Everyday thinking.
The arrogance of designers, and their claim as being good at problem solving
Problem solving is such a generic skill. It’s one of the basic attributes of intelligence, and even pulp have basic problem solving skills.
Each profession has problems to solve, designers too. They each do that with their own specialized knowledge and skills. Why designers would be uniquely positioned to solve problems generically outside of their area of expertise?
Why claim a unique capacity to take on a wider perspective?
Especially to tackle wicked problems.
I would argue for the need to have specialists from a large number of disciplines: tech, economy and business (these are you different things) but also and especially psychologist, sociologist, historian, geographer, and philosopher. I almost forgot lawyer and politician too.
Are designers particularly well positioned to act as facilitator in this process?
Maybe, maybe not. Or rather, some would, some wouldn’t.
Those who wouldn’t are the designers that say, I like to work alone, I get a brief, good discussion, and then leave and work by myself in my cave, for an undefined amount of time, and come back to you with my solution.
Why it wouldn’t work? Because no individual can in any amount of time understand, absorb and make theirs the issues, constraints and perspectives of each of these disciplines.
Instead, what’s needed is someone able to bridge the differences between all? Design might be part of the answer, but for this role, I would rather hire a diplomat or a mediator. Those people are trained to reach consensus within parties with widely different points of view.
Designers might have on the job training, but that’s definitely not their strongest suit. They might not be all aware of this, but they are usually seen as extremely arrogant people outside of design circles. Deserved or not, such a reputation is a serious impediment when working within a team.
Another aspect of the problem solving skill claim designers have is that their design toolkit could somehow be universal. Design methods could solve any problem you throw at them… which is obviously not true. They can help solve a specific class of problems such as creating a product, an interface, a service, a building. This could be extended to designing workflow, processes and even human experiences like in entertainment industry, services, HR.
But not all world problems admit a design solution. Some require fundamental research, or large scale negotiations,
Wicked problems are part of the later category. There is no design solution to solve these problems, no combination of new products, services workflow or experience can solved them. They are far too multi-dimensional.
They require behavior, cultural changes, political,
In the end, maybe the problem lies in the way we define design.
Design applies to so much that it starts meaning nothing.
Designers laugh when other professions say they are doing some designing work, even though they do create software, products, services, interfaces, processes, courses, etc.
But then, they want to insert themselves in all these domains.
You can see this shift through the change in job titles: graphic designer, visual designer, UI designer, UX designer.
I explain this by a struggle to stay relevant: as technology makes it easier and easier for non-designers to do passable, good enough graphics and visuals, designers have to move on and claim to have specific skills that apply to more and more domains, as print and web design are saturated.
On an even deeper level, it means that creativity can’t be a skill by itself. To really be creative, you actually need deep expertise in your field. This takes me back to the fallacies of teaching only skills in school. First, and of course, skills can’t be acquired in a void. You need knowledge for them to leave. Yes, this knowledge might be not relevant in 20 or 10 years from now. But in order to assert that, in order to go beyond that knowledge, you need to master it first at least until another paradigm replaces it. Otherwise, you just can’t think. You can’t hone skills without knowledge, you can’t perfect knowledge with no basis to build on.
It is revealing that a recent study show that the most creative are actually older people. We all suffer from a sample / representation bias, where precoce genius such as Mozart are put forward, and might even tend to think that you won’t do any good in your life if you haven’t created something by the time you’re 30.
My take is that the most worthy inventions and discoveries were done in later years, and that it takes all those years to actually prepare, accumulate knowledge, hone your reasoning skills, sharpen your critical mind, and ultimately attempt a synthesis.
Obviously, this reflects my path and my personal hope. It is a well-documented bias, and the symptom of a healthy mind, to view positively what is in fact nothing but the harsh reality.
Rendez-vous in 40 years from now, if I’m still there, to see who is right.
———–
Generalizing this insight: language, word is used more and more vaguely, inappropriately.
Exponential growth of media and contents, especially user-generated content, with few if any oversight or critical thinking nor feedback, mean that one word meaning is constantly shifting, and most of the time broadening.
Example: use of A/B testing, metrics and measurements, experiment and testing
Less and less critical thinking skills, especially rigor in the use of words, and the need to define their meaning before starting to reason. Skills which are taught in philosophy mostly, or at least when writing essays at uni level. Not much in maths, or computer science I guess.
Consequence: fairly cheap/ superficial reflection and analysis. Greater risk of misunderstanding, because the meaning of words and concepts differ from one person to the other, and nobody remember the need to establish common sense, literally; shared meaning of concepts and ideas.
Another example would be free speech, which could be translated in French by “libre parole”. A phrase many think means that you can say / speak anything you want. French phrase is actually “liberte d’expression”, “freedom of expression” closely related to “freedom of opinion, and religion”. The difference is a major one. It means you can express your opinion. But as all freedoms, there are limits. My freedom stops where the freedom of others start.
You’re free to move however and wherever you want, as long as you don’t hurt anybody, which would limit their freedom.
Same is true for freedom of speech: you can express any opinion you have, as long as your speech doesn’t have for consequences to limit the capacity of anyone to speak themselves.
Speech can be a vehicle for opinions and ideas, it can be an act in itself (performative): it’s in the later form that the risk of limiting the right to free speech of other is the greatest.
To understand this notion, we need to get back to the origin of free speech, which was the possibility of having dissenting ideas in a very intolerant political and religious climate (XVII).
Free speech was to guarantee that everyone’s opinion could be heard. Nothing is more in contradiction of free speech that armies of trolls harassing one person and forcing them into silence. The mob pressure achieves exactly what the monarchs and religious authorities were trying: silence dissenting voices.
Insults, threats are not opinion. They are actions, words used in a performative way. As such they are not entitled to the protection of freedom of expression / opinion. They are the opposite.