FOREWORD
Design is what we do to shape the world around us. Hence, as advances in technology and knowledge cause that world to change so the methods by which we design must also change. The industrial revolution enabled a considerable proliferation of new design practices, ranging from commercial graphic design and design for film and television to industrial design and transportation design. The signs are that the post-industrial information age will produce a far greater expansion. Already we have seen the emergence of interaction design, video game design, design of data, service design, design strategy, design innovation, social design and design futures. New disciplines emerge alongside the latest developments in science and technology. Bio-design has established an early beachhead under the guise of bio-mimicry, but this is surely just version 1.0. Already designers are working alongside synthetic biologists to explore what it means to design with DNA. Similarly, the emerging ‘Internet of Things’ is creating new opportunities for designers to combine the design of the physical and digital in new ways, with the likely result being that some other kind of new design discipline will emerge. In addition to what we are designing, it is important to consider the changes in how we are designing. My colleague Jane Fulton Suri talks about the changing relationship between designers and users in terms of designing for, with and by users. Traditionally designers, like architects before them, took responsibility for designing on behalf of users. In some cases there was no attempt to ‘know’ the user, but rather a belief that the designer’s job was to interpret the world on that user’s behalf – often, in effect, designing for themselves. This strategy can be successful when applied to relatively simple questions. The design of a glass, a toilet brush, a chair, or a building can be quite amenable to this approach. But it was the emergence of more complex design problems, in particular intelligent products and computer-based systems, which forced a reconsideration. Some designers, including my mentor Bill Moggridge, began to see the importance of a deeper understanding of the user. Instead of relying on traditional market research, they embraced ethnographic forms of enquiry and got out into the field, working with users as an inherent part of their design process. This approach became a founding principle for many of the new design disciplines, such as interaction design and service design which both have deep research and collaboration with users at their core.
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