Design is our Ultimate Down Fall and our Only Savior
As a discipline designers in the 20th century had overwhelmingly leant toward a nonchalant attitude when it came to materials. This has in part resulted in a range of beautiful and innovative products but also in a culture of consumers. Design mass produces material goods with little more thought to their eventual demise beyond what product might replace its predecessor. This critical piece of writing will explore where such a consumer culture originate, what effects it has had on the world around us and how design can move us as society forward to a more sustainable future not only environmentally but also socially. The movement of Modernism has widely been attributed as the start of an era where mass production was seen as the way forward, and very little thought was given to depleting resources and future constraints. “By 1900 the world was a bustling place transformed by all of the new discoveries, inventions and technological achievements that were being thrust on civilization: electricity, the combustion engine, the incandescent light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, radio, X-rays, fertilizers and so forth.” .” (Miami Dade Collage, 2014) This transformation had a two-fold effect on society of the 20th century. On one hand it created a mindset and future outlook of a ‘paradise on earth’, a “new utopian dream that would transform the very nature of man”, as Miami Dade Collage’s lecture on the History of Modernism states. A land without consequences where, in contrast to today, society was unaware of its effects. On the other hand modernism saw everyday life get fast and ever more connected due to innovations in transportation and communication. People moved from the countryside to cities, and factory line production became the norm. “Whereas in the past, a worker became involved in production from beginning to end, by 1900 he had become a mere cog in the production line, making an insignificant contribution.” .” (Miami Dade Collage, 2014) This is where as society we moved away from being defined by what we did and became instead defined by what we had. So consumerism was first born in the developed world’s increasing urbanized middle class.
Now all may seem lost but where designers are often blamed for causing the supply of such products and encouraging consumers to purchase these goods, they are also the only solution. Unless you are perfectly happy to live a minimal life, in ‘mud huts’ and survive of sustenance farming, only smart user-centered design can move all 7.8 billion of us to a different type of ‘utopian dream’ where equality isn’t a dream any longer. By creating desirable objects that still maintain a cradle-to-cradle approach product designers will be our ‘saviors’. “Our world now faces profound challenges, many brought on by innovation itself. Although optimism runs counter to the mood of the times, there are extraordinary new forces aligning around these great challenges, around the world.” (Mau. Leonard, 2004)
A designer’s duty - Our “line of evolution” has been positive over history and socially we have achieved greater equality, more health care, wider spread of education and over all increase in the standard of living. But up on closer analysis it is evident that this evolution has never been smooth but instead suffers from highs and lows throughout history. Maybe design is only acceptable in its art and philosophical form in times of plenty. When war is at minimal, over all amenities are met and society is able to dwell on its successes. So are we currently in times of need where art should not be societies priority and designers’ roles should move simultaneously along our line of evolution? A proliferator for such an evolutionary way of thinking is designer Philippe Starck. He describes our societies evolution as being made up of “light and shadow. We can say light is civilization, shadow is barbaria.” (Starck, 2014) When society is in times of ‘light’ there is room to converse about philosophy, progress, love and art. Such times saw the rise of a modernist way of thinking and production where our future problems were to stay in the future and designers could create purely aesthetical objects. In a cyclical design environment, though, it is important for designers to know where we are because “you have not the same duty in the different parts of the cycle.” (Starck, 2014) This is where Starck starts to acknowledge his design persona in comparison to his surroundings and the designers that surround him. He says that he and people like him are acceptable. Their designs fit into that period of evolution where “in the '80s, there was not too much war, like that, it was -- we can imagine that the civilization can become civilized.” (Starck, 2014) A designs importance is really born out of creating objects that are informed by their setting. Their surroundings. Their social context. Such design is capable of moving us forward to a “new story” (Starck, 2014) . Designers have therefor become the change makers of generations. Where consumer trends in part dictate design output design is at the forefront of innovation and creates all those utopian dreams society strives for. So we have come full circle where the responsibility returns to the shoulders of the designer “to try to do it the best possible” (Starck, 2014) for the moment in evolution we occupy and foresee.
Purposeful design- If design is made for purpose it can avoid becoming obsolete and continue along an evolutionary process. Designers therefor have a moral obligation to design for purpose. This does not mean a purely ‘form follows function’ approach to design, although it could in some cases, but it puts responsibility on designers to not simply design the skin of products but to translate values into their design. Behar conveyed this beautifully when he prompted more designers to think about the values that they want their designs to have and to think about what those values could mean to all of us. “If we really keep in mind the values of the work that we do, I think we can change the work that we do. We can change these values, can change the companies we work with, and eventually, together, maybe we can change the world.” Behar, 2013) This view of infusing values into design, of designers creating more than just the aesthetic outside of projects is proliferating through the design community in this new stage of evolution. Tim Brown noted that “it occurred to (him) that maybe what passed for design wasn't all that important” (Brown, 2014) and as a profession design has gotten small. The phenomenon of small product design seemed to be emerging in the late 20th century on the back of rampant consumerism. Where design became portrait in popular media as product-design, creating objects that might be amusing and desirable but not important, with a lack of impact and no real social values. Design used to be big, back in the 19th century before the profession was even know as design, when people like Brunel thought up whole transportation systems with a vision for the future. To Tim Brown that’s exactly where the difference lies between Brunel and today. It’s in the design thinking, the critical analysis that means designers do not just create objects but also design the impact that object has on the users, the people involved in every step of its manufacturing and even people that might not ever even see the object. “But I do think that perhaps design is getting big again. And that's happening through the application of design thinking to new kinds of problems -- to global warming, to education, healthcare, security, clean water” (Brown, 2014). Therefor our evolution, our destiny as society seems to once again prove itself intricately link to design. The terms design and destiny are not commonly know to have a strong association. However in his, fittingly entitled, TED Talk ‘Design and Destiny’ Philippe Starck illustrate exactly how our human destiny is completely dependent on design. He acknowledges that currently the majority of designers do not make a positive connection between the two. He classifies these designers into two parts so called “cynical designers” (2014) that produce sexy products made for marketing and little else and secondly the narcissistic designer that is a “fantastic designer who designs only for other fantastic designers.” (Starck, 2014) So does this mean that if we are to continue living through those objects, designed by such designers, that our destiny is going to be the same as the destiny of those design objects? This would be a truly disappointing destiny. There are however designers like that try their best to create in a challenging time designs that go beyond just being a product, one of which Starck considers himself as “I try, to not make the object for the object but for the result, for the profit for the human being, the person who will use it.” (Starck, 2014) To not stop evolution at the present moment but raise his viewpoint higher and further into the future.
Human centered design, “requires you to genuinely engage with customers and understand their lives and needs.” The designer in this case moves away from being a producer to becoming a facilitator. Where he enables the end-user to have influence through out the whole design process.
A recent report by the UN stated “we must urgently find ways to achieve economic and socially equitable growth without further cost to the environment”. (2012) Design that address this need has the ability to bridge the gap between the developed and developing world. However, for it to be affective it has to meet the users needs. This starts by an understanding of these needs through a human-centered design approach.
Human-centered design “is a process for designing and developing products that is grounded in information about the people who will be using them”. (Abras, Maloney-Kirchmar, Jenny. 2004) As an approach it is becoming ever more prevalent with organization. Existing examples of projects making successfully connections between the two disciplines are showcased in a recent exhibition called ‘Design Innovation with the Base of the Pyramid’. Run by the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais based in Santiago, Chile, and supported by the Inter-American Development Bank. It’s “methodology integrates the Base of the Pyramid in the research and development phase of innovative goods and services emphasizing the process of co-creation…to develop tailored solutions for the population facing poverty.” (Inter-American Development Bank . 2004) These include the Safe Aqua collaboration. Which “brought together an international team of designers with Un Techo leadership and residents of Campamento San José, Chile to envision, design, and test centric solutions addressing the lack of safe, running water. Where such projects are encouraging much more has to be done to bring this collaboration into many more sectors of design especially very primary needs are concerned, since “some of the best design solutions rise forth from people who aren’t credentialed designers at all.”
Design has create many issues around our planet that have had lasting and far reaching effects. However, it has also solved many of the issues around transportation, communication, health and education that have moved us as society forward in our evolution. As Philippe Starck very poetically points out in his, 2007 TED Talk Design and Destiny “we have no idea of what we shall be in four billion years”. “We are at half of the story” with earth having existed for roughly 4 billion years and its demise predicted for another 4 billion years. We can only future plan so far ahead our present knowledge but not only as designers but as society we should at least plan that far. After European industrialization, the move from rural to city living and the invention of the production line, society became defined by what we owned and consumerism saw its dawn. Leading to an industry where design has become small and product focused. Saying that there are positive signs of design getting bigger again. “Instead of seeing its primary objective as consumption, design thinking is beginning to explore the potential of participation -- the shift from a passive relationship between consumer and producer to the active engagement of everyone”. If this is the point of this cycle that we currently find ourselves at, we now have to choose that positive upward gradient of evolution that is heading back to the light, as Philippe Starck described it. There are other forward thinkers such as Rory Sutherland that see a wholesome system design emergence, or resurgence if we look back to Burnel’s system approach of the 19th century. Brown reflects on Sutherland’s notion “intangible things are worth perhaps more than physical things” and stretches it further into his own theory that “the design of participatory systems, in which many more forms of value beyond simply cash are both created and measured, is going to be the major theme, not only for design, but also for our economy as we go forward.” Moving along this thought of design as systems who better to design these systems than society itself so “that design may have its greatest impact when it's taken out of the hands of designers and put into the hands of everyone.” (Brown, 2014)
UN. June, 2012. Vol. XLIX No. 1 & 2. The Magazine of the United Nations. Addressing the Sustainable Urbanization Challenge
David Kelley: Human-centered design. (n.d.). TED Talk. Retrieved August 27, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_on_human_centered_design
Abras. C, Maloney-Kirchmar. D, Jenny. P. 2004. Encyclopedia of Human-Centered Interaction. User-Centered Design. Thousands Oaks: Sage Publication. Bainbridge.
Inter-American Development Bank. 2004. Exhibition. Design Innovation with the Base of the Pyramid. Retrieved from http://events.iadb.org/calendar/eventDetail.aspx?lang=en&id=2907
Pilloton, E. (2009). Design revolution: 100 products that empower people. New York, NY: Metropolis Books :.
Behar, Y. (n.d.). Transcript of "Designing objects that tell stories". TED Talk. Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/yves_behar_on_designing_objects_that_tell_stories/transcript?language=en
Brown, T. (n.d.). Transcript of "Designers -- think big!". TED Talk. Retrieved September 1, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big/transcript?language=en
Starck, P. (n.d.). Transcript of "Design and destiny". Ted Talk. Retrieved September 10, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_design/transcript?language=en#t-143000
Dade College Wolfson Campus. (n.d.). History of Modernism. History of Modernism. Retrieved August 27, 2014, from https://www.mdc.edu/wolfson/Academic/ArtsLetters/art_philosophy/Humanities/history_of_modernism.htm
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