Practicing Integrated Design (11/10)
Designing, Writing, and Running a Business
Today, we welcomed Andrew Shea, associate professor of Parsons School of Design. He is also a writer who recently published the book <Designing for Social Innovation: Case Studies from Around the World> and a designer running the studio MANY. Andrew shared his social design projects while connecting them to his philosophy about design, writing, and running a business as a designer.
Design as a Translation Process
From his studies in Politics and Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Andrew has transited to a designer and writer. The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is what he has been gravitated towards. Wittgenstein’s interest was in the translation process- how to take one body analogy and how to make people understand. Andrew interpreted that as designers, we also translate things such as how we help people understand the message, better do something, use a service, and so on.
Design for Social Change
As a designer, Andrew worked on projects which used design in a way to improve and aid people. He focused on the fact that “good stories have a strong narrative” and “they vividly engage readers’ senses and locate them in a place and time”. Therefore, he put his idea together into a book <Design for Social Change>. He shared that the book helped him better understand the needs and limitations of people and communities and how he wants to position himself as a designer among people and the community.
Revolving Doors
Revolving doors are more energy-efficient. However, while observing a building, Andrew found out that a lot of people were not using the existing revolving doors. Therefore, he worked on a project exploring how design can be used to increase people’s use of revolving doors. He wrote a book about revolving doors which contains the history, industry, and configurations of the revolving doors. He researched the actual data on how revolving doors can save energy and percentages of the people using revolving doors. Through design iterations starting from a piece of paper to a signage toolkit.
Recognizing the effect of the toolkit, he expanded the social impact of the design by publishing writings and pitching on podcasts. The toolkit was downloaded more than four thousand times. Through the example of the revolving door project, Andrew showed how a self-initiated project from an accidental observation could be led to a design iteration and bring a change in the community. Also, the class could learn how writing and a strategic mindset could fuel the process.
Studio Projects
The motivation led him to start the studio MANY. MANY focus on design strategies, services, and artifacts to support social changes. He shared projects such as NYCitizenship which is a package to teach financial literacy in citizenship workshops, 50 Years of Medicare which is a microsite tracing through the history of medicare, Human Impact Stories which was an exhibition where he used environment-friendly materials to the installations, and Palestine Reframed which is a website helping people understand the human rights issues that Palestine people are facing.
Learning to run a business
“Learn how to handle money”
— James Victore
As the next topic, the class learned about the essential requirements to run a business and how to arm us with tools to be successful. The following are the tips that Andrew shared with the class.
Estimate your rate
1. Get practice by pricing a past project retroactively. It could be a school project, internship, job, self-initiative, etc
2. Fill out the sheet, based on whichever factors apply, to you and your project and submit a formatted project estimate, as though you were submitting it to your client.
Discovery Meeting
Whenever starting your business, it is important to have an initial conversation with people. What the problem is, how you can design to help them. Help them understand the value of what you will bring and share the total amount of time and effort you will spend on it.
Proposal
You have to write a good proposal, showing that you have a solid understanding of the project and how you will approach it.
Contract
Make sure you write a contract. Specify the milestones and what your design will include. Spell out what you will do and what you will make.
Invoice
Get paid for every phase you agree on and don’t do work or deliver design until you are paid.
Takeaway
With Andrew, the class learned how to connect the experience from different fields into design and how they enrich the abilities as designers. They can become inspirations to build one’s identity and as a designer, amplify the impact of designs, and help one succeed as a designer.
