DESIGN — What?! Tell me something new…
We play Buzzword Bingo — Design Thinking, Agile (and Agile in IT), Product Thinking, Gamification — and think by throwing these words into a room full of people, our problems will solve immediately. And this is exactly what upsets me. By using these words inflationary, they are losing their power, they lose their identity, and we forget what they were about, what their meaning was and still is. Nowadays we use the word Design for everything — nail design, hair design, tooth design, food design — these things don’t have anything to do with Design in its’ meaning!
We use these words and don’t understand them properly — the sense and meaning behind them. They are not just words, they describe a whole idea, a whole process or a special kind of thinking — DESIGN or how I prefer to call it GESTALTUNG — is not visible to others, so people who don’t understand the meaning — reduce it to a hollow phrase.
In a world of digital disruption, Design may feel like the holy grail to us. We see the genius in Design and the design genius, the old wise men who created the new, who were brave, observed the world around them and crafted something new. Leonardo Da Vinci one of the most genius men in history showed us, the heart of Design — he observed it not only on the surface, he really looked deep into details, he wanted to understand all, the connections, intersections and dependencies and out of that understanding he created ideas and tried them, he tested, refined and sometimes brought them to live. This is the design way. Not more and not less!
So now you read so far and ask yourself, and what is the answer, what do I want to say to you — THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A HOLY GRAIL! It is the obvious way how things get into our world — how evolution in a way works! This is design, is Gestaltung, is CREATION — and like every good thing — it takes time — and probably the product will never be finished — a constant change — and so are the products, which comes out of a Gestaltungs-process.
We make it way to complex and forget to see the obvious in front of us!
So what to DO NOW? — May start first to OBSERVE — I think that is a good begin.
How to start observing
- Start looking at things, look at all details — all of it
- See it holistic — DON’T forget the context!
- Ask the question why
- Ask it again
- Take notes — take them how you prefer it — write, sketch, draw it…
- AND then you can start to UNDERSTAND — and your brain immediately start to THINK BIG!
Best to start with a topic you are interested in…
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017!
Follow me on my journey trough the design & gamification world — let’s play!
Originally published at Jasmin Deniz Karatas.
