Coming up: The limits of design: Designing for Security and Sustainable Development

For over a decade, design professionals have been extending their remit from the design of objects and buildings to the design of services, systems and environments. Their "design thinking" is now being imported to business school curricula. Magazines such as Business Week are promoting design-led innovation as essential for business. But businesses are not the only contexts that designers are now working in. In the most recent developments, a UN agency has worked with service innovation and design consultancy live|work. International design and innovation consultancy IDEO has produced a Human-Centred Design Toolkit for NGOs. Public service design group Participle has co-designed solutions to the challenges of ageing with older people themselves. One of them is a new social enterprise called Southwark Circle, now up and running and supported by Southwark Council. The NHS is bringing experience-based design to its service design and development. At a time when design thinking is reaching way beyond the design profession, it's time to take stock and ask: Is design thinking the way forward for solving complex "wicked" problems such as security and development? Can designers really design anything they turn their hands to? Are there limits to design thinking and, if so, what are they?

Speakers + panel
- Derek B Miller and Lisa Rudnick, Security Needs Assessment Protocol, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
- Daniel Dickens, Southwark Circle
- Jeff Masters, Commission Secretary, Commission on 2020 Public Services
- Joseph Harrington, Engine Group
- Alison Prendiville, London College of Communications
- Lucy Kimbell, Saïd Business School

Organised by Saïd Business School and London College of Communications
Graphic by Tony Pritchard

The limits of design: Designing for security and sustainable development
Weds 11 November 7-9pm
London College of Communications
Elephant and Castle, London SE1

To attend, please contact graphics@lcc.arts.ac.uk with subject line 'Limits of Design'
We think we'll be able to create a podcast for distribution after the event