Ever since Luke asked how we moved from the subject of the Overlap (of design & business) to grand notions of saving the world, I have been struggling with the question of whether this is just an artifact of the tendency of “designers” to boil the ocean.
A thread on the mailing list today gave me another thought, which is that design, unlike many analytical frameworks, can actually shape and even change reality. This is a heady notion and an intoxicating awareness, and I think that sometimes the combination of euphoria and good will can too quickly take us from navel gazing to star gazing. Not that I think this is all bad. For it is our power to imagine that can make design so optimistic and so powerful.
Using design to reshape and change the reality of work and the way we produce, to turn away from taking, depleting and subtracting and instead to build businesses and economies which create, add more than they take away and which increase the beauty (in the broad sense) of the world seems a worthy ambition. This doesn’t mean that all such design does or must happen on a grand scale. As Luke pointed out, the interface design of a website with a funny name is partially responsible for the fact that over 700 million people make their living selling on eBay. An important point. That said, someone else also mentioned the power of Roosevelt’s “design” of the New Deal and the lack of a national vision (or a global one) and the good that can come of having grand designs.
I don’t think any of us have “the” answers, but I do think that designers know that if you want to “get better reality” that you have to make reality better.
Michael, I think part of the “star gazing” tendency comes from the strength of designers to practice abductive thinking: embracing the logic of what might be.
But our greatest strengths are often our biggest weaknesses. So the ability to envision what might be inverted is the tendency to think too big. Personally I see a pretty consistent struggle between the tactical goals of product management organizations (we need to get a product out now) and the goals of designers (we have to make a vision about hoe this product will change people’s lives). Of course, I’m generalizing but..
The interesting thing about the “boil the ocean” tendency is that it initially seems counter to the iterative, rapid protyping style of thinking by doing that defines design thinking. The way I personally rationalize it is: thinking by doing is grounded/driven by a vision of the end state. The end state is often a big, abductive idea
Hi
G’night
debt interest consolodation consolodation about debt