Developing relationships across institutions
A partnership between Cranfield University and the London College of Communication, University of Arts London, the Centre for Competitive Creative Design (C4D) was launched in 2007 using an investment of £3.5m over three years from HEFCE’s Strategic Development Fund. C4D offers taught Masters courses and runs a research programme as well as services to industry.
Multi-disciplinary teaching and learning
Whereas Design London capitalises on the proximity of three institutions and on their history of collaboration, C4D shows how multi-disciplinary teaching and research can be offered by institutions which are geographically distant. The collaboration between Cranfield and London College of Communication provides another model for multi-disciplinary teaching: that of two institutions developing courses in tandem which run concurrently, and whose cohorts come together at specified points within the curriculum. The Masters course – MDes Innovation and Creativity in Industry – is now in its second year. At Cranfield, the current cohort of 14 students come from engineering or science-based industries and disciplines. The equivalent course at LCC has ten students whose backgrounds include product design, architecture, film-making and photography.
The two courses share a vision which brings them together at key points through collaborative multi-disciplinary design projects, lectures, visits and joint critiques. Alongside group project work, studio project work and self-initiated projects, podcasting and Second Life are used as teaching methods. Both courses include a group design project undertaken in a multi-disciplinary team and a major individual project submitted as a thesis, a practical exploration with a report, or public exhibition. Students also work on live industry-sponsored projects as part of their final degree. Recent projects have included a thesis on defining and characterising product experience for Ford.
The MDes programme is the backbone of the collaboration between Cranfield and London College of Communication, but academics and students from both universities have also worked together on a number of other projects and this shows the diversity of the relationship between the two institutions. Dr Alison Prendiville, Deputy Director of C4D and Course Leader for the MDes in Innovation and Creativity in Industry at the University of the Arts, London, describes the experience of working with scientists, engineers and medical technologists at Cranfield as ‘amazing’ and is enthusiastic about the activities of the past 18 months and the possibilities for future collaborative research projects.
Students from any field or skill can be exposed to other disciplines giving them the ability to apply “design thinking” in all aspects of industry. Tania D’Souza, Innovation and Creativity in Industry student
Projects have included London College of Communication’s MDes Innovation and Creativity in Industry students working with engineers at Cranfield to map patient journeys for the development of new scanning technologies. Another, a one-day workshop held with Dr Rob Dorey, Head of Microsystems and Nanotechnology at Cranfield, culminated in a public exhibition at the Royal Academy of Engineering summer Soiree event at Cranfield Univeristy in June 2009 and the London Design Festival in September. Twelve students from LCC and London College of Fashion worked in multi-disciplinary teams to explore ways to visualise potential applications of nanotechnology, with Dorey using Basecamp online project management software to guide the students on the scientific appropriateness of their visualisations after the workshop. Ideas included energy harvesters which would create power systems from ambient vibration and sound generation by piezoelectric speakers.
Prendiville explains that such workshops can be used to explore and test design methodologies as well as for practical outcomes. Another project saw participants from C4D and the Information Environments research unit at London College of Communication work with scientists from Cranfield’s School of Health, designers, architects and stakeholders from local government and local health authorities to explore the role that new media and community spaces might play in well-being (for example, participants considered how gaming could link inside and outside spaces). Here, ‘well-being cards’ were piloted as a new design methodology tool to help participants to visualise and understand the complex nature of well-being and its processes within community spaces.
Research
Cranfield and London College of Communication are currently engaged in a number of research bids that, if successful, will see further collaboration between departments at the two institutions. C4D has also secured funding for substantial research projects, including ERDF funding of £815,510 for a multi-faceted approach which aims to stimulate SMEs to work in low carbon business innovation activities. C4D’s PhD programme currently has two students working on research areas that relate to emerging markets and design futures – one on empathic design and Chinese product design education, the other exploring the scope for Brazil to adopt and adapt design and innovation policy from the examples of the UK and China.
Students from London College of Communication and London College of Fashion in a one day workshop on visualising potential applications of nanotechnology, held with Dr Rob Dorey, Head of Microsystems & Nanotechnology at Cranfield University
Services for industry
As well as setting live projects for student groups, organisations such as Procter & Gamble, the NHS, Ford and Nissan have run individual research projects with C4D. Procter & Gamble, for example, ran a project to facilitate the development of ideas for product development using consumer insight and rapid product modelling techniques, which informed their management’s high-level product planning sessions.
This is part of C4D’s range of services for industry, which include half-day Design Incubation sessions for external organisations or other academic departments who want to work with the centre. C4D has also run workshop trials of experimental innovation tools aimed at promoting and facilitating design thinking in public sector leadership. The tools, used in workshops with the Design Council and HM Treasury, were developed in multi-disciplinary collaboration with the Praxis Centre in Cranfield’s School of Management.
Perhaps the most important part of the C4D project is the willingness of so many of the staff from both institutions to acknowledge and reflect the unique cultures the two institutions, and to use these to consider how they are best placed to learn from each other. Dr. Alison Prendiville maintains that this shouldn’t mean ‘obsessing about cultural difference’ – rather, the emphasis should be on finding commonalities of creative processes. ‘The value lies in creating communities’, she adds.
Ideas generated at a multi-disciplinary workshop on nanotechnology applications