis.

4 Jua Kali is Kiswahili for ‘fierce sun’. It is also used to describe activities in the informal economy.

5Motivation (www.motivation.org.uk) is a ‘UK registered charity working primarily in developing countries to improve the quality of life of wheelchair users’. Its vision is to ‘initiate self-sustainable projects that will improve the quality of life of as many wheelchair users worldwide as possible’. The case study on which this summary is based was originally presented by Tim Coward at the 2002 Design History Society Annual Conference, London, 7–9 September.

6 Avakasha means ‘listening to crafts’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Coward

The authors are founder members of ‘The Cardiff Group’, an interdisciplinary research group that aims to explore and articulate the relationships between design and development. Tim Coward is Director of Research and Graduate Studies at the Cardiff School of Art & Design. His appointment as Research Fellow in the embryonic Department of Design Research at the Royal College of Art established a continuing commitment to design research.

James Fathers

James Fathers is senior lecturer at the School of Product & Engineering Design at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff. He worked for ten years in industrial design in the manufacturing sector. He has been teaching product design since 1997 and has initiated research in design in a development context.