TRADE-OFF DESIGN

Our civilization's future depends on well-designed trade-offs

For decades, an amazing number of people has occupied themselves with what has always seemed like a key question; what is design?

I’m not in any way diminishing the importance of these endeavours as means of articulating and communicating – thus creating awareness and understanding of – the value of design. They have contributed to building a language to discuss design issues both in industry, in the political as well as the public domain – not to mention among design professionals themselves. However, as design has also changed its character and meaning over the past decades, continuously being reframed and qualified by new add-ons, one must assume that the same will be the case for the decades to come.

Thus, while merly latching up onto a long-standing tradition, I also dare to be a little adverse when suggesting a shift of focus from what design is to what design can do. To me, it is more meaningful to look at what design has already contributed, what it currently brings to the table of new solutions and which role one could expect design to play in the future – to the extent, of course, that any one of us has the right to predict tomorrow.

Because I believe that it is necessary, I run the risk of introducing a proposition for what the primary role of design and designers in the decades ahead of us will be; The design of compelling trade-offs.  

Retrospect

Design does make a difference to artifacts and it enhances physical objects. So far so good; no-one seems to contest design’s ability to beautify, simplify and add meaning to tangible products, adding value throughout the value chain from manufacturing through sales and distribution to its life with the user – in the word's most inclusive sense – and beyond. The examples are many and well known. Our affluent lives are full of well-designed products like furniture and light fixtures, kitchenware and home electronics, clothes and accessories, cars, park benches, milk cartons... They all seem inevitable either because of the functions they fulfil, or because they cater for other, more subtle needs in our everyday lives.

Material design contributes to define our lives and our identities. The objects we choose to make part of our work or play, homes or communities influence on both our perception of quality of life, but they also help us understand and master well-known or unexpected challenges in our daily lives. Material design might be of even greater importance outside of our private sphere, even though not all of us will necessarily be confronted with it or take advantage of it directly. Such design could be applied to products dedicated to special user groups, such as assistive technologies disabled people, medical equipment, gauges or CNC machines, lifts or drilling equipment, feeding robots for animals or cabin interiors for military helicopters. Pointing to a product category, financial transaction or professional service where material design does not already play a significant role seems almost unthinkable. Design influences on the quality and durability, functionality and usability of all components being part of the delivery or value chain – from our choice of materials and construction principles, manufacturing processes and assembly, via distribution and sales to usage and disposal. More and more often, it doesn't even stop there, as the adaptability of the disposed product to fit into another value chain plays an increasingly important role, in line with principles like circular or regenerative design.

However, just like design adds value to material products by making them more precious, more relevant or more competitive, design also adds value – by means of the same considerations – through enhancing immaterial deliveries such as private or public services, client relations, experiences and business transactions. By improving the interaction between the supplier of a service and the consumer of that service, design contributes to strengthening the relation, influencing on our preferences and changing both our and the supplier's behaviour – as a result of the way in which the physical space or the digital user interface in which the transaction takes place has been designed, or simply by offering a more user friendly experience within already existing parameters.

So, design can be applied to an artifact or to any specific solution to any specific challenge. It can, however, also determine how we experience environments in which people work or play, make decisions or philosophize, celebrate or mourn. This is at least as important a role for design as any of the previously described categories, and a reminder that design can also be applied to a context – be it a physical space or environment or a configuration, or to an entire system. If the context is a physical space or a built structure, it does so by organizing choosing the most appropriate, and by organising objects, light and sound, activities and objectives, and by applying the same parameters as earlier described – not only to the space itself, but also the relations and experiences for which the space is dedicated and designed, adding value to the transactions taking place therein, as were they objects or services.

Material design contributes to define our lives and our identities. The objects we choose to make part of our work or play, homes or communities influence on both our perception of quality of life, but they also help us understand and master well-known or unexpected challenges in our daily lives. Material design might be of even greater importance outside of our private sphere, even though not all of us will necessarily be confronted with it or take advantage of it directly. Such design could be applied to products dedicated to special user groups, such as assistive technologies disabled people, medical equipment, gauges or CNC machines, lifts or drilling equipment, feeding robots for animals or cabin interiors for military helicopters. As a matter of fact, pointing to a product category, financial transaction or professional service where material design does not already play a significant role seems almost unthinkable. Design influences on the quality and durability, functionality and usability of every single object being part of the delivery or value chain – from choice of materials and construction through manufacturing processes and assembly to distribution, sales, usage and disposal. More and more often, it doesn't even stop there, as the adaptability of the disposed product to another value chain plays an increasingly important role, in line with principles like circular or regenerative design. However, just like design adds value to material products by making it more precious, more relevant or more competitive, design adds value by means of the same enhancement to immaterial deliveries such as private or public services, client relations, experiences and business transactions. By enhancing the interaction between the supplier of a service and you as the consumer of that service design strengthens the relation, influences on your preferences and changes both yours and the supplier's behaviour – either in correlation with the way in which the physical space or the user interface in which the transaction takes place has been designed, but often simply by offering a better experience within already existing parameters.

Design can be applied to an artifact or a specific solution to a specific challenge, but it can also be applied to a context – be it a physical space or environment or a configuration, or to entire systems. To design the environments in which people work or play, make decisions or philosophize, celebrate or mourn is at least as important a role for design as any of the previously described categories. By organizing space through objects, light and sound, activities and objectives, and by applying the same parameters as earlier described – not only the space, but also the relations and experiences for which the space is dedicated are designed, adding value to the transactions in question, as if it were an object or a service.

Design also determines the way in which we communicate with each other – as individual to individual, system to system, system to individual and individual to system. In this context "system" might represent public authorities of any kind, but also companies, organisations or movements. One of the most conspicuous examples of such communication design is the way "branding" and identity design is used to convince potential clients to choose one product or service over a competitor's – through media exposure prior to the transaction, at the point of transaction itself through packaging, physical or digital interfaces, and through surveys and other after-sales activities. Along the same principles public authorities use communication design extensively in their dialogue with enterprises and individuals through anything from flyers and reports to web portals, apps and self-service-systems. Other examples of communication design come from the ways in which we search and share knowledge in our modern age with Google and Wikipedia as pioneers, and more lately through difeerent AI driven bots, but also how our ways of communication with each other changes rapidly as new user interfaces and social media are made available to us. In the physical world, wayfinding design enables us to find our way in complex and often unknown environments. One might say that the need for communication design and design that communicates – to facilitate all the deliberations we all have to engage in on a daily basis – increases constantly, as does the complexity of our lives and our environments.

Until now, design has primarily related to the aforementioned areas; physical objects, physical and digital services, physical environments and communication. The domain currently being conquered by design, however, is the more subtle and rather intangible; how do we reach the goals we set? Some call it strategic design, others call it concept design while others again prefer the concept of "design thinking". Irrespective of terminology, it covers the notion that design is a highly relevant approach to dealing with challenges, which do not necessarily call for a physical object, a specific service, a dedicated environment or a new communicative tool – physical or digital – to be addressed and solved.

Design has moved out of the domain in which a delivery is most often a one-to-one tangible answer to a brief and into a domain, where design is seen as a valid resource where large, complex challenges are at stake, and where the designer works in close and equal collaboration with all kinds of other professional and academic disciplines. Such challenges could be efficiency or profitability related - most probably on long term, or it could be related to local, regional or national identity or development, external relations, loyalty issues and internal relations in large corporations, competitiveness and innovation capacity, civic engagement and democratic processes, cross-sectorial dialogue and diversity issues – just to mention some. Not to forget the probably most urgent of all challenges - the need for more sustainable corporate and political development, and for a more responsible and balanced global order.

This rather radical transformation and enlargement of design as a concept and profession has for decades called for cautious guardianship of design's original meaning and its meaningfulness for the individual. Design as the key to better solutions to specific problem, design as the door to experiences which move and activate one's senses, design as a means to improve everyday life, design that simplifies what doesn't need to be complicated and design which makes the inaccessible accessible. Design has this remarkable ability to make it easier for every single one of us to understand and to relate to the world and the local environment we are part of.

However, the world is at a watershed. While design – both as a professional pursuit and community, and as a policy area – for decades has struggled to demonstrate and validate its potential to foster innovation, growth and profitability, and while the world seems to finally accept this as being largely evidenced, yet another new paradigm is sneaking up on us.

Degrowth.  

Looking forth

Design has stood the test as a concept and a profession, and as a vital tool to increase corporate, national and regional competitiveness; ”design for profit”, as a significant factor in terms of influencing people's lives through the products and services, spaces and environments, relations and experiences that shape our everyday; ”design for people” and as a pivotal resource to promote more sustain-able products and services through better choices of materials and processes – as measured by their footprint from sourcing, processing, manufacturing, use and disposal – in addition to the power of design in terms of making responsible choices more attractive in our day-to-day consumption and behaviour; “design for planet”.

How will this change, and how will the role of design materialize in a “degrowth” scenario?

Notwithstanding the fact that design did not always have the positive effects on the user, the environment or humankind that the designer had hoped for, intended or envisaged, design – by and large – design has always started with an ambition to accomodate the needs, aspirations and dreams of individuals, acknowledged as well as unarticulated – long before concepts like user driven innovation and user-centred design, user experience and user journeys, were introduced.

Design fundamentally builds on an analysis of what could possibly be done to improve the perceived quality and the attractiveness of any given situation. Approached in a design methodological manner, this analysis will lead to a number of alternative scenarios – all of which represent some form of improve-ments compared to the present. The ultimate choice will reflect a number of conscious deliberations of different and often contradictory concerns. The most immediate and intuitive adoption of any solution, however seems to occur when human factor interests are given the same weight and priority as more pragmatic and economical ones, and for a number of good reasons.

Design respects the sensorial sensitivity of the user. Not only the visual but rather the combined – and rarely rational - sensual reaction triggered by an experience. If the solution resonates aesthetically with the user, it will auto-matically be perceived as more relevant, more meaningful – hence more likely to trigger any one out of numerous forms of desired engagement. In the case of a physical object, it might incite usage or merely visual or tactile enjoyment. A well-designed service or relation invites the user into active engagement, while well conceived and crafted – most often visual – communication increases the proba-bility of the user actually relating to the message communicated, and responding to its call for action.

How does all this translate into a degrowth paradigm?

One central and inescapable factor, which might possibly be framed differently than here, however without fundamentally altering its substance, and which will require more from designers in the decades to come, is the concept of “trade-off design”. As it doesn't yet exist, neither as a discipline nor as a common term, a few words of explanation might be needed.

We will all have to adapt to a wealth of restrictions in the years to come. These might be self-imposed, economical, legislative or moral, or come as incentives, and we know little about which areas will be affected. Neither do we know the speed at which they will be introduced, but we can see already how issues related to areas like air travel, food production and consumption are emerging.

Parallel with regenerative design and circular value-chains maturing, and as our hopes and confidence in new technologies, like AI and biogenetics, grow, we all know that such measures will not be enough in the long run. Changes in human behaviour, reframed priorities, new mindsets and new rules will inevitably be part of the equation, and those in turn will – equally inevitable – entail trade-offs.

On the other hand, very few of us are prepared to reduce our perceived quality of life for the sake of good itself. Hence, such trade-offs will have to be designed, just as carefully and diligently as any new product or service.

We have already seen some well-meaning attempts in the food industry, where the growth in meat substitutes has been staggering, although not necessarily a very good example of what we have in store. Removing meat from burgers and claiming that the remains taste like burgers is not a very designerly way to go about it. However, the demand for meaningful, honest and well-designed trade-offs hasn’t really awakened yet. But it will, as we get wiser and better informed about the footprints of our current choices, and about the massive contribution of making other and better choices.

Knowing that a return trip to East Asia leaves a CO2 footprint equal to one-and-a-half year’s average use of a combustion engine vehicle, which in Europe is approximately 20.000 kilometers per year, or approximately 60% of the average total CO2 footprint of European citizens; how can good trade-off design contri-bute to making destinations closer to home as alluring and as attractive as far-away destinations like Bangkok or Bali?

Knowing that over the last 60 years, the average size of new one-family houses in Scandinavia has grown by very close to 100% - while the sizes of the families occupying them have reduced significantly during the same period, and knowing that none of our otherwise commendable endeavours at minimizing our energy consumption from day to day – through better isolation, more energy-efficient appliances and so on, can ever compensate for the increased footprint coming from the increased use volumes of building materials, we have to rethink our physical spaces and what constitutes a good home. What do intelligent trade-offs to reduce our consumption of private space look like, in a cultural sphere, where size matters, and where there is a direct correlation between the space we occupy and our sense of well-being in our homes – as well as our notion of success?

Knowing that a constantly increasing use of digital services, like search engines and AI entails a parallel and directly entailed need for storage space, currently accounting for around five percent of global CO2 emissions. How can we design systems that either reduce the need for energy to maintaining our digital infra-structure, or which latch up to other types of infrastructure, so that the energy consumption of for example our lives on social media, can be morally defended?

We could go on and on, but at the end of the day, our survival as a species and civilizations depends on our capabilities and our capacity to design smarter, yet more responsible ways of leading our lives. And, as very few of us are willing to simply cut away privileges that add meaning and pleasure to our lives, we have no choice but to rely on the emergence of great solutions, which on one hand can contribute to an overall reduced footprint, while at the same time inspiring the sensation of life quality, purpose and meaningfulness in each and every one of us. Which, by the way, seems quite unlikely, unless we mobilize all good powers of design to focus on designing trade-offs, which are so attractive that we embrace them without being left with a feeling of loss or reduced quality of life.

Epilogue

While the idea of trade-off design might sound rather unglamorous, running the risk of resonating rather poorly with how many designers like to see themselves, I think that there is some really good news hidden in this perspective – both professionally and commercially.

Design has slowly – and unfortunately – distanced itself form one of its historical hallmarks; that of safeguarding the aesthetical value of solutions by giving them form and beauty. For a decade or more, aesthetics was almost banned from the design discourse. However, thankfully, we’ve seen a revival of aesthetical values in the design discourse during the last few years. And it survived because beauty and attractiveness are cornerstones of the entire concept and identity of design and designers. Most designers dream about being allowed to focus more on the aesthetical resonance of their work. This could be their big chance of doing so, because trade-off design can never be primarily utilitarian or driven by techno-cratic thinking and spreadsheets. It has to start and end with beauty, in its widest possible interpretation, and this very imminent and very contemporary point of departure could potentially spark a renaissance of a rather old-school approach to design, where well-designed means being more attractive, more captivating, more fun or more enriching.

Only in the wake of good trade-off design, based on robust and reliable data, our aspirations of reduced footprint will come through.