Examination of Witnesses (Questions 355-359)
Mrs Lesley Morris, Dr Frank O'Connor, Dr Tracy Bhamra
and Ms Clare Brass
5 FEBRUARY 2008
Q355 Chairman: Good morning. Thank
you very much for coming. I wonder if we could, perhaps, start
off with, Dr Bhamra, introducing yourself and then just working
your way along the line, as it were.
Dr Bhamra: I am Tracy Bhamra, I am a Reader
in Sustainable Design in the Department of Design and Technology
at Loughborough University.
Ms Brass: I am Clare Brass, from the SEED Foundation—Social
Environmental Enterprise and Design.
Mrs Morris: Hi, I am Lesley Morris, I am Head
of Design Skills at the Design Council, which really means that
I work with all of the education and skills development training
through the education system and professional development.
Dr O'Connor: Chairman, I am Frank O'Connor,
Director of Ecodesign Centre, Wales, a Welsh Assembly Government
funded organisation based in Cardiff, Wales.
Q356 Chairman: Thank you. We would
like to start this morning with the area of designers' education
and attitude. To what extent do designers consider the "cradle
to cradle" concept and waste reduction when developing new
products? Do you often get the feeling that: "If only somebody
had thought about this they would never have done it this way",
when you are trying to get rid of something? Who would like to
start on this one?
Dr Bhamra: It is probably true to say that there
is a bit of an ad hoc approach, at the moment, to cradle to cradle.
There are some examples of designers thinking about issues of,
maybe, recycling or, maybe energy consumption, but I would not
say it was a general approach that most designers adopt. There
are examples of companies who, maybe, try and encourage their
designers to do that, but they are few and far between. The same
with design consultancy; there will be examples where people are
thinking about it, but there is no structured approach to encourage
all designers to consider cradle to cradle.
Ms Brass: Our consideration about cradle to
cradle thinking is that it is very beautiful and a very healthy
approach to design, but unless you have the infrastructure in
place that can allow cradle to cradle thinking to actually become
a reality it is very difficult for designers to impose cradle
to cradle thinking, especially if they are locked into a client-designer
relationship where the clients are unlikely to be asking for it.
Mrs Morris: Some evidence on that front is that
we have just been doing some work looking at the skills that professional
designers need, and it is very interesting that when we asked
them about particular issues and trends for the future, sustainability
in any shape or form was just not one of their priorities. Most
of them reflected that, in a sense, if their clients do not ask
for that to be addressed then they do not provide it, because
they are working, obviously, mostly, as consultants. Obviously,
there are designers working in big businesses, and if those businesses
are driving that agenda then they will be much more equipped and
much more prepared to address the issues, but a lot of designers
are working, as I say, as consultants, and there needs to be that
whole shift in terms of what they are being asked to do, what
they know about and what they can provide. That links back into
the whole education system.
Dr O'Connor: We tend to focus purely on small
businesses because up to 99 per cent of businesses in the UK are
small businesses, and basically from a small business perspective
it is very difficult to implement cradle to cradle. The infrastructure
has been mentioned already; the key thing is you can design a
product from a cradle to cradle perspective but if the end-of-life
recovery, recyclability and collection facilities are not there
then it is not necessarily going to have the impact one would
like. At the moment, from an evidence point of view, we are working
with a small business in Wales looking at how cradle to cradle
could be feasible from a full life cycle perspective. So we will
have evidence this year on that. The key thing here is that for
small businesses, from a resource point of view and a cost point
of view, it is not feasible at the moment to undertake a full
cradle to cradle analysis, and a lot of small businesses would
also not have the design capabilities.
Q357 Lord Howie of Troon: I am a
civil and structural engineer and I am wondering, when we talk
about designers, just who we are talking about. As an engineer,
design means something to me very specific. On the other hand,
there are designers who are essentially stylists, and somewhere
in-between there are industrial designers who are engineers. Just
who are we talking about when we use the word "design"
in this context?
Dr O'Connor: I would say we are talking predominantly
about industrial product designers in this context; designers
who control the industrial aspects of a product development. So
that would be designers doing graduate programmes in BA or BSc
product or industrial design.
Mrs Morris: When I was talking about designers
I think it is a wider group, for sure. It would cover the sort
of designers that I think the Design Council has a connection
with, ranging right through from fashion and textile through to
digital and communication as well as product industrial design
and all of the three-dimensional areas of design. There is the
need to have a very broad view of the types of designers that
are contributing to all of the products and services that are
made. Yes, of course, there are engineering designers, on one
hand, and there are, as I say, branding and communication designers
on the other hand. I think they all have a part to play in this
debate.
Ms Brass: I would like to say that your question
flags up a very important issue—a very critical issue—to
do with design education, and that is that we are still considering
and training our designers in silos. We are still training designers
in very specific fields, and the complexity of the issues that
we are required to address now means that designers should be
exposed to other areas of design and, indeed, to other professional
capacities while they are still studying. It is a critical issue.
Dr Bhamra: I agree that it is product and industrial
design, mostly, but also engineering design. It is a wide discipline
and designers need to start broadening their horizons in order
to address these issues.
Lord Howie of Troon: It is a word which is very
slightly used, especially in the press. That is not a question.
Q358 Lord Lewis of Newnham: In the
text that we have, I was very interested to see that in point
of fact you imply that designers are a speciality group, as it
were, which are not necessarily the same as the manufacturers,
and that there is interaction between those two. Very often these
are relatively small groups of people who can, perhaps, influence
in some way or other the manufacturing process. How far do manufacturers
specify the type of design that they want, in making a request?
It is very clear from what you are saying that the whole problem
of this concept of cradle to cradle analysis is falling down because
of the interface between these two groups of people. What can
we do to rectify that, because, ideally, of course, this must
be a major factor for any future policy?
Mrs Morris: One of the issues here is about
how early in any research and development process, for whatever
product is being developed, designers are involved. There are
lots of cases now where it is becoming earlier but it is still
often not at a very early stage. So there is a lot of work that
is done, perhaps, by manufacturers and by the science and technologists,
who are looking at what a product might be, and the designer is
only brought in at a fairly late stage to actually look at the
interface, to create the actual end product. That is where, certainly,
there is a missed opportunity in terms of bringing designers in
at a much, much earlier stage to end up with the right use of
materials, the right type of product and the right way to actually
get those design ideas in at an earlier stage. We are doing some
work at the moment with some universities, looking at how designers
can really help, at a very early stage of research, in the application
of the technology and the research; really, even thinking about:
"What sort of product service should this be? Is it necessary?
Is it going to fulfil a purpose and be what customers want",
as well as thinking about: "What should it do and what should
it be made from?"
Dr O'Connor: The point you have raised is very
important and it goes back, particularly, to business strategy.
Design is not just an add-on process; it needs to be part of the
overall business strategy for any organisation. What we are looking
at, in terms of trying to inspire businesses to consider environmental
and social issues in parallel with economic issues, is the overall
brand and business strategy. That is the key to moving forward.
If businesses can be inspired to do that (build into business
strategy) and they can get results that demonstrate it is economically
viable as well—it has got to be economically viable in terms
of waste reduction and environmental issues—it should become
part of their business activities on a day-to-day basis. That
is crucial.
Q359 Chairman: Mrs Morris, you raised
the question of materials. This is something on which we would
be interested to hear the views of the panel. Can material producers
influence manufacturers of products to use their materials in
a sustainable way, or even substitute one material for another?
What sort of awareness are you conscious of, of that sort of approach?
Mrs Morris: You are right, I think there is
a real gap in knowledge here between designers and, perhaps, the
scientists and technologists who are developing materials. That
is part of the issue here. It links to what Clare was saying,
I think, a little bit about education silos. It is very difficult
for students to actually cross over different subject areas, different
boundaries to work with different types of subject areas and professionals
to find out about this sort of area. They might know about particular
materials within their own programme, if they are product and
industrial designers, but there is a whole load of development
work, obviously, going on in other engineering faculties and in
other science areas which they might not come across at all. There
is a real opportunity here to try and find ways to break down
some of that and connect students and tutors at that stage so
that they have greater interaction and are aware of things that
are happening. Then I think there is obviously an area within
the profession that needs to be addressed, and a part of the Materials
KTN at the moment, but there is a huge job to be done to get professional
designers to be aware of resources like that that are available.
We have to be quite clever about how we get that information and
those messages out.
Ms Brass: I would like to add to that that there
is also a great value in exposing students and professionals of
other professions to design expertise. Designers can add a different
approach rather than, for example, a scientist, and can complete
a picture which a scientist may not necessarily have. It is as
much to do with the people who are at the receiving end of that
scientific development.
Dr Bhamra: Also, I think it is the confidence
of the designer to use new materials. They will use the material
that they think and know will work in the way they would want
it to. Being introduced to new materials is fine, but they need
the confidence to know it will perform in the way it should. Unfortunately,
the way information is presented to them at the moment does not
give them the confidence that, actually, it will perform in the
way that they want, so they will probably be safe and stick with
what they know.
Dr O'Connor: Can I add one point to that? It
is important, obviously, to have a partnership approach, or a
team approach, and people have to work to their strengths. That
is why it has to be a life-cycle partnership approach. Designers
have a role, as do manufacturers and suppliers and other stakeholders—but
people have to work to their strengths. That is really important.
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