The things we acquire and consume express how we feel. The things we create reveal how we think. These two truths are central to the most significant challenges facing today’s designer. It is not enough to create better, more sustainable products – we need to change attitudes and behaviors. By understanding how people value the things they acquire or consume, designers can create informed innovations that change the underlying patterns of consumption and the ways that people frame needs and desires.
This design challenge is explored in the Graduate Program in Design in our Design Research practicum. In this first-semester introduction to design research and design thinking, we are examining how and why people simplify their material possessions, how people define “enough”, and how non-material exchange gains value in a material world. We are using human-centered research methods to uncover patterns in behavior that can inform design. Our qualitative ethnographic research takes us to garage sales and flea markets, into the homes of friends and family, and into the homes of people we’ve recruited to understand more diverse behaviors and lifestyles. We conduct observations, interviews and photo audits. We design and deploy cultural probes that evoke emotions and complex thought processes, then analyze how people respond. We develop insights through data representation, analysis, reflection and synthesis. From our insights, we form questions and brainstorm potential solution spaces to develop that meet the original design aspiration.
Helping the world simplify by realizing “enough-ness”, and understanding why buying things brings us pleasure is possibly the most enormous and ill-defined design brief given to any designer. Fortunately, the welfare of our planet is a collective design challenge. The collaborative, cross-disciplinary strategy of the Graduate Program in Design is the perfect model of the kind of thinking that will make this massive change attainable.
Written for the California College of the Arts Grad{e} zine, vol. 1, issue 1.