Difficult to start a review of a course if the host of the course is someone who you highly admire. So, I am sure, my review will be biased. It's best to watch the course yourself.
Overall, the course Design for the 21st century isn’t complex and easy to consume (I guess, even on the go). You’ll learn why the application of human-centered design practices helps to solve complex global challenges.
Though I enjoyed many background stories from Don, I assume that someone who isn’t such a fanboy as myself, could be happy reading the topic overview here and have a 70% summary of the whole course. But anyhow, I would recommend anyone to watch it. For people interested in an overall video, there’s also a talk from Don on youtube.
The main trouble with design schools seems to be that they teach too much design and not enough about the ecological, social, economic, and political environment in which design takes place. It is impossible to teach anything in vacuo, least of all in a field as deeply involved with man’s basic needs as we have seen design to be. To the problem of the dichotomy between the real world and the world of the school, there can be, understandably, many different answers.”
Victor Papanek, Design for the real world.
The future of design education
To initiate my review of the course, I commence by providing a concise overview of a paper authored by Don Norman and Michael Meyer in Spring 2020, which was published in the She Ji journal. The whole issue was about design education and Don contributed one chapter on “Changing Design Education for the 21st Century”.
One central element of the paper is that today’s community of design educators need a new transformational spirit to modify design pedagogy to form a new 21st century design curriculum. There are too many challenges, real world challenges, that could use the skillset of designers, but Design education is a complex field as there are numerous specialized disciplines and all are changing continually.
As proposed by Ken Friedman, there are eleven challenges for design education divided into four main groups that define the future of design:
- Performance Challenges
- Systemic Challenges,
- Contextual Challenges
- and Global Challenges.
For too long, discussions about design have focused on artifacts rather than scientific publications. While some disciplines have benefited from contributions from other academic fields, others continue to fixate on artifacts. Imagine what UX Design would be without the valuable insights from cognitive and behavioral sciences!
The value of design for companies also increased a lot. (Here’s a chart you might want to use in your presentation) Techniques like Design Thinking got popular, but also got abused or misunderstood by people applying these principles.
In the paper the origins of our design education and some evaluation/overview of current design studies, mainly in the U.S. get listed. The balance between academia and practice is one major struggle design education is facing now. There are many proposals in the paper, on curriculums, on degrees and on common skills for all designers. These skills relate to the challenges mentioned above.
“Today’s designers are required to use technologies that continue to evolve. They must gain a deeper understanding of social issues, human behavior, and modern business models. They must meet new ethical challenges that go along with an expansion into different global territories with different sustainability issues, different cultures, and different value systems.”
from the outline of the course
Common skills of designers
The most common theme in design is a focus on people, solving the right problems, prototyping, and iterating. The process of failing and learning is in the DNA of all designers, as is sketching as a means of thinking and communicating ideas to others. Finally, there is the ability to see the world through the user's eyes and the willingness to question everything.
Overall, the way designers tackle problems is different from other disciplines. As Don focuses on HCD, human-centered design, he outlines the special role of designers, who also consider people and society when working on a project.
As a consequence of this paper and the essential role of HCD, Don shares the course "Design for the 21st century" with us. I assume he also wants to motivate each one of the participants to contribute to the future of design education.
Review of the course Design for the 21st Century with Don Norman
Learning goals
- How designers can improve the world
- How you can apply human-centered design insights and processes when you aim to solve complex global problems
- Which skills a designer needs in the 21st century and what you can do to make a difference in the world.
HCD – human-centered Design
Above all you'll learn in the course about HCD, Human-centered design or if you wish humanity-centered design, which extends the frame even further. For me personally, I liked the way Don explained the terms and the transformations of terms over time. As you as an experienced designer know, Don also coined the term User Experience once. Nowadays, Don sees a shift from user centered, towards human-centered design.
Core attributes of human-centered design:
- People-centered:
Focus on people and their context in order to create things that are appropriate for them. - Understand and solve the right problems — the root problems:
Understand and solve the right problem, the root causes, the underlying fundamental issues. The symptoms will just keep coming back if we don't! - Everything is a system:
Think of everything as a system of interconnected parts. - Small and simple interventions:
Do iterative work and don't rush to a solution. Try small, simple interventions and learn from them one by one, and slowly your results will get bigger and better. We must continually prototype, test and refine our proposals to make sure that our small solutions truly meet the needs of the people we focus on.
Lost in a system crisis?
(note: this doesn’t relate directly to the contents of the course!)
If you ever went down the road into a little meaning crisis because you felt your designer job sucked and there must be more meaningful ways of following your profession, you might have ended up finding many different terms, such as
- environmental-centered design or planet-centric design, including interesting thoughts on a sustainable business canvas, the holistic design toolkit, the actant mapping canvas or various ideas around non-human personas.
- You might have heard of the humane by design guide focusing on inclusion, ethics and well-being or the concept of wellbeing in general, I already mentioned in my article on rebound effects in UX-Design.
What is so lovely about Don explaining complex topics is that he uses simple words, and he encourages everyone to also do it that way. So after listening to his explanations, it gets obvious it doesn’t matter what the name of any tool or practice is; it’s about the application of the tools. No matter if it’s humanity-centered, environment-centered, or whatever. Improving the world as a designer needs some skills Human-Centered Design has in its tool belt. Terms will evolve further in the future, but it's not important to improve the terms. It's more important to start acting.
Co-Design over experts – designers as facilitators of community-driven projects
Designers focus on the people and this is why designers are important to overcome old structures. Experts who don’t understand the people will fail, they are ignorant. It’s not the time anymore to apply western thinking to other places. The time of this colonialism is over. It's about listening to the local people and applying their insights.
“Local people ought to be the leaders inside the design process.”
Don Norman
As Don shares in his thinking for the future of education, Design is a discipline that is able to bring together multiple disciplines to overcome problems. In the course Don refers to the 17 sustainable development goals of the UN. Design as a field of synthesis is able to find problems, understand the systems, understand the people who are affected and bring together the right people and experts.
System-like thinking is a core ability.
The world around us works in systems. The human mind is not designed to understand complex systems, such as climate change. Action and reaction are easy to understand if there’s not much time in between. Speaking about sociotechnical systems, such as climate change, we need to understand the larger picture.
By involving people who are closest to those challenges, it will get easier to map the problem. (Mapping, such as Experience mapping, is an easy way to display a more complex system).
As designers have sketching skills and learn from failure and feedback, they are good in understanding the system, as all iterations deepen their understanding of the overall system to get closer to the root causes.
It’s also the skill of questioning that is urgently needed to understand the real problem. To identify these root causes, the 5 Why's method comes in handy (simply ask as many why's as needed to get to the core). There are also some other concepts, such as “muddling” that will be beneficial. Watch the course yourself, if it sounds interesting to you.
The call for generalists
The final chapter in the course is about the design skills you will need to make a difference. As shown in my headline, it’s more about being a generalist and about understanding the surrounding systems to think big. As I am a designer for more than 20 years now, the chapter didn’t feel new and there were many thoughts I could recall, especially for more junior designers or designers who are not trained in selling their ideas.
Often designers get the way they try to sell their idea or design wrong. They use their domain of words instead of the arguments and words their target audience uses. Such as the business perspective to show how much value or money the idea will create. I experienced it being a creative director at one of the biggest network agencies in the world. I assume I got promoted into this position as I could translate the language of other creatives towards the argument’s others needed. My artificial design skills are just OK, I would say.
In this chapter, Don brings back the focus to his earlier work on design education. He envisions a more comprehensive approach to education in general. While maintaining traditional design education, it's important for designers to develop a broader set of skills to comprehend the world and its interconnected systems.
While I initially thought I couldn't learn anything new myself, the final chapter completely captivated me. Don's words rekindled my belief in being a designer, reminding me that it is my true calling.
In my opinion, numerous aspects of our society, including the various systems that surround us, are defined by a single term. For instance, there is a specific term that describes one's occupation, as well as a singular term used to denote a particular design method.
I never felt good about these terms. People imply certain tasks and jobs to certain terms. Looking at my own expertise page, you will notice, that I didn’t call myself a designer, but a kind of swiss-army knife and some more fancy words that describe my passion.
Maybe it’s more of a German thing. Designer here are more crafts people and so most tend to see you as someone who is creating nice visuals or some other sort of visual design. Something I can't identify with.
I am a generalist who loves digging into other topics, of getting to know the problem and understanding the industry i am working for. Creating a visual layer to something is only the tip of an iceberg or to put it in the context of UX-Design, it's just a layer in the overall process. Of course I also like the visual design part of it, but i am more happy in solving the underlying overall issue to the better.
My final resume on the course?
Thanks @Don, though it's a simple course, I liked it.
The course may lack depth for experienced designers more drawn to the conceptual side of design. Nonetheless, these inspiring words from the grand seigneur of UX Design, Don Norman, instill faith in your skills and the impactful role you could play in making the world a better place.
We should all strive to incorporate the 17 sustainable development goals of the UN into our schedules. This should be a shared objective, even for those in the advertising industry, as there is a dedicated category for it at the prestigious Cannes Lions festival. Moreover, if you are working towards reducing your own ecological footprint, I will soon share some insightful thoughts on the matter.
Additional Ressources
- Applying 21st century design – my experiences in working on the sustainable development goals with students
- Thinking in Systems: Navigating Complexity – almost two years later – my current thoughts on thinking in systems
- Interaction Design Foundation – Design for the 21st Century with Don Norman
- Interaction Design Foundation – Design for a better world with Don Norman
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manfred feiger