Design that matters

A revolution in design

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”
-Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

After our lecture on Monday, I came home both excited and overwhelmed by what I had just learned in Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture. It was overwhelming to see the depressing number of refugees and the conditions they were in but at the same time it was an exciting opportunity for me as a designer to be involved with a very important issue in our world and to actually design things that matter rather than designing for market-based “needs” that our worlds revolve around. This lecture helped me see the bigger picture which I could get involved in.

I have always wanted to create and improve design that matters, but I didn’t know to what extend I could push it to. To make the world a better place, I have always thought about how to improve the problems I observe in my surroundings, which apparently only respond to the richest 10% of the world’s consumers. Even if I tried to design for the less fortunate I would always end up designing towards the 10% because the issues I had to solve in order to come up with a satisfying design for the other 90% felt overwhelming and I was often discouraged. And I thought that it would not make sense for me, as a single designer, to tackle the problems I cannot solve by myself. It is ironic because I chose industrial design to contribute and make design that matters but after seeing the rate of consumption, our limited resources and the amount of waste, I ended up feeling useless because world doesn’t need any more stuff.

Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture made me realize that there were so many ways I could contribute by creating design that actually matter by designing to the other 90%. As I looked into the website of Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s exhibition (www.other90.cooperhewitt.org) I found out that of world’s population, 90% “have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter.” Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture informed me about refugee’s living circumstances and made me realized that it is our responsibility as designers to come up with humanitarian design solutions for such users who really need our help.

And I also learned that instead of being discouraged I should try to solve at least some aspects of the problems in humanitarian design. Maybe as a single designer, I cannot solve all the problems by myself but together “one soul at a time” we can help make the world a better place by creating design that actually matter.