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That's just one example the new Canadian Design Research Network (CDRN) cites when explaining how novel approaches to design can improve Canadian productivity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make people healthier.

"Between 30 and 40 per cent of the greenhouse gases in Canada are emitted through the heating and cooling of buildings. We already know through research how to make buildings that can reduce that by 60 per cent. Through CDRN, we want to popularize those methods, make them more affordable and even look at new ones," says Dr. Robert Woodbury, CDRN's Scientific Director and a Professor at Simon Fraser University, the administrative headquarters for the Network.

The CDRN is one of five New Initiative networks funded by the Networks of Centres of Excellence. NCE support will enable over 100 researchers at more than a dozen institutions from across Canada to collaborate with each other, and with public and private sector partners, to identify the best new approaches to design. For the CDRN, design is inclusive; buildings are important, but not its sole focus. From handheld devices to cities, good design is key to good outcomes for our society.

The CDRN is taking an innovative and inclusive approach to design – one that brings together several key disciplines, including engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, industrial design, computer sciences and human-computer interaction to collaborate on common problems and solutions.

Using the NCE to create a critical mass of expertise is the first critical step. CDRN is also working with the private sector to build a pan-Canadian infrastructure that would be shared by research institutions via high-speed networks. This physical network would provide equipment and facilities to allow CDRN researchers to collaborate online and in real-time on rapid prototyping, digital fabrication, sensing technologies, visualization and simulation.

"Some of this work is already happening, some needs to happen, and, most importantly, it all needs to be connected," says Dr. Woodbury. "The NCE funding is enabling us to make that collaboration happen. It is also enabling us to leverage funding from other sources to build the most comprehensive design research network in the world."

Improving Productivity
The CDRN's main goals are to improve Canada's productivity and sustainability through design research.

In California, for example, Lockheed Martin was able to increase worker productivity by as much as 15 per cent by introducing more daylight into their buildings. In schools, children exposed to simulated sunlight (full spectrum lighting) have been found to experience less stress, less sickness, improved attendance and, surprisingly, less cavities.

"We live in buildings. If we make them more sustainable and more productive then we can have a direct and immediate impact on the lives of Canadians. We use designed objects everyday and many can be greatly improved," adds Dr. Woodbury. "With the NCE's support, we now have the team to do that."

Research Priorities
Starting this year, the CDRN will organize workshops for researchers and people in industry to share the latest research findings, and to identify new research projects for each of its six themes.

1. Advanced Design Techniques: Advanced design will have a transformative effect by providing more intelligent ways of putting a building together. For example, if one window was changed in a building design, the software could automatically update them all.
2. Collaborative and interactive design visualization: By combining 3D visualizations with high-speed networks in a collaborative online environment, researchers in different cities could work together on a building design. If one moved a mechanical duct, for example, it would appear in 3D on the computer screens of the other researchers.
3. Rapid prototyping and fabrication: Once you've designed it, how do you make it? Exciting research in this area is already underway in universities across Canada, from innovative fabric form work for concrete pillars at the University of Manitoba to the energy-efficiency of ceramic materials at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
4. Sustainability: What are the effects of design? How can our designed world make wiser use of resources and better support a rapidly changing world? Achieving sustainability spans politics, policy, design and engineering. CDRN researchers work along this spectrum, from new techniques for efficient wood design, to multi-criteria optimization, to engagement with key policy processes.
5. Visual Analytics is the science and design of analytic reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. It focuses on visual representations and interaction techniques that take advantage of the human eye's broad bandwidth pathway that allows users to see, explore and understand patterns in large amounts of information.
6. Interactive Technologies: The interplay between person and device and among people using devices remains poorly understood both empirically and in terms of design methods and results. The aim of the Interactive Technologies theme is to leverage and extend design research in new technologies, new design and creative methods, and new modes of evaluation for human experience.

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