Our new office is looking great after two months of work (photo above and second one below). Next year we will plan to build an outdoor extension so people can work outside with Wifi. We can never get enough of sun. Yesterday post was a very popular one so let’s continue on that topic. I am hoping to provide a more balanced perspective from Bruce Nussbaum's post pronouncing "innovation is dead".
I first started reading Le Corbusier ideas as a teenager and I was fascinated about his view of architecture although I have never received any formal architecture training (so was Corbusier), his ideas on how architecture should meet the demands of the machine age led him to develop, in collaboration with the artist Amédée Ozenfant, a new theory: Purism. Purist rules would lead the architect always to refine and simplify design, dispensing with ornamentation. Architecture would be as efficient as a factory assembly line. Soon, Le Corbusier was developing standardized housing 'types' like the 'Immeuble-villa' (made real with the Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau of 1925), and the Maison Citrohan (a play on words suggesting the building industry should adopt the methods of the mass production automobile industry), which he hoped would solve the chronic housing problems of industrialized countries. A man with mission to transform societies.
But despite his love of the machine aesthetic, Le Corbusier was determined that his architecture would reintroduce nature into people's lives. Victorian cities were chaotic and dark prisons for many of their inhabitants. Le Corbusier was convinced that a rationally planned city, using the standardized housing types he had developed, could offer a healthy, humane alternative. That's when 'design' becomes 'transformative'.
How often we hear big ideas like this from designers? Good design doesn’t have to be transformative. And not all innovation needs to be transformative either. Let’s not put that heavy burden on the shoulders of designers. For designers and human factors specialists, sometimes ‘small’ is the new ‘big’. The interest in exploring the design of assistive technology to support people with special needs is a great example. There is a lot of scope for assistance through items of technology from quite straightforward simple devices up to full-blown autonomous smart home installations.
Bruce thinks that ‘design’ is the answer to all our problems. To quote, “Design is the answer. I use the term ‘transformation’ to capture the immensity of the task ahead of us and to guide us in the magnitude of that task, but the actual tools, methodologies and, yes, philosophy of that mission is found within the space of design and design thinking.” That’s a little simplistic. It’s like someone saying ‘Technology is the answer” or ‘Re-engneering is the answer.” I agreed (and I am a strong critique of business schools) that business schools are not doing enough to prepare students to deal with the future and managing uncertainties, design school are doing much a better job. But it doesn’t mean designs are going to solve the big problems of this world.
The design professional has been pumping out a lot buzz words such as user-centered design, eco-design, experimental design, design for the other 90%, socially responsible design, universal design, sustainable design, interrogative design, task-centered design, reflective design, transformative design etc etc.? Some are justified but most are not. Design will play a key role to bring innovation but there are more beyond the fuzzy front end. We need to understand the full life cycle of innovation. It should not over-promised itself and being turned into another management fad.
I think 'Design-driven Innovation' is more accurate and appropriate than ‘Transformation’ although the results could be transformational. Design-driven Innovation become transformational when there are relentless pursuits of truth, beauty, balance and responsibility.
- Truth - the pursuit of truth is the societal function of design and technology. Technology and design is the application of science is the principal means used by society to disseminate the output of science and technology and together they enable people to pursue their ends more efficiently and affordably.
- Beauty – the pursuits of beauty beyond the conventional. Designers make possible for the mass the continuous pursuit of ideals, ends that can be approached indefinitely but never attained.
- Harmony – it is the pursuit of balance between the environments, users (emotive state) and the products. Humans seek both physical and psychological comfort. You are looking at a person's sense of well-being and how it influences productivity, creativity, and engagement. It includes the elements that must coexist to create positive and productive places: cognitive effectiveness, social support, emotional functioning, and physical function.
- Responsibility – It involves the dissemination of ethical and moral principles whether it is social or environmental.
