Uday Dandavate: On the Future of Design

DESIGNING FOR A CONVIVIAL FUTURE

Uday Dandavate

Co-Founder & CEO SonicRim Ltd. San Francisco, USA

Design in the Past

The origin of contemporary practice of design is often traced to the Bauhaus (1919 to1933) in Germany. Bauhaus founders were driven to restore the esthetic sensibilities that guided the imagination of craftsmen and artists prior to the industrial revolution. The Bauhaus movement was led primarily by artists and architects who set the tone and boundaries of contemporary design discourse around the idea of reconciling mass-production with the individual artistic spirit. However, while creating a platform for artistic expression, Bauhaus championed rational, objective, and minimalistic design over emotional expressionism, which is more commonly associated with the field of arts. As the field of design developed, an average person had begun to associate design with a connoisseur class of brands and products, designed for consumers with discerning taste. Media has also contributed to propagating a celebrity status to a few designers and their designs.

Changing relevance of design practice:
Design Today

The field of design is in the process of being redefined. Progressive organizations from both private and public sectors are developing a keen interest in design thinking, design research, and co-creation. Designers are beginning to discover the potential of their skills in inspiring the imagination of a team, organization, or community. Today, clients from both for-profit and nonprofit sectors are hiring designers to apply design thinking to translate social, cultural and psychological values into public policies and macro-level innovation strategies. Design schools have always trained students to become generalists (as opposed to specialists) in order to help them become integrators and cross-pollinators of ideas. However, two important emotional skills necessary in an effective integrator are missing in design education: humility and empathy. While acquiring skills for observation, creative ideation, and integration, most design graduates enter the workforce with a large ego and low empathy. This egocentric mindset can get in the way of designers gaining acceptance in a team as effective integrators of ideas and facilitators of a co-creation process. To manage complex issues of contemporary life, organizations need subject matter experts and integrators. Increasing dependence on experts has resulted in an unmet need for integrators who can make expert knowledge accessible and actionable across silos. Designers have the necessary conceptual skills to serve this largely unmet need, and thus many are recognizing the opportunity make a greater impact on organizations as integrators rather than as celebrity designers. They have begun to take a lead in helping their clients tap into the creative potential and wisdom dormant within their value chains. However, by and large most design schools are still stoking the egos of their students and nurturing in them the dream of becoming a celebrity designer.

Future of Design
The future of design will be radically different from the present. The vision of the future of design will not be articulated in the classrooms of design schools, nor in state-of-the-art studios of design consulting firms. The new model for design will evolve as a response to the changing behaviors of everyday people who are actively looking for and using new tools, business models, and services that allow them to participate in conceptualization and production of paradigm shifting products, services and ventures. In the future, participatory models will challenge the top-down model of management. 

For instance, we are already witnessing increased preference for participator tools such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter over traditional broadcast media. Participatory modes of creating and sharing content and increasing dependence on social networks will lead to new models of planning, management and production. It is becoming clear that designerly ways of observing, sensing, learning, discovering, and inspiring imagination will become foundational skills for every team. Visionary leaders will need to cultivate in their teams the capacity to innovate and build resilience to change. Designers have the opportunity to guide the imagination and the values of a new society and economy by conceptualizing new models of engaging users of design in creation of design. The future will bring to designers opportunities for leading transformative change in an organization, a community or society. Designers’ responsibility in the future will be to take design back to the people by training and encouraging creative thinking in schools, colleges, and workplaces. Instead of building products and services, designers will build tools and institutions for training everyday people to engage their imagination, express their ideas, and collaborate with each other to find solutions that meet their needs. 

The future of design in India is tied to the dream of an average Indian. It is tied to how the youth in India dream about shaping their future. As the generation of Indians that fought against the British rule step down from leadership roles, and the youth seeks new ways to find meaning in life, they will challenge old systems and beliefs, and innovate new approaches to every sphere of life. Twenty years ago, India turned away from its socialist ideals and opened its doors to multinational corporations. Now India is searching past its fascination with the Wall Street model of liberalization and globalization, which brought global brands into the Indian marketplace and injected enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and pursuit of wealth, especially amidst its middle class. Craving for intellectual fulfillment while going through everyday struggles of life has traditionally drawn the middle class to participate in social transformation processes and to champion the cause of the weaker sections of society. However with liberalization of the economy the middle class has abandoned its role asthe ideologues of the nation. Some have got caught up in pursuing opportunities to become rich and the rest are being pushed to the wall, unable to keep up with the pace of 21th century capitalism in India. The greed for wealth has resulted in increase in corruption, and a feeling has crept into the minds of the weaker sections of society of being abandoned by the middle class – who in the past championed their cause. 

Poets, artists and writers have always inspired the imagination of a society and united it around a common cause. Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Today, there is an opportunity for designers to take responsibility for shaping a vision, a common cause, and building tools to engage the imagination of people. In every organization and community people felt alienated from the value creation process because their innate creativity was neither acknowledged nor engaged. 

I would like to cite Ivan Illich’s thoughts on tools for conviviality:“Tools are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates himself in action to his society through the use of tools that he actively masters, or by which he is passively acted upon. To the degree that he masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning; to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image. Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision.”Bauhaus championed design for reconciling mass-production with the individual artistic spirit. In future, design can help reconcile society’s current craving for wealth creation and consumption, with a new participatory spirit of collaborative construction of tools for innovation, tools for responsible living and tools for everyday people to live the life of their imagination