So… What is that you design exactly?
As terms like design thinking and the likes are imported into mainstream corporate jargon, we see the raise of two complementary things: the mushrooming of business practices preposterously-inspired to this methodology; and a general lack of real knowledge about what exactly design thinking is supposed to be.
Days ago, at a family dinner, dad was telling me about some old friends he had just met.
“…Ah!,and they asked me: where does your daughter work, what does she do… “And what did you say?”
“Said you work in an agency!”
“That’s right.”
“But then they asked me: what kind of agency?”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it is an import-export agency. Coz you speak English, you know…”
“WHY would you say that?!”
“You tell me about design, strategy, branding. But if I’d mentioned that, I wouldn’t have made myself understood. Actually, I don’t get the exact meaning of it all, either…”
This conversation contributed to stoke an inner urgency to explain plainly what design is supposed to be and what we mean when we talk about design thinking, by also homing in on some misleading adoption of these expressions, that stir up a widespread confusion- eventually transforming into skepticism.
An interesting attempt to close the gap between non-practitioners and broad contemporary design, the exhibition “Designer, Maker, User”, currently on at The London Design Museum. The exhibit tackles design from the interconnected perspective of its three main actors and identifies one crucial misunderstanding. When we think of design we often associate it to established disciplines, such as graphic design, architecture, or product design. But these categories don’t do justice to the real scope of design. As a way of thinking, design can be applied at any scale, spanning issues as diverse as transport, healthcare, software…
“The work designers do shapes our lives at every scale, from the architecture of our cities to the objects and systems we use each day”-Designer, Maker, User- LDM
So designers create products. But also services. And even systems. The laptop you are using, the online banking service you are accessing with it, and the urban mobility system which had allowed you to go the electronics store and buy your computer.
Some designers aim to create commercially successful products. Others do operate to eventually benefit society through their work. And some manage to do both. Whatever their motivations, a designer aims at catering the needs of users and meeting clients’ expectations. These expectations may be formally expressed by the client through a brief. More often, designers have to dig to uncover the context on their own.
That’s why the design thinking process relies on fundamental activities: researching, observing users, questioning, iterating trials and errors and learning by doing.
Most of these things are rarely conducted by a single person on their own: designers do operate in close collaboration with engineers, manufacturers, experts and non-experts. Including information and knowledge coming from other disciplines in the process adds to the point of view of designers and can spark otherwise ignored intuitions.
“I don’t belong to any design association. I’m not interested in design. I am BORED of design! If you want to do design, don’t talk with designers. Talk with dancers, physicians, make-up artists…To be a designer you need to stay with people who are interested in something else than your passion .“— G.Ceppi, Designer, 2014
As their goals are strictly connected to users’ lives, designers can have a big impact on society in its whole, and whether this impact is going to be good or bad depends on the nature of the design.
If design is a process, a way of thinking, it means that it can be applied at any scale, but not that it should be applied at any cost. In a talk addressed at Adobe99U conference, Pentagram partner Natasha Jen warns about the risks of self- referential design. “I think design has become this box that people just want to check off. And that’s a problem. I think that as designers or anybody who has anything to do with design, we got to be really critical of it.”
The problem with the hexagons is that they’ve created THE design process, and that sounds grand and all encompassing, but in reality they are just a first recipe, a suggestion for how to get started.- Carissa Carter, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Stanford d.school.
Perhaps like in all other disciplines, design also needs a theoretical structure to inform its practice. Tough Ideo’s linear scheme* should be taken just as a basis, a general frame for action which must refrain from rigidity. Theory must be flexible enough to keep the “messy” part of the creativity process into account.
Real designers surround themselves with evidence. You’ve really got to have the evidence and you’ve got to have the crit in order to make the world better.- Natasha Jen, designer @ Pentagram
References:
The London Design Museum: Designer, Maker, User
Harvard Business Review: Design Thinking
Natasha Jen: Design Thinking Is Bullsh*t
Carissa Carter: L’et’s stop talking about THE design process
