Design takes you to some place better than a negative world of problems and take you to a world of happiness.

Industrial designers do not solve problems though we sometimes solve annoyances. In the name of business and monetary success, industrial designers have made prolific statements that we are problem-solvers even though the only real problems left to solve in the world with any immediacy are things like climate change and economic crisis, along with the usual fare of war, famine, and genocide. Those are problems, and they are not being solved by people who identify themselves as designers. Making an easier neoprene grip handle for people with arthritis is nice, but maybe the real problem is the health crisis of global citizens and seniors shouldn’t be eating high starch foods that need peeling in the first place.

The reason we started making these prolific statements about our industry was to brand ourselves and over promise a skill we’ve yet to master. It was a marketing move. We started touting ourselves as an innovation engine and now we are evolving to branding ourselves as “design thinkers,” as another wishy-washy catch phrase to elevate ourselves to some kind of creative (design) genius (thinker). I hope that every profession “thinks” when they do their work. No architect says “I’m doing ‘building thinking’ or ‘architectural thinking'”. Ofcourse they’re thinking about structure, form, and space, as well as iterating their ideas and using some kind of process. That’s their expertise and it is expected of them. Design is about creating with intent. Design requires thinking. It’s redundant. Labeling ourselves as problem-solvers or design-thinkers is just spin.

It clouds the philosophy of our profession when we create spin. Spin does not contribute to an honest dialogue about what we do and how we do it. Spin makes us sound prolific until we’re asked to actually deliver on our promise. Industrial design has created too many broken promises of success through innovation and problem solving. “I’m an architect, I design buildings” doesn’t sound prolific, but would get an “oh wow!” from anyone in public because of the aura of respect associated and earned by the profession. In the minds of the people, designing buildings in and of itself is prolific. The only industrial designers that get those “oohs” and “aaahs” are ones that can introduce themselves by saying “I design for Apple”. Like buildings they are consistent as an entity in their high caliber of work, have a bit of mysticism, and in and of itself, prolific products. And yes, I used Apple as an example like every other article EVER. Maybe there’s a reason Apple is used as every, example, ever.

Architecture and Fashion Design are creative fields which have established themselves and have lived up to the prolific statements and grandeur. These professions are pure in intent and philosophical depth that it connects even with Kids. Kids want to grow up to be fashion designers or architects. Rarely do we hear them wanting to become industrial designers. What resonates with people, especially with kids, are purity of intent and humanistic philosophical depth. The modern American designed-objects are deficient in having this philosophical impact because of our cultural prioritization with function, for solving problems. Americans have a thirst for function in order to enhance productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency in society. To be a holistic human being though, is not merely to enhance our physical attributes of productivity. As industrial designers we are keenly aware of American values, like function, but we need to design for many other universal human values that go beyond function and problem-solving.

I do understand why we started labeling ourselves as problem-solvers and design-thinkers though. The design process was unclear to outsiders and when we showed our final ideas to clients, they didn’t understand the logic  and the thinking that went into the final decision. And the fact is, thinking takes time, and time is money. We had to tell the clients “No! No! We DIDN’T pull this out of thin air. We actually thought about it.” The seemingly high cost associated with good and successful designs had to be justified. We had to explain that the extra cost was to solve-the-problem and think-about-designs and label our profession as such. Many of us in the profession, including myself, are working to educate the masses on the importance of design, and so lets keep talking openly and honestly with our clients and cut the spin. Let’s show them that the creative process is sometimes mystical and that sometimes logic and rationale that comes with our current label kills a little bit of that. Let’s bring back the philosophy and reaction from the belly of a design and allow it to percolate in to our executive meetings so that we can elevate our built environment to it’s fullest potential. If we establish ourselves as a profession that consistently creates products of the highest of standards and have the philosophical depth and cultural impact necessary of good design, we wouldn’t need to justify ourselves all the time in meetings. The powers-that-be would let us take the risks and even doubling-down on a little bit of mystique.

I’d like to propose the following as a start to a dialogue on how we can speak openly and honestly about what we do and can do with the power of our profession. We do have the power to solve real problems, just not alone, and I want to give this analysis of the Three C’s (catchy isn’t it?:) ) of our strengths on how we can play our role.

We are Cultural Identifiers. We have the capacity to constructively critique our built environment.
We are Creation Planners of the Built Environment. We are part of the cycle to manufacture and distribute what the world needs and desires.
We are Cornerstone of Progress. We propose alternatives, we propose the-next, we create the future and leave behind a history.

Cultural Identification is the ability to
i) Identify humanistic philosophies to infuse into our projects. We know how to talk to both artists and businessmen. We need to raise to the surface  the Philosophical Depth inspired and required by our inner artist. We need to question the existence of the designed object and then identify an answer or vice versa.

ii) Identify objects in our built environment that can and should be changed. This requires the criticism of the status quo. People should not have to live in a poorly built environment. With our background, experience, and knowledge, we are in the perfect place to become strong advocates on identifying which objects that surround us in this world are failures, why they are failures, and how it can be changed. We know how they are born in to the world and how they die. We can critique every detail from manufacturing to cultural acceptance of products.

iii) Identify opportunities in our built environment that is yet to be filled. With our involvement in the act of creation, we fundamentally know what exists in the world. Unlike a lay person who are concerned mostly with products in their immediate vicinity, we have the ability to observe and see every built object in our environment. Through this we have a strong sense of what is missing. Filling in these holes help create a vision for a better world.

Creation Planners of the Built Environment
i) Ideation to create. We ideate multiple creations through various forms of representation to develop the final design. We communicate various ideas to the necessary parties involved in the development of the object. This could me mere words! Gasp!

ii) Mediation to create. We mediate between many different fields from the manufacturers to the business executives. We mediate the conflicting issues facing users and profit.

iii) Representation to create. We create representations of objects to be manufactured so that the final object in the hands of the user are of the highest standards. Sketching, CAD models, etc.

Cornerstone of Progress
i) Progress our built environment. We (humans) are innately pro-new-things. We design based on what we want the future to be. We accelerate progress and we consciously take an active approach to progress society along with what is Next. We are proactive progress seekers. This gives us a grave responsibility to make sure that the future we create is a better one tomorrow than today.

ii) Progress our values. We create desires for people and there by what is valued in our society. We create the physical manifestation and representation of the internal values of our culture.

iii) Progress the human race. Through the objects we we leave behind we create a history for our ancestors. They will define us by what they find 10,000 years from now. They will mark significant points in history based on the objects we lived with. They will study the changing agents that greatly affected our culture through our built environment. They will asses our progress as a human race by comparing our lifestyle to their current ways of life.