Design as Facilitation.
Posted on December 16, 2016I never expected to be writing about what designers should or should not do. In fact, I had never realized or acknowledged the extent of the influence design can have in the world. While, I still do not believe that design can, or should, change the ways of the world, I recognize the potential in using the tools available to a designer.
As I set out to establish which objectives design should seek out, I began my thought process by defining design. I looked up a few dictionary definitions, all varying, but recognized a common thread: arrangement, conceiving, producing and planning.
It reminded me of the work being done by RED, a design team in the UK addressing economic and social issues through design. Most people would still not quite understand what exactly that entails, and, even I, as a current design student, feel like I am still trying to figure ‘it’ out.
This reading did however lay the foundation for how I imagine and hope the role of design should evolve in the coming years – and that is, away from the more traditional product- focused design and shifting towards the design of innovation, strategies, experiences; all guided by the user-centered approach.
As design expands in this direction, the most important aspect to stress is the responsibility that expands as well. This is especially true in a world where the current non-linear ‘open systems’ have produced a set of so-called wicked problems, due to their complex nature and the inherent inability to use prior predictive models or causal relationships as a way to develop further. Instead, one must understand what is driving these systems, and, in most cases, it is humans.
This is where things get tricky, for me at least. Designers are not behavioral psychologists, anthropologists or any other type of formally trained social scientist. This begs the question, how qualified then are designers to understand human behavior and guide services, systems and interventions?
I recognize the importance to allow experts in their fields inform these decisions. This is complicated, however, now that these wicked problems are typically a result of issues arising from various fields. Experts are rarely experts outside of their field. This is where the designer’s role comes in. The designer is not a formally trained expert in research or the previous mentioned fields, but designers can be experts in observing and using these observations to design strategies using experts from different fields- essentially creating bridging strategies to innovate, improve upon current systems and facilitate the merging of knowledge from various fields centered around the needs of the user to produce sustainable solutions.
This is, in my mind, the most interesting aspect of design, and, it is already being practiced. With the emergence and rise of popularity in ‘design thinking’ firms we have seen a shift within industries towards embracing an alternative consulting model to advise on services, systems and strategy design. The results are promising and demonstrate the potential of the role as a designer as a type of ‘facilitator’ infiltrating the sometimes, narrow and inward-focused world of experts. The book Natural Capitalism suggests a model whereby one could design for methods to maximize use of resources to eliminate waste and reduce carbon footprints, part of this would be to design a new system of accounting, one that includes natural capital in a former system that did not take these variables into account. It starts to become about bringing creativity into the process of matching needs and new opportunities. I recently heard of a project allowing for alternative credit scoring for farmers. Farmers in a community in Africa needed financing to fund schooling for their children but did not have the traditional collateral to establish the collateral needed, they did however have other resources. This new model allows for behavioral and social data to inform a person’s creditworthiness. It illustrates what can be done when designers work with those who know the field to address the needs of the user.
Other examples include Stanford’s d school’s legal tech design lab, a collaborative initiative to restructure and rebuild legal services and products. The designers bring together, facilitate and implement human-centered design within the legal field.
Expanding on these examples, potential also lays within design’s reach to bridge the traditional top-down, bottom-up structures by bringing in the user and shifting to participatory design methods at even the highest levels of power. Cities demonstrate how something outside of top-down, bottom-up categorization can exist: a ‘meta-level’ means of structuring and organizing. There are powers within and planners, developers and officials making decisions, but, there is room for community-based decision making and participatory efforts. Moving forward, how might we apply this and design strategies to bridge the rise of inequality and state of division currently within many countries around the world? How might we even redefine what constitutes an expert? Can an expert be someone lacking in formal training but rather someone ‘doing the work’ on the ground or in the field?
A designer’s role then becomes to find the points where these systems connect the different fields and finding the opportunity within that space to bridge those points with the needs of the user. In my opinion the challenge then becomes how to engage the audience or user in meaningful ways, and even, redefine the traditional understanding of ‘user’. In some cases, the user may become the earth and our environment. This is where creative aspects of design have potential to drive innovative solutions that can make an impact, and, simply put, do good. One of the challenges then lays in finding ways to design to for innovation that is not completely open and non-linear, as corporations and businesses cannot afford to invest in such practices. Ultimately, design has the potential to create a meta level within society, bridging people, fields, and services. This is desperately needed at a time where divisiveness drives our society.
As I embrace the designer within me, I envision seeking out all the variables of an equation to come to a solution, keeping in mind that it is truly best to turn to ‘experts’, whether they be formally trained or not, but those who are IN the field, on the ground and doing the work. I also set an intention to allow an honest reflection process and mindful awareness of others driven towards building empathy and compassion to guide my design practice.