Everyone Is A Designer

 Everyone Is A Designer

I’m not sure I have a secret per se, but I can share a few realizations I’ve had over the course of the nearly 50 years in which I’ve been designing: First, I agree with Victor Papanek who argued that design is a ubiquitous human activity—we’re all designing all the time. For me this puts what I do into perspective and reminds me that the people who are already in the system (the group, community, or organization you’re working with) have more tacit knowledge about the problem and their ‘system’ than I will ever be able to acquire. So the stakeholders connected to and affected by the problem are the real experts and my role is one of ‘service’ in bringing resources to their system, helping to convene useful and productive conversations and not losing sight of the fact that my own expertise is narrow and limited within the context of a large, wicked, systems problem.

Second, the most powerful systems interventions are often non-material. Most designers of my generation (and several subsequent generations) were taught design out of the craft tradition; the making of material artifacts. This way of knowing tends to focus on material solutions and can become overly fixated on aesthetics, sometimes to the exclusion of other considerations. Service and experience design are good examples of how our collective thinking about design has evolved from out of that mindset, but I think we still have a ways to go. Since the ways in which we humans think and act is at the root of most wicked problems, the most powerful interventions (with the potential to ignite positive, systems-level change) are those aimed at shifting collective beliefs, cultural norms, behaviors, and expectations. Material artifacts will almost always be involved in the delivery of these solutions but starting from the standpoint of the non-material objective is, I believe, a more powerful point of departure.

Third, experts always know a lot about a very little. In a world in which expertise and ‘mastery’ are the ultimate goals, the posture that we take as an expert can become habitual. And that posture can cause us to forget that when it comes to addressing a complex, wicked problem, we will only be operating out of the center of our expertise a small percentage of the time. The rest of the time we will be engaged in a collaborative dance in which leadership and followership are fluid and constantly changing. And sometimes, the most powerful posture is that of speculation instead of certainty, and leveraging the power of ‘beginners’ mind.’ We can perturb a system, but its response is always self-determined; we cannot predict how it will respond and so certainty becomes a liability.

I have found that the older you get, and the more years of expertise you have under your belt, the more difficult it is to adopt a speculative posture and let go of the need to have it all figured out. But this posture and willingness to speculate is—I believe—fundamental in addressing wicked problems. Designers must approach systems with a lot of humility.—Terry Irwin, director, Carnegie Mellon’s Transition Design Institute

Ask Open-Ended Questions

My design secret is simple: Ask questions. The creative process begins with inquiry. As a physician, I have been trained to focus on a narrow path toward a given outcome. This training is excellent for treating patients in the emergency room but not ideal for open-ended exploration. Designer and author Ellen Luptn taught me how the simple process of questioning helps us to reframe our assumptions and look at any problem from a new angle. Asking open-ended questions allows me to gain more empathy for my opatients and is the guiding design principle for a creative mindset.—Bon Ku, emergency physician and director, Health Design Lab, Thomas Jefferson University

Culture Is Evolution And Revolution

Culture is evolution: It is the consequence of prevailing collective conditions, like environmental and systemic oppression, geographic isolation, war, poverty, policy, and wealth inequality. Culture is also revolution: It is a survival response to immediate individual circumstances (shelter, food, education). It is the subtle adaptation of mental and physical processes to manage and adhere to a path of least resistance in life. These acts of preservation ultimately manifest habitual tendencies and lead to entrenched cultural values that define the use of space in ways often invisible to standard practice.—Bryan Lee, design principal, Colloqate

Embrace Big Data And ‘Thick Data’

When it comes to design for healthcare, we need to prioritize the measurement and understanding of metrics inside the system. For too long healthcare has operated as a black box, relying on anecdote and perception to drive our actions instead of actual real-world data about the system and our patients. If you can’t measure medical errors, how can you possibly improve the care and overall health of your patients? Now that we have access to big data with electronic health records, we need to couple it with ‘thick data,’ which, as described by designer Tricia Wang, are ‘insights generated by qualitative, ethnographic research methods that uncover people’s emotions, stories, and models of their world.’ These approaches are both complementary and necessary for understanding the challenges of a poorly functioning healthcare system that requires optimization, but that can also address the needs of the most vulnerable patient populations.—Joyce Lee, professor of pediatrics, University of Michigan