Final Thoughts I Collaboration and Inclusion

When is the design process finished? Is it finished when the designer hands the concept over to the manufacturer? Is it finished when the product rolls off the factory floor? When it finds its way to the store? Usually in school our projects are hypothetical and do not include a stage where the objects we design are really used. Because of this I think we tend to see the end of the design process as one of these three events. I am not so sure this is the case. When any piece of art enters the world it is not finished. People who read it, see it, hear it, touch it and use it give it new meaning and change it constantly. For this reason I don’t see design as a process of using user research to generate a product then returning a finished product to the user. Design is a collaborative process with the audience/ users.

A designer benefits greatly from seeing the client as a collaborator. One reason for this is the issue brought up in an earlier class about how to design for someone in another culture. If we look at it as working with that culture rather than designing for them, then we approach the problem by getting to know our collaborator. We spend time together, ask and answer questions, and listen. It would never work in a collaboration to do research about your partner instead of meeting him and coming up with ideas together. Thinking in this way can enable a designer to work with clients of different cultures, backgrounds and abilities with ease and understanding. Users also become collaborators by giving products meaning. When a product enters the marketplace it carries a lot of baggage. The associations people make, the history of the product, the public’s knowledge of the designer of company, etc. all shape the products meaning. An object takes on all of this meaning while it is in the world and the people who use it, critique it and observe it become additional authors.

It doesn’t really matter if we believe that clients and consumers have authorship when they use our products in new ways and see unexpected meaning in them. They will continue on their way and we on ours. However, like in critiques in class, we benefit so much from the collective wisdom of our classmates and collaborators. The more people who are included in these exchanges the more we learn. People from different cultures, of different ages and abilities, with different backgrounds and skills can all offer new ways of seeing. If we benefit from the opinions of fifteen classmates in crit think of the benefit of six billion opinions. The more universally accessible our products, the more of the world’s poor and disenfranchised we reach out too the greater the opportunity for growth. Every project can be a collaboration, and therefore present the opportunity to include new people in discussion and the exchange of ideas.