The Value of Design in Organisations

Abstract

The existing definitions of today for describing our design profession and how we work with design are not comprehensible enough. Often interpreted as form-giving, design tends to confuse more than describe. Based on our own experience, entering the social service center in Angered, city of Gothenburg, with definitions such as service design and design thinking, we see that these definitions are not helpful rather more misleading. Hence, it puts the value of design in the shadow. This is something we perceive to be an issue since working with design in organisations and the value it contributes with cannot be described with the definitions of today. However, is there a need for more definitions? In this research we investigate how the value of design within an organisation can be described in a better way from the point of view of the employees. We believe it is important for an organisation to understand what they embark and why, when building an in-house design capability. We claim that the descriptions of today focus more on what design is rather than what design can do. We do not want to come up with new buzzwords to describe what design is, that is why we turn to the employees to find a better way of describing the value. By utilizing findings from our qualitative research, we propose the Swedish definition förhållningssätt to better describe how design is adopted in organisations.