Interactions Cafe

On Designers
as Catalytic Agents

January + February 2010

interactions

Richard: The increasing importance and acceptance
of user participation in multiple ways is stressed
within most of this issue. Do you find a similar
increase, and acceptance thereof, in designer
participation among frog’s clients? Are designers
increasingly positioned as “catalytic agents for
broader impact rather than mere stylists for com-
modities” (borrowing words from the cover story)?
Jon: Absolutely—and at the same time, no. Our
clients are begging for, and willing to pay for,
strategic, organizational change. But that work
has to have some “thingness” to it—it must be
accompanied by actual design work, embedded in
actual products, systems, and services. The hand-
waving that accompanies a lot of “design thinking”
doesn’t fly; clients see through it and won’t pay for
it exclusively. That means that for all the userness
in our work, the designerness is as important. How
do you describe design thinking and the value of
designers when advising non-design executives?
Richard: Sharing examples is key, as is enabling
the executives to experience the value. Both facili-
tate countering “cultural constraints” and “power
relations” of old, as discussed in the article on
African design education. Those old constraints die
hard, as suggested by Don Norman. He argues that
much of the integration of new media that increas-
es user participation is “still based upon a distort-
ed view of commerce: We make it, you consume
it. The media moguls think of this as a one-way
transmission: They would have their companies
producing, with us everyday people consuming.”
Jon: Yeah, but it’s not just media moguls who
think this way. All of us are guilty of taking a
“heroic design” approach, one that puts us at the
center of the world and mandates use, consump-
tion, and our own twisted form of “user experi-
ence.” Design comes with a huge responsibility,
and part of that responsibility is realizing when to
get the hell out of the way. The piece on African
design education you mention describes a 50-year
history in Africa of questioning “progress” as
defined by the West. We might be able to act as
catalytic agents in Africa, but we’re going to need
to realize that the West’s idea of how life should
be—a small family, a house in the suburbs, and
all the technology we could possibly eat—just isn’t
going to fly there.