A great first step…
When you have some time, check out the website for the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative. This excerpt from their website sums things up:
Design serves to advance the goals of the United States’ economic competitiveness by saving time and money and simplifying the use, manufacturing, and maintenance of goods and services. It enhances democratic governance by improving the performance and delivery of government services. Thus, the American design communities offer ten design policy proposals for how we can partner with the government to help redesign America’s future.
- Formalize an American Design Council to partner with the U.S. Government.
- Set guidelines for legibility, literacy, and accessibility for all government communications.
- Target 2030 for carbon neutral buildings.
- Create an Assistant Secretary for Design and Innovation position within the Department of Commerce to promote design.
- Expand national grants to support interdisciplinary community design assistance programs based on human-centered design principles.
- Commission a report to measure and document design’s contribution to the U.s. economy.
- Revive the Presidential Design Awards to be held every year and use triple bottom-line criteria (economic, social, and environmental benefi t) for evaluation.
- Establish national grants for basic design research.
- Modify the patent process to refl ect the types of intellectual property created by designers.
- Encourage direct government investment in design innovation.
The report of their findings from the summit (which led to the ten design policy proposals above) can be found here: Report of the 2008 U.S. National Design Summit.
Read it over and if you agree, you can endorse the summary here.
This country is facing a number of very big problems right now, but we firmly believe that design thinking can help us (companies, cities, states, the U.S. government or non-profit organizations) sort things out, find innovative solutions and chart a path to better future. To the extent that Frontier can help make that happen with services (which now represent 75% of the U.S. economy) we are "all in."
