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The Perils of ‘Design Thinking’www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/06/invention-of-design-maggie-gram-book-review/683302/
195 sats \ 5 comments \ @deSign_r 28 Jun Design
How did the concept become the solution to society’s most deeply entrenched problems?
On the first day of a required class for freshman design majors at Carnegie Mellon, a professor stood in front of a lecture hall of earnest, nervous undergraduates and asked, “Who here thinks that design can change the world?” Several hands shot up, including mine. After a few seconds of silence, he advanced to the next slide of his presentation: a poster by the designer Frank Chimero that read, "Design won’t save the world. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen, you pretentious fuck".
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Jun
Any challenge to preconceptions is always constructive, even if wrong. But that ought to be reserved for later years. Most students will read that utterly wrong message and due to being completely unprepared to stand by themselves in front of it will take it by hearth instead of being able to adjust their pondering better (for example, knowing how to answer).
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @deSign_r OP 29 Jun
Messages like the one shared in the poster by Chimero, or what Victor Papanek similar message “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, very few.” from his book (Design for the Real World) aim to highlight the unseen details that design is always at the service of what the main industry aim to drive.
Another similar case in past years was how social media has been designed. Sean Parker reminded us how Facebook was designed to exploit human "vulnerability":
"That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever ... It's a social validation feedback loop ... You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology ... [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway."
This article aim to enphatize some of these points, concluding with a "Design can do it", but not alone outro. Beauty is simply the outcome of the function solving a common problem.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 29 Jun
"Beauty is simply the outcome of the function solving a common problem."
This sums it up for me. If that's the take, I'm all about it.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 28 Jun
Those are some of the more valuable experiences a teacher can give - either for the reality check it gives you, or for the impulse to fight back.
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51 sats \ 0 replies \ @deSign_r OP 29 Jun
We forget that the aesthetics of what we see in design is simply the result of its function and the message is sending out. We can not always detect the message, but our eyes comprehend its beauty.
I particularly like this quote:
“most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like.” But, as he argued, “it’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” —Steve Jobs, 2003, then the CEO of Apple
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