Abstract:
About the theme: Public design policies can be explained as sets of principles
established by a government intending to apply design into leveraging social,
economical, industrial, and regional development. Design policy is an emerging
theme in the field of design, and one that has been raising concerns from
governments globally. Two aspects drive this interest: the extraordinary growth
rates of the creative industries in the past decades; and the ability of Design to
be a link between technology, creativity and the user, being a potential unique
tool to help innovate and foster economic growth.
About the research: The research was proposed responding an observed
demand of governments in emerging countries to structure policies to use design
to promote industrial and social development. It was structured to analyse current
national and regional Design Policies within the framework of common aspects,
effective practices and trends; external factors influencing their implementation;
general causes of failures; assessment methods; and the influence of coexisting
design definitions and trends.
The focus is on Brazil, whose government is funding the research, the
European Union, and the United Kingdom. In this context the research aims to
generate a rationale for planning and assessment of Design Policies based on a
review of current effective practices and identified future trends relevant to
emerging markets. The main objective of the research is the identification and
analysis of the constituent elements, driving forces, impacting factors, expected
consequences, assessment methodologies and common failures of design
policies. The intended goal is to respond to a demand for new knowledge, data,
and tools that could contribute to reduce the current level of uncertainty
regarding design policies.
Methodology: To acknowledge the established objectives and goal, a
comprehensive review of literature was initially carried out, including many
reports and other documents from governments and from the EU. Emerging
issues from the review informed a two-stage study developed in Brazil. For the
first stage, in 2011, thirteen stakeholders were interviewed, from key active
governmental programmes and departments. The choice of programmes and
departments was validated by questions from the interview itself. The second
stage, in 2012, focused on the only currently active design support programme
aimed at SMEs in Brazil. During this phase, it was collected archival data and
three interviews conducted. Collected data was analysed using descriptive
statistic tools. The findings were then filtered using documents and archival data
about European effective practices to inform the discussion and
recommendations, and further used to generate a modelling framework for
design policies.
Contribution: The research contribution can be acknowledged in four different
levels of outcomes: a comprehensive review of literature (1), combining an
assortment of very significant documents and discussing their connections and
specific contributions to the field; the application of an interview and archive
based case study (2) about design policies in Brazil, corroborating Case Studies
as a leading research tool for the area; a discussion on the impacting factors
and effective practices of design policies (3); and finally the conceptual model
and framework named respectively Compass Model and Create DP (4) that set
together a framework intended to reduce levels of uncertainty in planning design
policies.