There has been a fair bit of fallout and online conversation over the past week regarding both the future of Industrial Design and the future of Design Research. A lot of it can be found by searching the #drc09 or #idsa09 hashtags on Twitter. But Jon Kolko has written two articles over the past week that have got me thinking about where Design Research is headed and how my own current design research fits into that picture.
By my interpretation Jon is reckoning like many others that Design Research is becoming increasingly ‘comoditised’ and democratised. Outsourceable to other countries and to individuals who are not professional designers – as he says:
“Design Research doesn’t require any special training. We can learn to be better at it, but it’s simply the skill of listening and observing.”
Maybe, but I’m therefore left a bit confused by Jon’s conclusion which is that:
“What’s implicitly lurking in all of this discussion of design, synthesis, innovation, research, experience, and empathy is the momentum of design as it breaks out from the confines of business…The “designer in the boardroom” model may already be out of date. To quote Robert Fabricant, “our value is in the long-term conversation.””
I agree with this, but to me there is something missing – a clear distinction in who we are talking to? Jon’s insight, by his own admission, cheaply available, screams out for increased acknowledgement amongst designers of participatory methods and involving everyone in the design process, but he doesn’t by my interpretation, mention that. Yes he talks about the bigger picture view of design – so-called “design thinking”, and urges us to embrace understanding of ”culture, behaviour and society” but I get the sneaking suspicion that both he and Fabricant are still talking about a model of design research or practice where the designer is in the ascendancy – ‘ego-design’ where the designer plays a more traditional ‘passive observational’ role before going away and constructing his vision of the solution.
I don’t see a correlate between what he acknowledges as the changing landscape of design and what he proposes as the solution to help build momentum in the design process. Involving users in the design process, unleashing and directing their deep understanding of their environment is the first step to creating sustainable design. As @tamsina and @jamesamperi from @hereatengine have been saying, designers who want to unlock this potential have to be able to plan and visualise their research process to ensure effective synthesis. This view is also somewhat represented in an article on systems thinking by John Seddon (via @redjotter). The ability to visualise the process and system of design is key to involving non-experts in it. As Kolko says, non-experts are getting involved already, so surely to maintain relevance established designers need to ensure they are planning and visualising their design process effectively.
To this end and as I have posted previously, I have been exploring visualisation of participatory processes and the role of designers in employing the latent skills, experience and knowledge of all stakeholders within the design process. Thus, I was very excited to find this post on Rob Tannen’s “Design For Humans Blog” talking about ongoing work by Katherine Bennett that was presented at the IDSA 09 Conference a few weeks ago. In a bid to further explore Katherine’s work and to see how it integrates with my own work and recent thinking, I have reconstructed it here: I hasten to add that this is purely to further my own internalisation and understanding of her work and how it relates to mine, I hope you find it useful but I hasten to add all credit and any questions and suggestions should be directed to her here.
Designing Design Research by Katherine Bennett & how this relates to participatory processes
Whilst I think each designer or consultancy will have their own database of tools and methods I think an approach like this is incredibly valuable for designers being able to do what Kolko and others have been suggesting, which is to better structure their design research to ensure that it adapts to the changing demands of our time and empower users in the design of their products, systems and services.
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Tags: Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Service Design, systems theory, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, User Empowerment, User Perceptions