Design Manifesto
A brief explanation of my outlook on and approach to design.
What is Design?
To me, design is manipulation.
When I say manipulation, I mean that design is an act of impressing or enacting intention upon a subject, the designed. It is not only the designed object itself (eg. a chair) upon which the designer enacts design, but also the subject the designer reaches through their designed object (the 'user', eg. the sitting on the chair). It also means that all intentionally made objects are designed, albeit to varying degrees.
Continuing the example of the chair, in designing it the furniture designer compels the user to sit a certain way, and indicates a specific context where the chair may be used. The interior designer may further compel the user by placing the chair in space to sit in a certain area, for a certain purpose. These are examples of designers 'enabling' or 'suggesting' action, but equally the designer may 'disapprove' action — by not giving for seating in a public space, the urban planner tells us where we should and should not sit, linger and walk.
Thus, manipulation.
The user is imbibed with the designers will through the designed object (or other design). In the current setup of society, this intention is often originally the client's, and the designer becomes the medium to carry out this intention from theory to reality.
There is another part of this loop between the client, designer and user. This is known as the ontological loop, which says that the world the designer designs in affect the design, and upon creation the design in turn affects the world, which affects all future designers and designs. The simple version of this is that 'design designs'. What this means is design not only affects the intended users, but indirectly affects the world and all future design.
Design is political because of this future shaping and effect it can have — it can control the flow and transfer of information, promote or disable entire classes of people from acting in their free will — a sociopolitical consideration if there ever was one.
Note also the relationship between the three stakeholders of design mentioned earlier, that of the 'client' or issue-raiser, the designer, and the subject of the design.
Another way of looking at defining design is to decide what it is not.
Design is not simply problem solving. Nor is it only aesthetics and beautification, though both these things — solving the problem and being beautiful — are integral aspects of a designed object.
Let us consider Object A, which is 'less designed' and Object B, which is 'more designed', but which both are 'workable'. What do you think Object B is more of?
Object B is likely to have been considered in all or many plausible scenarios of use (eg. a stool can be sat on in many ways), and ideally even plausible alternate or accidental uses (eg. pen caps have holes to prevent choking). So design must be considerate; and have foresight.
Object B is likely to be more optimised across many metrics than Object A — performance related of course, further minimising resource usage, external impact, maintenance, etc. The general intention is to maximise output while minimising input. So design must be efficient.
What is invariant between Object A and B is some minimum amount of functionality, in order for an object to be considered at all.
Design must be beautiful, but only after it is functional. When I say beautiful, what I really mean, which may differ from the way the word is used in common discourse, is superlativity, ingenuity and elegance.
This may of course present itself in the visual manner, but beyond that a thing may be beautiful in quality of it achieving another of design's many aspects. Therefore a thing may be beautiful because of the ingenuity of executing function, or the elegance of reducing cost, or the superlative foresight it offers.
Consider, then, that beauty and function may not need to be sequential at all, and may instead be co-determinate.
Keep in mind that these points — consideration, efficiency, beauty, elegance — are aspects of designedness itself, in that they indicate the presence of design not necessarily the quality of it.
What is GOOD Design?
To me, good design does not have universal , rather the ability to hold contradictions within itself depending on context. What I mean by this is that Good Design A and Good Design B may share little to no qualia, since what determines them to be good is inherited from their context and does not stand as objective universal truth.
For example, one school of thought says that design should be invisible, it should be so beautifully integrated that one might not even pay it attention because it simply works.
Yet in another situation, it may be perfectly acceptable or even preferable that design should instead draw attention to itself, whether in form or function. So one might deduce that good design is malleable and adaptable, and to fit some context.
Good design enables and is transformative. Design and technology are often present together, and I think design shares technology's quality of ability-enhancement, allowing users to do more or do something that was not possible before. It is an enabler of futures.
I don't think good design is necessarily good for everyone. As a result of the other duties design has of being suitable to context and optimized, it is unreasonable and inaccurate to expect a great chair to be equally usable universally. This does not propagate needless specialization, which is an inefficient use of resources, but it is important to understand that at times being specifically useful to some is better than being moderately useful to many.
Good design is beautiful and, as is inherent to the act of creation, adds value — both in the act of its existence itself as well as any functions it enables through existing.
What is MY Design?
What I know how to do within design in my opinion is understanding where the scalpel of design need to be applied, and fundamentally revolves around understanding people and their experience.
Experience is an important word to my understanding and preference in Design, as are the words Interface and Interaction. This is because all 'interfacing' between us as people and the world we live in is by 'interacting' with it, and 'experiencing' it. In my understanding, these are three of the fundamental aspects of the field — one might even say that all design is Experience Design so it must be experienced by the user/subject of the design.
What I find most appealing to do within design is to look at a product or a problem and examine these aspects — Why is there a problem in the first case? What are people's relationship with the product as individuals and collectives? Further, how does the product future and ? What does this mean for us?
Keeping in mind the vast scope and power design holds, I feel a sense of unfulfillment when designing mundane things, though they make life better, I feel like design can do so much more. This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to design a chair or a piece of jewelry in my free time, but probably not for my professional career. I suppose implicit in this is the fact I want my design to be accessible, or to not be gated behind extreme wealth or specificity as is the case for example with boutique furniture firms. It seems I need a sufficiently large user base.
I want to do good in the world — personally I have always found the idea of being a hero extremely thrilling. Perhaps heroic design is not yet a defined subculture, nevertheless it is not difficult to see how that could be engaging.
Without entering too much detail about what is good, I think a fair level of abstraction is that I wish for my design to meaningfully improve the lives of many people, and allow them to live better, more fulfilling lives, even if indirectly (but not tenuously) so.
Because I find the brief making part of design to be integral to the process, combined with my general aversion to the 'mundane' and 'small scope' areas of design, in my experience I have a strong disdain for the sort of hyper commercial, constrained design that is often seen.
As you can see from the figure, I find my basis in the middle of the design process, primarily in the Define phase where the right brief is made, secondarily in the Develop and Discover phases. The Deliver phase is where I feel the least affinity to, though of course it is an essential part of bringing design to reality and as such remains important.
The reason I place myself there is worth setting out. Recall the relationship between the three stakeholders of design mentioned earlier, that of the 'client' or issue-raiser, the designer, and the subject of the design. As is the case with any situation with stakeholders, the question is raised — which is most important? Who is accountable? Is the success of a design decided by how satisfied the originator is? Or how the users feel about it?
Personally, because I look at design as a tool of social benefit, the success of design is also measured by the social benefit it may bring, and not by the potentially self-centered and capitalistic intentions of the originator (or client).
In my estimation, the accountability over the downstream effects of a design lie with the designer. Recalling my earlier example of design shaping even movement through cities, the power design wields comes with, in the words of Uncle Ben, great responsibility. It is the job of the designer, in my opinion, to ensure that the blade of design is not wielded on the wrong brief, or to the wrong ends. And if I am to be held to that, I must be present where the brief is decided.
This is also why I will not design to actively harm people, or for specific exclusion.
Take the example of anti-homeless architecture. One may cite public safety as a compelling reason for railing in the middle of benches, but the fact remains that things like that are just band aid solutions to the most superficial manifestations of a far deeper problem. I would NOT be opposed to wielding the tool of design to combat and reduce homelessness, but I WOULD be opposed to doing so in an exclusionary and anti-human manner when there is no need to do so.
At this junction I feel it is necessary to point out that though I have opinions on design, as well as a sense of morals around design and its function in society, I cannot sincerely say that these values hold to the exclusion of financial lucrativity. For example I would not want to design for social wellness exclusively, in the world that we live in such careers are forever restrained to a lower financial ceiling. Money is important to me, insofar as it is the provider of opportunity.