Design is a social responsibility

Who deserves good design?

Picture this. A coffee cup, all shiny and ceramic with a long steel chain as a handle. A nice big couch, a beautiful sap green built using cacti. A rainboot with the toe front cut off. A 5kg fork to eat your fruits every day. These are designs from an art series rightly called The Uncomfortable – A series of inconvenient household items designed by Katerina Kamprani. While this is art that instigates questions about our daily comfort, this is closer to reality than you may think.

Now, picture a room of 10’ x 10’ with a narrow door and one small window close to the ceiling to let in a stream of sunlight. This room has in it a sleeping spot with a rolled up bed, a firewood stove and a few trunks with some clothes. Here, 6 people sleep, eat, rest, interact, store their things and have made it their home. Now, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for the next 388 times and you have the kind of settlements that 64 million Indians live in. Does that sound uncomfortable and inconvenient to you?

My inquiry here is not to distinguish between good and bad design.

Instead, I invite you to ponder with me on 2 questions -

1. What is good design?

2. Who has access to it?

While design is highly subjective, there are certain measures that a designer can take to ensure it serves the purpose it is intended for. Let’s explore these measures with the mindset that design is a tool. This tool may be used for personal contentment, to visualise one’s imagination, to achieve comfort or to solve a problem. I’m most fascinated with using this tool to solve societal problems.

The design thinking process is a perfect segue to understand what criteria one must consider to achieve good, functional design. Initiated and created over the years by insightful academicians, thought leaders like Nobel Prize Laureate Herbert. A. Simon, John. E. Arnold, Tim Brown and many more, this tool breaks down the design process into 5 steps -

Empathise with the user. Taking into account their functional requirements, cultural context, daily routines and lifestyle aspirations.

Define the challenges that need solving, the objectives and goals that have to be met through the design.

Ideate on the defined problems and identify innovative solutions that address them.

Prototype the shortlisted ideas with less resources, improvise and make iterations on the go.

Test the prototype with the users, observe and collect their feedback. This will then inform us to get to the second round of this design cycle. Following this 5 step process is not a guaranteed way that results in good design. It is, however, an efficient way to organise your thoughts and give clarity to our thought process for design is a decision making process.

Now, let’s address the second question on accessibility. We have all been introduced to the concept of clients. The kind who can identify the need for hiring a professional and the kind who have the ability to pay the said designer.

Now, is only the person who is able to pay a designer worthy of good design?

What about the millions who live in those 10’ x 10’ rooms? As a designer, I ask you - who do you want your client to be?

As Shigeru Ban said, “In our profession as architects, we mostly work for privileged people. Rich people, the government, developers. They have money and power. Those are invisible. So they hire us to visualise their power and money by making monumental architecture.”

While we can all agree that everybody deserves good design, what can we do as individuals to ensure it reaches the people in need?

Design is undoubtedly a collaborative process. One way to ensure that good design is ingrained in our societal system is to get all the stakeholders of the system involved. Community participation starts by enabling meaningful, outcome driven conversations with the community members. Conversations that are inclusive and take into account the needs of everyone regardless of their age, race, gender, caste or economic background. The purpose of such conversations goes back to the first step in the design thinking process - empathise. Informing oneself of the on ground needs as opposed to responding to intuitions and assumptions. However, the larger goal here is to also spread awareness among the lesser informed of the options available for a better lifestyle. One that does not have to be titled as inconvenient or temporary.

Let’s not just picture this but participate. A survey, a brainstorming session, a construction process that involves the end user. One that builds ownership among everyone to sustain, maintain a better lifestyle.

I want to ask you a favour. In your everyday lives, could you spare a few minutes and continue pondering about those questions? I ask because one of my favourite movie quotes goes like - “If you sit long enough in a question, the answer will find you.”

Swetha Manivannan

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Sources: https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/designresources/