Design serving people - does it?
Last weekend I read Liz Sanders’ piece titled, “Design Serving People” - if you haven’t given it at least a glance, I highly recommend it.
“No, design is not serving people today Design is serving markets, not people. Design is serving the needs of companies, not people. And as a result, consumerism is out of bounds. We have too many “innovative” products that we desire but do not need. We are degrading the planet with the debris of overabundance and overconsumption. Environ- mental sustainability is in big trouble. Meanwhile, cultural and social sustainability are finally being recognized as having tremendous importance to human survival and well being.”
Personally, I agree with most everything she says - and I would wholeheartedly agree that design, today, does not serve people. It mainly serves corporate and personal interests above all else - and I would take it a step further, adding that designers themselves drive this trend. As the ‘experts” of the field and discipline today, we are responsible for how are field adapts and is utilized by outside forces.
One area I would disagree with is the idea that there will always be multiple types of design spaces, and that people will always live in the four general ones she described - I think, with outside technological advances and more progressive civil rights movements, design will rapidly become democratic to a point where design experts will become obsolete.
My prediction is that as our economy shifts to a more service-oriented and personalized machine, designers will become facilitators of design, not experts or drivers behind it.
As my thesis is on design education, I plan to use this piece as a reference to some of the broader implications of education serving commercial and economic interests - design is a powerful tool that needs to be accessible to all, if they wish it to be.