Design Boost is a highly interesting platform that “envisions a holistic approach as a condition for sustainable design”. To fulfil this target the platform’s idea builds upon sharing knowledge by publishing media (magazines, books and videos), organizing events (talks, shows), building a community and offering consulting services.

Here is a documentation video of the last Design Boost event “Made in [Arnhem]” with an interesting, yet effective way to document an event by structuring the video with questions around the different themes: How can design understand cultures? How transform a commodity to an experience? Do we need another chair? How do me mind the gap? What comes after IKEA?

Now I cannot say that the answers are really satisfying nor are they new. For example I think it seems clear that “there are too many things we don’t need” and that it is “better to design better quality”. “When all parents are designers, that would leave to a better world” – that also needs more explanation.

Most interesting for me was the questions “What comes after IKEA?”. The answer was that after consumers became makers they now should become designers, said Tim Vermeulen. An interesting topic that needs much more work and debate I think.

Either it is the wrong questions that are asked or just some difficulty in the designers’ world that does not allow to bring up new ideas. Maybe it was just too short to put it in a single video document. Still the basic concept of Design Boost seems appealing to me as it consequently gathers designers and urges them to sit together and talk about problems and probably even solutions. It is for sure no coincident that the Scandinavians, the Swedes in this case, cultivate this kind of collaborative and sense-making approach.