Rachel Cooper
Professor
UK
Mike Press
Professor
UK
Design Against Crime
The research programme, Design Against Crime (DAC) develops and improves the efficacy of crime-preventive design. It creates an understanding for how design can prevent crime, and helps designers to include crime-preventive features early on in the design process. The resultant products, which are used in training courses, and by businesses and the public sector, embrace everything from electronic chips to architecture. They have co-produced anti-theft handbags and antitheft chairs (they prevent a bag on the arm of a chair from being stolen) and have also developed ideas for fingerprint identification when withdrawing money from a cash dispenser.
The DAC home page contains a wealth of research findings and conclusions. Retailers can read several case studies, look at design ideas and get general advice on problems associated with specific trades.
Rachel Cooper and Mike Press are both professors with long experience of research into design. They have co-authored several books. Their latest oeuvre, The Design Experience: The Changing Role of Design was published in 2001. The other two members of the DAC team are Rosie Erol and Michael Thomas.
