Design Sojourn

design, particularly in asia, needs to start thinking strategically, especially as they strive towards becoming leaders. witness John Maeda, the first designer to become the president of any college in the US, such moves tell us that design is moving away from the style giving towards the ‘enabling’ aspect of what it can do.

For the sake of the economy, our nations, the world, designers need to take on the biggest, most strategic problems there are. We primarily need to answer “what to do”, not just “how to do it”.

Leaders think what to do and managers think how to do and the people below them just do it.
In design, as we follow the complete process, we also need to think what to do in the beginning (creating an appropriate design vision) and then we need to think about solutions how to realize that vision and then we just manufacture the products within that vision.

The enabling aspect that niti bhan mentioned will become more and more important to designers in the future. As is proven time and time again “everyone is a designer”, so if this is the case where does it leave the ‘trained’ designers?

The designer then becomes the enabler, the person who is able to connect the dots between the leaders, managers and doers.

In many companies there exists rifts between various parts eg: management and workers or manybe finance and engineering/design. It is up to designers to be able to see all the competing aspects/points of view in companies/the world and be the enabler that brings those aspects/points of view together, synthesize them and then produce and outcome to the problems created by those aspects, that incorporates the best of both aspects/points of view.

Essentially the designers are becoming the bridge between, which requires designers taking on more strategic roles in the decision making process.

Design Thinking.. or more interestingly Design Behaviour… which alters our thinking (Peter Senge’s 5th Discipline books) is a cultural thing and the difficulty of embedding it into organisations should not be underestimated. But designers need to be the hub of the organisational wheel which is an uncomfortable position absorbing all the tensions from everywhere else. We did some work on what needs to be thought about in the Business Excellence model and produced a diagram that scoped out where the emphasis needed to be to catalyse a change to design behaviour- http://snipurl.com/3najg [ic-pod_typepad_com]. That is where we need to be thinking and doing

We should be thinking on “the edges”.

See Hugh McLeod’s latest thoughts on “the edges” over at http://www.gapingvoid.com

Hi All, this a great response! I never expected so many great comments and wonderful advice and suggestions. I will try my best to answer each of you personally!

@niti, good example. John’s position and ability is a very positive sign. However he is very suited for the role as much of his life was in Academia at MIT labs. Now the next thing here is to see a Designer in a CEO position in a company. Now that is big news.

@bob, great comment. I think that are some of the bigger questions that designers have to answer. It is a pity though as often money and the need for a full belly tends to get into the way.

@waikit, Yep that is sort of what my sketch was all about. Designers need to take that high level thought and together with a vision, the best designs are on the way.

@Melid, That is a great comment and point. The problem is not many designers see past their sketch or designs. This blog hopes to encourage designers to take their profession to greater heights!

@Jim, great insight as usual and thanks for the link.

@Jon, good to hear from you, and I love Hugh’s work, I will be checking it out.

somewhere outside the pyramid. (Sorry I couldn’t help my self).