Design as an agent of change

At the mcbw design sum­mit, design crit­ic and author Alice Raw­sthorn dis­cussed fun­da­men­tal ques­tions con­cern­ing the under­stand­ing of design: How do today’s cre­ative minds need to posi­tion them­selves, and what con­tri­bu­tion can they make to soci­ety in tur­bu­lent times? We talked to her about the effi­ca­cy of design and a new mind­set in the indus­try. 

Bet­ti­na Schulz: If I under­stand your view cor­rect­ly, you see design not mere­ly as a cre­ative force, as it has long been, but as an activ­i­ty that shapes soci­ety. Is this more impor­tant than ever, and do design­ers today have far more tools at their dis­pos­al to achieve this?

Alice Raw­sthorn: I see design as an agent of change. One of the most pow­er­ful tools at our dis­pos­al to help ensure that changes of any type—social, polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, sci­en­tif­ic, eco­nom­ic, or environmental—are inter­pret­ed in ways that will make our lives bet­ter, not worse.

One of the prin­ci­pal rea­sons why design­ers are able to do this is the avail­abil­i­ty of increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful, but afford­able dig­i­tal tools that enable them to work inde­pen­dent­ly and to pur­sue their cho­sen caus­es, rather than oper­at­ing under instruc­tion from clients who tend to be focused on com­mer­cial objec­tives. Most of these tools are famil­iar, such as the surge in com­put­er pro­cess­ing pow­er, social media, open source intel­li­gence, crowd­fund­ing, and, when it is used respon­si­bly, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, but togeth­er they have trans­formed the prac­tice and pos­si­bil­i­ties of design.

Is it also an impor­tant aspect that design­ers can visu­al­ize ideas—a skill that politi­cians or oth­er stake­hold­ers might lack?

Yes. Social design­ers who work close­ly with politi­cians and oth­er pow­er bro­kers about this say that design­ers’ abil­i­ty to enable the rest of us to under­stand com­plex and con­tentious issues through visu­al­iza­tion is very ben­e­fi­cial. How­ev­er, they also cite design­ers‘ com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and capac­i­ty for lat­er­al think­ing as being equal­ly valuable.

In which areas of soci­ety would you like to see greater involve­ment from the design industry?

We are liv­ing at an intense­ly tur­bu­lent, often ter­ri­fy­ing time of fren­zied change. Every area of soci­ety could ben­e­fit from intel­li­gent and sen­si­tive design inter­ven­tions, and some areas need them urgently.

To what extent would the edu­ca­tion sys­tem or course con­tent also need to change in order to tru­ly posi­tion design­ers as key play­ers in social devel­op­ment? 

Many design schools have already adapt­ed to this. Stu­dent appli­ca­tions to study prod­uct and fur­ni­ture design and oth­er tra­di­tion­al design cours­es have fall­en steadi­ly in recent years. Many of those cours­es have closed, where­as many design schools have launched new cours­es on human­i­tar­i­an archi­tec­ture, social design, inves­tiga­tive design research, design respons­es to the cli­mate emer­gency, and so on. This is part­ly a response to stu­dent demand, but also reflects the grow­ing impor­tance of those sub­jects in soci­ety. 

Let me play devil’s advo­cate for a moment. There are many design­ers who are hap­py sim­ply to cre­ate effec­tive cor­po­rate designs or an aes­thet­ic object. Is that not enough for you? 

The pro­found changes of recent years have made design a far more expan­sive and elas­tic medi­um by empow­er­ing design­ers to exper­i­ment with new fields and ways of work­ing. It’s up to indi­vid­ual design­ers to respond to this wider choice of spe­cialisms by iden­ti­fy­ing how and where they wish to deploy their skills and knowledge.

Does the design indus­try per­haps need to posi­tion itself very dif­fer­ent­ly to the out­side world in order to be per­ceived as a trans­for­ma­tive force and, accord­ing­ly, as a com­pe­tent partner?

Absolute­ly. Dur­ing the indus­tri­al age, design was pro­fes­sion­al­ized with the emer­gence of design dis­ci­plines and spe­cial­ist schools. But it was typ­i­cal­ly restrict­ed to com­mer­cial roles, often as a styl­is­tic or pro­mo­tion­al tool, and exe­cut­ed under instruc­tion from some­one else, typ­i­cal­ly a client. This yield­ed sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits eco­nom­i­cal­ly and, to some degree, social­ly, while caus­ing huge envi­ron­men­tal dam­age. It also stereo­typed design as a shal­low, super­fi­cial medi­um prin­ci­pal­ly con­cerned with sur­face appear­ance, rather than substance.

If design is to ful­fill its poten­tial as an agent of change, it needs to defuse those clichés and prove its worth in its new ter­rain. Oth­er­wise, how can it pos­si­bly hope to secure the pub­lic recog­ni­tion and polit­i­cal sup­port it needs to make fur­ther progress?

Par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, many have real­ized just how sig­nif­i­cant design is, or can be. Will this real­iza­tion now also extend to oth­er areas of soci­etal concern?

It already has. Pao­la Antonel­li and I launched Design Emer­gency, our pod­cast and research plat­form, in 2020, ini­tial­ly to explore the inter­na­tion­al design response to Covid-19, which was then rife, and, after a few months, to share the sto­ries of glob­al design lead­ers in diverse fields and geo­gra­phies who are mak­ing a major con­tri­bu­tion to build­ing a bet­ter future. In oth­er words, we want­ed to deliv­er prac­ti­cal proof of the impact of inge­nious design solu­tions to pro­found social, eco­nom­ic and eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges. Pao­la and I are in awe of the achieve­ments of the remark­able design­ers we’ve inter­viewed. Such as Francesca Coloni, head of design for UNHCR’s refugee camps world­wide; Yas­meen Lari, the vet­er­an archi­tect who has over­seen the con­struc­tion of over a mil­lion new homes in flood-prone areas of Pak­istan; and the vision­ary team respon­si­ble for the Great Green Wall of Africa. We also inter­viewed Sinéad Burke, who designs acces­si­ble and inclu­sive objects and spaces; Eyal Weiz­man, the founder and chief inves­ti­ga­tor of the inves­tiga­tive design agency Foren­sic Archi­tec­ture; and many, many more. They are all fan­tas­tic role mod­els for ambi­tious, com­pas­sion­ate young design­ers. 

Many social­ly crit­i­cal projects ini­ti­at­ed by design­ers often get stuck in a “bub­ble.” Do you see it that way too, and how can the wider pub­lic be reached? Does the design scene sim­ply need to open up more?

If design is to ful­fill its poten­tial to address com­plex, inter­sec­tion­al soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges, it needs to con­vince the pub­lic, politi­cians, and oth­er pow­er bro­kers of its val­ue for doing so. This process is already under­way, and has giv­en design­ers the chance to raise aware­ness of their work by telling their own stories.

Which con­crete projects are you refer­ring to here?

To name a few exam­ples, Foren­sic Architecture’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills have not only helped to estab­lish it as an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non, but to launch inves­tiga­tive design research as a dynam­ic new area of design. Or con­sid­er Dutch social enter­prise The Ocean Cleanup, which has designed new ways of clear­ing the plas­tic trash; it has proved so per­sua­sive that it set a new record for non­prof­it crowd­fund­ing by rais­ing $2.2 mil­lion (USD) in launch cap­i­tal, and recent­ly secured a fund­ing pledge of $121 mil­lion (USD) from a group of donors who sup­port The Auda­cious Project. And two Pak­istani doc­tors, Sara Saeed Khur­ram and Iffat Zafar Aga, suc­cess­ful­ly designed and deliv­ered a health care plat­form that now has 2 mil­lion patients through­out Pak­istan. They use video con­fer­enc­ing tech­nol­o­gy and an app to enable patients across the coun­try to con­sult mar­ried female doc­tors like them­selves work­ing from their homes. These are great exam­ples of design engag­ing with new audiences.

The Bauhaus is wide­ly cit­ed and admired. In your opin­ion, do we need anoth­er move­ment like that, one that rep­re­sents a gen­uine upheaval?

It sounds very tempting.

Inter­view by Bet­ti­na Schulz for bay­ern design.