„DESIGN CAN´T YET DO WHAT IT NEEDS TO.”
German version available
A conversation about current challenges and opportunities for the discipline of design and how Prof. Annette Diefenthaler addresses them at the TU Munich with her work in “Design and Transdisciplinarity”.
„CHANGING PERSPECTIVES“
As part of a panel discussion organized by BWM Group Design and Die Neue Sammlung, #SDNue spoke with Prof. Annette Diefenthaler, who has been Professor of “Design and Transdisciplinarity” at the TUM School of Engineering and Design since January 2023. In addition, as Executive Director of the newly founded Munich Design Institute, she is entrusted with the task of establishing an integrative research center that anchors research by and about design in the context of TUM.
“Changing Perspectives”, was the topic of the matinee for which we met Annette Diefenthaler. Under the overarching title “New Modes”, the event brought together experts from different disciplines and a large audience for the third time. This time, the discussion focused on the potential of interdisciplinarity as an enabler for social change.
DESIGN HAS REACHED STRONG VISIBILITY
It is no coincidence that the discussion mainly centered on design since interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity — not only between disciplines but beyond them — is a core aspect of the design discipline. According to Annette Diefenthaler, current times are proving to be quite favorable for this discipline: “Design has gained a great deal of visibility in the last 10 or 20 years. The proliferation of design thinking, which certainly has created its own set of challenges, has contributed to this. People now know that design is not just about an end product, i.e. the expensive shoe or the expensive piece of furniture, but that design is a process, an approach, a mindset. That has now been widely understood, and doors have opened as a result. It‘s no coincidence that the White House in the U.S. now hires designers. It didn’t use to be that way, that didn’t even seem imaginable. These new positions and access points open up new spheres of influence that, in turn, require the discipline to learn and evolve with them. That’s the work now.”
DESIGN AS A FOUNDATIONAL SKILL AT TUM
TUM recognizes this and wants to anchor design as a competence broadly in the university, as part of its mission to contribute to shaping the future responsibly — very forward-looking, but also ambitious, according to Annette Diefenthaler. Because it’s also clear to her: “I think design isn’t equipped to do what it needs to at the moment. The discipline must continue to evolve. We have to earn the right to play in the fields we now have gained access to.”
Here is what this can look like according to Diefenthaler: “Together with my colleague Prof. Katja Thoring, we will be setting up a design Master‘s program at TUM over the next few years. One of our promises for this Master’s program will be to embrace transdisciplinarity. If you join our cohort as a designer, you’ll have the opportunity to work with people who might come from medical school, from engineering, from the social sciences, and so on. And together, we can work on complex solutions with a design perspective.” Diefenthaler emphasizes that graduates of the design program will not only acquire a theoretical design understanding, but also practical skills — the craft of design.
TRANSDISCIPLINARITY IN DESIGN EDUCATION
How is transdisciplinarity to be implemented in this context, and what does that mean for design education? “The hypothesis of my professorship is that design will, must and can grow beyond what it is now,” says Diefenthaler. “If we work in a transdisciplinary way, design will evolve as a result. For example I want to address students from a variety of different schools within TUM with the courses I’m developing.”
According to Annette Diefenthaler, one indicator for success would be to actually see these courses being picked by students from different disciplines from the start. A goal that she knows is not that easy to reach, since study programs are planned and structured for the long term and a new transdisciplinary integration requires structural shifts.
Nevertheless, Diefenthaler is confident about the potential of this approach: “I hope that the the Munich Design Institute, an integrative research institute that we are working to set up will also be reflective of this: The idea is that we can bring together researchers from across the university there to work on design-based issues. Not every researcher there will be a designer. But I expect that we develop a basic understanding of design in each research group, and that they will courageously engage in this process in order to create recognizably design-led results.”
DESIGN IS MORE THAN JUST A “BRIDGE-BUILDER”
Design must therefore be more than just a “bridge-builder”, more than a common language that can connect different disciplines. “Design is a discipline in its own right with numerous methods that design work employs. Some of these methods are particularly valuable in the context of a technical university like the one I work at,” says Diefenthaler, who then elaborates: “ In design approaches, we tend to question the problem: ‘Is this even worth solving?’ To get to clarity, we involve people in the process who might be impacted by a solution and, at times, that might lead to us reframing the question.” Annette Diefenthaler considers this iterative approach to be extremely important in creative work, but also points out its challenges: “It takes a lot of courage to say, I’ve invested a whole lot in this project, but now realize that we have to rethink our question. That’s not always easy, especially in an entrepreneurial context.”
Another important skill and competence in design: visioning — the power of imagination. Of course, the ability to conceive of things and processes that do not yet exist is not solely present in design. But Diefenthaler makes a distinction: “I expect designers to be able to consistently and strategically develop an idea of the future and then present it in a way so it can be experienced, inspiring, and understood by others. These are design capabilities that mean tremendous added value, especially at this moment in time when the future is becoming increasingly complex and thus less tangible. We need a vision of what is worth living for and what gives us hope.”
WHAT DOES SOCIAL DESIGN REQUIRE?
#SDNue is also concerned with the design of social problems and tasks, i.e. with social design, with designing a world in which we would like to live. So how can this change succeed, who will be the drivers and sponsors of such changes? “I don’t think we can keep talking about transformation and not also put money towards it,” Annette Diefenthaler says. “I believe that in the business world, there is enough pressure to act: It’s no longer enough to simply add social responsibility and climate responsibility to one’s website. People increasingly expect that results are delivered, (…) and I think overall it is good if the demand for social and regenerative responsibility increases. Ten years ago, that was not the case. We now see promising starting points everywhere, and in this respect I really hope that funding will grow from the industry to make future-oriented design possible. We also heard that from BMW in our panel today.”
MAKING DESIGN FOR SOCIAL AND REGENERATIVE TRANSFORMATION MEASURABLE
How can this development be promoted, how can teaching and research contribute to it? Annette Diefenthaler has big ambitions in this context: “… I estimate this to be about 20 years of work: my goal is to research and develop metrics that help us better understand the contribution of design to social and regenerative transformation. Currently, we mainly know how to quantify the economic value of design with metrics such as click numbers, sales figures, or the like. But we don’t yet have truly reliable and also generally agreed upon criteria for the impact of social design. Here we also have to take a critical look at our own work: to what extent does social design accomplish more, or something different than what other disciplines have long been doing in such areas? How might we better demonstrate what effect design has in social projects? This is challenging because precisely what constitutes measurability often means a certain rigidity. This is in tension with the space that needs to be created to creatively and collaboratively develop design solutions.” A tightrope walk, that Diefenthaler says is already happening in other areas: “There are lots of interesting approaches that exist already, for example in healthcare, where smart people are tracking things that are difficult to measure and are evaluating complex contexts. We can learn from that. Then I hope we can say quite clearly: This is what design can do, here’s an evidence-based study. That’s my goal.”
Author: Stefan Wacker, Stefan Wacker on #SDNue
