2 Comments on Oh social, schmocial: beyond co-design

Ian Worley on Sun, 22nd Nov 2009 11:25 pm


I think designers (myself included) make the mistake of believing that creativity and creative problem-solving (e.g. the ability to make the world a better place through the practice of thoughtful and applied creativity) are somehow limited to those people trained and practiced in design (e.g. designers). A simple walk through the british museum or watching a random sample of videos from TED reveals that creativity, creative problem solving and making, in genera, have been in existence far longer than the formal notion of design…and certainly more productive.

The reality is that in a world where design has become a commodity, designers (and indeed the entire creative enterprise from art to music and design) is struggling with a massive identity crisis. If anyone can design, anyone can make (music, art or whatever), then what really is the value of a designer…or, indeed, a so-called “creative” practitioner? We no longer hold our once vaulted position (in modernism) as arbitors of the aesthetic good and the great…as the guardians and architects of the utopian future that would leave behind the dark days of war, poverty and social inequality that mar our industrial history.

And in spite of (or perhaps because of) the popularity of “design” that makes Ikea a more fitting (and successful) inheritor of modernist ideals than Vitsoe, designers’ ability to create objects (or spaces) of beauty seems, in a world of climate change and impending global crisis, to be not only frivolous but irresponsible. No wonder design has gone “sustainable”, “green” or “social”. How else to shore up our failing position as individuals with something unique and important to offer the world?…because that is where it all begins, if we look hard enough. How could we possibly face a future where we are not as special as design school and history has made us believe we are?

So what is wrong, then, with co-design, design-thinking, social design, or, in the broadest sense, sharing our “tools” with those less fortunate than ourselves to help them fulfill our modernist destiny as benign saviours of the world? Well, the problem is that, while I don’t disagree that there are some tools that designers have developed (even talents and skills unique to those people who choose to enter creative professions generally) that can be shared…we should be cautious in believing that outside our practice and training we have terribly much to offer.

Lateral thinking, pattern synthesis, intuition, insight (and many other skills we trade on) are not unique to design. However, manipulating the particular visual, audial or spatial patterns and languages that comes with a combination of talent, study and practice (along with understanding the history of the dialogue between designers and other creative fields) are. But these are certainly not the skills needed to help communities improve their lives.

Sure, we could invent new solutions to old (or new) problems that utilise our knowledge of particular materials or patterns (like a drinking straw that filters water for use in poor communities without access to clean water). But the vast majority of designers became designers to make pretty or clever things…and even if they had grander ambitions, the things and the people that are praised and rewarded (in school and in society) are those that often produce things of little more than aesthetic merit. Few design schools or practices send designers out into the world to learn how to work and help communities lacking resources or opportunities. Scientists, economists, social workers, doctors, engineers and many other professions do…but design has always, if we are honest, served those who could afford the unique and special…because it rewards our collective need as designers to be special and talented.

How many designers would become designers if they knew that what they were going to do with their skills was work in impoverished communities building better schools or building better latrines. And how would they make a living doing that in any case? Who would pay for all of that good will and effort? And who would create all the new stuff that capitalism needs to operate? And who would come up with the advertisements to sell it all?

The reality is that, not only are designers ill-equipped for solving social problems, they would, in most cases, much prefer to do something that has a concrete output that they can step back and look at and say with pride “I did that…and aren’t I talented!”…and to have the world say yes by giving them an award or paying them a hefty fee.

Design is a profession that is on the back foot. Like art, architecture and every other creative profession that was once based in craft, apprenticeship and talent…a world of mass production has simultaneously made us central to the consumer capitalist machine, but equally implicated in its grievous sin of wanton and empty consumption. What was once about making things that resonated with meaning has been reduced to making things that grab attention and sell.

No wonder the design world is now trying to find a new footing in something more valuable and honourable. But at the end of the day, there is little that design has to teach other professions that already have their own creative processes…or even people who, like the kid in africa who built his own windmill for his village out of spare parts or the women who decorate their mud huts with intricate patterns, do not suffer from the need to be clever or interesting, but rather have direct access to their own creative power and resourcefulness.

Its time that designers faced up to the reality of who they are and what they are really capable of…and more importantly…accept that the modernist delusion of grandeur no longer applies and rejoin the masses of humanity that are diversely creative and productive in ways that the western notion of design training could never even get close to. What other profession has the audacity to think that it is somehow so important that EVERY other profession has something to learn from it? Its an arrogance born of both ignorance and (perhaps well deserved) insecurity.

If as a designer, you want to genuinely help others (and the world)…then do so…but not under the false assumption that you have something that they do not…that you are somehow set apart and special. You are not. You will just be one of many creative and passionate people joining in to make something happen. And if you approach it that way, then you will at least have a chance do doing something important because you will engage people as equals.

If, on the other hand, you want to make cool and clever stuff that gets you (and your work) noticed, then just do it and accept that what you do is, ultimately, landfill and meaningless. But at least you can bask in the short term glory of your own self-agrandisement, even if when you die it will likely mean nothing to you or anyone after you.

Design, like art, architecture and music (in the modernist sense) has followed Nietzsche’s god into the grave. But in that death is a great freedom. In the words of Chrissy Hynde: “Welcome to the human race…”

Andy Dearden on Wed, 25th Nov 2009 11:59 am


Oh how sad to hear creative folks falling into bipolar thinking:
• designer as ‘auteur’ or designer as ‘everyone’ (and by implication no-one, or at most no-one special); and
• designer as prostitute to the highest bidder in the marketplace, or impoverished (but saintly) community activist.

Designing is not the activity of a single imagination acting alone without engaging with others, but a the result of multiple conversations with diverse participants – including ‘potential customers’, ‘clients’, ‘makers’, ‘manufacturers’, ‘suppliers’ and anyone else we as designers might engage with during ‘designing’. As well as those conversations, there are those tricky ‘conversations with materials’. A trained designer may be a focal point of those conversations, and may even advise and direct activities of others, but does not act alone. Nor is the trained designer a helpless, rudderless victim carried along by the forces of the market with no capacity for choice.

If design is recognised as a collective activity, then surely we should recognise multiple different ways of distributing roles, and skills amongst that collective. But effective teams are neither homogenous nor static. We should expect a wide diversity of skills knowledge and experience in designing complex products, services and systems, and we should expect everyone involved to emerge from the collaboration changed by the encounter.

But the idea of going from design “for, through with, to by; beyond co-design.” has already been tried. ‘Design by’ is not a new idea. The Participatory Design community (see 20 years of participatory design conferences) has a long history exploring these questions, and very early recognised the additional benefit that designers may bring to a situation so that ‘design with’ can achieve more than ‘design by’ (see Greenbaum & Kyng’s 1991 book Design at Work for discussions on this). “End-user design” has a shorter but still substantial history.

But there is a question of what we aim for in ‘designing with’.

* Is our focus only on the final product, or does it extend to thinking about the changes in ourselves and our collaborators in the designing process?

* Do we demand that the user treats our designed product as ‘final’ and uses it the way we set out, or do we leave the product open for their adaptation and interpretation to devise novel ways of working with it?

* Do we guard our specialised skills as industrial secrets to maintain our market position, or do we aim to develop the skills of our participants to spread design competencies through society?

These are personal decisions.

But if I was advising our clients or customers (whether private, public or third sector) which designers to appoint, I suggest that they will get more value designers who work in ways that spread designing capability as widely as possible.