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De-industrial design

by Paula | 13 May 2009 | permalink | comments
Tags: design, business planning

By way of Adaptive Path, here’s a fascinating, if academic, survey of the role of design in economic theory: Creating Economic Value by Design, John Heskett, from the International Journal of Design. Heskett writes:

Obviously for some reason, the discipline of economics does not acknowledge design. To be fair it must also be acknowledged that the discipline of design is deficient in communicating its economic role. Some designers might ask: why bother? My answer to that would be that basically, design is a professional business activity practiced overwhelmingly within business contexts and if designers cannot argue the economic relevance of their practice in convincing terms, the views of the officials I met in Washington will be justified and they will remain what the American designer, George Nelson, long ago termed “exotic menials.”

The work of Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate in Economics in 1978, is a rare exception of design being considered as a factor in economic theory. His starting point was acknowledging that the world we inhabit is increasingly artificial, created by human beings. For Simon (1981), design was not restricted to making material artefacts, but was a fundamental professional competence extending to policy-making and practices of many kinds and on many levels:

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. (p.129)

Implicit in Simon’s reasoning is an emphasis on design as a thought-process underpinning all kinds of professional activities; yet the varied skills through which design is manifested are not discussed. He did indicate, however, why design is so rarely considered in economic theory. Economics, he stated, works on three levels, those of the individual; the market; and the entire economy (p. 31). The centre of interest in traditional economics, however, is markets and not individuals or businesses (p. 37). A serious problem is thereby raised at the outset: two important considerations relating to design — how goods and services are developed for the market place and how they are used — receive scant attention.

Emphasis mine.

That highlighted bit of text underscores the fundamental issue with which decline-era entrepreneurs — indeed, everyone who wishes to maintain something like economic security — must wrestle. What goods and services will be valuable in the midst of industrial decline, how can they be developed and manufactured, and how will they be used?

We can all envision a variety of futures which may or may not come to pass. And, if you’re like most entrepreneurs I know, you probably have a running list in your head of potentially profitable undertakings. Making these a reality is where the challenge lies. How does one get from the idea stage to physical reality?

This is where design comes in. Design is the intermediary step between ideation and realization. Certainly design is not limited to those arenas with which it is traditionally associated; as Heskell quotes Simon above, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

For Simon, the importance of design is related to an increasingly artificial world. For us, design is crucial to navigating a rapidly de-industrializing world. As conditions deteriorate, “changing existing situations into preferred ones” will be everyone’s primary economic objective. Those who learn to design well will have a distinct advantage over those who don’t, because such persons will have the ability to help others achieve their preferred situations.

The obvious example that comes to mind is permaculture design. Self-sufficiency is the goal of many, and a perennial, edible garden is certainly a big step in that direction. But how does one go about creating a perennial, edible garden? Permaculture design offers the intermediary step between the ideation of individual-level food self-sufficiency and its realization.

Heskell goes on to offer examples of the importance of design in extreme competitive situations, noting particularly Germany’s success in the early 20th century:

Anton Jaumann (1907) observed that Germany’s competitive position was characterized by possession of few natural resources and dependence on imports of raw materials that had to be paid for by manufactured exports. How could it then survive the intense levels of international competition?

We must bring goods to the market that only we can manufacture. We cannot in the long run compete in cheap mass-production. Only quality is our deliverance. If we are able to deliver such excellent goods that can be imitated by no other people in the world and if these goods are so excellent that everyone wishes to buy them, then we have a winning hand. (Jaumann, 1907, p. 338)

Nothing, concluded Jaumann, injured the commercial reputation of a nation as much as the label, “cheap and nasty.” Many countries have faced this problem, the latest being China, which is looking to generate an image of their products based on design and innovation.

It’s pretty reasonable to imagine that in a world of increasingly scarce resources, buyers will be hard-pressed to part with their money (or goods & services in the case of barter) for something that is crappily built. “Bling” and “flash” at the expense of quality and longevity are forever consigned to the dustbin:

Nathan Rosenberg (1982), in examining the problems of technological innovation, points to “a frequent preoccupation with what is technologically spectacular rather than economically significant…” (p. 62) A parallel observation is possible about some problems of design innovation; in this case the preoccupation being with what is visually spectacular rather than economically significant.

As a designer myself, I can say with confidence that a resurgence of Arts & Crafts values would make me very happy indeed.

Heskell concludes:

A further level at which design research could be capable of articulating a role for design not currently articulated in any depth in economic theory is the context of use, of the role played by products, communications, environments, services and systems in the lives of people beyond the point at which most economic theory halts: the point-of-sale. It is in understanding this arena and its human problems, potential and challenges that design is of crucial significance in introducing change that is both meaningful in people’s lives and simultaneously capable of creating sources of competitiveness for firms.

In other words, the next stage of work needs to elaborate concepts of economics through the prism of design theory and practice.

I couldn’t agree more, and in fact, this is the central work of the disciplines of usability and experience design.

Even without the prospect of industrial decline, most conscious people (or even semi-conscious people) are aware that mass consumption and its attendant ecological footprint make for a rather shitty experience. The role of the designer in the midst of decline is to bridge the gap between the ideation of joyful experience in the absence of consumer culture, and its realization in the physical world. Whoever figures out ways to do this, even on small, individual scales, will not only have a much greater chance at hacking out some level of security for himself, he’ll also be laying the foundation for a more joyful, more simple world.