Design Attitude Measurement (DAM), a system for measuring companies’ design capabilities, featured in Design White Paper 2024
Design Attitude Measurement (DAM), a system developed by College of Business Administration Professor Kazaru Yaegashi, the Chief Producer of the Design Management Lab (DML) at Ritsumeikan University, and his colleagues to measure the design capabilities of companies, was featured in the White Paper on Design 2024.
Developing a tool to measure the design capabilities of companies
The current business climate that companies find themselves in is considered to be highly uncertain as represented by the concept of VUCA, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. To create value on an ongoing basis, companies need to engage in activities that pose new frameworks and meanings, rather than only considering existing options. For this reason, to enhance their design capabilities, companies must find and utilize individuals who possess a quality referred to as "design attitude."
Overview of DAM
The team in the DML developed Design Attitude Measurement (DAM) in 2022 to measure individual design capabilities. DAM uses 15 questions to measure an individual’s attitudes toward problem solving in the following five areas.
1. Experimentalism: Tackling a task without fear of failure
2. Optimism: An optimistic attitude that is not influenced by the situation
3. Visualization: A strong trust in visualization.
4. Collaboration: A willingness to work with others to solve problems
5. Empathy: The ability to see things from another person's point of view
How DAM is used
By assessing and aggregating the design attitudes of individuals, it is possible to measure the design capabilities of a department, group, or an entire organization. With DAM, you can generate averages by department or job function and then perform comparative analyses. For example, DAM could be used to identify and assign personnel with strong design attitudes or to analyze the correlation between individual and organizational design capabilities and other performance factors. Although DAM is a basic survey tool to measure individual qualities, the units of analysis and comparison can be changed, so it can be used for a variety of analyses by combining it with other indicators.
The report in the White Paper on Design is available on the website of the Japan Institute of Design Promotion (Japanese version only).
White Paper on Design 2024
The White Paper on Design is published by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion in cooperation with the Design x Creative Team of the Mitsubishi Research Institute, Axis Corporation, Designship Inc., and over 200 other experts. The White Paper provides a comprehensive overview of various design-related initiatives undertaken by prefectures, companies, and the national government.
Ritsumeikan University aims to establish the tentatively named College of Arts and Design and Graduate School of Science in Arts and Design in April 2026. Treating design studies as its own discipline and based on the pursuit of new future-oriented design studies and the technology and sensibility of art, we envision the development of education and research that transcends the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences at Kinugasa Campus, which is located in the historical and cultural city of Kyoto. As we prepare for opening this new college and graduate school, we will work with domestic and international education and research institutions and companies to plan and promote education and research activities and a wide array of industry-government-academia projects that focus on factors including creative thinking skills in accordance with regional cultural characteristics.
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