Transformation Design
Alex just pointed out that the Design Council’s RED group is planning to release a new publication in April about something they’re calling transformation design.
From reading the excerpt (available via the previous link), what it seems to be doing is codifying generalism:
So what is transformation design?
We recognise that design needs another discipline like a hole in the head. However we’re calling Transformation Design a discipline because we think it is important that it stands out as a particular approach, demanding a particular set of skills and methods and a particular context of application.
Obviously it is about a design approach operating at a strategic level. But rather than calling it a branch of strategic design, or a specialism, we would rather it be viewed as a generalism.
What I find interesting about transformation design is the idea that designers are moving up the food chain. I originally became interested in design when I was a technical writer because I was tired of essentially apologizing for bad design. I wanted to move into a space where I could make an impact and have more control over the final product. And it would seem that designers, when faced with some of these BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals—terminology from Built to Last) are questioning the fundamental assumptions in place which affect these situations. So if you are going to redesign a hospital, should you in fact be looking at the entire health care system? In other words, what is the brief, really? Does it exist upstream of the particular context you’ve been provided?
Up to half of the project timeline may be given over to problem definition and creating the right brief to answer.
I’ve been encountering a similar situation with my thesis, obviously, as I’ve been struggling to figure out what exactly I want to do. Given the huge arena of “sustainability,” how do I define a workable and meaningful brief?
I don’t have any formalized process, but one component is definitely learning as much as possible about the problem and its context. What are people saying? And more importantly, what aren’t they saying? What’s missing? Are there any strange and crazy ideas which aren’t mentioned or might have been overlooked? What can I take from other fields and apply to this particular problem? What past experiences can I draw upon to address this situation? These are some of the powers of the generalist.
And I’m also a firm believer in systems thinking:
These projects feel very different to the traditional design project. They’re about systems and social issues, and demand a level of ‘systems thinking’ – an ability to consider an issue holistically rather than reductively, understand relationships as well as components and to synthesize complex sets of information and constraints in order to frame the problem.
I always tend to make things more complicated for myself that sometimes seems necessary, but that’s because I tend to think beyond the present circumstances or context, both spatially and temporally. By this I mean looking across disciplines while also looking into the future or back into the past.
I can’t help but paraphrase from The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at this point: western culture tends to think of itself as facing the future with our backs to the past, but the ancient Greeks saw themselves as facing the past while the future snuck up on them from behind. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective, but looking at the past or present for clues to the future, while retaining the ability to project and shape an ideal outcome, is a way of grounding this kind of speculative design into reality.
The reality of now will inevitably affect the future: our cars use oil and gasoline, so the infrastructure and habits and so forth associated with this reality must play a part in any future scenario. And the more I think about this aspect of design, the more I realize the importance of retaining a sense of optimism. Especially considering the field I’m involving myself in with this thesis, where all signs point to the future as rather grim.
This post is a little longer than I originally intended. I’m looking forward to reading the final publication in April. From what I’ve read so far, transformation design more closely defines my world-view than other disciplines, including currently accepted definitions of interaction design. But that’s my gut instinct talking. More likely, interaction design is a subset of transformation design. Discuss.