Eliminative Design Manifesto
If it ain’t needed, don’t design it
I have long wondered what is needed to ask the fundamental question before starting any design process: do we really need what the design process can produce? Would we not be better off if we used existing solutions more wisely? Or is it precisely to eliminate the false need that is the starting point for design?
There is circular, regenerative and life-centred design. There are also design practices in which nature, or even future generations, are involved in the design process. So why talk about Eliminative Design?
Because all design processes aim to create what does not yet exist. Something new. As if the compulsive need for innovation has become a hyper-object. In other words, our urge for new solutions has become so expansive in space and time that it is — out of our control — trying to sustain itself.
Yet, as Bruce Mau writes in 24 Principles for Massive Change:
- with each new solution we have created new problems
- avoiding ecological disaster is not the greatest design challenge, but a basic condition of all design challenges
- the designer’s responsibility is not to adapt to the systems around him, but to fix them
- the more we can have a decisive impact on our environment, the more we are responsible for making it better
As a first step, redefine the fundamental purpose of design. That is, let’s get back to what drives us forward. As Herbert A. Simon put it in 1969:
“All design is the development of courses of action aimed at making a given situation more advantageous or desirable.”
In other words, the aim of design should not be to create something that does not yet exist, i.e. to create something new but to improve the given situation.
So why that is not happening?
Three basic factors emerged from the answers to my question on Quora:
There is no such design process yet. So the question arises:
What does a design process look like that, in addition to looking for new solutions, also accepts as a valid goal the better use of existing solutions and the elimination of false claims?
False needs are also marketable. But what can be done about it?
How can we prevent a false need from creating a market? How to prevent a false demand from being generated or responded to by market players?
We shouldn’t put the responsibility on a single actor, the designer. What is the designer’s responsibility anyway? To what extent should it be based on the designer’s individual conscience and diligence? Where are the responsibility for the process and the context of the design?
During a workshop on the above topic, I thought: perhaps I could do the most for the cause by helping the individual designer. Let’s say by launching the Eliminative Design manifesto, which, once finalised with stakeholders open to the topic, anyone can voluntarily join, committing to enforce its contents in their work and promoting it in the form of a badge on their own interfaces.
Of course, there are similar initiatives, but they are either limited to a narrow field of design (e.g. The AIGA Design for Good Commitment) or they focus on sustainability and its promotion (e.g. Climate Designers, The Designers Accord, The Good Design for a Better World initiative, The Healthy by Design initiative, or The Sustainability Design), which in my opinion is too big a task for individual designers. I would be looking for something that a single, solo freelance designer can take on. Something they can feel ownership of, something they can represent.
The bellow proposed manifesto is based on a revival of the Carter administration’s motto:
If it ain’t needed don’t design it.
In developing the manifesto, I have tried to draw on design frameworks and perspectives that have emerged from similar approaches (Reduce, reuse, and recycle; Energy efficiency; Life-cycle thinking; Human-centred design; Cardle-to-Cardle design; Biomimicry; Circular Economy; Material Selection; Design for Disassembly; Embodied Energy; Social Responsibility; Reduced Footprint; Upcycling; Durability and Longevity). The key ideas of these frameworks are:
- Minimize waste and pollution
- Optimize resource use and energy consumption
- Consider the full life cycle of a product
- Put the needs and perspectives of people at the center of design
- Use safe and non-toxic materials
- Rely on renewable resources
- Continuously improve and refine the design process
- Take inspiration from nature
- Promote equity and inclusiveness
- Ensure the well-being of individuals and communities
- Design products that are functional, durable, and aesthetically pleasing
- Encourage repair, reuse, and up-cycling to extend product lifespan.
In his article ‘Design Away: Unmaking Things’, Cameron Tonkinwise writes that design is necessarily destructive. That is, anything new that we create can only be made by using what we already have. Moreover, everything we create is part of a larger ecosystem, so its appearance is an intervention into the existing system. And the artefacts that are created through design are tools that can convey value to their users. In other words, the value of design is the utility that its object can derive from it. So the question arises: is the added value that we create worth the destruction and intervention that it entails?
This article refers to ‘elimination design’, according to which non-design or even elimination is also creation. From a practical point of view, ‘elimination design’ can encourage people, or create circumstances, to break away from (using) particular objects. Or, by using ‘Prefigurative Criticism’, we can place sketches or prototypes in contexts in which they become undesirable before they are born. We can also create products that eliminate undesirable products, perhaps by valuing certain of their components to the point where they themselves become disposable. And according to the principles of the sharing economy, the purpose of design is to create mediated value, using the means to transfer it.
Tonkinwise argues that designers should turn away from a culture of production towards a culture of re-creation, and see themselves as caretakers of a garden of objects.
Bellow is the first version of the manifesto based the above mentioned sources and influences. I intend it to be thought-provoking. It reads:
The Eliminative Design Manifesto
If you don’t need it, don’t design it
In design, as in life, there are no externalities. Everything is part of a greater whole. Each new thing is an intervention into the ecosystem that receives it. To create something, we have to take from what already exists.
Sometimes we can create the greatest value if the result of our work is the removal of something that exists. We create value by eliminating what is harmful.
Before you start designing, ask yourself: do we really need something new? Isn’t the goal to make better use of something that already exists, or to eliminate a misplaced need?
Does the result of design serve human selfishness and end up as waste, or does it become a natural part of a value-creating cycle?
Does it take into account and serve the benefit of all concerned? Beyond time and space?
How do the new thing affects the ecosystem?
What value is sacrificed in the creation of the new thing? Does it really create additional value?
If we left it to nature, would it start designing?
Don’t get involved if it is unnecessary, even harmful, to what could be created. You can do so much good in that time.
Let your design have one goal: to make the situation better for all involved. And, if necessary, design what needs to be eliminated.
I welcome any substantive comments on the manifesto here in the comments.
Literature used:
Trummer, Peter. “Architecture in the Age of Hyperobjects.” _Log_, no. 45, 2019, pp. 35–41. _JSTOR_, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26741431. Accessed 14 Jan. 2023.
Engholm, Ida. Quick Guide to Design Thinking. Strandberg Publishing A/S, 2020.
Mau, Bruce. _Bruce Mau: MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work_. Illustrated, Phaidon Press, 2020
Martin, Gary. “‘If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It’ — the Meaning and Origin of This Phrase.” Phrasefinder, www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it.html.
Tonkinwise, Cameron. “Design Away: Unmaking Things.” DRAFT, June 2013, www.academia.edu/3794815/Design_Away_Unmaking_Things.
