Dear
Lubomir,
I
would like to clarify a few things :
The
statement that you quote is the result of my reasoning, and it is a question,
rather then a personal conviction or agenda.
I DO
NOT recognize myself at all in the attitude that you describe : "They actually
protest the glorification of THE great DESIGNER and in this context they fight
for the empowerment of the little user."
Actually, my agenda, if I had any, would be quite
different. For instance, and amongst a few things, I believe that the
"great designer" has an essential contribution to our material world and should
be much more studied in a critical way. Rather then hagiographies of design
heroes, with fancy pictures on glossy paper, some serious theoretical criticism,
as one can see in art, would be healthy. And, to go to the end of this point, I
do not have in mind some "theory of design" in general, but for instance an
interpretation of one single project. Someone brought the issue of bridges, as
an example, I would recommend reading the first chapter about M. Baxandall's
book (Forms of Intention), which deals with the Forth bridge... But I'll stop on
that point here.
I
would like to go back to your points about democratic design. I don't recall
having used the expression as such, but having brought up the challenge (the
implications) of a "democratic control on design". For instance, to go back to
your remark, I would expect people who "fight for the empowerment of the user"
to explain on which ground they are empowered by the users, and how they might
be held responsible. This doesn't mean that personal and generous initiatives
are not important, but I don't see them as a
foundation/alternative.
In my
view, taking this challenge seriously would open completely new options that I
(personally) find essential to investigate. You are exploring what you call
"pre-design", as I mentionned, I'd like to hear more about that. For instance, I
am collecting examples of small initiatives that mix designers with local
inhabitants and marginalized population. Why : they develop a model that is very
different from the institutional client/designer/customer model that permeates
even in design education. I am keen on reading more or meeting people who
examine the evolution of our material surrounding (e.g. Bijker, mentionned
before on this list)...
The
impact of mass-production on our cultures and daily lives is so strong, and it
is funny to see that a discipline that could potentialy claim to have a
comprehensive view on how it develops seems still incapable of at least,
disseminating a critical discourse. This would already be a huge step ahead, in
the direction of "design for all". And would take much work out of our hands?
And this is not Marxism, or any ...ism of any sort. Just plain education. Just
like, say, organic farming informs you about the rest of the
food.
Regards,
Jean
-----Message
d'origine-----
De : PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of
PhDs in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]De la part de Lubomir S.
Popov
Envoyé : jeudi 31 octobre 2002 16:42
À :
[log in to unmask]
Objet : Re: Design By All
At 01:45 PM 10/31/2002 +0100, Jean Schneider wrote:
The advantage that I see in a declaration such
as "design is a (generic)
human ability, and (possibly) a right" is that
it would allow us to
deconstruct seriously the figure of the hero, and
discuss in a more positive
way about the power structure(s) and
discourse(s) of mass production and
consumption (money, ressources,
distribution, empowerment and use, re-use
etc...).
I think
I start understanding the attitude of the designers/researchers on this list.
They actually protest the glorification of THE great DESIGNER and in this
context they fight for the empowerment of the little user.
From this position it becomes clear to me why all that indignation, all that
almost leftist (and maybe too leftist) attitude to user inclusion, and the
politicizing of the design process
as a whole.
I look at design from
a completely different position. Although a designer myself, I had survived
the training in a company of philosophers and sociologists who sustained their
egos by offending designers. The designers were demystified, exposed, and
laughed at. That community leveled the same accusations to designers as you
do, however in a different context and with a different goal. You criticize
designers on pure humanitarian bases, you do this to empower yourself and to
gain a higher status in the design communities. These friends of mine (many of
them become and still are friends of mine) criticized The Designer again from
the same humanitarian and meta-position, but with the goal to take a piece of
the pie for themselves -- they wanted to take out and develop user needs
research as a separate specialty and to empower themselves as professional
user advocates in order to control The Designer. The whole nature of
pre-design research is about serving the user, but at the same time this
specialty empowers the agents engaged in it by allowing them to serve as
design criteria developers and from that platform -- as design evaluators. Now
you understand that those who evaluate, they control. The Pre-Designer wants
to become the middleman between the designer and the user and in this
employment to serve the user by controlling The Designer. In this way
designers are saved from burden they are not trained to carry on (user needs
research), user needs and interests are protected, and social scientists
working as social designers get a piece of the big pie called product
manufacturing and construction industry.
Now I believe the picture
becomes clearer and you can understand my own bias and stakes. This is the
reason I reject all populist appeals for democratic design.
Besides my stakes, I had pretty strong arguments against letting laymen make
decisions that affect not just their lives, but the life of the whole society.
I have nathing agains laymen planning their lives and curing themselves. If
they ruing someting, they ruing only their lives. But when they start making
decisions on behalf of the whole society or at least many groups of
stakeholders, laymen are the worst oppressors because they think only about
their personal and narrow interests rather than the common good. Communism
proved that pretty categorically. There were many "social" "designers" who
pretended they will design a new and better life for everybody, but at the end
it became pretty clear that they were not capable to design a life even for
themselves. All they could do was to ruin what was already designed by
professional designers. It took them 50-70 years -- it was difficult for them
even to ruin. That is the nature of the laymen. A technocrat can do damage
much faster.
This is why I mentioned several times in the last years
-- design is too complex to leave it to designers. Now I would add -- and the
users. My tacit implication is that there is a need for one other position, a
metaposition -- the position of the pre-designer. Actually, this is the
metadesign realm and the real metadesigner is the pre-designer or design
programmer. I will name it openly as the position of the social designer. In
this context I mean not the social designer working with social matter like
the designers of services, events, policies, strategies, wars or what ever. I
mean the social designers who design the functional blueprint of the artifact
(the design program).
There is not yet a pre-design research society
and that's why I still keep on this list. And I haven't found yet a listproc
of social designers working on material environment. (If you know, let me
know!)
Regards,
Lubomir
