"Design is the bias that helps things evolve. That is why design is one of the engines of civilization".

Nothing concentrates the mind of an editor quite as wonderfully as an unforgettable quote. While the second issue of i3magazine focused on Users, and contained articles drawn mainly from the projects in the Connected Community schema of i3, it also, inevitably, contained a good deal of discussion about design, in the course of which Marco Susani made this haunting statement (above) which gave such pause for thought that it confirmed the bias of the evolving third issue of i3magazine. This issue is therefore devoted to Design. It seeks to find the answers to such questions as: "What is design? Who are the designers? How do designers work? How do designers think? How is design helped by technology? How does design relate to people?" And who could provide the answers to these questions better than designers themselves? i3magazine decided to ask representatives from some of the design institutions involved in i3 projects to describe their institutions, their work, their principles and their practices. To start the ball rolling, a set of questions - relating to design, people, and technology - was circulated.

Each person responded in a different, individual way.

Marco Susani of Domus Academy and Alison Black of IDEO Europe chose to answer the questions directly in the form of an 'interview', and their responses make for an interesting study in comparison and contrast. Marco, of CAMPIELLO, LIME and PRESENCE, is the Director of the Research Center at Domus Academy: "My background is architecture, but I mostly worked in the design of physical and immaterial tools and spaces to support everyday life of people." Alison of MAYPOLE is a cognitive psychologist. She joined IDEO's London office in 1991 to set up their European human factors design and research group, establishing techniques to focus new product and service development on the people who will eventually use them. IDEO, an innovative design and engineering organisation, has designed over 2,000 products, many of which have won awards. In 1996 it was honoured by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, Essen, with the 'Design team of the year' award. Ingrid van der Zon, project manager of LIME and Senior Consultant at Philips Design, this year's winner of Design Zentrum's 'Design team of the year' award, explains the 'human- focused' High Design approach which earned Philips this accolade. Kay Hofmeester of the Netherlands Design Institute, project manager of MAYPOLE and PRESENCE, chooses to highlight the changing role of design and the challenges of the new technologies in his survey of the activities of the NDI. And Jeffrey Shaw of eRENA and eSCAPE, Director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media, emphasizes how the ZKM is forging new synergy between art, science and technology in his reflections on Media Art and the work of the Institute for Visual Media.

eRENA and AMUSEMENT, projects within the Inhabited Information Spaces schema, also contribute articles showing how design works in practice - using scenarios which will become increasingly important in the future. Guadalupe Aguado discusses multi-user games played by real people in a virtual world, while Monica Fleischmann and her colleagues prove Jeffrey Shaw's point by giving a demonstration of how art and technology can co-operate, helping artists towards new creative endeavours in Mixed Reality multi-user environments.

Seen together, all of these individual responses from creative people working with design form a dynamic picture in which people, technology, art and science interact and converge. Design, now multi-disciplinary and human-focused, is the engine, the driving force. And what drives design, whether in art or science, is creativity.

Imagine the future, then.

Science, technology, art and industry really will become sisters in tomorrow's world. And this synthesis is being developed and nurtured by designers and creative people. They have the vision to shape and direct, and, one might add,, 'civilise' the technologies of the twenty-first century.

The Editor

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