InFact Newsletter – Autumn 2009

There is not one person I speak to who says it is not a good time to invest in innovation. It is imperative we do. Investors are seeking great new ideas to get their money into something that will yield a return. Companies know all the rules have changed and thank God the banks are finally coming to understand that you can’t make the world up on credit and that we actually need a sustainable productive sector to create balance sheets that work.

We are sane after all!

Nigel Sharplin

Success is Best at the BeST Design Awards 2008

We’re very excited to announce that we have added a new trophy to our treasured Award cabinet. The BeST Design Awards are a national award programme of the Designers Institute of New Zealand, recognising New Zealand's best graphic, product and spatial design. InFact won Silver in the Non-consumer Product Award category for the design of the Hitman ST300 for Fibre-Gen Instruments Ltd. Special thanks and congratulations to Nick Rayner and the team who worked on this project.

InFact Meets With New RST Minister to Talk Commercialisation

Government investment in research has been and still is enormous, and yet very little of it generates profit in return. This would not be acceptable in the private sector – which recognises that only a few new product or service ideas are viable, so why should NZ tax payers continue to invest in research projects that can’t demonstrate how they will provide a return for the NZ economy?

As described by Better by Design, the NZTE programme set up to help grow New Zealand’s economy through the better use of design, ‘Design is a process which can give a company a sustainable competitive advantage’. It also improves the bottom line.

We recently met with the new Minister for Research Science and Technology, Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, to explain to him how ‘design-led’, government funded R&D could mitigate risks and return more profit for New Zealand. We recommended that all technology R&D funding applications provide evidence that they understand both the market needs and how they will deliver ‘new customer value’. He agreed that the programmes need better administration and would look into the points raised. (Click here to download the presentation we gave to the Foundation for Research Science & Technology and the Minister.)

NZ business and economic growth depends as much on effective commercialisation as technical brilliance, and research must look beyond science to create new customer value. At a recent seminar organised by Better by Design, Chuck Pelly and Joan Gregor of The Design Academy explained that design-led organisations are making startling progress, even in a downturn, because the design process permeates a company culture and is completely focussed on the customer end. “Design is a critical thinking process that looks at the end user and helps a company gain a better understanding of what the end user wants, instead of worrying what customers might be up to.”

To create innovation success that delivers real value to customers, you need a strategic design process that aligns knowledge, intellect and insight with real customer need. It is simple. BMW, Google and Apple understand this, as do Fisher & Paykel and Formway.

In his speech to the NZ Bio conference last month Wayne Mapp said the government is looking at ways in which it can extract greater value for money from its investment in Research, Science and Technology and will be appointing a Prime Minister's science advisor to provide focus and expertise in the assessment and simplification of the research sector. The aim is to strengthen links between RS&T, tertiary education and economic development, as well as supporting collaboration between researchers and research organisations.

InFact supports this initiative, for if the New Zealand economy is to continue to reap the rewards of our Kiwi ingenuity we have to marry the huge intellectual resources of our CRI’s and Universities with the customer needs being discovered by industry.

We need to be working together to solve the difficult science and technical issues associated with meeting a new customer need - be it emotional, spiritual, mental or physical. And in a way that customers truly value and will pay money for.

InFact supports both Better by Design and the Designers Institute of New Zealand in promoting the benefit of design professionalism for sustainable economic growth. We also acknowledge there needs to be a benchmark of capability amongst design professionals. To learn more about design-led innovation we recommend reading Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want by Curt Carlson.

InFact, Deloitte & pHd3 Team Up to Deliver Design360 Assessments

In the eleven years since he established InFact Nigel Sharplin has earned a growing reputation as an active advocate for design inspired innovation in New Zealand. When Better by Design opened a tender for Design 360 service providers Nigel partnered with Deloitte and pHd3 to form the D:Three team and entered a successful bid to carry out design assessments for qualified businesses on Better by Design’s Design Integration Programme.

Better by Design is a government initiative created to increase New Zealand’s export earnings. The assessments enable companies to become more internationally competitive and profitable through design innovation.

The key principles of the programme are to assess clients’ design capability by looking at their business strategy, strategic brand design, and new product and service development. Once opportunities are identified a plan is developed to integrate design as a strategic discipline for competitive advantage. The intent and focus of the programme are reflected and supported within InFact’s own design process.

The D:Three team aims to bring fresh inspiration and profitability to clients through product, graphic and environmental design, including brand development and communications. The Design 360’s design assessments are thorough and demand experienced and strategic design advisory, a growing service area for InFact.

Sleek New Touch Panel, a Winner for TL Jones

In the last year we have been working with TL Jones Ltd on the design and development of several new elevator technologies. One of which, the T1, is an integrated touch operating panel that replaces traditional mechanical buttons with a sleek and robust touch sensitive interface.

The New Zealand headquartered company, part of the Halma Group (UK), was one of the pioneers of infrared elevator door sensing technology. They received an R&D grant from the Foundation for Research & Technology to help fund the development of the projects.

Recently, through their worldwide network, TL Jones secured the T1 to be the standard operating panel in Otis India’s Quantum elevator range.

Chris Woodman, General Manager, says, “InFact give us access to a wide set of skills that we don’t have internally such as electronic design, mechanical design, industrial design, and software design. The main reason we chose to work with them is the ability to feed off their involvement with other technologies and bring knowledge and experience from other industry segments, without breaking confidentialities of course.”

“We used to contract some of our design needs to companies with a narrower range of skill sets; now with InFact we can have a wide range of readily accessible skills under one roof. This has proved valuable in a number of areas in the product development process, such as getting users involved upfront to help with user interface design and market research. InFact provide the questions that make us think.”

Design Innovation of the T1

The T1 introduces innovative touch technology into new and modernised elevators. The existing hardware solution – where buttons for each floor have to be made and inserted into a specially cut panel individually wired to the elevator’s controller – is an expensive and time consuming process. By replacing the individual buttons with one panel that is consistent in size, TL Jones and InFact created a software customisable solution that will cater for any number of floors that a building may have, from only two floors up to 21. The hardware of the T1 remains the same, only the graphical user interface needs to be customised for each building.

As the T1 is software-based, it offers the ability to custom-design the graphical user-interface panel beyond standard, run of the mill buttons to a state of the art, sleek design that compliments the customer’s own branding and company colours.

The quality of the graphics on the user-interface also means that the T1 can offer an enhanced passenger experience in the elevator. In tests users have commented on the high contrast and visibility of the floor selection areas (‘buttons’) on the panel. In particular, it is appreciated by disabled users who find it much easier to find the appropriate button to press to select their floor. T1 also easily integrates with accessibility keypads suitable for visually impaired passengers. Furthermore, because the T1 has no moving parts, it is maintenance free, vandal resistant, costs less, is quicker to install, and is very easy to clean simply by wiping the front face.

The target market for the T1 touch panel is significant. There are 8 million elevators in service already around the world with 350,000 new elevators built and 400,000 existing elevators modernised annually. The signal fixture market (e.g. floor and alarm buttons, position indicators, displays) is currently estimated at $2.5b annually.

Still Time to Claim R&D Tax Credits

Despite the fact that National repealed Labour’s R&D tax credit with effect from the 2009-10 year, many businesses are forgetting, or failing to realise, that they can still claim a significant amount of cash as part of their 2008-2009 tax return. This financial injection can make all the difference for businesses and, especially in a recession year, shouldn’t be overlooked.

According to Aaron Thorn, our business partner at Deloitte who also works closely with the IRD, many businesses don’t think it’s worth claiming any tax credits for the 2009 year.

He says, “With 15% of cash on offer - even though it’s only for one year - the credit is definitely worth chasing, as it can be quite significant. For instance, I just assisted a Christchurch manufacturer and qualified their entitlements at $150,000. This was a surprise to them because they didn’t think it was worth worrying about. Like many others they thought that National had cancelled all tax credits entirely.”

“Most people think that R&D credits only apply to lab coat and beakers type research projects. But the tax credit is deliberately very broad and, beyond pure research, also applies to product development and process improvement. The key requirement is that the project involves ‘technical’ risk or challenge, where success is not certain or the development of novel technology. It’s worth the effort, particularly as the IRD are administering the tax credits within the spirit of the legislation.”

As to what will replace the R&D tax credits, the Prime Minister has hinted that innovation is one of the three areas National will be focusing on to boost the NZ economy. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. As proven in other countries (including Australia), incentivising private companies to research and develop new products and services stimulates innovation, business and economic growth.

Our ability to survive in a competitive global market relies on the agility and capability of our top exporters to adapt and deliver best-selling products. And, as we see it, investing in private R&D is by far the smartest and most cost-effective way to create successful innovations.

Designalogue - April 09
by Shaun Craill, InFact Senior Industrial Designer

Over the last few months I have been dipping into Taschen’s weighty review of influential designers and design movements of the twentieth century. It has been an enlightening read covering the best work of selected individuals and their influence on the design movements they created and shaped. I gained the impression that emerging design movements often showed a graceful and intelligent evolution from what had come before. The continuum of change is not immediately apparent when individual pieces of design are examined in isolation, but when viewed as a whole it can be seen. It suggests a process of design evolution that is almost biological, as new ideas, fashions, materials and trends compete for survival.

What intrigues me most about the various design movements that arose during the last hundred odd years was how many of them were born out of periods of turmoil and discontent. Political upheavals, world wars and depressions all seemed to provide some sort of impetus for a creative response from designers to try something new. The history of design has been much more political than I had previously realised.

The world has now entered one of these periods of stress. Global climate change and economic meltdown are disruptions that design will want to respond to in the next decade. Michael Cannell stirred up a hornets nest for daring to suggest the same thing with his recent New York Times article ‘Design loves a depression’. I think he was right on the money and that Bio-mimicry will be one of the starting points of this response, with sustainability as the end target.

The current global financial and climatic stress is the result of the failure of capitalism (remembering that design is part of that system) to take a sufficiently long term view of the effects of its commercial behaviour. Sustainability offers a new way of looking at the problem by redefining the deliverables within an alternative framework and with a very different time horizon.

This framework aligns well with designers’ view of things. Designers have always been advocates for end-users and their concerns; and we find that as end-users begin to have an increasing concern for the climate, designers find they have a growing mandate to represent sustainable principles in their work.

There is a big potential catch; there is a real risk of the creation of another short term economic bubble. Robert Bell certainly thinks so, and in his book ‘The Green Bubble’, he maps out how such a bubble would develop and then fail. Bell predicts that this coming boom and bust will be unlike anything the world has seen before because this bubble would not be confined to any particular geographical market, it will be a global phenomenon because the conditions that justify it, climate change, resource depletion, and a political need for economic stimulation, are global conditions.

And this would be a real disaster, because the ultimate banker - the biosphere, doesn’t believe in tax incentives, or unrealisable carbon futures trading, and she plays for keeps. Financial markets currently operate without tangible accountability to this ultimate banker, as can be seen in the lopsided applications of Emissions Trading Schemes. Realistically this isn’t about to change.

Which brings us back to the role of designers in a time of crisis. Cradle to Cradle authors Michael Braungart and William McDonough have come to the conclusion that leadership will not come from politicians and corporates, but from design. Design is where the greatest impact can be made as an agent of change. Good design ideas have the power to cross jurisdictional boundaries, political systems and geography (as illustrated in the Taschen book) and in the digital age this can now happen faster than it ever has in the past.

McDonough poses a challenge to us ‘what are our intentions?’ Designers are the ones who make intentions tangible. It is now time to start evolving the new sustainable future we want to see and start making it real. The conditions are right for a shift. I look forward to seeing where this new design movement takes us, politically, aesthetically, emotionally and sustainably.

What do you think? I’d be interested to hear your comments.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to comment, give feedback, or request more information email us at design@infact.co.nz We’d love to hear from you.