I didn’t go to design school. I approached design from the margins as an intruder in a world of creativity. Somehow, the discussions on art and design were always external to me because I intuitively saw the two disciplines as very separate and different.
Doing a PhD in Design is one of the ways I found to prove to myself that I can use the word design to refer to my work.
In my early days as an interaction designer, Design Thinking for Business Innovation was blooming. Like many others, I was fascinated by an open door to the design world, where everyone could design… using post-it notes. Back then, my design knowledge was shallow and tacit. While searching for my own identity as an ever-becoming designer, I delved into the very meaning(s) of design and designing (for more on this, see my previous posts here and here).
Design work is often “solution-focused” and is deeply linked to practice and materiality. However, a new role for the designer has been emerging, particularly in the fields of strategic, service, and transformation design: evolving from a creator to an enabler or facilitator. In my understanding, we could add the role of mediator.
To understand this, we need to talk about four aspects:
From goods to service
The object is not design
Design is never done
Everybody designs
From goods to service
It’s easier to think about objects than services. We design, produce, distribute, and sell objects. We consume them. We buy them and use them. They are valuable. Or are they?
When I buy an apple, I don’t really pay for the apple. I pay someone because they can sell it to me. They have the venue, and they know the distributors. They have all the resources to make the sale happen. I pay for their resources and knowledge. The same applies to almost everything.
A service mindset focuses on the exchange and defines value as a co-creation between various actors: an object is only as valuable as the use I give to it (its value is not intrinsic). Hence, as a user, I’m a relevant actor in value (co)creation. As a user, I ultimately determine the value of an artefact. Besides, I don’t pay so much for the object as for someone’s ability to provide it to me (design, produce, distribute, sell it…).
Why should I care as a designer? Well, if someone is to value my work based on how they use it, should I not be concerned about its potential uses? Before designing a chair, should I not understand how this chair will fit in someone’s life?
The object is not design
It is, at most, the evidence of design. So much of the discussion about design is related to the objects. While we learn to appreciate and critique an object as a designed artefact, we are still unable to do so when evaluating a service. Service is not something we can look at. Besides not considering services as being designed, we probably wouldn’t notice their design until they break. We can’t see their aesthetics. I will not delve into that for now.
I’m not arguing objects are not relevant in design. My point is that focusing solely on its inherent characteristics is not enough. If value isn’t intrinsic, so shouldn’t our gaze be.
To design, we must go beyond our own material and visual exploration and understand the impact of our object on people’s lives. I don’t mean this in a grandiloquent way. The impact can be minimal, but the object will only be valuable if someone uses it in a particular context. When we talk about service, this is even more evident: if value is determined by the users, we cannot control the outcomes of the service; we can only define the processes supporting the intended interactions.
The Catalan designer Miquel Milá deeply understood this and meaningfully explored the relations between designer and artisan.1
Design is the meditation between our idea and its realisation. It must be meaningful for those producing, building, and developing the artefacts, and for those acting upon it, performing their role in a service exchange.
Design is never done
All design is redesign. As designers, we don’t work in a vacuum. The world is filled with designed things: objects, interactions, services. As much as we’d like to appropriate the creation of new things, we’re at most mediating between what exists now and what will replace our things in the future, whether ditched for innovations or simply redesign to fit renovated purposes.
In an ever-changing society with ever-evolving needs, dreams, and motivations, it’s inevitable to constantly (re)design. This work, if conscious and reflective, can allow us to assess and question the very direction of our course of action. Ongoing design work (as an action-reflection dialogue between us and the object of design) can help us not lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve.
Everybody designs
People are continuously finding solutions for everyday matters. While not really planned or accurately projected, people do envision a new way of getting things done and, in some ways, visualise and even enact it. As designers, our job is precisely to glide into that, if asked for, and build on existing work. Together, to mutually learn and help envision new collective understandings and practices. As designers, we can contribute with expert knowledge to some of these processes. By abandoning our creator's arrogance, we can learn from the communities and humbly support the emergence of new conscious shared practices.
As long as we see ourselves as one among many, as long as we continue to reflect on our actions and our work collectively, we may escape the egotism of the creator and embrace the in-betweenness of the mediator.
Designing is the collective quest of making a “future that can become” familiar.2
Have you ever faced this idea of collectively envisioning different outcomes by design?