Kevin Otto to Give Keynote Address at DESIGN 2016 on Design Research Adoption

The upcoming DESIGN 2016 Conference will feature a keynote address on successful adoption of design research from Design Factory’s Kevin Otto, Adjunct Professor from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The DESIGN 2016 Conference will be held in Dubrovnik Croatia on 16-19 May, and is part of a series that occurs every other year held by the Design Society. It is a premiere event for the design research community in Europe.

Kevin’s presentation ‘Industry Adoption of Design Methods: Where is the Crisis?’ is a reflection and recommendation to researchers in the field on how to get their design research successfully used in practice.

‘Design research deployment is different from other forms of technology research, it is more difficult. New technology diffusion follows well understood patterns of S-curve improvements, if your research produces an innovation that is an improvement there is a demand. Design research is slightly different, being simply a better method is not enough. Companies will ignore it and continue to do things the way they have. It is only when outside events change and their old methods fail that they are willing to consider new methods.’ says Kevin.

Kevin will present examples and evidence from the research community, as well as offer examples from the numerous engagements he has had deploying design research methods into practice, both successfully and not. These include helping companies such as Ford Motor Company, United Technologies Corporation, and the Bose Corporation make use of approaches such Design Thinking, Agile development, Pugh concept selection, Performance simulation, DACE, Robust design, DFSS, Model based verification, and Capability analysis.

‘In each of these successful cases, the company had a failed development effort underway using their existing design processes that had been previously good enough. They had a crisis.’ says Kevin. ‘This is key. Companies will not change to simply be better, that is a myth. Their methods have to first fail.’

It is therefore important to understand the improvement potential of a design research piece of work, and look for that as a gap when interacting with potential corporate design research partners. ‘Study their problem, and relate it to a gap in their design practices that need adoption of new methods.’ says Kevin.

With that enabler, design research results can be demonstrated, formulated into standard work, codified into certification levels, and packaged into training programs for successful corporate adoption and performance turnaround.

Prof. Kevin Otto is an Adjunct Professor from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Aalto University. He is also the CEO and President of Robust Systems and Strategy LLC, an engineering design consulting firm. Before his appointment at Aalto University, Otto was the Associate Pillar Head of the Engineering Product Development Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, a new university in Singapore focused on engineering design. Now he applies the ideas of modularity and robustness with students of Aalto University.