Design Thinking - Marisse Mari

This lecture was given by one of my actual tutors and focused on design, design thinking, 'T shaped designers', the job of a designer and the ethics of design - basically a whole lot of design. She started off by asking us the question 'what is design?', which she then answered with a quote from Victor Papanek - 'We are all designers. All that we do, almost all of the time is design, for design is basic to all human activity’.

We were also introduced to the concept of 'T Shaped Designers' - which is a designer with two key skills, they have a speciality subject and are knowledgeable about another similar discipline. They have two strings to their bow. This is a concept that Marisse seemed very interested in however i fail to see the usefulness of being a 'T shaped designer'. I see the logic behind it - twice the amount of skills, twice the likelihood of finding a job, but i don't see how that is a good thing. Take me for example- i love drawing characters and creating stories for them so i would be well suited as a character designer, however i am also being forced by the university to study animation. Therefore when i leave university i will be a 'T shaped designer' as games art will be my speciality and animation will be my secondary skill. The only problem is i do not wish to be an animator, so having it as my knowledgeable second subject is useless. Obviously this will not be the same for everyone, but at this point in the course i do not wish to be a 'T shaped designer'.

I liked a few of the quotes from this lecture but after a while they just seemed to spew out and didn't relate to anything after a while, the word design seemed to crop up every five seconds and at the end it wasn't a word to me anymore, it was just a sound. And also, even though Victor Papanek makes some good points, how on earth can you take a man referred to as a 'design guru' when his own book, 'Design for the Real World' (1971) is so poorly designed?!

Even in the 70s this must have been awful

Victor Papanek also believed in something he calls: 'The Function Complex', which generally makes the designer think about his design to see if it will be good enough. This 'Function Complex' has six stages that are listed below:

Method
The 'honest' use of materials - the utilisation of the materials must be such that the best solution is achieved.
If you don't need to add another material, then don't include it.

Use

A design has to work - it has to fulfil its purpose, for example, an advert should persuade, a book should be understood by those it is aimed at.
There is no use in adding features that aren't needed.

Need
The needs of the people should not be neglected by the designer. "Much recent design has only satisfied evanescent wants and desires, whilst the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer" Papenek.
Is your design even needed?

Telesis

"The deliberate , purposeful utilisation of the process of nature and society to obtain particular goals"

The design must reflect the society that has created the need for it, and also fit into the economic society.

Association
Our Psychological conditioning, often going back to early childhood, predisposes us to or against certain values.
Does the design meet the expectations of modern society?

Aesthetics

The attraction of the design.

Does it look attractive enough for people to be interested in it?

Even if the cover of this book is incredibly outdated and especially hideous, Victor Papanek seems to know what he is talking about and delivers some interesting quotes and good points, i especially like his 'Function Complex' and have used a few of his steps when designing characters (obviously only using a few of these stages as not all fit with character design). However, i think Marisse may have used the word design a few too many times and i think by the end of her presentation she had lost most of her audience which is a shame as she is clearly so passionate about design.