The New Design Agenda: Changing the World by Design

The design function has transformed and, in turn, has been transformed by the seismic changes in business and society associated with social attitudes and expectations, technology and digitization, media and communication. For designers, these changes have been both enabling and threatening; requiring new ways of thinking, new skills and calling into question the role and value of their work.

In The New Design Agenda, Rachel Cooper and Leon Cruickshank from Imagination Lancaster, provide a guided tour to these changes and their implications for designers now and in the future. Drawing on interviews with some of the most highly regarded commentators and practitioners from across design practice, industry, policy-making and academia they bring together the threads from this, the most cross-disciplinary of activities, into a coherent and convincing tapestry and lay out the vision for the future of design and the design profession.

This engaging and important book is a must-read for the design professionals, educators and policy-makers who will be instrumental in imagining and implementing the new techniques, capabilities and resources required to take design forward for the next fifteen years.

Rachel Cooper OBE is Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University. She is Director of ImaginationLancaster. Professor Cooper’s research interests cover: design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry, a specific interest in design for wellbeing and socially responsible design.

Leon Cruickshank is Professor of Design and Creative Exchange at Lancaster University. Leon’s core interests relate to how technology can enable new relationships between users and designers and through this allow users to become more active in shaping our society, environment and media. This requires a radical change in the way we think about designers and designing.