Just last week I had a conversation with two former colleagues from my Razorfish digital business consultancy days last century. I met one of them when she was an IIT/ID grad student intern at IBM Research and we were both spending time with a research group that was looking into how narrative intelligence and storytelling could be leveraged to support organizational development and innovation. We both moved from IBM to Razorfish. She had the role of information architect and I was 'Knowledge Engineer' and later 'Knowledge Ecologist' in a knowledge management and organizational development strategy role. We both drew on and built on conceptual frameworks and methods from the human centered design toolbox. We understood what we were doing back then as design practice. Yes, we and our collaborators needed to draw on first order design skills [e.g. visual design, information design], but we also were designers of second order emergent phenomena. [In their great book Rule of Play, Katie Sale and Eric Zimmerman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play> write about how to be a game designer you are a second order designer. You don't directly design 'fun', you arrange elements so that player/users, as they flow through the construct you have architected, participate in play, an activity that, when well formed, tends to elicit the emergent experience of enjoyment.]
I am going to leave a bunch of details out here and fast forward -
I know a number of seasoned designers who started out doing more traditional, corporate, product focused 'make it look nice and communicate clearly and easy and delightful to use' design, who have been self motivated to put a lot of time and effort into learning perspectives and skills to do work that they feel is more meaningful than what their corporate overlords offer them - doing graduate studies in transition design <https://www.design.cmu.edu/about-our-programs/phd-transition-design>, and organizational development, and getting certified as life coaches... generally looking into how to find agency and find a meaningful role as we face increasing complexity and interdependence [and institutional failure], and how to maintain our humanity and that of others while doing so. <https://practicesof.org>
[ You will excuse me, most of my references are from the last century. ]
So... my point, my curiosity/hunch/suspicion, is about what potential relationships and opportunities currently exist between direct/old timey/artisanal design and design-informed systems/complexity intervention practice. [And I should say, it's not accurate to frame this as an Old School vs New situation. Christopher Alexander and his peep's work on Pattern Languages has a warm and fuzzy Hobitty "Isn't the Shire nice" feel to it, absolutely human scale and legible to non-expert humans, a n d , it's all about how to see, document, and design-for ineffable second order experiential effects.] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language> [I picked-up my affection for pattern languages from Human Computer Interaction designer/researchers. Thom Erickson from IBM Research's Social Computing Group wrote a couple of papers i looove: "Lingua Francas for design: sacred places and pattern languages" <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/347642.347794>, and "Supporting Interdisciplinary Design: Towards Pattern Languages for Workplaces", <https://tomeri.org/Patterns.Chapter.html>]
Except that we are adding in the arrival of AI, and the way it threatens to shift the role, authority, and influence of regular old designer-designers.
OK. That's visual/web, even UX designers.
I am curious how systems designer/design strategy types fit into this picture.
That is, people who do service design, people who trained to be 'design strategists' @ the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design <https://id.iit.edu> [ "...Founded in 1937 as 'The New Bauhaus' by László Moholy-Nagy"], GK Van Patter/Humantific's NextD/Design 3.0 designers <https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/next-design-30-making-sense-of-design-now/1232166>, SYPartners/Kyu <kyu.org> 'sure we can totally turn this oil tanker of late stage globalist capitalism around' designers, Just Transition Designers <https://medium.com/design-council/designing-for-a-just-transition-b831de2fbeae>, and social system/systems intervention designers like DS4SI <https://hyperallergic.com/599238/ideas-arrangements-effects-review-ds4si/>
Just last week I had a conversation with two former colleagues from my Razorfish digital business consultancy days last century. I met one of them when she was an IIT/ID grad student intern at IBM Research and we were both spending time with a research group that was looking into how narrative intelligence and storytelling could be leveraged to support organizational development and innovation. We both moved from IBM to Razorfish. She had the role of information architect and I was 'Knowledge Engineer' and later 'Knowledge Ecologist' in a knowledge management and organizational development strategy role. We both drew on and built on conceptual frameworks and methods from the human centered design toolbox. We understood what we were doing back then as design practice. Yes, we and our collaborators needed to draw on first order design skills [e.g. visual design, information design], but we also were designers of second order emergent phenomena. [In their great book Rule of Play, Katie Sale and Eric Zimmerman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play> write about how to be a game designer you are a second order designer. You don't directly design 'fun', you arrange elements so that player/users, as they flow through the construct you have architected, participate in play, an activity that, when well formed, tends to elicit the emergent experience of enjoyment.]
I am going to leave a bunch of details out here and fast forward -
I know a number of seasoned designers who started out doing more traditional, corporate, product focused 'make it look nice and communicate clearly and easy and delightful to use' design, who have been self motivated to put a lot of time and effort into learning perspectives and skills to do work that they feel is more meaningful than what their corporate overlords offer them - doing graduate studies in transition design <https://www.design.cmu.edu/about-our-programs/phd-transition-design>, and organizational development, and getting certified as life coaches... generally looking into how to find agency and find a meaningful role as we face increasing complexity and interdependence [and institutional failure], and how to maintain our humanity and that of others while doing so. <https://practicesof.org>
[ You will excuse me, most of my references are from the last century. ]
So... my point, my curiosity/hunch/suspicion, is about what potential relationships and opportunities currently exist between direct/old timey/artisanal design and design-informed systems/complexity intervention practice. [And I should say, it's not accurate to frame this as an Old School vs New situation. Christopher Alexander and his peep's work on Pattern Languages has a warm and fuzzy Hobitty "Isn't the Shire nice" feel to it, absolutely human scale and legible to non-expert humans, a n d , it's all about how to see, document, and design-for ineffable second order experiential effects.] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language> [I picked-up my affection for pattern languages from Human Computer Interaction designer/researchers. Thom Erickson from IBM Research's Social Computing Group wrote a couple of papers i looove: "Lingua Francas for design: sacred places and pattern languages" <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/347642.347794>, and "Supporting Interdisciplinary Design: Towards Pattern Languages for Workplaces", <https://tomeri.org/Patterns.Chapter.html>]
Uh. This all may just be the latest version of, "Hey, what's the relationship between Design and Human Centered Design?" <https://bebusinessed.com/history/the-history-of-human-centered-design/>
Except that we are adding in the arrival of AI, and the way it threatens to shift the role, authority, and influence of regular old designer-designers.
OK.
That was fun.
Party on Andrew.