There are many different kinds of designers and they all happen to do various different things. There are product designers, communication designers, information designers, interaction designers, computer designers, software designers and also system designers. One of the new emerging ways of thinking of design is by thinking of systems and processes. This is the notion that no design is separate from the world around it. Posters designed by communication designers operate in multiple fields. They could be a billboard that is on the highway, a poster on a bus stop, an ad in a train or on the side of a bus, in a newspaper or magazine, a book, an ad on a website, etc. What this means is that there are countless ways in which people interact with a design and these methods of interaction need to be accounted for. But it isn’t only the interaction that needs to be thought of. What if the poster is advertising a local farmers market and inviting you to become a member. The poster then becomes the gateway for action asks you to then do something. If one were to get involved one might perhaps then need to look at farming and gardening, and thus one might need to buy or learn to use certain products that are required of gardening. One might need to buy a shovel, some gloves, a rake and perhaps even a book on how to garden. The poster is then the gateway that leads to interaction with products. This understanding of how design and the things that we have in our lives are a part of larger systems is a relatively new way of thinking and these systems need to be designed.
One of the tools that is used for this new form of design is a scenario. A scenario is a vision of the future and the acceptance of a certain outcome. A designer can follow trends and envision a certain way in which the world is operating and pick a future that is a result of these trends, after this the designer then designs for that scenario to become a reality. Given the situation that we are in right now where we are currently in an environmental crisis, we begin to look for ways in which we can begin to solve the current situation. Manzini proposes a scenario that gives us a way in which to begin to operate. Having looked at trends of new forms of “creative communities” where people have begun to empower themselves in order to change the situation that they are in, Manzini’s scenario states that this is the way people will continue to act. Examples of these creative communities are farmers markets, community gardens, park groups that organize to better their surroundings, communities that structure themselves so that children can walk to school, communities that start their own nurseries. These new ways in which people are beginning to give power to themselves and organize are the crucial support for Manzini’s scenario.
The next important part of Manzini’s scenario is that of “Collaborative Networks.” These networks are the results of the internet age in which we live where new forms of information sharing have become possible. The examples are Wikipedia and social networking sites such as Facebook, Meetup, Couchsurfing, etc. These new forms of communication and connectivity have allowed for new forms of organizing and Manzini’s scenario is that these new ways of organizing will support “creative communities” and create a world that is “small, local, open, and connected.” What this means is that everything will operate on a local scale with information flowing globally. People will have the networked communication of the entire world but will use that in order to create local creative solutions. In Manzini’s proposal small is not small and local is not local. This basically means that small and local are now referred to as nodes in a network where they operate in their node but are actually global and large. Given this scenario and all the supporting infrastructure and examples that exist, Manzini’s final solution was that designers need to begin to design systems that empower people to act. He believes that these creative networked societies will continue to exist and that designers need to design ways for people to adopt these practices. Meaning design a way for a community to start a community garden, design a system that allows for any citizen to become an advocate of his park, design a system that allows for traditional office spaces to disappear and allow for people to work from home. Manzini has given designers the goal of designing systems, and once these systems are in place people will adopt them.
My own views of this are that it is nothing special and nothing new. This has been the direction that design has been going for a while. Designers have already been aware of the new networked societies and creative communities and have been designing means for them. This is visible on the networked scale in the emergence of new forms of architecture such as the Strata Building at MIT that was designed by Frank Gehry. In the Strata building there is a constant connection to the internet through wi-fi and an understanding that people are becoming more nomadic and moving from place to place. The building was designed so that any place can become an ad-hoc classroom, lunch space, socializing venue or meeting location. This was because of the trend in wired society and networks. This is also visible in the Googleplex where workers can work from anywhere even on the bus that brings them to the office space. The office space is also not a traditional office space anymore but rather one that is multipurpose with spaces for play and recreation intermixed with office environments. Shortly the trends have been there and the design has begun to appear, all Manzini has done was create this vision of a future and given a call to designers to adopt this as the actual solution and group together these creative communities and collaborative networks. The question that I have is where does this faith in people come from? I understand that the examples already exist but I also understand that people are very picky in what they adopt, and what they choose to do. What is there to ensure that the people will adopt these systems? Is he basically stating that we need to design systems so well that people will want to adopt these new behaviors and change their lives? How does he propose we incite people to adopt these systems or is that supposed to be an afterthought once the systems are already there?
