On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 1:37 AM,
​ this was sent to all of us
:

> in light of the many severe important and, for many, life threatening
> problems humanity is facing today do designers really have nothing better
> to do than designing baby diapers with sensors that tell parents when they
> need changing?
>

​Personally, having diapers that would tell parents that their baby's
diapers need changing might be useful  In today's modern world, neither
parent is a full-time baby-minder and few households can afford (or have
the desire to) have a full-time nanny. Having a diaper send a signal to a
smartphone may sound horrible to some of you, but reassuring to the parents
-- and probably to the baby.

​Design is no different than most other professions.

Should Journalists expose the evils of the world in an attempt to get them
remedied? Yes. Should Journalists report on the Children's soccer league?
Yes.

Every profession can contribute to a better world, but oftentimes that
comes about in small ways.

Should designers solve the world's problems? Nonsense: no single field can
do that.  Should they work on these problems? If possible, but it isn't
always possible.

Most people have to earn a living. I see nothing wrong with making a better
coffee maker, a better cooking appliance, a better ornament or jewelry.

I also try to save lives by designing better relationships between
automation and people, especially in aviation and automobiles. I also try
to save lives -- and make existing lives more comfortable through our
research and implementations in healthcare.

But I am also working with a client to improve home lighting systems,
designing better switches and better wireless connectivity to the
controlling unit. Does his sound worthwhile? Well, it will eliminate a lot
of unnecessary copper wiring. That's good for the environment, right?  This
will reduce the cost of building a home and make it a lot easier to change
the location of switches at any time. It might also put people
(electricians) out of work. That's bad, right? Should I be working on this
project? Who has the right to decide?

I also teach how to make signs more legible, to put up better maps across
campus (here, the problem is not the skills of the university's map makers
-- it is financial, convincing the administration to give those people a
sufficient budget).

Designers -- and all professionals -- work in an ecosystem: they cannot put
ideas into practice by themselves. Few work in a place that has the
resources and funding to make major changes in the world.

So most of us must deal with the problems as they come to us. Most are
small. Many are unimportant, but through design can at least mitigate some
existing problem.

And most of us have to do what our clients or employers ask us to do. Can
we change their minds? Not without changing a lot of other factors.

Some things we do will be ecologically bad, some ecologically sensitive and
positive. Is it bad to do something that is ecologically bad?

(Do I need that extra light above my keyboard, a light that was
manufactured in a plant that might have burned coal, that the metal
ion the stand might have been in an ecologically unsound factory (how would
I know), and that the chemicals in the LED bulb might have had bad residue
that had to be disposed of?  And the light itself uses energy, even an LED
light, and that energy comes from some generating plant far away. What kind
of energy did it use? Coal? Oil? Hydroelectric (which is the most dangerous
in terms of deaths because of dam failures)?

Everything in life is a tradeoff.

Do not take umbrage at those who make tradeoff decisions that you would not
prefer. After all, few of us can make a difference: to make a difference
requires time, energy, money, and a group of like-minded individuals who
will try to work to change the system. A job that can take decades.  This
doesn't mean it isn't important. It does mean that we should not assume
that every single person on earth will be able to join the movement.

Don

Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/  www.jnd.org  <http://www.jnd.org/>


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