Integral Design and The Curse of Living in Interesting Times
There’s a war out there in the world of business. Designers are still fighting ghosts while consultants are busy digging for gold. Integral design is our white flag.
There has always been a fuzziness surrounding design. The word itself defies definition. And it was barely able to get on the radar of many businesses until customer opinions on digital media began to reign supreme and Apple’s success with design became apparent and compelling. To apply the power of design, these phenomena have driven VCs, Consulting firms and Infotech companies to a shopping spree of design firm acquisitions.
Along the way, design thinking is helping businesses clarify design by emphasizing a focus on customers. In the process though, it has also fueled the age-old confusion about what design is and what it is not. Yogi Berra’s sage advice nicely characterizes what many think is happening: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
In all the 70+ collective years we have practiced design, we never tried to fully explain what came naturally to both of us — we just made good livings simply designing to help our clients succeed. But now that design has made its grand entry into boardrooms—it helps designers and business leaders alike—we think it would be opportune to bring clarity to the various dimensions of design.
In a speech in Cape Town in June 1966, Robert Kennedy said: There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and growing uncertainty while they are also more open and beholden to the creativity of humans than at any other time in history.
So to help further clarify design for all its stakeholders, here’s what we are hypothesizing and studying, as first described in our article in the Summer 2018 issue of Innovation Magazine, quarterly of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) —
From the article-
The full potential of design to delight and enrich customers while helping businesses be more successful is layered like an onion. So greater breadth and depth are needed to understand and explain it more comprehensively. In this brief article we offer a framework that might just be up to the task of integrating the whole of design.
To date, attempts to fully explain design can be compared to the story of the six blind men and the elephant. This ancient Indian parable broadly goes:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form.
Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch”.
So they sought it out, found it and groped about it. The first person whose hand landed on the trunk, said “This being is like a snake”.
For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan.
As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, the elephant was like a tree-trunk.
The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said, “it is a wall”. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope.
The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is like a spear.
In some versions, the blind men stop talking, start listening and collaborate to “see” the full elephant. In another, a sighted man enters the parable and describes the entire elephant from various perspectives. The blind men then learn that they were all partially correct and partially wrong. The moral is that while one’s subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth, regardless of how objective it may appear.
This is what seems to be happening with Design Thinking as well.
We see at least three possible reasons.
- First, the strategic use of design in business is in vogue arguably due to the huge successes of innovators using design, like Apple and AirBnB, and design adopters like Amazon and Pepsico.
- Second, that social media has made everyone a critic in a globally competitive context. Therefore products and services have to be better and better to succeed.
- Third, nobody wants to miss out on achieving the greater success that using design seems to promise. Hence, a general thesis drives modern teaching and consulting approaches to design. This is especially so in Design Thinking programs, which promise clients methodologies that will help their companies be more successful.
Reactions —
“This is short & sweet. Yet, clear & deep.” ~Sivakumar Surampudi, CEO at Agri Business Division, ITC Limited
“My one comment is that computational design requires considering how technical execution plays a role — that’s an important piece to consider that’s missing in your piece.” ~John Maeda, Global Head, Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic
“Love the way it is constructed and love the blind men parable as metaphor for your method. I have myself used that parable in teaching a class […]” ~Mark Dziersk, Executive Editor, Innovation Magazine at IDSA (The Industrial Designers Society of America)
“Whenever I’ve used simple/elegant frameworks such as IDF to help explain a complex topic I’ve found that people need applications of its practice and an understanding of the model’s use as a process.” ~Thomas Koulopoulos, Chairman at Delphi Group
“I really like your use of the normally religious/god parable of the elephant and the blind investigators to understanding design perceptions. My take is that you’ll always have the “blind” executives, managers, professors and ignorants out there believing and telling the wrong story of design and, just like blindness, often sadly incurable.” ~Bill Dresselhaus, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Portland State University
What‘s cooking?
Quick update on our progress since the article first appeared in Innovation Magazine Summer 2018—we have good clarity of understanding of the “I” and “We” quadrants, with the result that we are delving more deeply into the difference between being a Leader of Design vs. a Design Leader.
At this point we are still struggling somewhat with Wilber’s demarcation between the “It” and the “Its” quadrants and understanding these quadrants’ roles in design more clearly.
More to come — watch this space! Oh, and please jump in with your own perspectives.
