My work experience at Taiwan Design Research Institute
Exploring Taiwan’s design ecosystem and Designing for Policies
2020 sees the transformation of Taiwan Design Center to Taiwan Design Research Institute. It inspired a discussion to rethink and shape the future of design in Taiwan.
After conducting several workshops and expert interviews, several ideas of the future of design came to shape. This is the first time that stakeholders from all of the elements in Taiwan’s design ecosystem came together to ideate and draft policies.
Introduction
Our research and policy development report, ‘Taiwan Design Blueprint’, is the main outcome of my first year at Taiwan Design Research Institute.
The purpose of this project is to shape the future of Taiwan’s design industry using a systemic design methodology. Using co-creation with design ecosystem stakeholders, we examined the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Taiwan’s design industry, and established a series of action plans for a better environment. The results are 122 action plans and 33 strategies.
You can read the full version here.
Our team consists of 3 main researchers and several consultants (professors from design and public administration). Vice President Lin was our team leader.
The National Design Ecosystem
After exploring many ways to systemically design policies for the design industry, we decided to employ the concept of ‘national design ecosystems’, which is a model published by Whicher et al. in 2017 after iterations throughout the past decades. The ecosystem model pretty much covers every aspect that design can involve. After careful considerations we also altered the elements in it to better suit the situation in Taiwan. This led me to think of the design industry on an ecosystem level, in which the interplays between each element is emphasized and scrutinized.
The elements in the design ecosystem:
Supply:
- design education
- designers
- design research
Demand:
- design users
- design promotion
Supply & Demand:
- design policy
- design funding
- design actors
Methodology
This project involved over 60 stakeholders in the design industry in 3 workshops that explored all aspects of the design ecosystem. Workshops are a great means of communication and debate, as we discovered stakeholders that have diverse beliefs and values, and identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in Taiwan’s design ecosystem.
Developing and developing action plans for the future had to be the most intriguing and challenging part of our research. What are the right directions for now? Who will advocate our strategies? Why should we work with a certain party instead of others? Being not only researchers but also an important stakeholder of the discussed topic, these are questions that are carefully thought through.
In terms of data collection, the series of workshops were more difficult to plan, since the attendees were all experts or opinion leaders in their own field. The decision of tools used was tough because:
- Considering the number of attendees, we had to make sure that all 8 facilitators (one per team) could understand the rules clearly.
- The limited time duration was intolerant for complicated tools. Therefore our tools were kept simple but inspiring, and the outcomes did fulfill what we set out to find.
Design workshop is a great way to change how people normally think and do things. Though experts might have hesitated in discussions during the first or second workshops, the more experience they have, the smoother things went. Diverse opinions were highly encouraged, and the ‘no judging policy’ worked well, giving birth to multiple innovative ideas. So, in some way, I believe we are nudging the high level stakeholders in the design industry for a positive transition in the future.
Afterthought
Even though organizing the workshops was tiresome, it reminded me of how details matter, and how the workshop environments affect the way attendees think and talk, and become a deep-lying factor of our outcomes.
Research values were often questioned since I believe its more significant outcomes only start to show on a more long-term scale, and as our research involves policymaking, I feel the urgent need to finish our research and come to a conclusion asap, for policies are very likely to expire with everything (politics, for example) changing so fast.
By December, we have completed and published ‘Taiwan’s Future Design Blueprint’, and have moved on to exploring concrete ways of carrying out the action plans.
During my first year at Taiwan Design Research Institute, I have gained valuable opportunities on projects only organizations on such level can provide, and explored design methods in the complicated world of policymaking. These experiences inspire me to look at future problems and opportunities on a more systemic approach.
