In the creative world, the only constant is change 25/07/08
Published in the International Herald Tribune, July 25 2008, by Alice Rawsthorn
Extract
The social and political systems that underpinned our lives in the last century are breaking down...and the grim truth that many of the institutions that looked after us in the last century are no longer fit for purpose. Schools, hospitals, prisons, and the rest are all struggling to cope.
The traditional response would be to improve the physical design of the buildings, their contents, and the literature explaining what they’re trying to do. Designers still do that, but they’re also using design thinking to identify what needs to be done to improve the work of those institutions, and how they deliver it. Often they do so by working in collaboration with social scientists, economists, management consultants and anthropologists. Design thinking then helps to invent more efficient alternatives, many of which will be executed using conventional design techniques. This area of design is so new that it doesn’t have a recognizable name. It’s variously called “social design,” “service design” and “the new design.”
Whatever it’s eventually known as, it will be an increasingly important way in which designers respond to change in the future. It’s now being taught at forward-thinking design schools, such as the Institute of Design at Stanford in California, and was the theme of the Changing the Change design conference held in Turin earlier this month as part of the World Design Capital program. Some design teams are already putting the theory into practice. In Britain, the design teams Participle and Live Work are partnering with local government agencies to develop design-led solutions to social problems, such as aging populations and health care. IDEO, one of the largest American design consultancies, has established a Human Factors team to address similar issues there, including patient care in hospitals.
view online: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/28/arts/DESIGN28.php