Defining Design – Building a Stronger Voice for Emerging Vocations

Help shape Australia’s emerging design sector. Join sector leaders redefining service and strategic design in national classification frameworks.Join us for a special webinar focused on articulating the design sector's emerging vocations. Last year was the first time the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had reviewed professional occupations in depth since 2006. The Design Institute of Australia (DIA) instigated a working group to respond to the review, appointing as Chair Dr Laura Kostanski, Principal Strategic Design at CSIRO, and Simon Goodrich, co-founder of Portable as a member of the working group. As part of the DIA submission, the emerging sector was surveyed. Over 400 designers responded validating the growth in Strategic Design, Service Design, and related disciplines and the need for these categories to be recognised in the updated Occupation Standard Classifications Australia (OSCA).

At this online presentation, Laura and Simon will talk with Chris Hinchcliffe, Director, OSCA Review Program at the ABS about how the emerging disciplines of service and strategic design can be introduced into the professional profiles, how they should be defined and what minimum qualifications should be required.

Insights from the sector survey conducted in 2024 will be shared and the next steps for creating a clearer, more unified representation of design in national frameworks.

This is an important opportunity to get involved, learn how you can contribute, and help shape the future of design recognition in Australia.

Speakers

Dr Laura Kostanski, Principal - Strategic Design (CSIRO)
Chris Hinchcliffe, Director of the ANZSCO Review Program (ABS)
Simon Goodrich, Co-founder (Portable)

Why attend

In this 60 minute webinar we will cover:

• Hear from leaders in the design and standards sector.
• Learn about findings from a national survey of designers.
• Find out how you should be filling our your job title in the next national census.
• Understand how better sector definitions will unlock future funding and government support.
• Connect with like-minded professionals passionate about growing the design industry.

The panel will also make time for 15 minutes of Q&A.

Who should attend?

• Designers across all disciplines
• Educators and researchers in design fields
• Industry advocates and sector representatives
• Anyone interested in growing the impact of Australian strategic and service design

About our speakers

Dr Laura Kostanski FDIA

Dr Laura Kostanski crafts strategic designs for a sustainable future with her expertise in governance and spatial sciences. A Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, Laura has been Chairing the DIA Working Group to review and co-design official occupation descriptions for Australian design professionals. Her role at CSIRO, Australia’s national science research agency, sees her engaging across multiple industry sectors to connect scientists with organisations, governments and communities to develop leading-edge solutions to the world’s most pressing sustainability problems. From designing the data ecosystem for the Australian Agricultural Sustainability Framework, to developing governance arrangements for the Australian National Soils Information System and coordinating strategy development for Indonesia's Lake Information System - Laura’s expertise in strategic, service, transitions, communications and user experience design enable people and organisations to rapidly and adeptly navigate complex sustainability systems.

Leander Kreltszheim

Leander Kreltszheim (she/her) is a social codesigner/design researcher with extensive experience across the community/non-profit sector. Her design practice demonstrates how the process of codesign can be respectful, reciprocal, joyful and empowering, in addition to leading toward longer-term social change. In her PhD research through Monash University, Leander maintains that safer and more effective ways of 'designing with' are possible, but are founded upon a radical shifting of our relationships with 'time' in the design process. Relationships are at the heart of her practice.

Christopher Hinchcliffe

Chris currently leads a team to develop and maintain the Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA). OSCA supports official statistics including the Census of Population and Housing and Labour Force; as well as government frameworks including the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List and skilled migration. Chris has been employed by the ABS for over twenty-five years in a variety of fields including national accounts, prices, balance of payments, and labour statistics. He has also worked for the International Monetary Fund supporting improvements to economic statistics in over twenty countries.

Simon Goodrich, Moderator

Simon is a co-founder of Portable, an innovation partner for public good. He has worked to develop international leading digital tools and processes to make justice more human-centred and accessible to all. This includes tools in client triage, navigation and resolution. Simon is working with Colin Rule on a family law dispute resolution framework based off the world leading platform, amica.gov.au, the Portable has developed in conjunction with the Australian Government to help couples separate.

Simon has developed the delivery methodology for Portable, focusing on human centered design and technology to improve public services, for the past 20 years. He is a fellow of the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University, a leading justice innovation body, and Senior Honorary Fellow at Melbourne Law School and The University of Melbourne.