The Bullshit Design Job……?
Posted on October 28, 2021Is design a bullshit job?
After studying for about two months, I experienced two shocks, which more or less prompted me to rethink the meaning of design. The first time is when I was reading an article about designer ethics, one of which mentioned that designers should not be complacent about their whimsical design ingenuity. However, producing ingenuity is one of the most important sources of motivation for me as a designer. This is equivalent to overturning the reason why I have been working; the second thing is that after reading “Dilemmas In a General Theory of Planning”, I found that the designer needs to consider things far beyond my imagination, we need to consider too much. And no matter how much you think about it, there is no guarantee that the problem will be solved. This kind of work that can’t see specific positive results makes people can’t help but imagine the meaning of work. So I tried to find out my feelings and compare them with the bullshit job. Because in the definition of the bullshit job, a very important factor is the meaning of existence.
“A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is: so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious, even the employee cannot justify its existence. And as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”
As a supplement, I think that looking forward to a job goal that is not in line with current professional competence will also lead to thinking that “I am doing a bullshit job”. Take designers as an example. When a designer cannot have enough power and resources (which is also regarded as a kind of work ability), if he aims to change social problems, he will feel powerless. “I like my work very much, I think my work is meaningful, but I can’t achieve this meaning”, which will lead to the final “meaningless” result. There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to firmly believe that you are about to use a higher ability, or to choose a work goal that matches your current ability.
However, when I know that some people are arguing design as a general education course into the classroom of elementary and middle schools, I think this is very reasonable. Because the design can cultivate a person’s ability to discover, research, and solve problems. These are undoubtedly the life and academic skills that everyone needs. This proposal indirectly proves the importance of design and the necessity of its existence, and at the same time affects my understanding of the meaning of design work—if the design itself is meaningful, then the design work must be. Similarly, if design is included in the general education curriculum, it means that the design is widely recognized, and practitioners will also increase their recognition of the work.
In addition, whether a design job is a bullshit job can be temporary and changeable. When we are forced to accept a project that we don’t like; when we have just entered the design industry and deal with some document filing work, we will feel that we are doing a bullshit job. Once we break away from these specific cases, we can feel the meaning of design again. If someone claims that these jobs are not temporary but never-ending for them, this job can no longer be called a design, but a “good guy bullied by relatives” and a “document organizer”.
Although I sometimes don’t know what my ultimate goal of design is, I never thought about not being a designer. This is the reason for me to write this blog, and I also want to take this opportunity to figure out why I want to persevere. The following picture is a system diagram for designing bullshit level. Maybe in the future, I can polish it, or maybe there will be no such day. If this is the case, then stay with the trouble.
As shown in the above figure, there are many random factors and individual work cases that will affect our temporary perception of the meaning of the design, and this effect may be large or small. After choosing to adjust goals or accumulate experience (or have more professional capabilities), some of the factors that cause “powerlessness” will disappear, and the factors that cause the “sense of accomplishment” will increase. And these factors include reinforcement feedback, which will gradually reduce doubts about the meaning of the design. In addition, the dotted line at the top of the figure is the bullshit line. Once the value exceeds this line, means the person thinks that the design is completely useless and will harm society, which means it’s completely a bullshit job.
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