Design topics — 1x0, The Intro

The Italian philosopher and professor Maurizio Ferraris, in his work “Documentality: Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces” explains that the Subject peculiarity is to have representations. While the Objects do not have, Subjects going through space and time are responsible for what they produce, hence the difference in “social objects” which embeds the above mentioned categories, or rather the spirit, the will of our “acts”. Documentality so, is precisely the “strong” inscription of acts (strong in the sense of power acquisition over the reality where they exist). The explanation of these acts of the spirit (which is all that technical, scientific, artistic and cultural production) finds in the Design practices a clear overlapping, exactly as moment of construction and production. Especially today that (we always say) it concerns even more to the human experiences and systems. So the questions that are traced in this Design topics column, come from the everyday work of course and their elaboration is deliberately inspired by the framework proposed by Ferraris (such as the interesting one about the difference between ontology and epistemology, a very crucial issue also within Design). Ferraris again, make us think of today’s communications explosion and in that context our cultural registrations (compared to communication) takes on an unmistakable value. Design is a great social subject, it is the realization of our mental representations. It is at all levels a really representative human phenomenon, it refers to our culture and spirit of time. Thus it is true that no production of the spirit could have consistency without the documental registration. Ferraris reminds us that it is only through registration that the transition from nature to culture takes place, that it is foundation of society. in this spirit, Topics from Design, are proposed as an open contribution to the Design culture.

Well, various European examination boards focused on innovation, recognize Design as a driving force for growth. “Design has the capacity to bring new ideas to market”. It unveils innovation, increasing the value of new products and services. Companies experience first-hand the competitive advantage of Design in terms of local marketing, and so we can deduce that the more undeveloped a country is, the more it needs to be designed. Western countries immersed and concentrated as they are (physically, socially and culturally) in new apps, devices and novelties, show and are witnesses to the highest level of artificiality that man has ever created. Even nature at this point is affected by our designs. It is bended to our goals and our need for livability. Where does this power come from? What is able to process and materialize so much information? Our mind. All that is the result of the spontaneous and deliberated practice of our mind, which could be good or bad. From this point of view Design, or rather the innate capacity and ability to organize knowledge, plan resources, (as Simon said in its well-known Science of Artificial -which still maintains its status of incipit-) “the act of envisioning alternative realities and developing them” into new synthesis, is everywhere (from architecture to the organization of a lawyer’s closing argument, or the whole retail system up to a politic reform). The reference framework here belongs to the rare and precious range of “applied sciences” that we use to unravel problems. What logic the designing-act should follow is the eternal question to which theorists are trying to respond, and to which we understood there is no a definitive answer. Design is about new ways of looking at the world, and at ourselves-within-the-world. It is about new ways of thinking and conceiving humanism.

Pondering on this issue and looking at the current situation, a paradox comes up: despite the “designing-act” is basic and ubiquitous, its output struggle to disseminate good and long-lasting innovations. Design topics draws its contents just from that tangle. Where does the short circuit lie? The Italian teacher and researcher Roberto Verganti pinpoint the fallacy into the lacking of new cultural values interpretations. According to his researches, our “power of criticism” has somehow been depleted. Despite we are living in a world “overcrowded of new ideas” they do not embody any new meanings. But if design nurture the ability of the human being to “project” our thinking and “engrave” it in the physical world, so we should always reconsider that process of realization. There, is where the evaluation and production and assignment of meanings happens. A promising starting point to increase our ability and attitude to proceed through (what I call) the line from abstract to concrete (walking a path that goes from the rigorous and rational Simon’s problem-solving to the definitive coupling of mind and product, cognition and designing, which is coming out from the neuroscientific line of Design Research) is the competence in mental and cognitive knowledges, so as to rethink and adapt always at best our design-thinking. This is a first fundamental topic within designing which concerns the mind-set, that is a psychological attitude. In fact, in this column, it is treated as a real psychic modality, or “Design-modality”.

The current “challenges” our designs have to face are more complex than ever, and to figure out a new human being within the world, we should discover new visions to cross over the exhausted drivers of development, efficiency or convenience. Tim Brown recently noticed we are passing through “the most volatile and disruptive business climate the world has ever known”. So we should focus on the production of humanistic contents to give new landmarks at the designing worktable. We are at the design process core which refers to the art of framing, interpreting, and as another scientist say “making sense of things”. Today this practice is a complex body of politic, social and cultural issues. It is here, that if the man disciplines are badly “intersected”, we can not give new life to our daily problems. Organize information into the just question could give us the opportunity to unlock a favorable and unexplored void where we can find new avenues for innovation. That is the topic, strictly related to the Design-modality one, but which elevate us in the dimension of the interpretation, the structure of the problems, the “Problem-Framing”.

Thanks to the Human-Centred approach (that demonstrates the placing of a strong “landmark” within the design-act, in other words a set of principles which connote and characterize the whole policy of the decision-making process) we focus our design fatigue on a process of integration of user human-factors and needs and (according to its own theoretical) that is perfect for incremental innovation. By doing so we often bump into another and more deep level of inquiry, which embodies another equally crucial and existential question that puts the designer’s intentions and the renowned final-user in front of the big judgement juncture: we ask (implicitly and elusively) to users if they want to trigger a positive and definitive uplifting or keep a static-balance in a determined system of things. A question that can not be solved during an interview, because it puts users into contact with a so rich semantic and interdisciplinary system that arises an unavoidable question of responsibility of how design wants to conduct its investigation. Regarding another side of the issue, are we aiming at development or progress? Two similar practices, but not equal (many evidences are within the politics history). This is the field of another crucial topic that today it acquires more and more importance, and it concerns the ethics in the design, that is the “Design-ethics”.

However the last years are marked even by a compelling phenomena which embed in a certain part all these topic: the boosting of connective spaces that aims to build up a mixed worktable for designing and planning. Given above the designing-act omniscience, nowadays setting up mature design workshop activities results really important. They are a form of encounter that increase engagement and involvement in a re-educative spirit within Public/Private at all levels. They are a deep moment of acculturation and learning around new mind-set and methodologies that are valuable to reframe the yearned interpretations. The sociologist Richard Sennett explain the importance to take back to the top a culture of “staying together” as a “dialogic cooperation” because the people reduced ability in cooperating has been one of the economic crisis acceleration factor. Well, if collaboration it is possible, we should improve it as much as possible. Ezio Manzini, whose research and study is grounded on the inclusion and participation within the design processes, notice that who is ready for the task of orchestrating this connectives are the so called “design experts” that today “when everybody design” play increasingly the role of connectors and facilitators. This is the topic which regards to the “Co-Design spreading”.

To conclude Design is important actually, and it refers really to human kind (and not just to anything we know how to do). It is one of the most powerful and complex cultural phenomena of our human existence-path, that we observe every day within our communities. And analyzing the relation between human being and Design, emerge remarkable topics. This kind of inquiry shifts the focus into this inner perspective. This movement from artifacts (all the range from tangible to intangible ones) takes us to a deeper level, that look more at the subject who produces than the produced object. By this viewpoint, designers are “intersecters” or they act where something comes and something goes. A space that is always open and confused, uncertain and without defined boundaries. The heart of their work is therefore to shape, discover, “educate” and construct. Thus Design proves to be a great way to learn. The word “intersecters” would like to emphasizes a “crossroads” among hard and soft sciences, a mental space that Joichi Ito connotes as “undisciplined” and that gives us back a fascinating and frictional show. A cornice that works like a MODEM which modulate and demodulate information. An intersection really hard to frame, such as its own outcomes from Uber to Facebook, passing through Amazon, Airbnb and Foodora.