Growing
up my parents introduced me to the power of design, although they
called it “being resourceful.” A household appliance or piece of
clothing wasn't functioning the way they wanted, so they’d re-designed
it to suit their needs. My mom taught me to sew and I’d find little
things that needed a custom bag to protect it, or sew extra pockets into
my clothes. In the wood shop my dad taught me to use power tools to
make boxes and stools. Later, as a sailor, I carved pieces of wood to
protect my rigging knife, and made canvas buckets to haul tools up the
mast. My parents taught me to literally make solutions to the problems that I faced. Yes, this is "being resourceful." And I later realized that it is also called design.
As
a young adult, however, I saw “design” as something frivolous: shiny
products that oozed cool and were made by skilled industrial designers
and glamorized by creative marketers. These beautifully designed objects
-- smartphones, cars, kitchen knives, bags, artisanal coffee --
surround Americans everyday. They make our world beautiful and seemingly
unblemished.
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| Walkway at SFO airport |
In 2010 I saw Emily Pilloton's TED talk
about using design to change people’s lives. Pilloton worked in rural
North Carolina with high school students. She used design principles to
engage her students in finding solutions to problems that ailed their
communities. They weren’t just building a farmer's market, they were
creating meaningful employment for their neighbors and families.
Pilloton’s
talk showed me a new side of design. Design is a tool, and like all
tools it can be used for meaningful things or frivolous things. Pilloton
introduced me to a movement that takes industrial design,
anthropological study of human needs, and marketing finesse to effect
deep change and for people all over the world.
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteGreat start to an interesting thread. i love the way you kicked it off rooting design in your own practical experience. Design - after all - is a solution to a need. I agree, some designers seem to have lost sight of this.
I live in a family of designers (husband = architect; oldest daughter = RISD trained furniture designer) and I am constantly reminded by watching them work, that good design is mostly about creating creative and effective solutions to problems.
Now I'm going to go watch the Ted Talk you named. Sounds great
I connected to this blog because I can relate to your experiences. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family where everything is catered around creative ways to solve challenges. As a child I spent hours and days designing and building houses, puppet theaters or tree-houses, but once they were built, I never played with them. I just loved the design and building process. As a sailor I have also been forced to fix broken things in very creative ways - jerry-rigging it - to keep things moving. You have to finish the race... right?
ReplyDeleteDesign is such an important piece of everything we do and create. We can use the best materials and the most experienced people to build something, but if it is not designed correctly, it will not work. At lest not to its fullest capacity. The same rule applies to managing a project for example. Unless the project is designed and organized right, it will struggle no matter who is on the team.
The LPD courses we are taking as a part of this MBA is another great example of how design can change peoples lives. We are learning how to design a space and how to design individual tools and behaviors that will make us more efficient and happier in all aspects of our lives.
-AZ