University of Technology Sydney Business - The Design Way

The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World, UTS Business, University of Technology, Sydney NSW Australia 

3/28/13 7:00 PMhttp://cfsites1.uts.edu.au/business/news-events/event-detail.cfm?ItemId=34241

The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World

Dr Harold Nelson is an international visiting scholar from the US whose university appointments have crossed the fields of business, IT and design.
He is a qualified architect and has extensive experience consulting with corporate, government and non-profit organisations.
Together with Dr. Erik Stolterman he co-authored the book “The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World”, which received the Outstanding Book of the Year award from the Division of Instructional Development of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. See more details here.
Harold and Erik conceive of design as culture of inquiry and action directed at creating new things which can be applied across multiple contexts, including industries that may not normally be thought of as design centric. Whether you are deeply involved in design or just curious about design thinking, join Dr Nelson at UTS for this interdisciplinary discussion.

Design Flight School - systemic design: 1:00pm-3:30pm
This interactive discussion is intended for academics and research students but friends of UTS available during the day are welcome to attend.

Venue: Palm Court (CM05C.04.17), Block C, Level 4

Register for the workshop here.

Presentation with Q&A: 6:30pm for 7:00pm-8:30pm

This session is for all UTS students, alumni, staff and general public

Venue: Moot Court (CM05B.01.02), Block B Level 1

Register for the the presentation with Q&A here.

4 April 2013

13:00 - 20:30

(Workshop: 1:00pm-3:30pm | Presentation with Q&A:

6:30pm for 7:00pm-8:30pm)

City - Haymarket

All Welcome

Free, but places are limited and registration essential

engagement.business@uts.edu.au

Invitation Only Event - Healthcare Design

ODC in Melbourne, Australia

New site for the "The Design Way"

We have now opened a new site with more information about the new Edition of "The Design Way". You have find it at thedesignway.net

design competence

As interest grows in design as an efficacious form of open inquiry integrated with an effective approach to action—i.e. inquiry for action or thinking for doing—it is important to keep in mind that design is not a method or recipe for prescriptive reaction but an intentional stance one takes towards life. It is also important to keep in mind that good design is not just another approach to problem solving. Design is a process for determining desired directions to take and strategies for following through with actions that result in the realization of desired outcomes or states of affairs in organizations and other social systems. Design in organizations—governmental and business—is played out in three different ways in the guise of organizational design competence (see Figure below).

Organizational Design Competency

As a leadership stance, design competence is the capacity to create or recreate whole organizations or major systems within organizations. As a management approach, design competence is the requisite ability to create tools, procedures, processes, structures, and other instrumentalities that support the operations of successful organizations. As an interface between the organization and its constituency, design competence is the form of expertise that creates products, experiences or services for clients, stakeholders and society as a whole.

Design competence is the ability to make desired changes in the right directions, for the right reasons using the right processes. It is driven by what is desired to be brought into the world rather than what is feared about the world as it exists. 

2nd Ed. The Design Way coming soon

The Design Way

Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World

Second Edition, MIT Press (2012)

Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman

Humans did not discover fire--they designed it. Design is not defined by software programs, blueprints, or font choice. When we create new things--technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, ways of thinking--we engage in design. With this expansive view of design as their premise, in The Design Way, Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman make the case for design as its own culture of inquiry and action. They offer not a recipe for design practice or theorizing but a formulation of design culture’s fundamental core of ideas. These ideas--which form “the design way”--are applicable to an infinite variety of design domains, from such traditional fields as architecture and graphic design to such nontraditional design areas as organizational, educational, interaction and healthcare design.

Nelson and Stolterman present design culture in terms of foundations (first principles), fundamentals (core concepts), and metaphysics, and then discuss these issues from both learner’s and practitioner’s perspectives. The text of this second edition is accompanied by new detailed images, “schemas” that visualize, conceptualize, and structure the authors’ understanding of design inquiry. This text itself has been revised and expanded throughout, in part in response to reader feedback.

Harold G. Nelson was 2009–2010 Distinguished Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University and is currently Senior Instructor in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School and President of Advanced Design Institute. 


Erik Stolterman is Professor of Informatics and Dept. Chair in the School of Informatics and computing at Indiana University Bloomington.

Organizational Design Competence

We are pleased to welcome you to the new ODC (Organizational Design Competence) design consulting site. We welcome inquiries from organizations, institutions, and individuals who are interested in discussing their desire to explore strategies for the development of design competence in their work settings.

ODC brings substantial depth and breadth of expertise and experience to the field of design thinking and design action in organizational contexts. Design has become a key competence in organizations as diverse as the US Army and Apple. Interest in design has moved well beyond the traditional fields of commercial and material design.

We invite anyone who is interested in collaborating with us on the development of design competence in their organizations to contact us.