NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design Special Issue, April 2007
Jørgen Rasmussen |
Beautiful Diversion
Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark
Bruce Nussbaum has some very relevant, but not exactly new points in his article on Designers as Enemies Of Design. Especially if you read between the lines you can detect Mr. Nussbaum’s (hopefully deliberately) shallow understanding of design. (A designer is a designer, right?) From were he stands Designers Sucks, but “designing” is “a tremendous tool” and “a powerful methodology” that “can transform society.” In his argumentation he randomly throws in cases from fashion design, the iPot, Carbonfootprint and “Navajo Hogan.” This is followed by a suggestion that designers should give up their professional authority and becomes design-democrats and start blocking. We as designers are obviously not fit to handle this powerful tool that is destined to save the world. It is with some discomfort I read yet another business view on how the designers not yet have understood what design is and how the business community should be allowed to take over, if only they knew how. It is with the strangest feeling I [again] meet the very accepted point of view, that everyone can do design; designers are just a little better, but they need help to perform design in a proper way. I feel compelled to make a few points on this. First I would like to reverse the Nussbaum environmental thinking. Business management tools are quite powerful tools, if only business managers knew how to use them. If these tools were used, as one would conduct a design process, in a responsible way, it could actually solve many of the e.g. environmental problems we are facing today. As a result of his focus on profit-making, the business manager fail to see or accept the real issues of a globalized world and thereby becoming part of the problem. This actually makes sense, in a “one liner” way of thinking! Business Managers are largely responsible for what is produced and how it is produced. One business trend after another sweeps the country and Business Managers follow the call. For obvious reasons, design (or innovation) has become one of the more persistent ones. Only this time Business Managers do not fully understand what it is and they are not in control, and that scares the s… out of them. All they understand is; design is good business! They also understand that designers rarely are driven by profit and that scares the s… out of them to. Designers are from the Business Managers point of view loose cannons; you never know what to expect. Exactly reframing problems is an important quality in design thinking, so — live with it, or evaporate! Like Higgens says. This absence of understanding is in many ways excusable. It takes five years to obtain a Master’s degree in Design and to understand and perform the complex cross-disciplinary and open end, unframed problem solving within the iterative design process (plus 5-10 years of professional practice to learn how to do it well). Because of the complexity of the process some students never learn (just like in any other education e.g. Business Management, Engineering etc). What is difficult for me to understand is the lack of acceptance of the professional design competences. The exact competences that over time has developed the concept of design thinking and produced the qualities also recognised by Mr. Nussbaum.
Page 47 of 58