Design Business Conference 2011
A.3.5 Constructed Discursive Validity
The Managing Design Discourse has reshaped the design understanding. It has redesigned design by generating the following key statements:
- Managers are designers, designing organizations and services.
- In management we tend to close the problem, in design we tend to leave it open, but a good designer and manager has both capacities.
- An organizational design works from purpose, to principles, people, concept, structure, and finally to practice.
- The interaction design methodology and process follow a similar pattern:
creating a vision, moving to strategic planning, planning and prototyping, and evaluating the effectiveness.
- Interaction design permits us to describe how people relate to other people and how we can mediate this relationship through products.
- Designers, as managers, need to have knowledge of accounting, finance, human relations, strategic planning, and vision building.
- Organizational systems have never been fully designed; they have always had lives of their own.
- We never design endings; we mostly design middles, as design is often design, characterized by interruption, resumption, initiation and
re-contextualization.
- Designers and managers, always in the midst of something, are forced into action without the opportunity (or need) to disengage and function as detached observers.
- Managers and designers look for adaptation, because constraints are important to challenge new meaning negotiated by the environment.
- Design thinking in business practice is the solution in the area of non-programmed decision-making.
The Managing as Designing discourse is still shaping design understanding. It
within the design community. It has shown in a very good way that the designing in management, organization and service are new and important domains. Many of the statements, condensed and reviewed, still pose a challenge for designers and managers, because they go beyond an average professional understanding.
In the case of Design for Social Business, the impact into design conception and understanding is not as obvious. The key statements might influence certain areas of design in the future. This depends very much how important the concept of social business will be.
- The design frame is moved into system design, asking, how we can design banking systems.
- There is a development within design thinking from mass production, graphic, industrial, and interactive design, to system, environmental and organizational design.
- Any business can be redesigned as Social Business.
- The design of the interactions can be a collective process, marked by co-design and co-creation.
- Within designing organizations and businesses, the purpose is important and can be determined by understanding the aim of the organization’s design.
- Designing business can be conducted in two modes - collaboration (driven by social need) and competition within the field.
- We can design policies from thoughts to action.
- Designing the totality of our lives seems to be design’s new task.
The discourse of this case extended beyond design, and often focused on the issue of social needs. Therefore, the impact for design is not as strong, and the understanding of design is not as greatly influenced. The statements generated do not indicate a revolutionary approach to design, aside from identifying that business can be designed, and even existing business can be redesigned.
Business design is a collective process, including co-design and co-creation.
Within business design, two modes - competitive and collaborative - are apparent. The designing of policies is important. The purpose needs to be
considered in business design, and that is a new discovery yielded by this Social Business discourse.
The third case on Designing Business is an extension and reconfirmation of the Designing Design project initiated in the second design case.
- The conference, by itself, is an example of Designing Design.
- Design understanding should increase the number of available choices.
- Designing business needs to be explicit and interruptive.
- The foundation of designing business is design thinking.
- The design practice is shifting to a rhetoric and dialectic.
- Designers can solve these design problems only through conversations.
- This type of design is a new way of practicing synthesis, and involves a cognitive process, envisioning the narrative and particularity of the discipline.
- Management and design are not separate entities; therefore, we need an ontology and epistemology that captures both.
- Designing business is an on-going discourse, involving moderation, self-moderation and self-regulation, to shape the behaviour through interaction within the organizational structure.
- Such designers are (design) facilitators, activists, community
coaches-‘designagers’.
- Design thinking must be followed by design management.
The Designing Design factor of the third case is much more clear and distinct, than it was in the conference held a year before. The discourse reconfirmed the new domain of designing business. This was neither thought through nor
attempted before. It is design where design thinking is the base; it is co-designing through conversations, through the rhetoric and dialectic. Here, management and design are the same process - they merge. In this domain, design and management collapse into one entity.
Summary:
In all three design cases, the frame of designing design allows to better
understand what a community of people is actually doing when they meet for a
conference event to develop a discourse focused on certain thematic statements.
In the ‘Managing as Designing Conference’ held in 2002, the designing aspect is much more obvious, since the impact and the changes - even if not
quantitatively measured - can be seen in various places, especially since the documents generated had been discussed in many places where the community of professionals meet and provide statements. But this is also visible and
recognizable in statements, such as ‘Managers can be seen as designers, since they are designing products, organizations and services.’ In addition, humanistic discourse is indicated by consumption of textual objects. As outlined before, the time that lapsed since the conference held in 2002 might have helped to
recognize the new understanding of design, and appreciate that management is its integral part.
While the ‘Design for Social Business Conference’ cannot be evaluated
regarding its impact, looking at the statement generated, it is evident that they are less focused on designing design. Instead, the focus is on the ‘moral’ aspect of the act of designing. This can be exemplified by the statement: Within
designing organizations and business, the purpose is important; hence,
determining the aim of the organizational design is necessary. This statement helps differentiate values within designing of business.
The ‘Designing Business Conference’, due to its purpose, implicitly included designing of design; since it expands the understanding of design into a realm that was not previously considered as a domain of design - business. Thus, the statements generated during the conference focused on how to design business:
- The foundation of designing business is design thinking.
- The design practice is shifting to a rhetoric and dialectic.
- Designers can solve these design problems only through conversations.
These statements indicate that there is coherence to what was stated in the
procedural aspects of designing design. Design Thinking aimed at conceptualize the future of design, it is a design based on rhetoric and dialectic because the base is text and it is a conversation with the actors in the network - the
community of people who met to solve some problems in design.
A.3.6 Theory in Action as a Participatory Design Process
The three conferences addressed above can be seen collectively as a
participatory design process, since all are live communication events, which depend primarily on the participants.
‘Participatory design approaches are considered to reflect design as a social process, illustrating that the sphere of the design activity extends beyond he designer. When engaged in a participatory design workshop the people who attend are part of the social process of design and play an active part in the issue/problem raising, discussion and decision making processes that are part of the early design stage of a project. The people who are commonly known as the users are active participants in the design process and hence the boundary between designer and user becomes blurred’ (Luck 2003, p.523).
The three conferences were participatory, with many interactive parts depending on the participation of the attendees. After stage-setting and some basic lectures, the participants were given the opportunity to take on the role of designers. Their participation as designers is evident in the provocative statements and intense discussions held on-site, as well as in post-conference activities and collective writings, which exemplify a participatory design process that creates design and knowledge.
It is also important to note that the practice of participatory design has a practical and an ethical motivation. The practical argument is that users have a better understanding of their needs than those tasked with creating for them (Bødker 1996). Hence, in designing conferences focusing on design, the contribution of the users is a necessity.
Holmlid (2009) summarizes two premises that guide the development of
participatory design and makes the point that the inclusion of users will increase the likelihood of a successful design outcome. Moreover, there is a moral
premise that users have a right and possibly obligation to be involved in a design development (Holmlid 2009).
Sanders et al. (2008) approach these issues from the creative perspective ‘First, to embrace co-creativity requires that one believes that all people are creative. This is not a commonly accepted belief, particularly amongst those in the business community’ (p.5). However, the conference was organized based on the belief that the participants would actually contribute with their co-creativity, even if some do so not as designers. ‘We use co-design in a broader sense to refer to the creativity of designers and people not trained in design working together in the design development process’ (Ibid, p.2). This statement can be evaluated as a shift, since many ‘normal’ conferences are organized as traditional talking conferences, which are less participatory. ‘It is a shift in attitude from designing for users to one of designing with users’ (Sanders 2002, p.1). Nonetheless, some participants have voiced that the conferences have not been participatory
enough. Sanders echoes (2005) this, noting: ‘It has become increasingly evident that everyday people are no longer satisfied with simply being ‘consumers’. They want to be ‘creators’ as well’. (p.5) All conferences described here can be seen as a generation of outcomes, statements, discussions and documents, achieved through a co-designing act. According to Sanders (2006):
‘Co-designing is also known as the application of ‘generative tools’, which refers to the creation of a shared design language that designers/researchers and the stakeholders use to communicate visually and directly with each other. The design language is generative in the sense that with it, people can express an infinite number of ideas’ (p.6).
The conference participants also acted as researchers , searching together for solution to the research questions asked, as we can see later on. ‘In participatory experiences, the roles of the designer and the researcher blur and the user
becomes a critical component of the process’ (Sanders 2002, p.2). Still, the conference organization and management was not completely given to the audience, as certain decisions had been made by a small group of people, namely conference chairs and organizers, all of whom took a role of designers.
‘Designers will be needed because they hold highly developed skills that are relevant at larger levels of scope and complexity’ (Sanders et al. 2008, p.12).
‘When all three perspectives (what people do, what they say, and what they make) are explored simultaneously, we are able to understand the experience domains of the people we are serving through design‘ (Sanders 2005, p.12).
Participants change their perspective from that of an observer to a co-designer
during the conferences or the interviews. Sanders and colleagues (2008) also make the case that the designers have a new role within such a process: they will make the tools for the participants to facilitate the creative process: ‘The onus is on designers to explore the potential of generative tools and to bring the languages of co-designing into their practice. Designers will be integral to the creation and exploration of new tools and methods for generative design
thinking. Designers in the future will make the tools for non-designers to use to express themselves creatively’ (p.13).
In summary, while the design conferences have not been announced as
participatory design acts, the participatory aspect was a part of the concept, and it applied to the conference as well as interviews. It was also evident in the creation of discussions, discourses and outcomes.