Hello everybody. Thanks Ken for the opportunity you have given me to participate as commentator on this very interesting debate. I appreciate the initiative of the conference method, as for us in developing countries it is almost impossible to physically attend this kind of events.

I would like to comment on Venkatesh’s paper, though I will do it from a different perspective to the one that might be expected. As a Colombian designer living and working in Cali, one of the three most important cities in this country, I have to start somewhere else. My perspective is as well fed by the experience I had for almost 5 years, to create, set up, inaugurate, direct, teach, etc., a new Industrial Design program at Icesi University, here in Cali. The first in the history of this very industrial city, the first in Colombia with an emphasis on design management, and an alien to the culture that the university had exhibited for 20 years since it’s creation.

My comments will focus around the idea that design education may need to have different characteristics and objectives depending on the context in which most of the future professionals will act. Despite globalization.

And as much as this might be unapplicable in Europe or the USA, it is an issue in a country like mine, where design students will stay in their localities to work in them. And it is relevant if we believe the industrial needs of a country like Colombia are different from the industrial needs of a country like France, to name any other country.

Development is at different stages in different countries. Business organizations are too.

At present I am a member of the Innovation Advisory Group for the Government of the Valle del Cauca, the state where Cali is located. It seems I am all alone in trying to raise the issue that, as Venkatesh says, “the decisions and behaviors of many companies are going (should go) beyond the techno-economic rationality paradigm which for a long time has dominated the economic discourse.” This is being overcome in developed countries at various levels, but here, not many have even noticed the fact, much less do we encounter industrialists who can understand the concept of innovation. Industries are thinking of overcoming technological problems, because they are so far behind the technologies found in USA, Europe or Asia. They are following the same steps those countries followed at some point in their histories. In the meantime, our industries  end up with no resources to invest in anything else, much less, in a “risky unknown activity” like design.

Venkatesh says: “Design is not viewed as a way to adapt to customer
needs but as an expression of a visionary outcome. “

Vision!! This is so much lacking in our enterprises!

It has proved quite impossible to design, when our clients don’t even have a vision or a clear company strategy to begin with; this is if we want design and innovation to be on-going activities in companies. If we design just once something that has an attractive superfluous style, and it sells like crazy this year, it doesn’t mean the manufacturing company is already innovative or that it has a culture of innovation.

This is specially the case with micro, small and medium enterprises (which account for the majority in Colombia). It’s a fact that these small companies, as much as they may finally understand the issue and as much as they might even want to invest in design, they just don’t have the resources. And we designers, we need to create our own successful consulting businesses as well and get a fair pay.

Venkatesh says: “From the customer's point of view design becomes a matter of experience. The challenge facing companies is how to translate their states-of-mind
into meaningful customer experiences.”

Customers here in Colombia are still praying to get basic needs covered. Only a few people is expecting products that generate experiences and that create emotions. So companies are in a way being very comfortable, and users are not very demanding. The main issue is still price. Still, ironically, you see that in the long run, the poor people pay more for many consumer products. They buy them in tiendas (small corner shops, as opposed to hypermarkets): one bit of shampoo, one bit of oil, one cup of rice, a piece of soap, and so on; whatever they need for the day. In tiendas you can find many of these products in their own small packaging (produced by multinationals); the packaging ends up costing more than the product itself. And poor people end up paying for it; but they couldn’t buy it any other way, as they earn a small amount of pesos each day. It’s a kind of credit if you like. In other cases, the tiendas just sell the product, and the customer brings the container If needed.

The context of Design education in Colombia

The first Industrial Design program in Colombia was inaugurated 30 years ago. Today, we have approximately 16 programs throughout the country. Five are located in the capital, Bogotá, and together they graduate many students each semester (maybe something between 150 and 200). Industrial Design education was brought here by Germans, and their model was imposed. Nonetheless, you can tell nowadays, that something has not been working right for 30 years. With so many graduates, it should be that every industry in Bogotá would be working with designers, designing. But instead, designers are mostly unemployed, underpaid, misunderstood, or working on something else (and many are working in design education, where you CAN find a job; it seems the biggest business around design in Colombia, is design education).

In the context of our debate, it is important to look at the fact that there are developing countries. Colombian designers may need to be good at making our enterprises successful, but designers all over the world need to be good at creating products for everyone: the rich and the poor. And in both cases, to imbue those products with the same qualities; achieving a balance between costs and “good experience products”. Why do the cheap products have to be bad or ugly? EVERYONE has the right to good designed products. Poor people need more than just their basic needs covered, we ought to make a leap and not wait until development comes our way: we ought to be creative.

Despite and because of the whole context described above, I am creating my own Strategic Design & Innovation consultancy in Cali. Because regardless of the fact that most of the people in Colombia live under the line of poverty, there is still a good number of people who can buy a few better things, produced by big companies. I would also like to create evidence for those non-believers, and for non-demanding users, that products can be better at a good price or at the same price; I also need to make money for a living and I can’t make money helping small companies who can’t pay for design services.

But I’m still not happy enough. My dream is to win the lottery and set up a design research and consultancy not-for-profit organization to work for micro, small and medium enterprises in the region where I live (to start with, as a laboratory). This way, I believe, so many resources that we do have, will be used in much more effective ways. Of course all the other aid these companies receive in order to make their production systems more effective would still be working towards that objective, but mainly on the technological side. Design, strategic design, and innovation permeated throughout these companies, should make them so much more competitive, so much better. If this happens, my region will be a wealthier region; there’ll be less unemployment, less underpayment, less poverty. And, guess what: more consumption. I really do believe design and innovation can make a difference to our economy. But… there are no public or private entities that will make donations towards this “extravagant”, unproven and expensive initiative, and I seem to be far from winning the lottery!

Under globalization, our local designers need to be really good at tackling the needs of our local industries. And every designer of the world needs to be able to design good products for every kind of public.

For Christena:

I feel so identified with your words, I feel as if I really would like to meet you. It’s a shame I didn’t know about you last June when I visited Chicago.

When I set up the design school here in Cali, I did focus much on the factors you expose. I guess my management was okay, but I also guess sometimes some unknown powerful external forces get together to make things happen in a certain way: We ended up with an incredibly passionate, cohesive and productive group of work. Let me tell you first that here in Colombia, to work as a university teacher you have to accept that you won’t earn that much money; much less if you teach in an hourly basis: At undergraduate level, if you have a masters degree, like I have, you can get paid around 8 US dollars per hour. And don’t expect to get paid any extras for your research time, even if you are asked to create a new course content. So you find many people here are teachers for the mere passion of teaching. On the other hand, a school will have a very small amount of full time teachers.

And those who make a living on teaching on hourly basis teach so many hours in so many universities, you just don’t understand how they ever get to renew the contents of their classes. But if they don’t do all those hours, you can’t expect them to have a decent life.

Sometime I had this conversation with an English academic, and he was telling me how the money for research was being lost in his design school in England, because no one wanted to take on the activities. I was as surprised as I could ever be: God how I wished he could transfer that money to my school in Colombia!!!

In an informal way, here at Icesi University we were doing so much research you can’t imagine. We had to make the design course a good one, we were trying to give it a design management profile (something totally new in this country), it was the first industrial design course ever in this industrial city, but we could not just dedicate a year or two, and we had no money either, to do any research. So as we say here, we had to work with our nails… night and day.

And so I wonder if there’s any difference in the attitude towards teaching, and for this matter, in teaching design, if you were born and are located within a low-resource area, or within a rich and resourceful area. Do we have different mindsets?