Design-led Innovation Research Articles

Implementing Person-Centred Lean Six Sigma to Transform Dermatology Waiting Lists: A Case Study from a Major Teaching Hospital in Dublin, Ireland

The study site, a major teaching hospital in Dublin, Ireland, addressed significant challenges within its dermatology service through a comprehensive improvement initiative using a person-centred Lean Six Sigma methodology. Initially, the hospital’s dermatology department faced excessive outpatient waiting times, with 3736 patients awaiting appointments, and 1615 waiting over 12 months. The person-centred Lean Six Sigma approach, which combines Lean techniques to reduce non-value add and Six Sigma methods to eliminate variation through a person-centred lens, was applied to overhaul the referral, triage, and scheduling processes. Key interventions included standardising triage categories, centralising the triage process, and redistributing referrals equitably among consultants. A new centralised triage system was established, leading to a more efficient allocation of appointments and better management of urgent cases. Post-implementation data showed a 40% reduction in the overall waiting list and a 60% reduction in the number of patients waiting over 12 months. The initiative significantly decreased the wait times across all urgency categories, with the most notable improvements in soon and urgent referrals. These changes were also the impetus for a follow-up design-led innovation phase, where the team worked with partners across the educational and healthcare system to enable disruptive change. The success of this project provides a scalable model for improvements in similar healthcare settings.

Design thinking mindset: a user-centred approach toward innovation in the Welsh creative industries

ABSTRACT The Design Thinking (DT) mindset, a fundamental aspect of User-Centred Design (UCD), is often presented as a powerful and accessible trigger for innovation. There is much discussion in the extant literature on the communication of the DT concept to non-design practitioners to encourage broader use of design-led innovation. The present study expands this discussion by exploring which DT mindset attributes are considered meaningful for non-design professionals in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It presents a UCD intervention that embeds the DT mindset attributes to introduce design-led innovation to SMEs of the Welsh creative industries. Semi-structured interviews, non-participatory observation, and reflective open-ended questioning are utilised to analyse the impact of the intervention in supporting creative industry practitioners’ understanding of the DT mindset and design-led innovation approaches. Our findings demonstrate that the intervention has prompted participants to (i) challenge the idea of ‘ideas,’ (ii) frame failure as an option, (iii) learn to trust the process, (iv) acquire innovation self-efficacy, (v) view collaboration = learning, and (vi) change their perception of innovation. We discuss how these identified ‘mindset shifts’ are valuable toward building individual innovation capacities in non-design industries.

Design-led innovation for more plant-based food: An interdisciplinary approach to more consumer-centric product development

A more plant-based diet will contribute to food sustainability. Achieving this change requires collaboration across disciplines which is not easy to achieve. This article illustrates how interdisciplinary collaboration in a large research project can be facilitated through a design-led innovation process juxtaposing approaches from design and science. Consumer insights were used in creative workshops to ideate and develop packaging and product concepts for plant-based food focusing on ‘environment’, ‘health’ and ‘Norwegian’ design imperatives. Learning loops of alignment – creation – feedback were applied to design and test six packaging prototypes of two product categories (Pea Porridge, Faba Bean Drink). Qualitative feedback was collected from 147 consumers and a quantitative survey with 1102 Norwegian consumers tested product expected liking and product-concept match. Younger consumers and users of plant-based products exhibited a higher expected liking vs. non-users and older respondents. Packaging design adopted for specific consumer segments can positively contribute to a shift to more plant-based diets. We show how a dynamic interdisciplinary innovation approach can be powerful to creating new product ideas, getting consumers’ input and fostering collaboration and learning among disciplines. We offer other researchers and the food industry actionable opportunity areas and design imperatives for their innovation activities around plant-based food.

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO DESIGN-LED INNOVATION FOR ECO-FRIENDLY CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CLOTHING ENTREPRENEURS

Purpose: This article demonstrates how collaboration in a PAR and R&D research project can be facilitated by a design-led innovation process that juxtaposes design and scientific approaches.
 
 Theoretical Framework: The work was theoretically grounded in an interdisciplinary methodology and customer-centric approaches. Researchers adopted a "principles-driven" strategy as a primary guiding principle.
 
 Design/Method/Approach: This study utilized participatory action research (PAR) as a research methodology, emphasizing the importance of collaborations between stakeholders and the research team. The study methodology encompassed on-site visits, SWOT analysis, focus groups, and questionnaire surveys. The data obtained from all of the previously described instruments was subjected to qualitative analysis using triangulation.
 
 Findings: The study demonstrated that this approach significantly enhanced the innovation of new products and the establishment of brands by local businesses. The remaining fabric key rings of the stakeholders had an impact on the most recent clothing collection. The development of new products involved the integration of identity, traditional knowledge, and creativity with modern technology, utilizing local resources from the community for innovative transformation and business product development. By adhering to experts' recommendations, stakeholders can enhance the value of their products by demonstrating a preference for environmentally conscious, culturally significant, and artistically innovative products to the target market. The introduction of the new clothing product range received positive feedback from business owners and entrepreneurs, with an average rating of 4.71. Additionally, the annual sales value increased by 36.3%. PAR R&D facilitated the improvement of stakeholders.
 
 Research, Practical, and Social Implications: Creating eco-friendly apparel from fabric scraps will contribute to sustainability. Obtaining this level of sustainability requires collaboration across disciplines and design-driven innovation. In addition, this study demonstrates how a dynamic interdisciplinary innovation strategy can be effective for generating new product concepts, obtaining consumer feedback, and fostering collaboration and learning across disciplines. Lastly, this study provides other researchers and the local industry with actionable opportunity areas and design imperatives for their sustainability-based product innovation activities.
 
 Originality/Value: This study is the first to apply theoretical concepts to practical situations in a specific rural area to assist local community entrepreneurs lacking resources for research and development in improving their performance and outcomes, with a focus on creating product concepts that reflect the local cultural identity and incorporate innovative design principles.

Indigenous relations: craft, vernacular materials and cultural assets in Borneo

ABSTRACT This article explores Indigenous relations to craft, vernacular materials and cultural assets in Borneo to raise awareness around the complexities, entanglements and precarity surrounding natural resources and craft practice(s) located within Indigenous communities. The authors present two case studies based in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia from the Cultural-Assets and Vernacular Materials project and in so doing highlight the role ancestral wisdom and embodied knowledge play in the cultivation, conservation and crafting of natural materials towards situating craft as a living, ecological and regenerative practice. We locate an expanded notion of craft whereby the intimate relations to materials – growing, harvesting, preparing – are integral to materialities of place as site-specific, place-based and communal bodies of knowledges that reside within Indigenous communities. We position an ontological framing of design research as a set of practices that broaden the ways craft can advance new ways of understanding, becoming and doing. In such a reframing design-led innovation approaches are cognisant of and informed by the plurality of contexts that reside within and emerge from Indigenous communities as sites of situated knowledges.

지속가능한 디자인 수업사례를 통한 새로운 디자인 프레임 혁신 연구

Now that the economy is developing day by day, human values are also continuously growing. All over the world, various efforts are being made to achieve the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) set by the UN, and education is in full swing. However, education on what the Sustainable Development Goals are and what efforts should be made is insufficient. Therefore, the study progress was observed using the sustainable design process model reconstructed by the researcher for first-year students of D University in Busan, who have not yet decided on a specific major. In addition, based on the theory that Doest (2011) sets a frame by tying together items and operating principles that have been assumed to have potential for “a specific value”, and proposes a solution to the problem in the best way, the researcher reconstructs It aims to propose a new design frame. As a result of this paper, the proposal of a new design frame as a problem-solving method utilizes 'environment' and 'virtual story (personas)' experiences, SDGs, sustainable design process and new design frame to achieve design-led innovation when solving problems. We want to help you.

Design-led innovation

This forum is dedicated to maximizing the success of HCI practitioners within the frenetic world of product and service design. It focuses on UX strategy approaches, leadership, management techniques, and above all the challenge of bringing HCI to peer-level status with longstanding business disciplines such as marketing and engineering. --- Daniel Rosenberg, Editor

Defence Innovation: The Role of Design-Led Innovation in Disrupting the Conservative Paradigm

Design thinking is actively promoted in the military to accelerate innovation. However, governments do not provide adequate funding or prioritise design methods in defence innovation programs. Our study audits global defence innovation programs, the strategic direction for innovation labs, funding and the role of design. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent and effectiveness of design methods used in defence innovation labs. We also examine the structure, methods and outcomes of three lab case studies within the global defence context. Results reveal a disproportionate focus on science and technology in innovation labs. Few organisations incorporate design methods, seen as critical to successful innovation, in their R&D programs. Where design is encouraged in military organisations, it is primarily directed at bottom-up innovation programs. In contrast, government and defence heavily support science and technology innovation programs as part of organisational strategy, with funding as well as sponsorship from senior officers. Therefore, government and military organisations have systematically constrained the potential to accelerate innovation using novel strategies such as design. We discuss the unrealised opportunity for use of design in defence as well as the potential model for increasing cross discipline collaboration and disruptive innovation.

PARADOXICAL TENSION: BALANCING CONTEXTUAL AMBIDEXTERITY

AbstractThe concepts of high-velocity, complexity and interdependency are nowadays vividly discussed in design-led innovation management. Design organisations seek to manage innovation in a more dynamic way to ensure competitive advantage and long-term competitiveness. Contextual ambidexterity is advised to be a dynamic capability that can facilitate firms to effectively manage incremental and radical innovation alike. This paper proposes an approach that focuses on the individual and the underlying thinking which bases its foundations on ambidextrous leadership, abductive reasoning and strategic fit.

Design-led innovation and sensemaking

Design-led innovation (DLI) is a framework with particular focus on developing design capability. Implementation of DLI has been observed to positively influence firm innovation performance. As the framework is of relative infancy, there is opportunity to learn from and integrate methods and practice from other fields to strengthen the implementation of DLI. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to make explicit, the similarities DLI shares with sensemaking as in order to provider clearer approaches to managing the design process. An action research design is applied for 14 months within a major Australian Airport Corporation (AAC) to implement DLI. Qualitative data is collected and analysed, with the findings showing there are implicit similarities between the practice of DLI and mandates of sensemaking. The paper contributes opportunities to strengthen DLI by incorporating mandates of sensemaking consciously to enrich interpersonal interactions during the design process.

The design capabilities of dynamic teams pursuing innovation in an academic context

Design research is moving beyond the study of industry based practices and towards the stewardship of design-led innovation for business development and economic growth. To this end, it is now required to evidence the benefits it creates. To examine these notions further this paper presents an approach for design-led innovation within an academic context. The authors build on the concept of design capabilities to develop a framework of evaluation that provides a platform for which the impact and value of design to industry and the formation of diverse teams can be critically discussed. Furthermore, this study contributes to the burgeoning cognisance of design capabilities as a means to understand value, by indicating potential pathways towards yet further application of design research in the industry context. It closes with reflections and reveals how lessons from this study can contribute to future of university-industry partnership working.

Dual Nature of Designer’s Attitudes Toward Design-Led Innovation

These Design has become important to corporate competitiveness. Studies on design have paid much attention to innovation (Von Stamm, 2003; Utterback et al., 2006). A growing number of scholars see the design as the driver of the innovation, and two key ideas has gathering attention. One is the concept of “HCD (Human-Centered-Design)” and “Design Thinking” (Brown, 2008, Martin, 2009), and the other is the concept of “DDI (Design-Driven Innovation)” (Verganti, 2009). However, there is tension between two deterministic views of design-led innovation. On one hand, design is seen as a creative problem-solving activity that works towards a desired state of affairs that can be determined in advance. On the other hand, design is seen as exploratory research through which an understanding of an issue or problem emerges.
 This paper investigates the contribution of the designer’s attitude relating to problem-solving/exploratory research, and provides conceptual framework that explain relations between dual nature of designer’s attitude and design-led innovation.

Developing and applying performance metrics to evaluate co-design activities in design-led innovation

Abstract – An increasing number of companies are experimenting with ‘designerly ways of innovating’ to improve the agility, speed and hit rate of their innovation activities. Co-design activities are emerging as part of a design-led innovation approach. Whilst there is extensive academic literature on design process performance metrics, they have rarely been applied by organisations that are testing co-design activities, possibly due to the time and effort that is required to apply them. This paper begins to address this challenge by developing a tailored suite of design process performance metrics. Some basic guidelines from the academic literature and the results of a practitioner survey inform the selection of metrics. We go on to apply the metrics to real-world projects within companies that are trialling technology-supported co-creation sessions. The metrics and the insights into their development and application are likely to prove useful to other design researchers and practitioners that wish to evaluate the benefits of adopting co-design activities as part of a design-led innovation approach.

Building Design Capabilities in Academic Libraries

While design-led innovation may have huge potential to change both tangible outcomes of design, such as products and services, and the intangible ones such as values, mindsets and organizational cultures, the approach has not been broadly investigated in the organizational settings, especially when it comes to building in-house design capabilities. The paper reflects on both practical and theoretical concerns around building of design capabilities in academic libraries. The making and sustaining design capabilities was supported by design interventions in the form of design workshops and other design activities, and repeated re-enforcements of constructivist and experiential organizational learning leading to integration of design proto practices with daily routines and established work practices. The findings are articulated as a set of guidelines toward building design capabilities in academic libraries through design thinking. At the conceptual level, the work highlights the importance of openness, dialogical spaces and temporal aspects of such processes.

Track 6.c Introduction: Entrepreneurship in Design Education

Over that last few decades there has been a significant rise in interest for design-led entrepreneurship and innovation. This has brought about the need to expand on the principles and methods of human-centred design by incorporating knowledge from multiple disciplines, such as management, business, and entrepreneurship studies. This expansion aids designers, engineers, and marketing practitioners who strive to create innovative, meaningful and relevant services, business models and experiences.
 More often than not, ventures operate under very limited resources, and practitioners are often required to fulfil several roles. The concept of ‘multidisciplinary teams’ widely spread in this sphere often bears little resonance in these contexts. Designers possess valuable competencies that can have a significant impact on the venture, especially driving user and context-centred strategy and processes for the introduction, legitimization and scaling-up stages. However, engaging with these areas of practice requires skills and capacities that overlap traditional disciplinary roles. In doing so, the boundaries between design and engineering, branding and communications, cultural and behavioural insight, marketing and management strategy are blurred.
 As educators in design innovation, how do we explore, define and balance interdisciplinary relationships between design, engineering, management, business and entrepreneurship theories, methods, language and models of education? The purpose of the entrepreneurship in design education track is to discuss methods, models, case studies, research, insights and unexpected knowledge in benefits and limitations of design entrepreneurship education. In particular, the three papers presented in this track demonstrate different approaches to entrepreneurship and design education.

Design-led innovation and Circular Economy practices in regional Queensland

The Circular Economy proposes a sustainable economic model that encourages businesses and governments to work towards the goal of conserving natural resources and reducing waste. This model largely relies on government policies that encourage waste reduction and help businesses creating markets to re-purpose that waste profitably. Design-led innovation offers methods to drive required business model transformation and is recognized as one of the key enablers in the transition to a Circular Economy. It is evident globally that metropolitan cities and countries with high innovation indices are better able to transition to a Circular Economy by applying design-led innovation. Although more populous states and densely populated cities in Australia have started to initiate Circular Economy practices, it is unclear if similar initiatives could be developed in regional economies in Australia and if design-led innovation has a role to play in their acceptance and development. This study is an exploration into two regional areas in the state of Queensland: the Sunshine Coast and North Queensland. The qualitative study explores the views of waste managers of local councils, small-scale applications of the Circular Economy on two university campuses and an experiment to introduce a street of business owners to Circular Economy practices.

Design-Led Innovation Strategies of Family Entrepreneurs: Case-based Evidence from an Emerging Market

(2019). Design-Led Innovation Strategies of Family Entrepreneurs: Case-based Evidence from an Emerging Market. The Design Journal: Vol. 22, Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank, pp. 85-98.

The Why and How of Design-led Multidisciplinary Innovation Education: Context and Curriculum

This study charts the design and development of a pioneering design-led multidisciplinary innovation Master’s degree; a degree in Design Thinking. It reviews a decade of delivery of the programme and considers the contextual factors that influenced its original design and subsequent iterations. The study uses a critical participatory action research methodology and draws on previous research conducted on and through the programme in question, together with stakeholder surveys and interviews. The programme in question has evolved from its original manifestation as a teaching programme to an entity that acts as a locus for education, research and practice in design-led innovation. As such, the study identifies four essential stakeholders; students, partner organisations, society and academia, whose priorities have formed the contextual elements that have driven the programme’s introduction and development. It considers their influence on the programme design and the values derived by each from the programme. Furthermore, the study reveals the underlying pedagogic principles and aspects of delivery that have ensured that these values are delivered.

Action researcher to design innovation catalyst: Building design capability from within

Design as a creative way of framing and solving problems is considered an essential business capability in an innovation era. Organizations with design capability can improve the lives of their customers, stakeholders and employees by creating valuable products, services and experiences. Design-led innovation is a framework that assists organizations to develop design capability for creating a better future as well as profitability. However, implementing design-led innovation requires support. This article presents insights from an action research extended to design innovation catalyst. The catalyst’s aim was to facilitate implementation of design-led innovation in an Australian Airport Corporation to develop design capability. To date, this extended role of action researcher as design innovation catalyst has received limited attention. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present insights from the experience of the action researcher as a design innovation catalyst. This paper contributes conceptual and practical insight into the research design, action research cycles and critical reflection of an action researcher operating as design innovation catalyst.

Design Evolution and Innovation for Tropical Liveable Cities: Towards A Circular Economy

Design has become an important driver of economic innovation and better living globally. This paper looks at the evolution of design within the innovation space and how it is applied in tropical Singapore, a global financial center, and Townsville, a regional city in Australia’s tropical northeast. The general question of whether regional Australian cities can adopt and adapt large scale innovative practices is examined in the context of driving change in the Circular Economy. The role of design has evolved from the popular understanding of creating products, driving consumption and being a decorative discipline; to driving social, public and economic change. Cities like Singapore have been on the policy forefront to push design-led innovation to facilitate start-ups, spark economic development, re-imagine its future, and on a human scale, harmonize with its tropical setting. Design Thinking and Service Design Thinking as strategies for innovation play a crucial part in driving a paradigm shift in economic thinking away from unsustainable levels of consumerism and towards a Circular Economy. The future challenge for designers working toward a Circular Economy will require new ways of approaching services, processes and products that are good for business and sustainable development. Through higher education, Townsville design students took innovative steps to improve the quality of life for the elderly on a small scale, which illustrates a capacity for design-led innovation on a regional level that reflects large scale Service Design in Singapore.