Design as a profession has no one point of origin, growing from different industries, along the way developing a rich mix of thinking in craft, politics, mathematics, engineering, science, writing and salesmanship.
I was formally educated as a product designer with a background in small business; now teaching management and researching design thinking, metadesign, and design management. I find a natural discomfort in the idea of focusing on one thing and like to challenge this status quo.
The pre-conception of design just as a marketing tool is naive. Design is a tool for business in its departmental role as a function, a managerial concept in its own right, and beyond the paradigms of business.
Design is the relationship between the ‘manmade’ and people, humanly focused and experientially driven. This is a very important concept. Design is an evolutionary trait to control one’s environment. The made environment is a phenomenally complex system, which we humans, have imagined and constructed. I believe, therefore, we have the ability to act on it; we made it so we can make it better.
Generally speaking we struggle to comprehend and react progressively to issues of magnitude such as social injustice, environmental damage, and economic flux, however as a designer I am paid for changing things, mostly for me, as an educator, it is the way people think and act on decisions. Designers are in their very nature ‘agents of change’ and the great thing for designers is that the world radically needs change. This is the new paradigm of design; not making better things but making things better!
A very important understanding in change is the complexity of the systems we all operate in. We can no longer afford to ignore the effects of our actions and this means the understanding of our doing.
To understand what we do, and what happens when we do it, we must appreciate the diversity of the world. It is this diversity that gives us resilience against losses (economic and ecological). It is seemingly apparent that diversity in ecology and economics is becoming less and thus our resilience too. The idea of building resilience is a fundamental point in the future of the designed world and this resilience must come about via change, managed by design thinking. We are emerging from a recession illustrating very clearly what happens when we have little ability for resilience. Design thinking, a now common concept with business leaders and academics, requires an open-minded approach in problem solving and a great empathy for specialist knowledge.
Designers are specialists in using specialists. I believe that the idea of the ‘specialist’ or the ‘professional’ is a dangerous focus that can neglect to see opportunities beyond a problem; designers however are by their nature not navel gazers. There are many parts to a problem (or as a designer sees it ‘an opportunity’) and this requires a holistic approach in understanding. I don’t teach design management students to understand in great depth all areas of a system but rather appreciate the breadth of the subject and join up the dots. With this way, of what I like to call ‘knowledge grazing’, you can start to make associations and begin to understand the complexity and opportunities for change.
The great minds of the past where not marked in their time by a single profession. Da Vinci, Galileo and Newton held academic rank and specialism in different fields giving great wisdom. Buckminster Fuller, a great multi-faceted mind of the last century, stated that birds are specialists in flight and fish in swimming, humans however have built the airplane and the submarine. These are extreme characters of human ability and thought, but the appreciation of wisdom via connective knowledge and the ability to see the world holistically is what I prize as the key to designing the future.
The ability to see complex relations and build perspective from different sides is the offering of design, however this is reliant on specialism, highlighting the importance of design thinking with areas of specialist knowledge. Serendipity in design comes from curiosity and systemic thinking, making associations within our complex world.
An important part of our student’s education is the skill set in natural-collaboration, multidirectional research, perception, empathy, ideation and presentation. I say with absolute confidence that in the current ‘paradigm’ of being productive, thinking is not thought about enough.
Design thinking requires a nonhierarchical structure in collaboration, and the education of design management is around progressive positive relations. The pancake structure is an example of how companies like Pixar, Apple, Google and Phillips innovate with such success. I see the future of business as a collaborative process, enhanced by open source information, made possible by technology, made accessible by design.
Design instills an upbeat attitude, working on constructive and reflective criticism, seeking constraints as positive commodities. We have all experienced the difference in our productivity when working with and without constraints; Charles Eames described design as being mostly of constraints. The great design thinker Tim Brown of IDEO outlines these as desirability, viability and feasibility. If you are a business leader, teacher, scientist, or politician you have understanding of these factors. Designers find ways around issues using creativity as a tool for navigation.
The lifestyle of a designer is wonderful, with flexibility and variations from one day to the next. It does come at a price and that is a constant desirer to improve the world (also taking yourself a little too seriously sometimes). Designing is a never-ending quest and a life in education.
Language often fails design leading to the creation of new words, in effect designing design (adding change to the changer) adapting with, and for, resilience. I’m confident that there is an unspoken element in the act of designing that is innate in all of us. What is vital is that the progressive character of design, in acting for positive change and thinking open-minded, is appreciated and embraced by all.
Our undergraduate students, on the Global Business and Design Management pathway, are gaining design thinking power within a business school, which is almost totally unique across the world. We have brought design to BA business education, eradicating preconceived discipline barriers, developing power thinkers and future makers. The design management pathway is now influencing beyond its origins at Regent’s Business School with a new element within the MA program in Global Business Management, and partnering in a directing role in the successful validation of the new MA at EBS in Luxury Brand Management.
Our graduates are entrepreneurs in the truest sense, acquiring skills in systemic comprehension, switching from big to the small parts of the same issues, finding opportunities in making things better and ultimately generating resilience to loss. We are working in exciting times at Regent’s, and I am confident that we are pioneering areas in business education and beyond, shifting the paradigms of what is a business school and dexterity in thinkers.
We face ecological and economic uncertainty, generating great social and commercial strain. I am confident that the way forward is in the appreciation of wisdom for change; building resilience… the design thinker offers exactly that!
