We live in a world that is, and always will be, designed.

Why should we care about design? ... we should ask these questions if only to generate dialogue.

A lot of interesting discussion sparked by Bruce Nussbaum (”Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?“, March 18, 2007)

We don’t even know if design is dead. It is possible. ... All we know is that this context gives us the framework for discussion.

No indication that design ever was alive, so it can’t be killed.

Entire computer industry has grown off of acquisitions or N+1 products (iterations, versions) ... not because companies know how to make new products. ... There is a clear failure in product design.

If everyone is a designer, then everything is designed by designers. Then design deserves to be bad. ... Design is a distinct profession.

RE: Bruce N. ... Thank God he said it. He says we should use the term “innovation” instead of design. ...

Mumbo Jerry principle - there are tons of innovated people, but they are the equivalent of one-hit wonders. What makes designers designers is that they are repeat offenders, they are Rolling Stones.

A design professional has a distinct set of skills. .. The last thing you want is for everyone to be a designer. It is just as ridiculous to have a designer managing software as engineer managing design.

If designers “suck” it is not because they suck at design, but that they suck at understanding themselves. ... Profession has been very bad at articulating their value.

We are in the equivalent year 1929 of Industrial design ... GM car release caused Ford to shut down their line to work on a response. ... There were no schools for industrial designers at the time; they made it up as they went along. Of them, 3 of 4 are still in business (on the eve of the Great Depression).

Design is not a visual lollipop. ... The low-hanging fruit has all been plucked. ... Just because we are making it up as we go along, doesn’t mean we won’t follow a similar development. ... Working with the design schools.

Start off by disagreeing with everything Bill said, and then discuss why.

Design is more about what they are doing while they are designing. .... You can do it well, or poorly, trained or untrained. What is the activity?

For me ... “throwness” ... a way of doing ... something that you don’t plan and do step-by-step, but how you respond to the world.

example: a guy crashes his bike ... my first reaction is to go pick up the bike and get him righted, but my wife would have gone to him and comforted him

Working with the D-School ... reminded in some ways that I’m a foreigner (grew up in Tech).

Design is about understanding the user, but there is a level of engagement that is deeper than that. That is where the inspiration comes from, not the validation. This is very different from the “heroic designer” idea where ideas come in flashes of brilliance.

Exercise to do user interviews ... halfway through the exercise, one of the guys was missing (he was hiding in the restroom because he didn’t want to go out and talk to people). ... We are not always ready to hear what people have to say.

Design is serious and interdisciplinary. ... Sometimes you accept that sometimes computers aren’t involved, if you are truly interdisciplinary.

Remembering Dourish’s paper last year asking if we should have papers that are just enthnographic.

What is it to do a prototype for a course?

Coming into design from different areas ... We want to make them to do design as well as possible. Our program is aimed at people who are in business and education, etc.

Design is alive and well.

Design is about multiple perspective

moving from an existing situation to a preferred one ... ask questions about how complicated it is to intervene.

It isn’t so much that we can’t define design, but there are so many other things in the way.

Why is design claimed to be a methodology? ... my answers are around design and specialization ... All of our different designers don’t talk to each other. ... There is a lot of fragmentation in education, and a lot of cross-disciplinary as well ... Design crossed with social sciences has been the most successful

Interaction design ... methodologies have been based around design of experience, requiring iterative and non-linear process ... given design an incredible amount of capital ... yet in undergraduate education, especially in design, we don’t prepare students for a holistic approach to development. ... In 42 credits, there is rarely a time when that instruction is directed toward that idea

If we are going to have a real intervention ... Any design that doesn’t take into account the relevance to the ecosystem will have dire consequences ... Educational programs don’t do that ... The context for our most pressing problems are extremely complex. What approach/methodology is required?

There is no clear solution, they are longer term.

What are the roles of other disciplines (like economics)?

In the 90s we studied interactions and lifestyles, brought up participatory design ... but for what purpose? You get to help design something that someone else has set in motion.

We did lots of ethnography, but it was always limited by the constraints of others ... if you understand experience, you can own it. That idea is talked about as if it were completely unproblematic.

Importance of valuation (long-term as well as short-term) became important. ... if you wanted to stay long, you got interested in the metrics even if they weren’t the metrics you might find important (like aesthetic).

How does the picture shift when we situate design in a broader context, in times of crisis and uncertainty, when systems are at risk? How do you plan innovation and its advocacy there?

Design is looked upon with suspicion. ... We don’t go back and look at the impact of what we have done, but rather move on to the next problem to solve. ... When I talk to anthropologists about how to interact with their classes, they say they are not about intervention. ... It makes me think sometimes that maybe someone should kill design.

How does design speak of itself in a time when we really need a lot of restraint?

“The Long Tail” is great as long as you don’t think about the people who don’t enjoy the long tail ... It is sort of depressing to think why people would become engaged in some activities but not problems with clean water.

In China, the government can regulate what happens when projects are deployed.

How does a design understand this new context? ... interdisciplinarity is something already talked about ... There are a lot of schools with multiple disciplines. Other than Stanford, Helsinki works with four different disciplines. In student teams, there was only one person who wanted to do a particular part of the project. It was very easy. ... Perhaps the opposite is true with faculty, where they are the kings of their departments having now to listen to others. ... It might explain why it hasn’t taken off in education.

I don’t think that design isn’t alive, but I don’t think it is close to death, either. ... Design hasn’t really grown up yet (comes back to the 1929 comparison) ... Like teenagers, we get terribly upset about stuff.

Design commits suicide in this way: told to be sure result will keep shareholders happy, but designer comes along as says, “I have this great idea! Trust me! Give me a million dollars!”

BB: Problems take really deep specialization, because I need huge depth to make that holistic approach work. The Renaissance Team is needed. ... The most productive time of a Ph.D. student is while trying to get tenure. ... It’s like little Billy going to Kindergarten coming home with something with 4 stars, put on fridge, etc. We don’t do team work. We need to articulate as clearly as possible that we need to change this. ... It’s not about the world of design, it is about the design of the world

TW: After every single class session we sit down and discuss what worked. The people who do that tend to be the people with a design background.

Meg: Need to teach the ways of design and how it differs from the way of business. ... Most students come to school knowing what business they are going into. ... Practice-based learning, for design it is imperative ... making your work public → potential for cheating is high, need to teach how to critique and work in a public way

Q: Design

BB: Until we start understanding that there is a calculus, but it isn’t the same calculus as in the other sciences. It is understood and must be respected. And it’s not.

Q: Design is a discipline where we need to look across many things and make a connection to bring it back to what we want to resolve. How do we get students to do this? If someone was there helping them connect the dots, they did better.

B Mogg: We’ve been practicing the approach where we put everyone in the same room so they get used to each other. What emerged from that was the people who were most successful are what we call “teaching people” ... At the same time, they have to be interested in this cross discussion. There are some who are just interested in doing a good piece of work. You need a collection of these teaching people. We have a slogan, “Check your discipline at the door.” Some combo of cross-fertilization and depth.

B Mogg: We need that person to set a direction. Apple - without that clear leadership, it wouldn’t have the success.

TW: Engineers love to fix things. Need to understand how it connects.

Q: What do you see as the potential for design by the masses, content created by the masses? You are talking by the few determining many.

Meg: What are you designing? What level of design?

Q: It’s based on the fact that people might take a part of reality and improve it. From that standpoint, everyone has the potential.

B Mogg: What happens with open source design. The possibilities of having an open source approach is difficult, because no one gets paid, it’s all volunteer design.

BB: There are problems that aren’t going to be solved by the world at large. Let’s understand that it does some things well, but it sucks at other things. It’s not religion.

Q: What a fashion designer brings is different from an electrical engineer. You have been talking like design means one thing, but I think it means different things. There is a craft stage.

BB: The word “Design” is much like saying “Medical doctor” ... It would be better if we had a clearer idea about how the term is used.

B Mogg: There is a huge difference between design and innovation. Distinction between trying to discover something new and trying to develop something that exists. ... Different when you know what you want to build. With innovation, you have to provide a different set of techniques.

Q: To what extent is design compromised when you are trying to get things out?

TW: Design is about trade-offs. Time is one big factor. Less time helps, because you don’t over think.

Meg: Getting a product out the door does curtails the investigation of new business laws,e tc.

BB: Edison didn’t invent anything. He was just collecting and innovating. I’m lauding that, not criticizing. ... The way you get to play around is because you’ve done your homework.

Q: We think about the death of design because there is very little truly excellent design out there? Isn’t it true that the moment of magic will come about when it comes about, no matter what you teach?

BB: I don’t think the range of design is any different than any other profession. I want the world to be filled with competent designers. I want to look at the people who do it every day with a track record of doing it over and over and over. It’s way better than one person who does one particular great thing.

“Design” - ?

“Designer” - ?

“Designed” - ?

This is a rough draft of notes from the CHI 2007 session, “Who Killed Design?: Addressing Design Through an Interdisciplinary Investigation,” taking place from 2:30-4p Pacific on Monday, April 30, 2007.

Scott Pobiner and Anijo Mathew, moderators

Panelists:

• Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research)
• Terry Winograd (Stanford University)
• Meg Armstrong (Parsons The New School for Design)
• Bill Moggridge (IDEO)

See also the abstract