AxisGroup International Inc.

Discover Define Design

Discover
Define
Design

Alexander Manu
Design DK 2:1999
June 1999

Towards a New Model for Industrial Design

 

Over the past few months I have noticed the growing number of "design" sites on the World Wide Web, that is sites that advertise the services and capabilities of design firms. The CORE Industrial Design Network (www.core77.com) lists over 1200 design firms worldwide; here are three typical examples of how 80% of these promote their services:

 

"We offer our clients a full range of services including: Market Analysis, Product Development, Industrial Design, Engineering, Transportation Design, Prototyping and Packaging/Graphic Design".

 

" We are a one source consultancy offering seamless product design and development through to manufactured goods. Conceptual and mechanical details are developed and realised using state of the art technology. Our in-house rapid prototyping, tooling and injection moulding rounds out the complement of services that we offer to our clients".

 

"A full service design, engineering and prototyping firm. Utilizing rapid prototyping, integrated CAD engineering, CNC machining, prototype tooling, RIM moulding and high-tech materials to produce fully dynamic prototypes. Full mechanical & electrical engineering".

 

The above illustrates the condition of industrial design in 1999 and the schism that now seems inevitable: the separation of design as a "tool based" service from design as a creative profession. One will notice the absence of the words "creativity" and "imagination" from any of the methodologies being advertised, while at the same time noticing the relentless building on on technology. These are by no means exceptions, but rather they are the rule - at least in the North American context. A new generation of corporate design users is being taught that design is a service just like any other, with merits to be judged only on the provision, on time and on budget, of that service. The "How" has replaced the "What" in the marketing of design services; in such an environment, creativity is not being talked about, as the outcomes of the tools are always more tangible than the outcomes of the mind.

 

How did we get here? Where are we going?

There is a certain symmetry between the situation the design profession is facing today with a famous Albert Einstein quote" The consciousness that has created the problem is not the one that could provide the solution". While this quote is used often in connection with what went wrong with the environment, I have never agreed with its fundamental premise, as the consciousness that creates any situation is precisely the one that has to provide the solution seeing itself out of that situation. And here is where I found the key: the operative word is "consciousness" , which is a nicer way to say awareness, recognition and/or attention. In answering the above posed questions - and thus became fully aware - one must start by searching for the conditions that have encouraged this development.

 

The general condition of Industrial design in 1999

From any perspective, two major factors fragment design today: its teaching as a task solving activity rather than a task defining profession and the economics of demand and supply.

 

The first is responsible for design's fragmentation into industrial, interiors, graphics and so on. As a result, the profession lacks intellectual cohesion and a common vision - or shared visions for that matter - beyond sharing the general attitude that design is a business. This reduces the design discourse to the basic elements of any "business".

 

As for the second factor, a strong supply of capable designers guarantees neither demand nor quality in the design output. This is a client driven fragmentation - the demand side effectively influencing the quality and quantity of the design outcome. Specialisation further fragments the profession as demand, again, narrow's one field from interior design to retail design, for example. This may serve the short term goals of both clients and practitioners but it does little to move design towards any relevant role in society or in giving it a cultural platform.

 

AS the tools we now use have rendered most of the skills we learned irrelevant, it seems right that we transcend the consciousness that created the design profession as an extension of "others" - a tool for industry, business, markets - and move into a new consciousness, that in which Design exists as an indispensable creative discipline.

 

Assessing and Addressing

The Industrial Design field of activity has been generally characterised as Assessing and Addressing a given problem. Designers have been or thought of themselves as being, problem solvers. Good at receiving the statement of the situation - the design brief - assessing it in their own terms and creatively addressing it in tangible forms. To function in this mode , one needs to be supplied with the "design brief". While it is true that design is in many instances a solution to existing - or perceived - problems , it is also true that the scope of design is larger than that of each individual solution itself.

 

And here we enter the last years of the century, when design briefs are no longer stationary - in as much as they ever were - briefs are moving with the pace of change and the user is more and more the world around us . The user is the brief. In such an environment, problem solving can no longer be the claim of the designer. In a society going through fundamental changes, need analysis and problem definition become the new realms of design.

 

It is precisely here that the transcendence point is to be found: in moving from the consciousness represented by Assessing and Addressing into that of Discover - Define - Design .

 

The New Model: Discover, Define and Design

Discover, Define and Design must be, in my opinion, our new consciousness, the way towards becoming a fully imaginative, functional and meaningful profession. Our talent of discovering what ills society is as important as defining the problem in design terms, and addressing it via multidisciplinary solutions.

 

Under this model, design How and design What can reintegrate into a creative profession that can now Discover and Define the problems we are so good providing solutions for. This will mean a reclaiming of the art of thinking and of social forecasting ; it will also mean endowing designers with the knowledge tools equal to the task.

 

Our challenge is simple: how good are we at observing the whole in order to make elemental discoveries, define them in design terms, and provide long lasting solutions? These undertakings will have a lot to do with grounding the future of our profession into a complete cultural experience, one which includes both means and meaning.

 

 

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