Design in Academia, Consultancy and the Corporation

Description

How does research make its way into the world? Are investment and public policy understandings of education, knowledge transfer and commercialisation the most appropriate for societies and economies of the 21st century?

The notion of “design”, as a style of intellectual engagement, offers many challenges to the traditional university. This event investigates these challenges from the perspective of two speakers who have regularly crossed the boundaries between research and design, one addressing the question from a perspective of applied social sciences, and the other providing a response from a technological perspective particularly characteristic of Cambridge.

David Gilmore is Design Research manager at Intel User-Centered Design in Portland, Oregon. He was previously a user experience researcher at international product design consultancy IDEO, and a visiting professor at Apple Research Labs. He was originally an academic, spending 10 years as a lecturer in psychology at Nottingham University.

Andrew Herbert is Managing Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge. Like David, Andrew was originally an academic, in the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. In 1985 he founded consulting company APM to manage an industry-sponsored program of research and development in distributed computer operating systems. Before joining Microsoft he was Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix Systems.

Discussion will be chaired by Alan Blackwell, co-director of the Crucible network for research in interdisciplinary design. Alan teaches and researchs design topics in collaboration with several Cambridge departments. He previously spent 12 years working in professional design and engineering.