Bruce Nussbaum deserves a lot of credit for promoting the subject and the issues of design to the business world. So it is most appropriate that he also addresses the designers.

In his statement: “designers suck – being ignorant and arrogant,” he scratches on some fundamental issues with respect to the members of a discipline, which struggle for recognition. To a large part the self-promoting designers have to blame themselves. With every little challenge they create a new specialty-field offering their services, instead of communicating design as an all encompassing way of life or as I like to call it: ‘a navigational tool around the reefs of facts.’

Here are a few comments on some of the issues Bruce Nussbaum raised in his article: “Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?” –

Everything man- and machine-made is designed. It doesn’t matter, if someone called a ‘designer’ has been involved – disregarding the movement of ‘Intelligent Design’ in this context.

Everyone is a ‘designer’ – fortunately, design is not a licensed profession. One may compare it to cycling, which most people may claim they know how to do. However, if they want to win the ‘Tour de France’, it becomes a different kind of a challenge. The differentiator is the competency level on which they are able to perform.

Design is mostly invisible, as it is a process. Only the results become obvious, like the tip of an iceberg. Few would judge the quality of a surgeon by the way the patient has been stitched up.

It is all about innovation, as the human mind is never satisfied with the status quo. However, this endeavor doesn’t solely produce superior results, but creates crap as well. We belong to a family of crabs, moving in all kind of directions.

Sustainability has to be understood not solely in an ecological context, but as an economical issue as well. Unless the stakeholder value of an organization is satisfied, environmental aspects are not of the highest priority. Fortunately that is changing, as protecting the environment becomes a business in itself.

‘Design Thinking’ – as the new thing – tries to describe that design isn’t about pills, but diagnosis – that’s why design starts with a ‘D’. It is not about fulfilling some needs, but the effort to solve problems, identify opportunities, provide solutions and create meaning. Both sides of the brain are required, the analytical and strategic, as well as the intuitive and creative side. And, since individuals are rarely equipped with both sides comparably, design development has become a team-oriented process to deal with the complexity of the tasks.

And at last, I do believe that we will be able to overcome our dilemma in design, when we don’t consider us artists. It is not about self-expressionism, but the effort to bring a vast amount of expertise to the task. As such design offers itself as a meta-discipline to overcome artificial boundaries.

Thomas S. Bley, New Zealand, April 2007