Design Organisations

One of the major hurdles is going to be getting access to design organisations. For such an international research project it would be nice to get international design organisations involved, along the lines of: IDEO, Philips Design, Fosters partners, Ove Arup... Maybe too big, and also too secret? Would there be any benefit in keeping to smaller local organisations? Maybe we should make a 'long list' of organisations (organisations we've worked with in the past, those that we wish we could work with, local organisations, etc.).

Also we need to be clear about the benefits of the project to the organisations involved. Off the top of my head:

* Free marketing in the resulting publications, especially if the data becomes standard (albeit to a limited community). Also the possibility that good collaboration might lead to OU television programmes.
* The worlds best minds concentrated on your organisation and design process (I say without irony)
* Simply an interesting thing to do (the Hawthorne 'watching decorators increases productivity' argument) which you'd be foolish to miss.

Would it be worth asking organisations to put up some money for the project to promote a feeling of exclusivity and commitment?

New Members

I've asked Fraser Reid if he would be interested in joining the project and he has said yes. I think his psychology background will look good in the mix, and he's recently been filming architects in meetings. So maybe that is more data we can discuss. I've also asked Nigel Cross to be involved and he's happy to do that as well. So we're building up a nicely composed core team for the project. Currently:

Janet McDonnell
Peter Lloyd
Rachel Luck
Fraser Reid
Nigel Cross

Should we have titles?