In the early stage of my professional life, coming from a stringent and technical background of engineering, the term Design appeared to me as an enigma, something really connected with the world of art, which I was completely extraneous.
Being now part of my everyday, I have decided to delve deeper into discovering what’s behind the complexity of this term.
When I studied at the UX Design Institute of Dublin, I realized soon that Design transcended far beyond the aesthetic or artistic realm we often associate it with.
Behind that there is a deep culture of planning, organizing processes, it aligns more with the realm of project management rather than the nature of art.
I tried to understand why me, and many other people, are usually driven by this misconception and why many stakeholders often relegate Design to a supplementary component.
My first explanation, that can seem a bit funny, came from my Italian context:
I thought about the linguistic proximity of Design and Disegnare (to draw), and maybe that’s not completely wrong in my context, some people can involuntarily do that association.
On the other hand, seemed to be a superficial explanation, so I decided to look back in the history.
The influence of Made in Italy
Remaining in Italy, surely a big part of the Italian designing conception comes from our cultural heritage, but without going back to Leonardo da Vinci, we can stay focused on the second half of the 20th century.
Between the 50s and 70s, in the wake of the economic boom, many young architects were pioneers of Design in a modern sense.
Because of lack of policies on major infrastructural projects, many of these new designers were occupied in the industrial sector (from A. Branzi – Introduzione al design italiano).
Engaged in the creation of tangible products rather than edifices, they carried a visual expertise. Combined with the research of quality (but that came also by an old manufacturer heritage), they helped to create the renowned “Made in Italy”.
It’s not too far from reality to say that even if our artistic culture it’s one of the greatest of the world and obviously a reason to be pride, it’s also true that Italy struggles to accept new paradigms and get away from its past.
Probably Italian industries still struggle to accept that time is changing, and Design is no more only an artistic concept.
Engineering culture and the abuse of features:
That’s all about Italy, but there’s a similar conception outside my country?
If we still look on the same historical period, we can notice a florid era of technological innovation, nurturing a dependency on technology like never before.
Engineers and nerds, employed in industrial companies, were more focused on the creation of technologically superior products. There was a techno-centric approach rather than a design-centric approach.
For many of the people that were living that engineering culture the mantra was "the more features you can pack in a product, the better the product is."
A great example can be seen in the evolution of television remote controls.
An old remote control, with only four buttons
The primitive remote controls were with merely four buttons, optimizing simplicity and intuitiveness. Modern controls have an enormous array of buttons, a majority of which remain a mystery to the average user.
This proliferation of buttons comes more from the mind of an engineer rather than from a designer.
Examples of modern controls, many of the buttons are "useless" features
Technology overshadowed design, relegating it to a mere aesthetic aspect.
However, as markets began to saturate and the awareness of consumers has grown, industries started to understand that Design can be really useful to “project”.
Design is about projecting
Just the fact that design its slowing freeing itself from the conception as purely art, lets everybody understand the literal translation from English: Progettare (to project).
Derived from Latin, Pro meaning forward, and Jacere meaning to throw, To Project (or to throw forward) encapsulates the essence of being casting forth to the future.
Design is an instrument that, through specific processes and based on the field of application (in this this article I wrote about UX Design Process), serves as vehicle to program the future.
It's an incredible tool and, as a sentence that in the last period it’s resounding in my head:
Design is a way to steer people’s behaviour
It’s a truly versatile concept. In the next years will be exploit in many different fields.
The one I prefer is strictly connected with innovation.
I think Design will transcend its traditional boundaries and will be used as a fundamental approach to lead digital transformation in the companies of the future.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)