So believes designer Prof Ken Friedman, who will give a keynote speech at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Arts Educators conference in Dunedin today.
As dean and professor of design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, with professional appointments at the Norwegian School of management and the Danish Design School, conference organisers are thrilled to have him here for the event.
Otago Institute of Design general manager Alistair Regan described it as "absolutely wonderful" that such a knowledgeable and respected man would speak in "little old Dunedin".
The talk would be based around "the role that research plays in working better as designers", Prof Friedman said.
Research improved design and "shows there are some things you simply shouldn't make", he said.
Research-based solutions and intuition gave designers the skills they required to make things humans needed, rather than things they simply wanted to design.
"Making things that work requires great creativity, working within the constraints of what human beings need."
These skills need to be harnessed to improve quality of design and therefore productivity.
"Really well-designed products for humans will sell better and improve the economy."
However, designing another Jimmy Choo shoe would not save the economy, he said.
Prof Friedman used Toyota as an example of design quality working profitably.
Toyota's assembly line focused on reducing faults to improve product quality as opposed to General Motors, which focused on moving product out at pace.
As for the rest of the conference, he was looking forward to participating in the Maori workshops on offer.
"Different epistemologies have a lot of light to shed on how we understand things."
He was also enjoying spending time in Dunedin, a city he believed had a lot to share and which housed a "very good design school".
The quality of facilities and workshops on offer were a cause of jealousy for him.
He wanted to instigate in his own workplace some of the things he had seen on his trip.
Prof Friedman hoped a collaboration with the Otago Institute of Design would link design circles in Australia and New Zealand and allow him to return to Dunedin soon.
