NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design Special Issue, April 2007
Uday Dandavate |
Beautiful Diversion
SonicRim, United States
A more appropriate title for Bruce Nussbaum’s presentation would have been, “Are designers on the way to becoming extinct?” Let me explain. We are in the midst of an evolutionary process. As Richard Dawkins proposed in his book, The Selfish Gene (Dawkins 1976), meme — the smallest unit of culture — survives through replication. Memes, like genes, choose machines (bodies) that are best suited to ensure their survival. Unfortunately, the design meme has found new machines to survive. My spin on Bruce’s comment is that the carrier of the design meme is not limited to designers; it’s spreading like a virus and is well entrenched in the bodies of everyday people. In his book, Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich made a prophetic reference to people’s desires to participate in the design process. He suggested, “People need not only to obtain things, they need above all, the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others.” (Illich 1973) Designers have a vested interest in making people the slaves of the tools they design so that they can pretend to be indispensable. The design profession has borrowed a lot from the architectural field, foremost of all, the ego. Like architects, we aspire to build monuments to ourselves through our design. We’re desperate to see creation of the likes of Frank Gehrys in our midst. We feel rewarded when our designs land in the MOMA as opposed to blending into the lives of people. Bruce mentions at the end of his presentation, “Design thing is a glorious thing that has the potential of changing our lives in a myriad of ways in a myriad of places.” He’s not challenging the value of design; he’s suggesting we relieve ourselves of the arrogance in believing that what designers do is design. Instead, if we allow ourselves the opportunity to separate the meme of design from the carriers of that meme (the designers), it would be easier to appreciate that the culture of design will survive through the best carriers for that meme. Our challenge is to open our minds to the possibility that it will no longer be possible for us to control design. We may escape extinction if we align ourselves with other stakeholders of design who collectively are going to shape the discourse of design and, thereby, the practice of design. When I started visiting homes around the world as a design researcher, I saw what people’s homes really looked like and what they possessed. I recognized my limitations to visualize what drives people to the objects and images of everyday use, especially in unfamiliar cultures. As I gained humility about my shortcomings, I realized that I know very little about how my own people perceive their world. As a result, my concept of design changed. I recognized the need to co-create with people. That is why we do not call SonicRim a design company, but a company that inspires design through collaboration with the stakeholders.
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