Atlantic TIDE – Transforming Ireland’s Design Economy
Design Research | Institute of Designers in Ireland
Over the last six months, we have been working with the Institute of Designers Ireland on a project aimed at boosting design enterprise and impact along the Atlantic Economic Corridor.
Atlantic TIDE (Transforming Ireland’s Design Economy) saw us engage with design businesses, enterprise support agencies and significant industrial enterprises who may use design services across the Atlantic region to hear of their experiences, ambitions, challenges, and needs, all with an aim to understand how the future of the design sector may be supported.
The project was a collaboration between many organisations, including Sligo Couty Council, Western Development Commission, Institute of Designers in Ireland, Mid West, North West and West Regional Enterprise Offices, Future Mobility Campus, CREW Digital, and connected hubs along the Atlantic coast. The Atlantic TIDE project was funded by Creative Ireland.
The project was broken into three phases. Firstly, we engaged design businesses through an online survey and a series of online workshops. Our goal was to learn more about the operational, sales, marketing, talent, and export challenges faced by design businesses.
64 design businesses responded via our online survey, and in total across three workshops, we engaged representatives from 34 design businesses. Not only were these workshops beneficial for our research, but they were also a great networking opportunity for our participants. We gained vital insights from the sector, to take forward to our second phase.
We next reached out to enterprise support agencies, hosting 24 representatives from about 15 different organisations, in an online workshop. Here, we shared some of the insights already gathered, and focussed our work on the perception and understanding of design, as well as existing ways design businesses are supported in the Atlantic region.
In the final phase of the engagement and research effort we hit the road and facilitated 3 on-site workshops each targeting a different industry vertical. These included Medical Technologies (hosted by Ludgate Hub in Skibbereen), Mobility (hosted by Future Mobility Campus in Shannon), and Construction (hosted by FutureCast in Manorhamilton). We additionally hosted an online workshop for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods companies.
In total, 28 expert representatives from these sectors took part, and shared deep insights as to their understanding of design and experience working with design, and how design adds value to their industry.
“Context Studio were able to take a complex proposition involving multiple stakeholders, and design a framework through which we engaged multiple audiences to help shape the future of design across the Atlantic Innovation Region.
The insights from this work have proven invaluable to all partners involved, and have opened the door to new professional networks that we will build on in phase 2 of Atlantic Tide.”
– Charlotte Barker, CEO, Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI)
Throughout the three phases, we helped the consortium partners generate a qualitative understanding of current state of the design industry in the Atlantic region, and of the attitudes and understanding of the support agencies, and the industries who might benefit most from good design.
By capturing and synthesising these multiple perspectives, and Context Studio delivered detailed research findings and insights that will be utilised by the consortium going forward to help shape the future of enterprise supports for the industry.