NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design Special Issue, April 2007
Beautiful Diversion
So what’s this mean for designers? It means forgetting about messing around with cute ways to play creative director. It means confronting hard truths, being serious, having the courage to solve really big problems — and discovering what it actually means to be creative. Nussbaum’s playschool design for the masses takes us nowhere. The message to aspiring designers has to be more like — ‘guys and gals, deepening unsustainability presents us with challenges like never before: the problems we face are absolutely massive, but so are the opportunities. It’s down to you. You can be defeated by what you’ve had dumped on you or you can be part of taking design to where it’s never been before and where it urgently needs to go now.’
Brett Patching |
PhD Student, Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark
There are a number of issues under the umbrella of Nussbaum’s “Design Democracy.” One is the shifting role of designers from the centre of their own creative process to members of transdisciplinary teams. This forces us to take a hard look at how we can contribute individually as creative designers in these teams. Just what exactly are we good at and what new skills should we learn? Another is the “democratisation” of design thinking and methods and its potential role at the centre of transdisciplinary teamwork. Why have creative designers only had limited success articulating the strengths and weaknesses of design thinking to a wider audience? And are we afraid of the evolution of design thinking once other disciplines analyse and use it with us? The third is the implications of co-creation. The shift from “designing for to designing with” is not (only) a design management challenge. When Nussbaum writes that people, “want to participate in the design of their lives”, this also means their work. People both inside and outside organisations will actively influence their strategies more and more in future — and this is a challenge for management. Strategies have to be made tangible for this to happen. The strengths of the creative designer to explore and manifest possible futures, and of design thinking’s people-centered learning process have a central role to play. I do think that Nussbaum is correct in criticizing the design disciplines with regard to sustainability. Environmental issues are the biggest wicked problems around and, in theory at least, design thinking should provide a key to tackling them. Design schools in particular should play a more active role in increasing awareness and promoting change. The fact that Bruce Nussbaum is talking about the shifting role of design and designers is important. It is a sign that this relatively accepted position (at least from my Danish perspective) is starting to reach broader audiences.
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