Design & Social Change

PERSONAL
Whether or not to accept pro bono design work has never been a question for me. Some designers, particularly those in urban areas, mahy have difficulty choosing which organizations are on the receiving end of their free design services with such a wide variety of nonprofits and charitable causes to choose from. The decision for me was an easy one growing up in a small town - Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church and other organizations that played a significant role in my upbringing. The handful of folks that attend the 175 year old church that sits at a crook in the road in Stumptown, West Virginia are a group of hard-working, generous, close-knit people that know me as well as my own family, but would respond with equal concern to the needs of a stranger. As soon as I had the opportunity to give back to these friends who had given so much to me, I eagerly embraced the task. This is only a small start in designing "...For Good", but if every designer found a cause or group pof people that they felt a deep connection to, we - as an industry - would be well on our way to "supporting those who want to make a difference" as AIGA calls for in Design For A Brighter Future.

INDUSTRIAL
In Brighter Future, Richard Grefe hints at the added bonus for the design industry as a result of Design For Good - an increased awareness of the balue-added benefits of design. Ideally, this discovery would pave the way for the ideas Richard Buchanan outlines in Design and Organizational Change. Truly understanding the difference that design can make will spur organizations to plan for design in their future endeavors, working it into both their timeline and budgets. By embracing design earlier and earlier in their process, businesses would essentially open the door for designers to be increasingly bold and to break out of the realm of the visual into a position to make changes inthe way a business operates. Buchanan writes, "Indeed, design could offer a new way to understand and practice managment, leading to more human-centered organizations." Nowhere is this understanding, and the practice of design attitude more needed than in our own United States government.

NATIONAL
Redesigning America's Future, which outlines 10 proposals for making better use of design in our federal government, was completely new cotent for me and something that I honestly hadn't even thought much about until this point. But what better example of the need for problem-solving with empathy and human-centered solutions than in the government? The document includes a fantastic quote from Jimmy Carter that is every bit as relevant today as when he spoke it, "Good design can help us meet our commitment to improve the efficiency of government... and reaffirm our concern for the human side of government." By beginning on the personal level - choosing a deserving cause to lend our services to, our industry will see a boost, that hopefully will lead to a spot for our contributions on the national stage. And just maybe, designers should think about working towards the pinnacle of using our talents for good... the U.S. presidency. Let's hope for a future election that places a true "designer" in the White House - regardless of age, race, gender, or party affiliation.

The Business of Design

Robert Fabricant's article from Fast Company on the aging of American design directly contrasts with the idea of designers as business people. When Fabricant lauded American designers for winning a major battle by recognizing and asserting our "strategic" position, I expected much discussion on the fact that designers were improving the culture and bottom line at small and major companies alike. Fabricant wrote "Designers don't just make things easier and simpler to use, we open up new opportunity spaces through a more creative approach to problem solving." Unfortunately, the rest of the article backpedaled into a discussion of purely formal (and usually visual) concerns with no mention of improved ROI, increased market shares, or even shifting corporate culture thanks to design contributions. Rather than encouraging companies to embrace design in all facets, Fabricant reduces designers contribution to merely visual and usability concerns. His attack on Google's black navigation bar, Windows Swiss design and Apple's bookshelf only alienate designers from other business professionals and even cause division among those within the profession as evidenced by the comments attached to this article. Obviously formal concerns such as these are important, but I feel they should be reserved for design-centered publications instead of a business publication such as Fast Company, where designers should be united in their push for inclusion in the "boardrooms" across the country.

I fear that Fabricant's article also runs the risk of making designers appear to lack the ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team. In Tim Brown's On Being T-Shaped, the IDEO executive uses his own personal experience as a consultant to demonstrate how designers must evolve in order to become integral to the overall success of a business. In addition to formal constraints, designers who are able to factor in business constraints like efficiency and politics position themselves as management consultants and can win over other disciplines by employing design thinking outside of typical "design" boundaries. Proving your individual worth in this way can be a great boost for the design profession as a whole in the eyes of business leaders.

One difficulty for designers can be getting that foot in the door in the first place. Perhaps not every designer is in a position like the one outlined above. This is where measuring and quantifying our work becomes so important. Determining how our contribution improves a company's bottom line lends designers bargaining power and a voice in the boardroom. Bill Breen and Thomas Lockwood outline a few ways to measure the impact of design in Fast Company and in Businessweek respectively. Some of their suggestions are easier to measure than others, but all are useful in showing that design is not merely an expense that must be swallowed, but an investment that directly and indirectly impacts the bottom line. I especially appreciated Breen's closing statement.

"We can no longer get by on being the wacky creatives who can't be held to any kind of standard. The sooner we get over this notion of having to 'speak the language of business' and just get on with it, the better off we'll all be."

Most of design history indicates that designers put out a product or poster and then move on to focus on the next client. Adding a new dimension to our workload and following that design and its impact is one way that we can cement our status as professionals. Of course those measurements will not always be easy. Even a purely visual design, a poster for example, has a job to do and we must measure that to determine effectiveness.

Application
Most of my career thus far has been spent as a freelance designer, or as the sole designer for an in-house operation. In either case, I feel that I haven't had the opportunity to prove my worth as Tim Brown advocates, and certainly haven't had access to the sacred, for-important-eyes-only financial information that may allow me to quantify my contribution. The solution to both problems is easy to pinpoint, but much more difficult to act on. I need to be bold. To ask for access to financial information and be able to intelligently explain why. I need to stop thinking of myself as merely a designer and start embodying the attitude that other MBAs and account managers have. I am a hard worker with good ideas (and processes!) that may just lead to a boost in a company's bottom line, whether through increased revenues or cost savings. Thanks to my education as a designer, I can solve a problem. I can work as part of a team. I can be adaptable and learn new skills quickly. I can be Super Designer if I believe it and then back that up with evidence. Even more, I can completely break out of the mold of designer and be Super Employee or Super Entrepreneur if I am willing to take risks and be bold.

Intellectual Property's Relationship to Creativity

The debate concerning IP protection's effect on creativity has always been one that I have difficulty forming an opinion on. Most likely that is because I have worked on few (ok, no) high stakes, high paying, highly secretive projects that would genuinely rely on IP protection. I've found that I usually have to experience the worst of a situation in order to form a solid opinion. Nevertheless, the question of whether IP protection fosters or inhibits creativity is a cross-discipline concern that will probably be further complicated as more companies and industries adopt team-based approaches to problem-solving, as talented individuals become more transient and jump from job-to-job or city-to-city, and even as corporations face greater criticism from a frustrated public demanding transparency in all facets.

One side of the debate posits that IP protection (patents, trademarks & copyrights) is necessary to encourage artists, scientists and inventors to work hard to innovate because they will enjoy credit (usually publicly) for the research, protection from those looking to copycat and make a quick buck, and - in many cases - compensation of some sort. Supporters of this side fear that a lack of IP protection could result in the type of "brain drain" typically linked to socialism, where talented professionals leave (or in this case are unmotivated to develop new ideas) due to fear that someone else will enjoy the fruits of their labor.

On the other end of the spectrum, the argument is that IP protection inhibits "perfect competition." Supporters of this side believe that being first to market (or first to patent/copyright/trademark) does not necessarily mean best. If other creators were allowed to compete, then the public would be better off and companies/inventors would strive harder to innovate. I have a hard time believing that this theory would actually work in the way that it sounds. Although I understand the logic behind it, it seems that it would lead to mayhem.

As in all situations, finding a balance between protection and competition seems key to advancing our society as a whole. Of all the readings, the comment that stood out to me more than any other, was Hugh Dubberly's response to a survey question of whether interface designs should be protected by patents. Dubberly indicated that he did not necessarily agree with granting interface design patents and questioned whether or not true innovation took place within the framework. (emphasis is mine)

"Even if it did [take place], limiting use seems to hurt the society as a whole. For example, the notion that Amazon "owns" one-button check out is absurd. Society is harmed by restricting that system to Amazon. [...] Clearly, Amazon did not expend large amounts of time or money to come up with the idea. Not patenting it would not reduce the efforts of others. What's more, granting patents has not resulted in a flurry of research. The result has simply been richer lawyers."

I'm not sure where the balance can be reached between protection and competition, but I think Dubberly's idea of considering the impact on society (NOT the company) should be at the core of intellectual property protection decisions.

Service Design = Good Business Investment

Despite the fact that our readings this week were - logically - design centered, I couldn't help but continually come back to the advantages and ramifications for businesses that I picked up from the readings.

As a starting point, I would like to reference Whitney Hess' article addressing the misconceptions about user experience design. (As a side note, I will probably refer to user experience design and service design interchangeably in this post. I'm not educated enough about either area to know the precise differences. It seems that service design is more encompassing, but for this post, I feel that they are interchangeable.) I found this article to be very informative and actually pretty easy to understand which seems important considering her profession. :) The first thing that stood out for businesses was Dan Brown's comment that user experience design isn't "a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service." Lifelong learning is an education buzzword, but a business must be committed to lifelong learning in order to remain competitive. Learning about new opportunities and technologies, new and existing customers, competition, and what is happening within your own walls must be a continual process. Obviously though, learning is useless without action. That's where the "responding" and "evolving" come in, the steps where the design in service design becomes more tangible. The point is that this process never truly ends for a company that wants to reach the top and stay there. It makes sense then for a business to build this idea of continual reevaluation into their vision, a point made in Hess' article by Livia Labate. Thinking that user experience design is the responsibility of a department or a designer "is evidence that it is not part of the organizational culture and hints to teams not having a common goal or vision for the experience they should deliver collectively," she states.

I suppose I should back up a step and define the purpose of service design for this to make sense. I liked the UK Design Council's definition, particularly the end which states that service design delivers "services that are built around the real needs of clients, that simplify complex problems and deliver solutions that are future focused and cost conscious." I've emphasized real because to me that is the essence of the entire profession, and the challenge. Sometimes it may take significant work just to discover what those real needs are, much less fulfill them. Even the customers or users may not be able to identify their real need, so it is not always as simple as asking them.

The task doesn't end with simply filling a need at a good price though. Users/customers have so many choices in every aspect of their lives now, that they are continually looking to maximize value - of which, price plays only a small role. Additionally, customers expect to "be heard" by companies, whether that involves demanding transparency of a corporation's environmental stance, requests for cleaner restrooms, or input into the company's visual identity (think Gap rebranding debacle). Customers are finding increasing value in companies that are accessible - a direct result of service design no doubt. This is really what I think Richard Buchanan was getting at in his Emergence keynote when he stated that service design is "a discipline that everybody can participate in. Everyone is affected by, and if we do it right, we increase human's access to their own rights. Economic, cultural and social rights." Empowerment, customer relations, connectivity... whatever terms is used, service design seeks to maximize the product of these relationships. Companies that don't take the time thoroughly research and reach out to customers, companies that refuse to have a Facebook page or provide easily accessible contact information, companies that are too stubborn to enlist the help of service design professionals in any capacity are headed for hard times. As Josh Porter matter-of-factly pointed out, "the biggest misconception is that companies have a choice to invest in their user's experience. To survive, they don't."

Information Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Oh My!

I would certainly not label myself an interaction designer. Or an information architect. Or an interface designer. But after reading the articles assigned this week, I feel a greater sense of shared purpose with those "professions."

I had always considered that - as a graphic designer (which is how I have typically referred to myself) - I am generally in the same field as these other designers, but their work seemed very foreign to me. Listening to Jesse James Garrett deliver the 2009 IA Summit Closing Plenary helped me to realize that - although we may use different media in most cases - our purposes are the same. Garrett told the audience (fellow information architects) "There are no information architects. There are no interaction designers. There are only, and only ever have been, user experience designers." I particularly liked this statement because it re-opened my eyes. I say re-opened because, of course I knew that the success or failure of my work was dependent on whether it generated the desired response from the audience. But how easy it is to forget (especially when working as the sole designer in a workplace) that the choices in each work should have nothing to do with ME. An interaction designer's work in creating software interface, while it may make use of more scientific testing and studies, is really no different than my work when creating a poster or a brochure in that both have a specific purpose to achieve. Garrett realized this overarching purpose across media when he said "there are lots of materials - media - we can use to shape experiences. Saying user experience design is about digital media is rather like saying that sculpture is about the properties of clay."

I also enjoyed hearing the perspective of Garrett's business partner, Peter Merholz (as much for how he handled the passive-aggressive digs of GK VanPatter as for what he actually had to say about design!). In their interview titled Ladder of Fire: Unpacking Advocacies, Merholz spends significant time discussing experience design. What I liked most about Merholz was his insistence on the importance of other disciplines and other experiences to create effective "designs."

Although Merholz had many great things to say, his one statement that immediately jumped out at me was that "I don't define myself by my degree, though, because it really was just proof that I survived four years of college." This is something that I would like to reemphasize to all those designers just finishing college. The name of your degree can be such a limiting, restrictive force in your career if you allow it to be. Having a degree in graphic design does not mean that you should feel pressured to find a job with that same title. I worked a variety of jobs that - in appearance - had nothing to do with graphic design. Yet they helped build MY unique set of skills and perspectives. I have never held a job where I couldn't find something useful to take away. Moreover, I always found some little way that I could incorporate my design skills (essentially problem-solving skills) in every job.  The pressure to find employment after graduation can be intense, just know that accepting a job in another field can really add to your arsenal if you use it for that.

Design Leadership

After studying a handful of articles concerning Design, Management, and Leadership (Managing is Designing?, Leadership is the Strategic Issue, Design Vs. Design Thinking, and Design Vision), my poor highlighter is begging for a break. Although each of these articles address slightly different topics, all addressed the qualities and responsibilities of a leader at some point. Some focused on business leaders, some on leaders within the design field, but I think most of the qualities addressed in these writings could be applicable to leaders of any field. Based on the fact that there were numerous authors and a small army worth of "commenters" on the Newsweek article, there were naturally hundreds of different ideas and opinions about what a leader should be. Leadership studies have always been of great interest to me. So, using all of my highlight marks - along with my own thoughts about leadership - I've tried to synthesize all of those comments into a single statement that I feel explains the task of a leader:

Leaders use their experience to recognize an opportunity, develop a vision, articulate that vision to others, then build and inspire a team to complete that vision.

I feel that a leader MUST fulfill all of these tasks and if you study any of the world's great leaders in any discipline/country/era, you'll find that they meet these criteria.  [Keep in mind that leaders and managers are two completely separate breeds. As most business education teaches, (in a nutshell) leaders define the goals and objectives for a company, while a manager sees that they are carried out.]  I'd like to address each of these criteria then and show how designers in particular have the "skeleton" to be a great leader using comments from the four articles above.

Leaders use their experience to recognize an opportunity
Take a look at a great leader's resume and you will find that they "paid their dues" before becoming rich, famous and loved. There is absolutely no substitute for real world experience. Every degree within a university could not prepare a person to be a leader without real work experience. Truth be told, had I been thrown into a management position fresh out of my MBA program, I most likely would have been a flop. Not because I'm not intelligent or can't learn on the fly, but because I had very minimal work experience. Leaders have worked at the bottom, they've witnessed AND experienced success and failure and have catalogued every experience and every conversation. In a comment attached to "Design vs. Design Thinking," Simon Shmueli argues against a design-business undergraduate degree, saying "People without real-life industry and life experience simply don't have the maturity and big-picture view that is necessary to really understand the issues. At the undergraduate level you need to equip them with skills that will give them a good start in the industry[.]" With experience comes the ability to recognize opportunities for improvement, for new ventures, and for innovation. Learning to recognize which opportunities are in line with his/her direction is one component of leadership.
Application for designers: Because designers are already accustomed to working across disciplines and must research extensively when creating each project, they are naturally positioned to accumulate a broad portfolio of experiences on which to call when in a leadership position.

Leaders develop a vision
....which brings me to the second criteria, developing that direction or vision. We would all like to be number one at everything. The reality is that most of us (or most companies) have a comparative advantage in a few things. Leaders understand where their company stands and develops a strategy to optimize their best characteristics. In "The Many Faces of Design Leadership," Kevin McCullagh states that leaders "have the ability to hover above the detail, see the big picture and think abstractly to imagine a different direction." To develop that vision, he says that leaders ask questions like "what is changing and what opportunities flow from this change? -what core competencies do we have and which do we need to build? -how are we going to set ourselves apart from the competition? -where's the money?" Having the ability to see the big picture and make decisions that steer the company are at the core of leadership.
Application for designers: Designers must continually question what is working and what isn't when researching and completing projects. They are also trained to stop and look at the big picture while also drilling through layers of superficial to get to the very core of a problem. These traits would serve designers well in leadership positions.

Leaders articulate their vision to others
I feel that this is probably the area where most would-be leaders drop the ball. A great vision that nobody else understands or feels compelled to support will never make it past the walls of that corner office. Firstly, a leader must be able to sell what is at the very core of his/her vision by stripping away all of the extraneous. In "Design Vision," Bob Baxley describes the importance of this task. "Although it might sound like a simple thing to do, the act of forcing the expression down to a single, concise sentence imposes a level of discipline, commitment and clarity that is all too often lacking [.]" In the discussion of design student vs. business student as potential manager, this is where I'm afraid that the business student could have an advantage. I had the opportunity this past year to teach a business communication course. Throughout the semester, in every project and assignment, I emphasized writing clearly and concisely and writing to express (an idea) rather than impress. This is a course that every designer should be required to take as a part of their education. Learning to strip meaningless, vague words from your vocabulary (various, several, numerous, very, etc), learning to use simple, easy-to-understand terms in place of the word-of-the-week, and eliminating one's reliance on slang, euphemisms, and jargon can lead to much more powerful communication
The second step of articulating one's vision however, is convincing others to follow. Dirk Knemeyer gave an incredible example of leader whose vision reached all through the ranks in recapping the story of the Cape Canaveral janitor who was "helping to put a man on the moon." He explained that "because of the shared goal and high organizational morale - the product of strong communication, starting with the President himself and running all the way down - everyone including the janitor saw their place not in terms of the specific role they did, but framed within this ambitious, even audacious, goal." Shared vision is what truly distinguishes great companies like Apple, Patagonia, and Southwest Airlines from every other good company out there.
Application for designers: As long as they avoid getting sucked into their new iMac with all of the latest software, designers - communicators at their core - are in a position to excel on this point. As Luke Wroblewski said in "Design Vision," "Designers can envision and articulate a strategy through words, pictures, and motion in a way that everyone can understand."

Leaders build and inspire a team to complete that vision
The janitor story above touched on this point already. Steve Jobs could not continually bring innovative, coveted products to market as a one-man band. A leader must be able to build a team of the right people and keep them inspired and empowered to help achieve a vision. In "Leadership is the Strategic Issue," Richard Farson makes an excellent comparison of a leader and a dinner party host that is worth restating, as it sums up the role a leader plays in the team in order to bring a vision to fruition.

"Leadership is like being a good host at a dinner party. [] A good host thoughtfully plans the evening, carefully composes the group, takes pains to create the proper environment, arranges the appropriate seating, sets the agenda for the evening, introduces subject matter for discussion, lubricates difficult situations, soothes relationships, takes responsibility, moves things along, attends to details, keeps controversy at a manageable level, adds humor and optimism, comes early and stays late, brings guests into the conversation who previously may have been marginal, handles one thing after another, shifts attention easily, listens well, doesn't dominate, is at ease with self and others, and most important, enables the guests to be at their best."

Application for designers: Design is a service profession. Designers should be comfortable with collaboration and with participating in a team process like the one described above. Many of our country's great leaders have embodied this style of "servant-leadership" that designers should be well-equipped to use.

To define design, or not to define design...

Dear Diary,
Can't we all just get along? Throw out a definition of design and suddenly everybody has an opinion...and the RIGHT opinion of course.

As I read articles and blog posts such as Defining Design, greenonions.com's pieces about Lakovian analysis, Bruce Nussbaum's Are Designers the Enemy of Design, and the compilation of responses to that article published by NextDesign, the common thread seemed to deal with blame of some sort. "We can't be responsible for...." "You really can't blame designers for..." "The true responsibility lies with..." or some variation of any of these was repeated time after time in the comments section or within the writings themselves.

Is it not true that each of us feel that OUR profession is the most important (whether or not we ever admit that out loud). Teachers decide to teach because they feel it is important. Doctors care for patients because they feel it is important. Activists give voice to issues that they feel are important. Designers design because they feel it is important. And each of these folks are right! Why then, do we spend so much time and energy trying to elevate our profession over that of another, knowing that each is vitally important to the improvement of our society? Instinctively, I jotted various snide remarks and come-backs in the margins of my copy of Enemy as I read. While composing my response however, I realize that throwing out those remarks would be about as productive (and as never-ending) as those "Oh yeah? Well you...." arguments that my sisters and I engaged in as children. Likewise, simply shifting the blame as illustrated in the previous paragraph leads to an infinite loop of stagnation, or worse, regression.

Whatever innovation might be, it is not achieved through these types of divisive conversations. Tim Brown of IDEO said it best in his response to Enemy when he stated that new

"functionally, emotionally and economically compelling alternatives [...] will be the result of talented interdisciplinary teams." 

Not the result of journalists. Not of designers. Not of doctors. Not of teachers. Of teams. In this context then, is the definition of design really even important?