Choose Design

Design is often something we turn to after we’ve solved the big problems - as if it is comfort food. It is difficult to exaggerate just how far that view misses the point. And it is difficult to underestimate the opportunities we miss, and the resources we potentially squander, by not exploiting what design can offer us.

First of all, design is a unique tool for solving big problems. It is what we should bring to the table at the start. Why? Because design helps us reframe questions as well as reimagine answers. Design is not just a drawing: it is an approach, a tool, a way of looking at the world and making it different. To borrow an epithet of scorn from sustainability, it is not ‘designer bling’.

We can choose how to define design. Certainly, it can be seen as representation or decoration - or it can be seen as ‘the purpose or planning that exists behind an action or object’. I choose the latter.

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The Wind in our Sails

One argument put forward against user engagement and regular consultation is – we don’t want to risk a change in direction. It seems the preferred option is to travel hopefully and then deal with any major course corrections at crunch meetings marked on the project manager’s gant chart as points of no return. This is hard to do when the only two choices are – meet the right brief or deliver the wrong project.

The alternative is to make continous small corrections depending on the surrounding conditions – to get to where you want to go in the best way you can. In the yachting world this is called ‘Sail Trimming’ - the art of adjusting your sails to make the best use of the wind in moving your boat forward.

So, when the wind begins to change, we need to react - quickly. If we want to arrive safely in the right harbour then we need to be realistic about how we work with the changing elements rather than against them.

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Upgrade Now

'It is strongly recommended that you upgrade Firefox as soon as possible' is the message that invariably interrupts me sending an important e-mail. I press the 'not now' button and finish what I'm doing. Later I worry: perhaps strongly recommended is code for 'or else suffer catastrophic consequences'.

I am sure that it is inconceivable to the software designers that I do not immediately follow their instructions. Just as it is inconceivable to some architects that the users of their buildings don't take full advantage of their design potential - they refuse to upgrade. But sometimes we are all preoccupied with life's other priorities, or just distrustful.

Upgrades are not a no-brainer. We first of all need to be convinced that we need an upgrade. And we will - when we have the focus, the trust, and the desire. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that you upgrade Design as soon as possible.

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Design Haiku

A haiku is a Japanese poetic form of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. It aspires to translate, within a very intense structure, lived moments into life changing insights. Constraints are not always a bad thing.

There is a saying in management consultancy - every challenge is an opportunity, but some opportunities are insurmountable. The world is full of great buildings which were shaped by the need to surmount insurmountable difficulties. Design provides us with a tool not just for overcoming constraints, but for befriending them – using them as catalysts for innovation and creativity.

World class buildings, like world class poems, happen when constraints and imagination effortlessly come together - design haiku for the future.

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A Room with a Kettle

Every building has a threshold – a point at which something starts or ceases to happen. Crossing that threshold is not always easy. Some buildings just seem too difficult to enter: they carry meanings and associations best avoided.

It is an obvious point that to deliver wider educational services we need people to willingly cross the threshold – ideally with hope rather than apprehension in their hearts. Well designed buildings make you want to enter them. They create a place you want to be

At a recent seminar by the Open University I heard someone describe their preferred place to encourage and nurture wider participation in learning as a room with a kettle. That sounds like a safe place. It sounds like a place you would enter.

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