A Review: Change By Design (Part 1)

Well It must be something in the water, or perhaps the words because I have continued reading the works of Tim Brown.  This time it is the first few chapters from Change By Design.  The book is a look into Brown's thoughts on how design is in fact more than just design.  As he spoke about in his article I mentioned yesterday, the field is becoming increasingly diverse, and requires both expansion and integration into more areas than ever.  As this is the case, I believe I not only agree with the sentiment, but also believe the word "design" is becoming a social misnomer.

A parallel example would be the understanding of the word "film."  Many people still refer to movies and cinema as films.  However, they do not actually contain film, but are rather digital counterparts.  Yet society still understands the concept of what the word film means.  I feel this relates both directly and inversely with the word design as people tend to understand a basic definition of the term.  This however blinds them to the concept of the word having broader meaning and applications than they believe.  Thus the inverse relationship.

Brown believes design has a place in most every field, and that it should be utilized to help create new, less constrictive means of approaching tasks within several fields.  He does caution it's implementation not to become too sweeping, as some constraints are required for maintaining constructive frameworks, but could very easily be used to break the barriers of negative constraints on the workforce.  Brown believes this will lead to a more constructive approach of design thinking which allows for businesses to understand that problem solving is more social than spacial.  Thus creating more societal connections and getting more people involved to reach a broader and more diverse group.

This change to the system could allow for a sort of new chemical reaction to occur, which could allow for more definitive and usable ideas to be followed through upon.  But in order to achieve this idea, companies must allow for a co-mingling of their workforce in constructive environments.  He speaks to design teams being segregated from other employees who are "the 9 to 5'ers" and how this fragmentation of a company leads to stagnation in it's creative approaches.

Brown mentions this could be prevented by implementing project rooms like those at IDEO to more industries.  At first I was confused given his a fore mentioned dislike of segregating thinkers from one another, but it all came together when he mentioned that the people were not forced into these areas, but rather were capable of using them with anyone, and constantly be surrounded by others in similar environments working towards any number of global or local issues.  This mixture of people and ideas, thoughts and viewpoints allows for new chemical reactions to occur between people and new solutions to be conceived.

It brings everything to a full circle.  The focus and need for design thinking to be a social element, rather than a hard science approach is important.  Also important is the understanding that the word design means so much more than the aesthetic values an object may have, but rather the effects every element related to the object has upon it.  Like viewing it as if it were the center of a large bubble diagram.  I feel like the final words of the first chapter explains his approach perfectly.

"Design is now too important to be left to Designers."