*What would be a truly great design intervention right now? Maybe a 100% freeware
iPhone that could fix broken infrastructure automatically.
http://www.icsid.org/newsletter/index/enews_issues27.htm
"If we assume that global economies will continue to struggle in 2009, the design professions will be forced to think differently about how they do business - the products they make and the services they provide. Consumers will have less disposable income, which means that there will be less interest in non-essential or luxury products. In this economic environment, quality, durability and low-cost are likely to become more important than high style. Design consultancies are already suffering from the slowdown as fewer companies can afford to enlist their services.
"As economies struggle, the trend I see for this year will be toward more meaningful and lasting design products, especially those that improve our quality of life. Design always works well with constraints, and a bad economy might in this way produce better design.
"Yet there will be new opportunities as well. In American President-elect Barack Obama's speech on his economic stimulus plan (8 January 2009), one of the goals is to create jobs through a national commitment to alternative energy industries and to infrastructure, such as urban planning and transport. These are areas where designers can make important contributions. Much of the design we will see will work to improve existing conditions of life rather than to create new objects.
"There are also opportunities for design schools in this economy...." (((Nobody can buy anything nice any more, so, well, either sell 'em rock-solid pig-iron tanks, go work for the government, or go back to school.)))
