What 21st-century design looks like
Don Norman and decolonial design.
Back in October 2020 I had the pleasure to attend Don Norman’s Master Class transmitted by Interaction Design Foundation in which he presented the challenges to the discipline of Design and to all designers in the 21st century. To help me grasp a bit better his ideas, I also read the article he wrote with Michael W. Meyer entitled “Changing Design Education for the 21st Century”.
I want to expose in this article the main takeaways I got from Don Norman’s ideas but not without patching them with other references, which I believe it will bring more context and texture to this discussion.
The 21st Century Design
Don Norman begins his speech by saying that design started as a craft and ever since students have been learning how to manufacture things in schools and universities. Design, however, is complex for it encompasses other numerous disciplines, as both practice and academic discipline, and this is why Norman focuses his ideas about the 21st Century Design on Human-Centered Design (HCD) professionals.
By this we mean simply designers who design for people and society.
The world is changing, new challenges are emerging but the current system of design education has not kept up with the new demands of the 21st century. For Don Norman, designers are starting to play a larger and larger role in not only designing solutions in siloed studios but also impacting decisions that affect businesses. However, unfortunately, designers are not trained properly.
Education for designers (like nearly all education) is based on learning skills, nourishing talents, understanding the concepts and theories that inform the field, and, finally, acquiring a philosophy. It is unfortunate that our design schools proceed from wrong assumptions. The skills we teach are too often related to processes and working methods of an age that has ended — Vitor Papanek
Decolonial Design
Unfortunately, designers are educated and trained under the mentality that one expert can solve everything. And that’s why we need a different approach to design, where specialists and professionals know how and when to step back and let the community participate and decide.
A designer can be the expert, but it’s the community that needs to ask for their expertise. Otherwise, it’s paternalism.
Letting everyone co-design and facilitating the design process with the community is the best way to adopt a decolonial approach in your projects. But in order for this to happen, however, one must recognise in the first place that design reproduces a colonial structure:
To date, mainstream design discourse has been dominated by a focus on Anglocentric/Eurocentric ways of seeing, knowing, and acting in the world, with little attention being paid to alternative and marginalised discourses from the non Anglo-European sphere, or the nature and consequences of design-as-politics today — The Decolonising Design Manifesto
To be direct, the colonial structure is part of a globalised system that constantly threatens to flatten disparate world views while advancing an agenda for the benefit of a privileged small group at the expense of everyone and everything else that doesn’t fit in this narrow perspective. And design, as both practice and academic discipline, is part of this structure. To put into Tony Fry’s words,
there is no overarching “world” viewpoint from which to describe “the world” — to adapt such a perspective is an act of ethnocentric violence intrinsic to Eurocentrism — Design and the Question of History
The focus of this is article is not about decolonising design therefore I won’t extend any longer on the topic (I guess I’ll write another article dedicated to the subject), but I know it is important to address it as part of our challenges as designers in the 21st century.
Breaking down this structure and renewing the approach on how we practice design is not an easy “habit” to change and it will take decades to happen, but as designers, our actions will define not only the stories and narratives we want to tell and endorse, but what world(s) we want to build — and for whom.
Even though our contemporary education seems flawed, Norman still affirms that designers are very well equipped to understand the structure of big challenges we’re currently facing in the world — such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why? Because designers focus on the people. And experts who don’t understand the people, will fail otherwise.
Are designers well equipped to help to solve the challenges of the 21st Century?
The COVID-19 pandemic opened our eyes on what’s happening with our social, political and environmental needs. On this take, Don Norman affirms that designers can bring all disciplines together to solve problems, such as the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, if we respect the 4 principles of Human-Centered Design:
- Focus on the people;
- Solve the real core issue — and not the symptoms;
- Everything is a system — thus every problem is interconnected;
- We’re dealing with human beings, society, cultures, political issues. We have to find a common ground between different standpoints.
Let’s imagine we’re living in a pandemic.
(Just imagine…)
If we are to solve the problems of a virus pandemic, first we need to solve the problem with hygiene, as washing our hands is imperative to keep the virus away. That also means that people need to be informed and educated on the best way to protect themselves, which requires new solutions on education and communication.
However, in big cities, there are many homeless people which don’t have access to clean water and no access to basic hygiene instruments. This means that we cannot tell these people to simply “stay home” or “wash your hands”, because they lack the most basic facilities for human dignity. And why are there homeless people in the world? We can take our time and list capitalism, patriarchy, racism, social inequality, just to name a few. On top of that, we have to think about the economic crisis that is triggered by the fact that people “need to stay home”. What is the responsibility of the State, the private enterprises or the banks in this situation? How people can survive if they have to protect themselves from the virus? Who can help them stay home? How can we help others to protect themselves and survive?
And this will unveil even more different problems, displaying the interrelation of all problems as part of the same system. And this is why, as designers, we have to have a system-like thinking — because that’s how the world works.
All important problems are difficult to solve. If they weren’t difficult, they wouldn’t be a problem — Don Norman
But I’m a designer sitting on my desk all day… what can I do?
Victor Papanek wrote in 1971 a book called “Design for the real world”, where he introduces the text by saying that there is no field more dangerous than design.
But according to Don Norman, Papanek is wrong.
Designers are actually powerless. We are in the middle level of any department, where we are actually one of the services. Sometimes designers have no choice but to build what we are told to build. If not, we lose our jobs. What can we do then?
The answer is to find out different ways of doing things.
Move up on the corporate ladder to management and decision-making positions
In the design field what usually gives you money is the advertisement niche. And this is harmful because in most cases advertisement agencies are doing nothing but helping out the consumerism wheel. Plus, the monetary issue of generating constant profit by developing products that are disposable or programmed to fail (planned obsolescence) is already an old problem, but still more and more incentivised by the business model of many enterprises.
And this is one of those “decisions” that directly impacts the environment. In the United States, for example, it’s very easy to get money to create something new, but very expensive to maintain it, whether it is a mobile phone, a dam or a national health system.
How to convince your managers and C-levels that you are a good designer? Promote them. Promote your boss, promote your client. Meaning: increase their margin of sales, profit, show the numbers, present a spreadsheet, learn their language.
Encourage young designers to do the same
We don’t know the answers for these big problems of our century, and that’s why we should mobilise the next generation of designers to think hard about these issues, and to rise inside their companies so they are respected and they have a voice within executives and decision-makers.
The good news is that more and more industries are starting to understand the importance of good design. This is part of the digital revolution. Thus, having a cohesive design approach nowadays makes the whole difference in the world.
Take part on collective initiatives, projects, clubs, groups
Find people, engage into similar causes, take concrete action and offer your design skills to meaningful projects. It’s not only a great opportunity to try something new — test a new tool or methodology — but it will take you out of your comfort zone and put your human-centered design skillset to the test. Whether is an environmental cause, educational claims or protests against a political figure, these experiences not only improve your craft but they help you shape your world views.
During the first lockdown in April 2020 (even before the Anti-Fascist Deliverers group became a national movement), I joined a cause with other 1000 anonymous people in Brazil to, remotely, create a mobile application named Idvogados to connect deliverers and lawyers in the same city. The main goal of this project is to facilitate the access to their legal rights and to provide legal aid for free, if necessary.
Takeaways
In the 21st century, we don’t need to get rid of the “traditional design” but we need to become more responsible about our impact in the world. And to be a good designer in today’s world, one has to understand the world.
Maybe an undergraduation in design won’t make much sense any longer. Instead, an aspiring designer will be more competent if they study in depth other areas of knowledge.
A good designer should work for things that go wrong. So when things go wrong, people know what to do. Because “there is no such thing as human error” — just design error.
Don’t forget to read Don Norman’s paper on the subject of design education:
Changing design education for the 21st century — Michael W Meyer and Don Norman
And here are some book titles to help you expand understand (better) the impact of design in our lives — socially, politically, economically and subjectively speaking:
The Politics of Design — Ruben Pater
The Politics of Design — Victor Papanek
Design and the Question of History — Tony Fry, Clive Dilnot and Susan C. Stewart
Diseño Grafico para la Gente — Jorge Frascara
