More thoughts on the practice I am hoping to carve through my work with organisation M. I feel as if I am leaving behind the ‘myth’ and ‘mysticism’ that designers hold on to like a security blanket – designer’s attachment to ‘things’ and the creative process of making ‘things’. I know I am distinctly different to designers like my friend Luke, Stu or Keith for that reason, where that security blanket is what defines who they are and what they do.

So, what kind of designer am I trying to be? I know education has had an enormous affect on my practice – to the point that I feel as if I am educator when I am with M, rather than a designer. By letting go of the security blanket, I am more open to embrace our process of discussion and where it may go as content and outcome of every meeting we have. By doing this, I have also let go of the common tactics used by designers of presenting 3 options strategically so that the client will chose the one that designers would want. The ‘things’ I use in meetings with M are now more to trigger discussions or consolidate decision making. My role is to facilitate this. The visualisations or ‘things’ I have designed have been effective in focusing on certain issues and catalytic in moving from one point to the next very quickly. The visualisations have also served more purpose for them when they have asked me to let them present it to the government/other stakeholders. I have been very surprised by this – that they were willing to use it as a tool for their discussion as well.

The role I see as a facilitator, rather than a ‘problem solver’ is also interesting. The problem solving paradigm had always bothered me (I am sure it surfaces many times in this blog) but yesterday, it had occurred to me that to ’solve a problem’, requires one to see things objectively, remotely and act as a ’saviour’ to those who need it solved. This thought was initially prompted by Dori Tunstall talk that I attended last week. I have already written about here previously in my blog (titled ‘more on values’ under human values category) and was reminded that her Design Anthropology or Design for Democracy held no real values of a democratic process. In my opinion, she has a strong (and scary, almost religious) conviction of what values she deems are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – democracy is right and anything else isn’t – and she sees that her role is to implement it. As to what democracy means to people, how questionable it could be and being open to a democratic ways of discussing it, is not a consideration for her. Though, what is scary is that she is unaware that this is what she is doing – and infact, I would not be surprised if she thinks she is a ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ actor in this whole process. She is not interested in the complexity and chaos of life – she is more interested in giving order and clarity to this world, organising it in the way she sees fit. Laurene mentioned that ‘radical’ anthropology (which came about in the 80s) was allowing people to name themselves, rather than the ‘labels’ that anthropologists have given them. Perhaps Dori comes from the pre-80s era..?

I might be harsh on Dori, but her activities are not dissimilar to many over-zealous designers whose idea is to give order to the world, to ’save’ poor people from their mistakes and be a messiah of truth. Brrrr. And their religious tools are ‘things’ – they give them power and mysticism to perform such ‘miracles’. It is a paradigm based on difference and hierarchy.

From a conversation with Tania on a potential Masters course on sustainability, she illuminated that there are various courses offered on this subject that range from very heavily academic/theoretical; MBA-style quick-fixes (she mentioned vegan packaging); or the one by Tony Fry, which I assume would be to make designers feel terribly guilty for not ’seeing the light’.

So, what would this course teach?

We then circled around a lot of the issues that I had posted here before – and my lack of definition on what the ‘design’ aspect is to a lot of service design examples. When students are entering into a course such as this with their firm skill based and knowledge of communication design practice, how do we nurture and develop this? How do we educate, what Ideo call, ‘T-shaped’ people (in-depth, as well as broad, general knowledge)?

I then talked to her about Terry Irwin’s keynote speech at New Views 2 and her squiggly diagram of the wicked problem.

The red box is what her role was – where her usual practice boundary existed. Even though she was given a logo to design for a crystal shop, where the usual procedure would be to research the context and apply that to a visual outcome, she then decided to ask questions about where the crystals were from, how they were transported etc. By engaging the client in this conversation, they were both entering into the wriggly lines where it gets complex but begins interconnecting with other things. Terry talks about this being a way of shifting our paradigm / world views – stepping out into this territory that is outside of our comfort box.

Then, with Tania, we also highlighted how confronting for us (designers) to be that red dot in amongst the wriggle-lines. Where do we anchor ourselves, where to begin? Would this lead to more confusion for the students, or nurture a kind of apathy/heaviness that we are too powerless to deal with?

At the end of the 2hr discussion, however, we highlighted that there were key things that we could start with, for example, building an awareness of the largeness of the issue, but still relating it back to our practices. So, maybe the students could look at an existing project (like as basic as designing a logo) and analyse how the actions, resources and other elements connect with other things. The idea is to locate ourselves in relation to this activity, and also identify what surrounds it. Who is it for, what is it? We thought that creating diagrams would be a good way to ‘make sense’ of this. Designing as sense-making, firstly for ourselves, for our peer group, and then, through a process of redeveloping it, how it could be used when talking to a client.

Obviously, this needs more thought, but its a good start anyway..