SO YOU THINK YOU ARE A DESIGNER?

Who is the designer of tomorrow and what are their skills? What imperatives should they apply to their interactions with the world? Regular columnist Justin Zhuang contemplates the role of designers in an increasingly complex future.

The designer is becoming endangered. The individual who marries form and function to produce physical things – such as books, automobiles, clothes, interiors and buildings – has been reclassified by some as the ‘classical’ designer in recent years. Judging by how popular ‘classical music’ is, the new term suggests that the designer as we have long known is increasingly regarded as a thing of the past, or even worse, archaic.

But far from going extinct, the designer is undergoing a redefinition because of the profession’s growing status. Once regarded simply as technicians who supported industrialisation, particularly in making products visually attractive, designers have since climbed their way into corporate boardrooms, and even the offices of policymakers. This has been fuelled in part by a frustration with the status quo and in response to technological disruptions in the profession. As the act of designing has become more accessible with software and templates, designers have been confronted with the existential question of who they really are.

While it is clear to all that the scope of work has changed, what it entails remains contested. Some have embraced the notion of designers as authors by seizing upon new technologies and the blurring of disciplinary boundaries to become entrepreneurs of their own brand and products. Others have touted the designer’s unique methods of understanding users through empathy and ethnographic research so as to help clients innovate in a process known as design thinking. There are also designers who see a role – and even responsibility – in critiquing society and speculating on the future through the medium of design.

More recently, the rise in digital technologies has led some to advocate for designers who can harness computing and code to generate new products, services and even experiences. According to John Maeda, who is known for forecasting industry trends in his annual Design in Tech Report, such ‘computational designers’ will be the Bauhaus of our twenty-first century, revolutionising the world with good design for all!

The designer of tomorrow will be a mix of all of the above. But underlying these different visions is the recognition that the designer can no longer excel just with knowledge of design. A designer has to integrate a variety of contexts – industry, society, culture, technology – in order to realise a design. This has always been the case, but it has come to the forefront in recent times.

In addition, automation, algorithms and artificial intelligence have continued to chip away at the silos that define different professions, including design. It has become increasingly difficult for designers to define themselves by a mastery of specific skill sets, a proficiency in specialised knowledge or access to professional tools. Instead, designers need to look deeper to identify a distinguishing ability.

One example is the ‘designerly ways of knowing’ that Professor Nigel Cross first made a case for in the 1980s. The design educator and academic described this as a type of intelligence that allows designers to respond to ill-defined problems in a constructive manner, resulting in novel and unexpected solutions that communicate in both abstract codes and concrete forms.2

Such a definition acknowledges the ‘classical’ traits of designers to give form and function to things, but also widens the focus to how this is achieved too. Living in a world that is becoming more complex and uncertain, we can begin to see the value of ‘designerly ways’ in making sense of it all. The value of designers can no longer – and should never have been – defined solely by the things they create, but rather their ways of looking, thinking and acting upon the world we live in.

Justin Zhuang is a writer and researcher with an interest in design, cities, culture, history and media. justinzhuang.com