Dear Mauricio,
Politicians become designers when they are elected. Once elected or appointed as legislators, executives, members of the judiciary, or members of the civil service, they are designers in the sense that Herbert Simon defines design: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”
Klaus Krippendorff points to the real challenge. When elected politicians design, they design for complex multiple constituencies. This is not the simple case of designing a preferred situation where the designer works for a single client. It involves designing toward ethical ends and good outcomes for all stakeholders. The entire problem of the lobby system or the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address is that small groups of the wealthy and powerful gain control over the process of design for public good, turning it instead to private ends.
There are, nevertheless, many examples of successful design for public good. Organizations such as Policy Lab work on massive design projects for the UN. The World Bank now works with design. When we speak of politicians as designers, we must also speak of those who design on behalf of political leaders with agency distributed among the politicians and those whom they employ and charge with execution.
The current issue of the Journal of Design, Business, and Society features an in-depth interview with Mitchell Sipus - Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Obama White House. Editor-in-Chief Gjoko Muratovksi describes the interview this way: “Sipus is an interdisciplinary designer and urban planner who works with complex socio-technical systems and has a particular interest in reconstruction of cities affected by future wars. Prior to joining the Obama administration as a Presidential Innovation Fellow, Sipus worked in some of the world's most challenging environments and most terrifying war zones from Afghanistan to Somalia. In the ‘Tour of Duty’ interview we will be discussing his background and experience, and why he has chosen to follow such a challenging career path. Also, we will discuss about what does it take for a designer to operate in this context and how does it look to work as an innovator at the highest levels of government. In the lead up to the interview, I will also summarize the Presidential Innovation Fellows program; how it all came about; why the US government is seeking innovators to work with politicians; and how this program is planned to evolve in the post-Obama years.”
Those who want to learn more about Sipus and his work can also visit his web sites:
http://www.mitchellsipus.com
http://www.sipusdesign.com
Another example is Denmark’s MindLab:
http://mind-lab.dk/en/
The Helsinki Design Lab, now closed, is a great example that left a web site behind documenting all their projects. You can still download their books and projects:
http://www.helsinkidesignlab.org
Sabine Junginger and Jurgen Faust recently edited an excellent book from Bloomsbury titled Designing Business and Management.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Designing-Business-Management-Sabine-Junginger/0857856243
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Business-Management-Sabine-Junginger/dp/0857856243
I wrote a chapter for the book examining “3,000 Years of Designing Business and Management.” One key point is the fact that the public organizations and social structures that politicians design constitute some of the earliest records of purposeful human design to change existing situations into preferred ones. This has also been the focus of work by pioneering scholars. Mary Parker Follett was one of these. Her first major book was an 1896 study on the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Her second major book was the 1918 classic, The New State: Group Organization, the Solution for Popular Government. Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom is a more recent example of this work with her studies on how to organize the commons.
I have posted my chapter in this book to my Academia page at
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
The chapter contains an extensive bibliography for those who want to learn more on politicians as designers in the extended sense. Here is the first paragraph:
—snip—
Designing businesses is, in essence, designing human organizations to produce the systems, services, and products. The idea that design firms such as IDEO, Nielsen Norman, and the Policy Lab are addressing these problems from a design perspective anchored in the four orders of design is new. Management consultants and management experts are now working from the design thinking perspective. This is also new. Organization design is not new. While organization design as a specific term in management dates back to the 1940s, the idea of organization design is far older. The purposeful design of organizations for human purposes is as old as the first groups of people who organized governments and governance based on customary law and local versions of black-letter law. The first writings on organization theory are embedded in documents that we think of as philosophy, religion, or political science. This is in part because early writings on the organization and conduct of life in all its aspects were framed in a general wisdom literature. It is also because many early thinkers explicitly believed that it was impossible to separate out the different parts of life and human experience.
—snip—
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
--
Mauricio Mejia wrote:
—snip—
... candidates and seen them as designers. … traditional designer that relies on intuition to make decisions. … systemic designer that collaborates with all stakeholders to negotiate a participatory outcome.
It seems to me that both approaches are noble-minded and look for the best
for the users (citizens).
—snip—
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