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A Sense of Place

The design industry of Massachusetts
creates new currency for its integral role
in the knowledge economy

WITH the Charles River refracting the sparkling light of an azure fall sky, the view on the morning of November 6 from the first-floor meeting rooms at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center at One Memorial Drive was stunning. The architectural design details—the curves, colors and glass—all served to minimize the actual boundaries of the building, and to accentuate a natural sense of place, of openness, of belonging.

Equally stunning was the dialogue among the 90 or so participants at the working session, “Design Innovation and the Economy,” sponsored by the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts, or DIGMA, which Microsoft was generously hosting. (www.digma.us)

In their conversations, in their shared understandings of the importance of their work to the success of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy and, of course, in their own personal dynamic, artistic vision, the participants – most of whom are leaders in the very competitive, global design industry cluster – displayed an eagerness to engage in a new framework to create a vibrant, collaborative “quilt” of future endeavor in Massachusetts.

Left to right: Continuum CEO, Harry West; DIGMA co-chair, Frano Violich of Kennedy & Violich Architecture; Valerie Fletcher of the Institute for Human Centered Design; Patrick Larkin, Director of the John Adams Innovation Institute; and Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. (Photo credit: Melissa Ablett. More photos of event courtesy of Ben Gebo >> )

“I’m excited to be here,” said Michael Schaeffer, sipping coffee before the first session began, dressed in complementary grays, charcoals and black. “It’s great to talk with other designers, and not be stuck within the walls of our own small world.” Schaeffer directs all corporate design at Reebok International Ltd., that not-so-small Massachusetts firm that describes itself as “an American-inspired, global brand that creates and markets sports and lifestyle products.”

According to Schaeffer, who serves on DIGMA’s leadership committee, Boston, despite its abundance of design talent, “is not known as a design community; it’s not transparent.” “Yet,” he continued, “there is an opportunity here to make Massachusetts a global design capital, similar to its recognition as a world-leader in life sciences and technology.”

Sitting nearby Schaeffer was Frederick Leichter, who directs Fidelity Investment’s website design. His work illustrates the symbiotic relationship between innovation, technology and design. Leichter explained that he is “responsible for designing some 30,000 pages” where the product is a process that requires “the ease of use by customers.” “The ability for customers to open accounts easily,” he said, “is the key part of the equation.” Today, 96 percent of all transactions by Fidelity customers are conducted online, he said.

Participants also included Chris Pullman, formerly the top designer at WGBH, who now teaches graphic design in the graduate program at Yale University with courses in time-based media. He stressed the importance of user-centered design and case studies. “In today’s design world,” Pullman says, “you need to leave your ego at the door.” With the democratization of tools,” he continued, “we are more engaged in a user-centered design world. Field tests often tend to up-end the designer’s initial assumptions.”

DIGMA Founding Director, Beate Becker

And, according to Howard Berke, co-founder of Konarka, a solar polymer company, designers need to instill the message in their work that design affects both “the top line and the bottom line.”

Visibility, connection, collaboration
The new, as yet fledgling group, DIGMA, defines its mission as follows: to promote the Massachusetts design economy. In its first six months, it has focused on reinforcing the mantra that ‘design thinking and practice is integral to the competitiveness of the industries of the Massachusetts innovation economy.’ Yet, as it explained in its invitation to the November 6 gathering, despite a wealth of talent interlaced across the Commonwealth, design has often been absent from discussions of economic innovation.

To set the table for the morning discussions, Beate Becker, who directs DIGMA, provided a series of snapshots of the design industry cluster in Massachusetts. “There are currently some 44,500 people working in the design industry,” she said, “which represents about 30-40 percent of the creative economy cluster,” according to figures from 2007. Those numbers increased during 2008, she said. To increase visibility, Becker continued, DIGMA is beginning to work with partners to develop self-guided design tours and design exhibitions in shopping malls throughout the Commonwealth.

The morning session—a kind of show-and-tell panel discussion—featured Harry West of Continuum, Valerie Fletcher of the Institute for Human Centered Design and Frano Violich of Kennedy & Violich Architecture. They were joined by Greg Bialecki, secretary of Housing and Economic Development, and by Pat Larkin, the director of MTC’s John Adams Innovation Institute. The discussion’s aim was “to explore the implications of design as a hidden regional asset.”

DIGMA is a collaborative initiative involving numerous stakeholders and supporters drawn from and beyond the world of design. It receives funding, operational support and in-kind services from public and private supporters, including the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MTC’s John Adams Innovation Institute, and The Boston Foundation.

Harry West, CEO of Continuum, began by tracing the origins of the firm since its beginning in 1983 in the South End, attributing its success to “lots of luck and good clients.” One of the clients was Reebok, for whom Continuum designed ‘The Pump’ sneaker, catapulting Reebok with more than $1 billion sales in its first-year debut. What Continuum did was take a medical device instrument, a blood pressure pump, and insert it into the sneaker. Some 20 years later, that sneaker is still being made, he added.

More recently, Continuum developed the ‘Omnipod,’ an all-in-one disposable device for diabetes care, which is the size of a baby’s fist and can be adhered out of sight, on a person’s body. The company that launched ‘Omnipod’ just raised $160 million in an IPO, he added.

Continuum CEO, Harry West

“Today,” West said, “we’re an export industry in a completely global economy. West Newton is home, but we have offices in Los Angeles, Milan, Seoul and Shanghai. And, it’s no longer a product economy; design of services makes up 70 percent of our business.”

“Why Massachusetts?” West asked the audience. “Because we can recruit people, it’s a great source of talent. And because there is a network of people and firms here,” he said, naming Essential and Vessel, among others.

A tool of social equity
For Valerie Fletcher of the Institute for Human Centered Design, design is a human-centered “tool of social equity”: it can be shaped for good or ill. “With 30 percent of our population over 50 years of age,” she said, “there is a need to focus on design for an aging population.” She decried the $80 billion a year consumers spend on trying to hide the impacts of aging.

The Institute’s philosophy is to promote the simple and open framework of human-centered design, shaped by parallel trends including green design and design for health and healing.

“We are talking to each other in a way that we haven’t done before,” she said, praising the gathering. “Boston,” she continued, “is very much viewed in a global perspective by the world, as a place recharged by the diversity of multi-disciplinary talent.”

DIGMA co-chair, David Hacin of Hacin & Associates

Frano Violich of Kennedy & Violich Architecture shared some of the innovative projects his firm has been working on, such as the soft house, built with energy harvesting textiles that distribute renewable electrical power, the portable light project, which delivers de-centralized renewable power and light in the developing world. The newly launched “Flap Bag Project,” in collaboration with Timbuk2 of San Francisco, is made of solar fabric, serving as a mobile tool kit. “We are spinning a message about the power of design,” he said.

Secretary Greg Bialecki spoke humbly about his own learning process, to understand that in meeting with industry clusters such as the design group, it required some “humility,” a willingness to listen to what the customers were telling him, and then to help enable the groups to organize themselves. The Secretary of Housing and Economic Development spoke of his work with DIGMA and the Boston Society of Architects to develop “Design Excellence” guidelines for public agencies and expressed interest in working with designers to tackle the challenge of delivering government services.

For Patrick Larkin, the director of the John Adams Innovation Institute, who has been involved with the formation of collaborative groups in both in the life sciences and in IT, he compared the work of the Innovation Institute to venture capitalists. “Like VCs, we invest in people. It’s the leaders who will understand the niches in the marketplace,” he said. “These are the people who can identify where the opportunities and challenges are.” Further, he praised the leadership of Governor Deval Patrick, which has proven to be “a powerful catalyst” in recognizing the value of the creative economy.

David Hacin, co-chair of DIGMA, who served as moderator for the session, stressed the importance of integrating design education into the framework STEM curriculum – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “Design means nothing unless there is an application for it,” he said. “Design needs to infiltrate the way we think about sustainability,” he continued. “We need to define careers in relationship to sustainability.”

Valerie Fletcher of the Institute for Human Centered Design

A new understanding
The afternoon’s energetic session focused on three questions: What are the models for success, or best practices, in industry or cluster development? How can we bring together the talent and resources of the design community with those of the Massachusetts innovation economy? What can we do to promulgate design thinking and innovation in Massachusetts industry and the public sector?

Much of the free-form discussion focused on points of connection and opportunities for collaboration. Indeed, the representatives of the Boston Society for Architects and the International Interior Design Association found themselves seated next to each other, concurring enthusiastically with each others’ comments. In addition, many voiced the need for design to “infiltrate” education – in grammar and middle schools as well as high schools, so that design and new media need to become ingrained in the way that students think.

By the end of the day, there seemed to have been a revelatory evolution in thinking. As Katherine ‘Kay’ H. Sloan, the president of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, or MassArt, described it, instead of a creating a message that DIGMA needs the other industry clusters to succeed, “we’re needed, really needed, by the other sectors and clusters.” To that degree, it is important for DIGMA to be industry-led, rather than, say, from MassArt, she said. “What DIGMA is doing,” Sloane continued, “is forming a triad among industry, academia and government.”

At MTC’s John Adams Innovation Institute, our goal is to enhance innovation as an integral process of the Massachusetts economy. In our support of the work of DIGMA, we recognize that design—in both products and processes—is integral to the competitiveness of the industries of the Massachusetts knowledge economy. In our role as a broker, a convener and catalyst, we believe that sharing critical dialogue as it occurs with our many constituencies in academia, industry and government helps to further innovation in Massachusetts as a forward-looking process.