Design Against Crime

12Nov09

These are weblinks that follow up the issues raised at the lecture on Designing Against Crime held at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, November 2009 for MDes/MSc students.

The Design Against Crime website was established by the original research teams at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Salford and contains research papers, project publications, links to other resources, and an archive of student design projects. The site has not been updated for over four years, but has some useful information. Some of the published papers and reports can be found here.

Since our original research, the Design Council has recently initiated further work in this field, which can be explored here.

The Design Against Crime Research Centre is based at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, and has information on projects conducted there. This is a very useful resource with details on the practice-based research underway with a number of different partners.

At the start of our project we undertook a number of detailed case studies that showcased effective design against crime practice. These were conduced in the UK, United States, Sweden and South Korea. These can be downloaded as four files – one, two, three, four.

The report we produced – Think Thief – provides more detailed commentary on the case studies and, most importantly, provides guidelines for designers on how to explore and address crime reduction in the design process.

Paul Ekblom is a leading criminologist and a champion of design against crime. His paper, Gearing Up Against Crime: a Dynamic Framework to Help Designers Keep up with the Adaptive Criminal in a Changing World provides a more theoretical and detailed discussion of the issues.

The European Designing Out Crime Association provides a useful platform for professionals working in this field.

A fairly old profile piece in The Guardian on my views on design and crime. See also recent news coverage on my views on CCTV elsewhere in this blog.

Breaking the cycle book chapter with Rachel Cooper, Andrew Wootton and Caroline Davey.

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CCTV

18Oct09

“CCTV fails to cut crime and the technology needs to be curbed in Scotland, where the number of cameras has almost doubled in the past six years, a leading academic has said.” This was the opening paragraph of a piece on CCTV in The Times last week, based on an interview with me:

Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can contribute to crime reduction, told The Times that the expensive policy is politically motivated and ineffectual. He also warned that it can have the opposite effect of that intended, by giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with property and personal safety.

“We should, as a society, question why we have got it,” said the professor of design policy at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. “Our civil liberties have been crushed and trampled upon and compressed and this is part of that. We have yet to see it have any positive impact. I think we should have a moratorium on it.”

The whole article is available online here. It was also picked up by Henry Porter’s blog over at The Guardian, together with other specialist sites. The following day I did a live interview on BBC Radio Scotland, patched in “live from Luton”, as they seemed proud to claim.

The problem with coverage such as this is that of the over-simplification of complex issues. Indeed, media coverage of CCTV (and its contradictions)  is the subject of a case study that I do with our postgraduate students, so this episode will contribute more useful material to that session! The Times journalist Lindsay McIntosh did a good and thorough job of interviewing me (by phone while I was on a train going through a succession of tunnels in London) and the piece is well researched and very readable. But some aspects of the story need further elaboration.

I am described as “a leading academic”, which is most flattering. I have worked in the field of design and crime for over a decade now, and have a well established record of publishing and researching in this field. But, I am no expert in the field of CCTV – I merely track all the research on this done by others as part of my continuing research into design and crime prevention. But what is interesting about the media is how journalists create experts in their own imagination to help strengthen their own position. Lindsay McIntosh contacted me because of a previous piece on CCTV that I had written for The Times Higher. Nowhere in her piece did she refer to any current or recently published research. Unlike The Guardian’s Henry Porter who wrote this: “The latest report from Scotland by Professor Mike Press says the policy is ‘politically motivated and ineffectual‘.” Sorry Henry, there is no latest report. Never has been. Just the one that you imagined.

So, if I don’t do research on CCTV, then who does? Well, quite a few people, and it’s best to google them. There is some very good research underway at University College London, but a good place to start is with this report by Martin Gill and Angela Spriggs undertaken for the Home Office – Assessing the Impact of CCTV. As their report makes clear, it is not a black and white issue – CCTV can be effective as a crime prevention strategy in certain circumstances. But if one was going to reduce their detailed and well argued report to one central idea, then it is this: CCTV is no ‘magic bullet’ to the problem of crime. But this is so often how it has been portrayed by the policy makers and some parts of the media. In other words – it has been over-sold. So, there is a detailed body of research on CCTV that suggests that, at best, it plays a minor role as a crime prevention tool. The point that I made in my interviews for both The Times and the BBC was that there are now strong vested interests – largely the security industry – that is driving CCTV forward, and taking resources away from other, more effective crime prevention strategies.

But the thing I take strong exception to is being wheeled out to support David Cameron and the Tories, which was the central thrust of Henry Porter’s piece. CCTV began its accelerating drive towards ubiquity under the previous Tory government (largely as a consequence of the Jamie Bulger case). While former Tory shadow Home Secretary David Davis has spoken out against CCTV in seemingly non-authoritarian terms, David Aaronovitch in The Times has an alternative take on his position. But as is now patently the case with The Conservatives, behind the noble front of non-authoritarian reason is the rude health of good old fashioned Toryism, demonstrated in their appetite for CCTV in the Ribble Valley, in Norwich, in Somerset, in Hendon, in Chester, and many other places.

Our civil liberties have taken a battering under this government, and CCTV has been extended in its scope without any rational assessment of its efficacy or implications. That is not to say that it is without any value in terms of crime prevention or detection. However, its future development and application should be informed by research and framed by a politics that is rooted in social justice. And that is not the politics of David Cameron.

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UK design in trouble

15Jun07

Tony Blair may have dragged the UK into an illegal war, undermined faith in the democratic process and driven morale in many public services to rock bottom levels, but as he finally leaves office he does leave behind a legacy of spearheading Britain’s shift to a knowledge-based creative economy. Who says? Well, to be honest, mainly Blair himself together with his supporters such as Lord Puttnam who claimed that the UK was transformed from an “island of coal surrounded by fish” to “an island of creativity surrounded by a sea of understanding”.

The evidence, however, does not stack up, and in particular the UK’s design industry is beginning to exhibit some acute structural vulnerabilities. Those of us who have an interest in design education and the future of design in the UK need to carefully assess the implications of recent studies and commentaries that suggest a potentially bleak future for the UK’s creative industries if current problems are not addressed.

In their book Fantasy Island, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson describe the state of Bullshit Britain – the country that has begun to believe the post-industrial hype that obscures its significant economic problems. “So what is Britain good at?” they ask, “where does the UK fit in this world of changing economic geography, in which nations will increasingly concentrate on the things they do best? The answer is simple. We count the money and we do the bullshit.”

An extract of their book is online at The Guardian website. Here is a section from it:

“In the days of Cool Britannia back in the late 90s, Blair called the UK the ‘design workshop of the world’, while three years later, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport noted that ‘Britain is a top exporter of design worldwide and many design consultancies earn a significant portion of income from work outside Britain’. Not, however, as much as they did. Overseas earnings from design fell from £1.4bn in 2001/2 to £699m in 2004/5, while the number of people employed in the design workshop of the world fell from 82,000 in 2000/1 to 71,000 four years later…. Some of the claims made for the new knowledge economy are nothing more than hype, and nowhere is this more true than in the case of the creative industries. There are three times as many people working in domestic service as there are in advertising, television, video games, film, the music business and design combined; the creative industries represent around one in 20 of the people working in Britain today.”

Recent data and research strengthens this case. The British Design Industry Valuation Survey 2005 to 2006 makes the following points:

• Turnover for the industry has seen a 6% fall on last years figures, from £4.6bn to £4.3bn
• Growth this year has been in the mid-sized companies, suggesting that smaller, newer companies and freelancers are struggling.
• 2005/2006 employee numbers are down overall by 8.4%

The Government’s own Creative Industries Economic Estimates contains statistics on gross value added, exports, employment and numbers of businesses within the Creative Industries. This shows that whereas the creative industries accounted for 7.3% of Gross Value Added in 2004 (as compared to 7.8% in 2000), only 0.5% of that comes from the design industry (a 50% drop from 2000, when the contribution was 1%).

Nesta’s recent report Creating growth: How the UK can develop world-class creative businesses argues how “the UK’s creative industries are facing increasing international competition. In particular, creative businesses and policymakers need to appreciate the scale of the competitive challenges now facing these sectors in the UK.”

One key factor that creates vulnerability in the smaller design firms are a lack of business and entrepreneurial skills. This is highlighted by the report Creating Entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship education for the creative industries published in May 2007 by the ADM-HEA Subject Centre. It argues as follows: “The creative industries account for more than seven per cent of the UK economy. But many are now struggling in the face of unprecedented overseas competition. Stronger entrepreneurship education is needed to equip graduates with the skills to create commercial opportunities for themselves – and to contribute to the growth of larger, more sustainable businesses.”

Last week in the House of Lords, Lord Patel raised this issue in a debate on the creative industries:

“Despite their growth, in the UK creative industries related to design remain a cottage industry dominated by small businesses that are also very young. The sector is unable to take up the new opportunities offered by sustainable design. Design graduates need business and financial planning skills, which they are not taught adequately because of the lack of resources. Postgraduate courses are needed, and Cox’s report recommended them in order to create design-literate managers and business-literate designers. It is important that the Government recognise that more funding is required at higher education levels and at universities if we are to see greater growth in the creative industries so that they can make a greater contribution to economic growth.”

I for one would not disagree that more funding for higher education would help in addressing this. But in addition we require actions on a number of levels. First, we should acknowledge the spin, hype and bullshit that has obscured the reality of the creative economy, and take a long hard look at the emerging data on its structural weaknesses. Second, we must address the requirements of management for design and design management for the small firms sector: this we must place more firmly on the educational agenda. And third we must explore more fully the business tools required by the design industry, as my colleagues Tom Inns and Emma Murphy are doing. We should also be doing this much more on a European level rather than limiting our perspectives to those of the UK.

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Design Management Europe

09Jun07

This Thursday I was in Eidhoven, invited as keynote speaker for the launch of the Design Management Europe Award, which was held in the Evoluon – a suitable venue for an event to champion design in Europe. This award is organised by the DME Network,

The event was chaired by Wally Olins, and the other speakers were Jesus Garcia of Boreal, one of the winners of the DME Award in 2001, VP of Design at Philips – Grant Davidson – and VP of Johnson Controls – Han Hendriks. Wally Olins was fascinating to meet with, particularly to learn his insights into the future of branding, which will be the subject of a forthcoming book by him.

A good posting on the DME Award event by Erik Roscam Abbing can be found here. He has picked the bones out of my talk far better than I could. For a short time I will be making available a PDF of my talk downloadable from here.

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It was 40 years ago today…

01Jun07

1st June 1967. The Beatles. Sgt Pepper. I remember my Dad bringing it home and playing it for the first time. Now that was a user experience. And it still is today.

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Seduction, attachment and the design experience

01Jun07

Experience is a hot term in design, which is problematic as the theoretical frameworks offered to describe and explain ‘experience’ leave something to be desired. This provides the potential to develop a rich interdisciplinary research programme to explore this further. There is certainly some interesting and innovative research being conducted at the edges of the field, which need to be woven together. Some recent reading has highlighted three important contributions that have emerged from very different disciplines and research paradigms.

“Technology as Experience” by John McCarthy and Peter Wright starts out with the view that “technological development and business momentum may have outstripped reflective commentary and analysis (on user experience) …. which may take a potentially rich idea and reduce it to design implications, methods or features”. There is certainly sufficient evidence that a reductionist view of user experience is widespread, which their important book seeks to rectify. Reducing their argument to a few sentences is fraught with difficulties, but let me plough on regardless. Theirs is a philosophical argument on the nature of experience with regard to technology: “In this book we prioritize feltness to emphasise the personal and particular character of experience with technology. For us, felt experience points to the emotional and sensual quality of experience. Our first proposition is that these qualities should be central to our understanding of experience living with technology.”

They develop a pragmatist philosophy of experience that draws in particular on the work of John Dewey and Mikhail Bakhtin. This, they argue, is a philosophical approach that is particularly well suited to to exploring the shifting relationships between people, technology, and design. Significantly, Dewey was concerned with the production and consumption of artworks, while Bakhtin was concerned with our relationship to literature. A key point they make is that you can’t design experience. This of course is true, but there is a multi-million dollar industry predicated on the opposite point of view.

As I read their book, I try to draw some connections with the work currently being done by Laura Gonzalez. She is also looking at our creative relationship with artworks, but in a way that has implications for designed objects. Her research “aims at answering the following question: what makes a work of art seductive? There is a current interest in seduction, evidenced by a proliferation of monographs and exhibitions on the subject. This research is concerned with the relational aspects of subject-object interaction as experienced in contemporary art, and its underlying psychosocial characteristics.”

Her research is brilliantly encapsulated by this photograph. Drawing in particular on the work of Lacan “this research aims to produce a methodological innovation derived from an evaluation and synthesis of specific qualitative, psychoanalytical and creative methods (case studies of seductive objects like Juicy Salif, the iPod and Man Ray’s Cadeau, interviews evaluating subject-object interaction; the transference process; video diaries of the creative investigation).” On one level, anyone whose research includes Marx, shoes, seduction and iPods is worth checking out for novelty value alone – but the serious point is that her work is tackling an aspect of our “design experience” that I’ve seen little evidence of from elsewhere.

Ruth Mugge has recently completed her PhD from the Delft University of Technology that addressed the question of how can a designer increase the degree to which people bond with a product? Hers is a more prosaic focus that that of Laura Gonzalez, and the methods used in the research are more empirical and design-based. Delft has made some important contributions in this broad area, and Ruth Mugge’s work will I am sure be equally well regarded. So far I’ve only been able to get hold of a couple of her papers and read a summary of her thesis. But this seems to be the core of it: “One of her important conclusions … is that consumers bond more strongly with products which have a ‘personality’ agreeing with their own personality (e.g. extrovert or introvert). However, feeling attached to a product with an equivalent personality does not necessarily lead to a long-term relationship with such a product, because fashion changes influence the relationship between product attachment and product lifespan. Mugge also investigated the self-expression factor by determining the influence of product personalisation on the degree of product attachment… By personalising a product (for example, by painting it), an individual invests effort in the product and is able to use it to express his or her identity. Self-expression in turn has a positive effect on the degree of attachment to a product. For designers who wish to extend a product’s lifespan it is thus a good strategy to incorporate the possibility of personalisation.”

These three contributions are from diverse perspectives, but provide important insights into how we conceptualise and describe the design experience. Significantly, they take us far beyond the reductionist commercialised view of how we are supposed to “design the user experience”. A dialogue between McCarthy, Wright, Gonzalez and Mugge before an audience would be very interesting. It’s already on my to-do list.

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The Unusual Suspects

16May07

I recently had the pleasure to visit the Konstfack in Stockholm as external examiner for their MFA in Jewellery and Metalwork. Led by Professors Ruudt Peters and Karren Pontoppidan (third and fourth from left above) they are seen here wearing pieces by graduating student Sara Borgegård (far left) which are shown in the current degree show – An excellent course with excellent students – and for overseas students there are no tuition fees, which is a refreshing take on the idea of public education.

What is also interesting is that the Konstfack is about to begin a doctoral programme in art and design. We had some discussions about this, and the need to better link up research students in craft disciplines worldwide. The recent conference in Izmir, Turkey of the European Academy of Design (EAD) also raised this issue. There were some very good papers presented by doctoral students. But there are few mechanisms in place to help them network together. There is the phd-design list, but this would appear more effective for networking supervisors than students. So Wolfgang Jonas is starting work on developing an on-line networking system for research students in design, which will be under the EAD umbrella, but open to all. Early in June he is holding a meeting to progress this idea, and is seeking suggestions for what is needed.

If you are a research student in design – or a supervisor, or have even a passing interest in doctoral studies in design – please leave a comment on what you would want from an online networking system. How could we learn from other social networking facilities? Is an email list sufficient? What resources would you like to see shared?

All your comments will be forwarded on and contribute to building something that helps create a worldwide research culture for design.

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Steve Bell

29Apr07

Steve Bell is one of the UK’s foremost political cartoonists. I think I first saw his work in City Limits – the Maggie’s Farm strip, then Lord God Almighty, then If… in The Guardian, which he continues to work for. Last night he gave a lecture at the University of Dundee about his work, at which I met him and had the honour of proposing a vote of thanks afterwards.

His work has covered over two and a half decades of commentary on politics in this country. For those of us on the left, these two and a half decades have been dark days indeed: Thatcher, the Falklands, the SDP (remember them?), the Miners Strike, nuclear proliferation, the in-fighting on the left, the grey years of Major, all those dreams that led to Blair’s landslide victory, which ended up wasted in some desert in Iraq.

But through it all Steve Bell – a gentle giant of a man with a wicked sense of humour and great political insight – has helped to keep us sane.

The great thing about political cartoons is that they can present visually views and ideas that – if they were to be committed to the printed word – would result in a court case. He saw and depicted the true demonic character of Thatcher, in Harry Hardnose he showed what British journalism was descending to, he saw and presented to us the mad glint in Blair’s eye. And he got away with it. Although I understand that John Gummer came close to litigation, and deputy PM John Prescott pledged that should he ever meet Bell, then he would greet him with – as we call it up here – a Glasgow kiss.

He exemplifies why Fine Art education is not only in itself a good thing – but essential to an open society and our democratic process. He is an artist who looks at those who wield power and too often abuse that power – and provides an eloquent and powerful argument as to why they are wrong – and vulnerable. And that argument is presented in a few visual snapshots. These endure in the memory – and they make a difference – a positive difference – to those who see them. In the words of one of his characters – Kipling – a seaman in the Falklands war: “This penguin is my friend. It’s given me a reason to carry on through this madness”.

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Design management in Rotterdam

27Apr07

The EURIB Institute in Rotterdam runs Master of Design Management and Master of Brand Management courses, with sessions held at Erasmus University. Gert Koostra and Rik Riezebos run these courses, supported by Suzanne Leentvaar. For the second year running they have invited me to provide a masterclass for the Design Management students, which took place this afternoon. Photos here of most of the class which, for some inexplicable reason came out in black and white. The sixteen students mainly all hold professional positions in the design industry and therefore were great to work with over the four hours that I was with them. These Masters courses are clearly very well structured with diverse and appropriate input.

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Design Experience in The Netherlands

27Apr07

Currently in The Netherlands for two days doing two events. Last night I was invited to address the Design Management Network – “It was created in 1995 as a platform, following in the footsteps of the US Design Management Institute, at the initiative of SCAN and the Netherlands Design Institute. The DMN aims to promote knowledge acquisition and exchange among its members, and design management in general as a knowledge and professional area.”

Around 60 members of the network attended to hear my talk on design and the experience economy, and Monique van Gelvelt, who spoke about the conception and development of the Dutch Design Hotel.  The talks fitted together well, with mine focussing on broader issues, and Monique’s exploring the experiential issues involved in the design of a hotel.

I had developed the talk in a new direction, emphasising how co-creation was presenting new opportunities, but also enormous challenges for the design profession as a whole. The plenary afterwards took us into a ‘politics of design’ discussion which seemed to envigorate the audience.

Today I will be teaching on the Master of Design Management course organised by EURIB, at Erasmus University here in Rotterdam.

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