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The value of design: what’s next?

Thursday 28 November | 3-4pm GMT | Online
Register now.

Have we reached a turning point for design?

In recent years, design has experienced significant shifts: there are arguments it has been oversimplified and commoditised. We’ve seen big changes in the size and structure of design teams across many global organisations, and wider market conditions continue to impact our sector. In the face of these ever-growing challenges and pressures, how do we ensure design maintains its valued and hard-won position as a driving force for change?

As designers, you don’t just anticipate the future; you determine it. Building businesses and shaping the world through a unique blend of creativity, curiosity and empathy. The ability of designers to find creative solutions to complex problems has cemented design’s place as a core business function. So how do we craft the solid arguments that set design and designers apart from other functions in business to safeguard and strengthen its place?

Proving its effectiveness and clearly demonstrating the unquestionable value of design has to be part of the answer. And now is the time. If any group can design their way through the challenge to a better future, it has to be the design industry.

Join Deborah Dawton, Chief Executive at the DBA and Kevin McCullagh, Founder of Plan as they unpick the inherent skills and abilities that designers hold to find brand new opportunity in challenge. This conversation will explore where we are now and what we need to do to be the architects of our own future.

Thursday 28 November | 3-4pm GMT | Online | Register now

Deborah Dawton, Chief Executive of the Design Business Association

As Chief Executive of the Design Business Association, Deborah works with the industry to champion the tangible and measurable impact of design and its capability for change in business and government, nationally and internationally.

Her passion for design as a strategic tool that boardrooms must recognise, and her experience of the UK’s diverse and competitive design sector enable her to lead the DBA as it works tirelessly to build universal confidence in design investment and support the design industry to deliver on this promise.

Kevin McCullagh, Founder of Plan

As the Founder of Plan, a product strategy consultancy who help lead mobility and consumer tech companies to navigate the tricky early stages of innovation, Kevin anticipates future disruptions and what they mean to product development. He brings strategic clarity to design and innovation for clients such as Coco-Cola, Hyundai, Sky, and Yamaha. 

Prior to Plan, Kevin was a director at product design consultancy Seymourpowell, where he set up one of the first dedicated design strategy teams in Europe.