The mission, led by Dr Nina Wakeford, Director of Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography (INCITE) at the University of Surrey, was made up of delegates from the Design Council, Orange, BT, PDD, Instrata, Sky Blue Pink and the BBC. It met with major technology and design companies, universities and other professionals based on the West Coast of the USA to understand the latest developments in the practice of user-centred methods, and to explore the potential for international commercial collaborations. Among those visited were Microsoft, Intel and BMW.

Findings from the mission were today published in a report to be launched during the DTI Global Watch Mission Seminar at the Design Council. As well as presentations from the mission members, participants attending will be able to hear first hand from US speakers, Herman D'Hooge (Intel Corp) and Uday Dandvate (SonicRim) about how their organisations are linking design and user centred needs.

Among the key recommendations of the report are:

• UK companies need to adopt people-centred innovation techniques at an early stage of their innovation programmes to continue to compete with US organisations.
• UK companies should invest in developing new communication tools that make research insights more tangible, beyond PowerPoint and spreadsheets, to inspire and focus the innovations team's attention.

A recent study by the Design Council revealed the share price of companies that used design well outperform the FTSE 100 by 200% over the last ten years to 2003.

The mission found that senior management in US businesses understands that innovation is critical to the mid-term and long-term success of their organisations. In recognition of the importance of innovation, corporations invest large sums in R&D to try to ensure that invention will extend their corporation into the future. The R&D tax credits introduced by the UK government are now worth £600m to British business.

Nina Wakeford, Director of INCITE at the University of Surrey, who co-ordinated and led the DTI Global Watch Mission to the US, says: 'User-centred design can give companies the competitive edge over others, especially in the high-technology device market. Given the wide variety of user-centred techniques that are being developed, it is essential that UK companies know how to distinguish what each offers in terms of understanding user experiences. The most successful US companies know how to match their innovation goals with the appropriate user research - both from commercial and academic sources. They also know how to move research through the organisation by creating multi-disciplinary teams.'

Ellie Runcie, one of the delegates from the Design Council, says: 'After my visit, I questioned whether UK businesses are actually taking design seriously at a strategic level.'

'My impression is that despite the importance of design and innovation to the UK economy, there is surprisingly little discussion in the UK technology business community about the role of design in understanding users of products or services. Little is said about the role of user research and its application to design and often no discussion at all is made of the role of user research in innovation.'

The mission also found that senior management in US businesses understands that innovation is critical to the mid-term and long-term success of their organisations. In recognition of the importance of innovation, corporations invest large sums in R&D divisions to try to ensure that invention will extend their corporation into the future. However, by their own remit, R&D divisions are almost always technology driven.

Media enquiries: Stuart Miller, Press Office at the University of Surrey, Tel: 01483 689314 or E-mail: s.e.miller@surrey.ac.uk

The report is available for download from 8th December at www.globalwatchonline.com/missions/tmsmrep.aspx