Recently the designer has seen an unprecedented awareness of the benefit and value their craft brings to the development of products and services across the business landscape. Where previously the designer may have been brought in at the end of the conceptual or prototyping process to add ‘styling” we see an apparent integration of what has been defined as “design thinking” at the core of industry. The rise of the blog in telling the story of this evolution is evidence enough that something is at least happening to change the way design and, by inference, designers are perceived within industrial and organizational cultures.
As a design professional, one cannot help but be curious about how far the business world will take this new - found love of the value that effective and innovative design can provide to a project. A reading of most recent literature sees an assumption that design is inherently good. Clearly this is not the case.
Graduates from serious design education programs across the globe enter their professional life having been exposed to a wide range of knowledge and skill – based areas. There has been much discussion about the most appropriate content of such programs in the contemporary multi-disciplinary paradigm. Mostly, discussion centers on the urgency for design education that maintains design leadership and credibility for the profession, or on the lack of apparent business training in d –schools. In itself this is no bad thing, and it is clearly high time such approaches were integrated into design education programs at appropriate levels.
What remains unclear is how much of the design curriculum the business world will integrate into its processes. Strong design education courses generally include contextual studies. Contextual studies usually explore issues of professional, social and environmental responsibility. Design students learn about the evolution of the design profession within the context of industry, and the broader societal impact that has been brought by several centuries of what can essentially be described as ongoing innovation.
As business becomes more focused on the value of design to increase profits, reduce costs and to produce innovative products and services, it seems logical that contextual studies may be introduced into MBA programs that include design, or have a design focus. It would seem fairly imperative that we extend the awareness of the overall impact of design and design thinking in business as an important agenda item. As innovative businesses becomes more aware of the power of design, they might also become more aware of the responsibility they wield.
I’m thinking about Victor Papanek, and looking at World Changing…
What do you think?
2 comments so far
Glad you mentioned Papanek, often modern day designers think they’re solving new and unique problems, but I often find Papenek’s writing to be extremely relevant to current design problems. His book “design for the real world” is a brilliant piece of work, a little preachy, but well worth the read.
Here’s a post from a while ago that is tangentially relevant:
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/2003/06/26/same-problems-different-decade more dramatically it could be called “same problems different century, or generation.
So true Karl. I also agree that some of Papanek’s approach was a bit preachy, but he was clearly passionate about design, and was very cognisant of the potential for positive and not so positive outcomes in people’s lives. I think you are right to point out how his writing is relevant to current design problems. Papanek remains a potent design icon for our times.