Sharing my valuables – the background battle for who will own design thinking

The surprise was like hearing the Pope say that contraception was an acceptable form of birth control! That is the analogy that sprang to my mind when earlier this year Michael Porter – the great guru of business studies from the Harvard Business School – published an article, exclaiming that corporations and businesses have been working against the greater welfare of society at large!

If you do not know him, Michael Porter is the man who brought us ‘Strategic Thinking’ in business, ‘Business Groups or Clustered Development’, or the need to creating ‘Competitive Advantage’. He is probably the most influential business thinker in the world and responsible for policies that have formed the structure and operations of many multi-national cooperations. Moreover, he in some ways symbolized the kind of thinking behind many businesses that have taken little consideration of local needs. If you are the CEO of Global Greed Enterprises it is likely that you would have;
a. been trained at the Harvard Business School
b. used Michael Porter’s strategies
c. implemented quarterly reporting – a business strategy that publishes profits every quarter or three months, so that investors are drawn to your company’s ever increasing profits. This has driven the majority of corporations and their executives to be focused on short-term financial success rather than the long-term well being and sustainability of a company.

As a consequence all of this, the maddening elements of multi-nationals which we love so much, such as outsourcing to India and China rather than investing in the local economies, stakeholders or communities, maximizing profit at the cost of services to the customers. More significantly, a detachment from the environmental consequences down the road or unsustainable consequences of the actions of these companies for society at large. As long as the great god of “Growth” was satisfied then the rest of us could go to hell, or stop being dreamers and face up to an essetial truth about life – Adam Smith is never wrong.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against business. I believe in the entrepreneurial spirit, I have run businesses and worked with them. However, all of my adult life right wing governments (including New Labour in the UK) have been driving the agenda that free and unregulated markets are acceptable, and these should not be in any way be constrained, since the self-interest of companies and their executive’s greed is good for society at large. We would all benefit from the trickle down effect of their wealth. According to Roger Martin of the Rotmans School of Management, these ideas can be traced to a theory that said; “we should align the interest of management and shareholder by giving management stock based compensation”. That is to say, if we pay the managers of a company in stocks, and as the price of the stocks goes up, then they would benefit directly in their pay packet. This idea was first stated in an article published in 1976 by Michael Jensen & Bill Meckling called the Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure. Click to read the article.

Except the trickle down never trickled down to us in society. As Mrs Thatcher famously said in 1987 “…and who is society? There is no such thing!”. Well except there is a society, and the cat is out of the bag that it had been hidden in by the Thatcherite policies which have dictated society for so long! When push came to shove and free enterprise failed, it turned to society, us the community, the voters, the tax payers. That same society who was forced to step in and bail out the banks, the same society who had to step in pay for the excesses of the unregulated banking sector that was selling toxic investments, or the greed of the executives who payed themselves millions out of tax payers money, while their employees and shareholders went bankrupt.

Over the last 30 years businesses have been driven by a tacit and systematically greedy agenda. This has been based on the competitive business modeling of the Harvard Business School (amongst others) which have cost society at large so much. The apologists for this model of institutionalized greed have over the last few years of economic collapse come out and tried to create rationalizations for why it should carry on as before, but some how their arguments sound very hollow.

Understandably, many young management graduates have been feeling uneasy about their prospective careers, and the message must somehow be getting through to their professors. You may be described as being cynical if you read the text and ask yourself, but surely Mr. Porter you have been responsible for promoting many of these strategies in the past! Why have you suddenly changed your mind? But there it is without any form of reflection, a co-authored paper by Michael Porter and his business partner Mark Kramer. Business studies with a conciseness! Click to read the article (pdf).

I’m a happy that a voice as prominent as Michael Porter is lending credence to a sustainable agenda. His voice may help persuade those who are carrying on as before that there is value in turning the direction of their companies.

What has all of this to do with us in design? Well interestingly economists from the opposing wings of economic field – the Harvard Business School and the Rotmans School of Management, have turned to design to help them with new ways of thinking. To help turn these companies so that we may end up in win – win situations for both business and society. They have turned to what is called ‘Design Thinking’ (more about this in a later blog), or in other words how we as designers are able to turn out new answers to old problems, which many business management graduates can not.

Watch this space. The battle for ownership of what is design thinking will soon heat up between the two extremes of economist theory, and how we think as designers, may not be dictated by design eduction and practice, but rather by economists with their own agendas!

Things I have learnt from the Bazaars of Istanbul

While in Istanbul, on a study trip with my MA Design students, we spent some time visiting the Grand Bazaar (Kapalıcarşı) and the Egyptian Spice Market (Mısır Çarşısı’). The contrast of shopping in a Bazaar, in comparison to my normal shopping experiences, drove some points home to me.

Being originally from the Middle-East, I realised, as I strolled through the bazaars how much I had missed this sort of experience of buying. It can not be called shopping, since there are no shops involved in the modern sense of the word, (so I shall call them stores, since they are storage places for goods) – rather it’s a radically different sort of experience. It’s one that starts with the senses; the explosion of colours, the smells that drift past and the sounds of the apprehensive Turkish stall keepers, as they scan for customers, and above all the ambiance of the covered Bazaar. Though, this assault on the senses is just the start.

The Bazaars are separated into different sections, each providing a specialist range of products. This dates back to the Middle-Ages when the planning of the bazaars reflected the tradition of the crafts guilds, each guild being housed in a particular location, for administrative reasons I imagine. I remember as child, walking through the Bazaar in Isfahan, and hearing the tapping of the hammers upon chisels of the metal workers bazaar even before reaching that section. It is the same in Istanbul, the halva and spice sellers, the specialist in antique crafts, the carpet dealers and so on, each in their own section.

So how could I choose, which store I should buy from? Is was not possible to distinguish between the displays, which were all so overpowering. Well it was partly luck, since I did not have the recommendations that most Middle-Easterners (especially women) are armed with, when they hunt out a store. I also did not have the keen eye, nose or tongue that could distinguish if the product I was after – dried mulberries in my case – were fresh or not. (I watched one old man, spend a considerable amount of time squeezing dried figs, testing their quality before putting a sample to his lips.)

And by luck, I struck up a conversation with a young Kurd whose face looked trustworthy-ish. He told me that he had been born in the footsteps of Mount Ararat (the mountain where Noah’s boat is said to have landed after the flood – the young Kurd indicated that he was descended from the line of Noah – well by that logic I suppose we are all, but I did not push the point). While answering his questions about where I was from, I soon realised that what I buy, and how much I buy depended on developing my relationship with him. He was weighing me up, and I in my turn, was evaluating him. How guileful was he really, how much was his friendliness genuine? How could I prevent him from becoming over friendly – so as to keep the business edge of our relationship, when it came to haggling over prices – and how honest was he being, in his claims on the quality of the goods he was selling? This was all part of the transactions that were about to take place.

For instance, in assisting a student who wanted to buy saffron, I asked for it, using the Persian pronunciation Zaffer’oun (this was opening gambit and claim to expertise which I did not really have). “What sort?” he retorted, his eyes shifting away form my gaze slightly. “Iranian” I said nonchalantly, guessing that it was the best, since I had seen he legend outside a few shops, “Genuine Iranian Saffron”. He opened up a jar of dark red looking saffron stems, and offered it up for me to smell. I could not smell anything, so I said with a little disdain in my voice, “No not this, the better stuff”, not even knowing if there was better stuff. Well sure enough he hunted out another jar of lighter coloured saffron and as I smelt it, I was overwhelmed by the lovely aroma of fresh saffron (knowing that it must have picked last spring or summer). And so the negotiations went on.

The session ended well, with all of us buying all that we wanted, having got a good “special price”. Both parties parted company, happy with the transactions; a win-win situation.

Sitting afterwards in a cafe, a realisation came as something of a shock. I was enjoying buying stuff! In fact I was relishing the experience of hunting out more things I wanted to buy. Back in my adopted home town, Oslo, shopping was an experience I avoided at all costs. In fact I could say that I really hate shopping. Our weekly food shopping, has been reduced to a commando style maneuver through my local supermarket and all other shopping limited to a maximum of 45 minutes.

It occurs to me, that in the West we have allowed ourselves to be robbed of the joys of experience of real social interaction during the act of shopping. The mechanization of shopping, the layout of the supermarkets, all lead us to an act of consumption, which has no joy in it. It is, like phonography all action and none of the joy. The first hit of buying something in a shop, is exciting, but it is soon followed by a feeling of hollowness and empty dissatisfaction.

I was bemused by the idea that, in Oslo it would be a very rare experience to find out, as I did, that the young Kurdish shopkeeper was a keen football player, as nimble as a cat, and that he wanted to study sports coaching in the USA, in order to teach football.

We in the West have stripped contact from our fellow human beings, out of the equation of shopping, the personality of the shopkeeper remains, all too often, anonymous to us, and they in their turn, will never get to know us, their customers. Consumerism, has under the guise of individuality and privacy, robbed the shopping experience of its meaning,

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So what can this meaning be I wonder? What does it mean to buy something and own an object? A question that no economist has ever answered satisfactorily for me, since their science negates the idea of emotional or spiritual experience during a material exchange. Moreover, what do we as designers have to do with all of this? How do we, or our voice, feature in this exchange process?

Recently, I have been thinking about and working with Service Design and trying to figure out what service design (with the emphasis on design rather than service) could be? Today, as I sat in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul – which was founded in 1453 – I realised that we could not only learn from the past but also from the East. In the West I don’t buy things, because I am bored and sickened by the endless act of consumption (ignoring the environmental and ethical questions of depletion of the Earth’s resources). While here, in the East I wish to buy, because I wish to have the joy of the experience of contact with other human beings.

This for me posses a significant question to Service Design!

Socially Responsive Design & Utopia

There are many voices at the moment talking about design and social change. This is a positive and exciting advent, especially in area of design education. When I started teaching, the students who cared about social issues were few in numbers and considered as design outsiders (there was still a hangover from the 1980s lingering in the air), now a significantly large number of my students care about these issues. What is more interesting, is that they do so with a modesty, and a rejection of the heroic and manifesto driven declaration. This point was largely missed by the co-signatories of the second “First things First” manifesto in 2000 (01), who were subsequently surprised at the lack of response by the younger generation of designers. 

If you Google these terms, there is an array of design sites which address social issues and using a number of different terms. However, there is a need for clarification of terms and what they mean. 

In most debate about social responsibility in design (SR), Victor Papanek’s concept of volunteer work is quoted. In Design for the Real World (02), he floated the idea that designers should be encouraged to offer their skills in the service of social issues:

“I have tried to demonstrate that by freely giving 10 percent of his time, talents, and skills the designer can help.” In other words, a willingness to volunteer design skills in order help make the world a better place.

Social responsibility was paralleled by businesses and corporations in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which in essence was a self-regulated form of ethical behavior in order to follow national and international codes and regulations. This initiative was driven by marketing departments, and was seen by some designers as a possible touch point between social activists and corporations. However, there is some degree of cynicism about CSR and documentaries such as Super Size Me, or and Inconvenient Truth have proved that guerilla techniques, can go a long a way to motivate large corporations to change their behavior. Most designers of the 1960s generation, often mistake this form of social responsibility with Social Responsivity.

The term Socially Responsive Design (SRVD) determines a different approach; “design which takes as its primary driver social issues, its main consideration social impact, and its main objective social change”. This definition was devised initially by Dr. Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe of the Design Against Crime Research Center, at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design (03) in order to emphasis a tactical shift in design strategies. The idea was pick up by and, further debated and developed by Maziar Raein and Halldor Gislason, in a series of workshops entitled: Design in the Age of Anxiety, 2006, held at the Oslo National Academy Of The Arts with.

In essence, this term describes designers’ social interventionism with markets and consumer behavior. The main principal motivation for the design activity is to work with, and develop on behalf of stake-holders who have been identified as individuals or groups within society. Their products catalyse social change and market acceptance, by harnessing consumerism, in order to initiate social change. SRVD design extends Papernak’s social responsibility of ‘informs, reforms, and gives form’ (04) but also extends it to ‘perform’ – in this sense SRV-Designer’s are active agents for strategic change, with-in defined social boundaries.

So far so good, however, a number of question have been bothering me. Much of socially responsive design needs to address the subject of scale, be they in terms of ‘scale of actions’, or a ‘social scale’ or defining a cycle of scaled action (beginning to completion). 

How can socially responsive design define a sense of scale?

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Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.

Nicolas Bourriaud (05)

 

Design for Micro-Utopias does not advocate a single, monolithic Utopia. Rather, it invites readers to embrace a more pluralized and mercurial version of Thomas More’s famous 1516 novel of the same name. It therefore encourages the proliferation of many ‘micro-utopias’ rather than one ‘Utopia’. This requires a less negative, critical and rational approach… asks whether a metadesign approach might bring about a new mode of governance. 

John Wood (06)

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For References See

(01) First Things First 2000 a design manifesto published jointly by 33 signatories in:
Adbusters, the AIGA journal, Blueprint, Emigre, Eye, Form, Items
Autumn 1999 / Spring 2000

(02) Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek, 1971

(03) For the Design Against Crime Research Center’s view of SRVD see:

http://www.designagainstcrime.com/index.php?q=sociallyresponsivedesign

(04) Green Imperative, Victor Papanek, 1971

(05) Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud, 1998

(06) Design for Micro-Utopias, Making the Unthinkable Possible, John Wood, 2007

Walking into the Future Or Tigers in the Jungle and Axes

I have been wondering how we as designers can look into the future. Or rather, how can we see the consequences of our actions and forecast what what effect they may have in  the future; before we carry out our actions. Surely, this must be an ethical obligation we owe to the future. 

How can we look into the future? Well this is one of those unanswerable questions that we face, and how we view the future has always been a mystery. Well it kind of was a mystery, till quite recently.

A hint of how we could understand  the future came when I read two books by the psychologist Robert Ornstein. These were; The Axemaker’s Gift, that describes how at every stage of human history we have developed sequential and analytical processes, in order to develop tools (such as an axe) and as such have pushed into the background our intuitive and creative knowledge. The other book, was the Evolution of Consciousness, that delineates how the human brain was not designed, rather how it developed from a reptilian, to mammal. In other words, our brain developed in order to adapt to the immediate needs of our animal world around, and still does.

The scenario I  drew up to explain the findings of these two books for myself is; when faced by a tiger in the jungle, our animal brain does not enter into logical and sequential thinking. Rather, we react and run for our lives. Yet, when faced by the slow degradation of our environment our animal brain is not able to react and instead puts off the recognition of our imminent destruction.

So maybe as designers we can find ways to look long term consequences of actions (since we have produced much of the crap that is choking up the earth). Maybe, we can see through the the life-cycle of our designs or the ‘social life-cycles’ of the objects of design? 

What do you think?

 

For reference see:

http://www.robertornstein.com

http://ishkbooks.com/books/AXGI1.html