Globalization has brought with it challenges that make much of our previous work [as designers] appear very simplistic – consequently there are skills required by designers that are new and not yet clearly defined.
Many contemporary problems are difficult to define clearly. As designers we need to be strategic in our approach. Synchronization and organization of parallel processing of complex, unstructured problems is becoming increasingly sought after by business, inevitably requiring solutions and innovation from multi-disciplinary teams. We must ask questions about how we work with other professions, and importantly, about how we educate our up and coming designers – the future of our profession.
Training in this kind of process is missing from most design education programs. The point here being that other professions have already realised the trends and directions and are preparing themselves to cope with the inevitable changes. Traditional design problem solving works when one can clearly define the problem. This has led to the evolution of specific ways of thinking applicable within delineated professional boundaries, each possessing their own vocabulary and patterns of practice and thought.
In today’s world, societal and technological change have evolved at increasing pace to the situation today where problems we face are not necessarily clearly recognizable. VanPatter [2004, NextD] argues that many problems can be said to be “unframed”. In this environment, we need flexible, creative open-minded approaches that enable a multi-perspective mode where we examine the issues at hand from multiple viewpoints, redefining the problem through the eyes of a multi-faceted range of inputs. In this kind of approach, we may see real potential for innovation to occur.
3 comments so far
Hi Ian,
What do you think are the ways in which “other professions have already realized the trends and directions and are preparing themselves”?
And what do you think are examples of “flexible, creative open-minded approaches that enable a multi-perspective mode” or what they might entail?
Hi Rick,
Good questions. Well, above I cite GK VanPatter above and his work with others with the Next D project. What I think has been achieved by Van Patter and others such as Bruce Mau is they have started a well focussed discussion amongst designers and design educationalists which is cognisant of the trends inherent in the seemingly inevitable globalization process which we are emeshed in.
There are others working in tangental ways around similar ground. Tom Peters is often referred to in this forum for good reason. His work in outlining the “big picture” has been invaluable in inspiring and informing business about the need for design and innovation that takes risk as a given in order to break new ground.
For me as a design educationalist, I think there is an immediate requirement for programs to address the need for our young, aspiring designers to feel comfortable working in global teams consisting of colleagues from different professional backgrounds, from different cultures, and operating in virtual workspaces. There are some innovators in these areas. One of the most impressive is the Omnium Project put together by Rick Bennett and colleagues at the University of NSW in Sydney. It is a fantastic project that links design students in global, virtual teams working on complex design problems.
These type of projects place students in situations where they cannot help but develop the flexibility I refer to in my post. The global learning environment created by Omnium emulates in a very real way the kind of workteam we are seeing emerge out of the contemporary industrial context.
I am elaborating on this topic with further extracts from my Mac + Design article published in China earlier this year at: