The Big Innovation Centre at the Work Foundation recently hosted the 5th DeEP Project Meeting – the penultimate gathering of the project consortium. Chaired by Ben Reid from the Work Foundation, with European Design Leadership Board member Professor Rachel Cooper OBE present, we met to further the design, development and implementation of the key outcome of the project – the DeEP Design Innovation Policy Evaluation Tool.
The meeting brought together all project development activity to date – design innovation policy landscape; taxonomy; indicators and policy flow & evaluation process – all of which have informed and refined the scope, form and function of the tool. Future activity now concentrates on finalising a detailed tool specification and the development of a number of fully-functioning components within a demonstrable prototype populated with real data.
Results from the ‘paper test’ of macro and micro indicators have validated both the relevance and coherence of these indicators, and provided valuable insights into the effective positioning and usability of the tool. A conceptual visualisation of the tool’s data capture and analysis functionality – the ‘engine’ of the tool – was presented for discussion and approval.
Other key issues included a review of on-going dissemination activity in terms of the profile of the project and interactions with project beneficiaries – policy makers, policy implementers and SMEs. With the conclusion of the project approaching fast, at the end of April 2013, the next six months or so promises to be busy!
John Chisholm
Dr Martyn Evans