I have been touring the east coast this
past week to see family and friends before I leave for Bangalore on Friday. It has been a whirlwind of friendly
faces in Boston, NY and NC. While
in New York, I visited Cooper Hewitt's "Design with the Other 90%
Cities" show at the United Nations building. As expected, it was very
inspiring to see work that is being done with low income communities
across the globe. The show presented a diverse range of projects, everything from architecture to product and service design.
There was a rather harsh
review of the show
on Design Observer that mentioned the lack of American or western
nation initiatives, highlighting the international and possibly
'paternalistic' lens that the show was curated with. The article also
called into question the redundancy of the initiatives, commenting that the
show cherry picked projects from other social design exhibits and
offered little new to the public. I respect Mark Lamster's
opinion and agree that the design of the show itself was a little
lackluster. It must be very challenging to design for a space that is
offsite and temporary in nature, but I also think that these types of
projects are simply difficult to showcase and display.
Design
is a process, not just a result. There are decisions that must be made
within certain restraints that steer a project in a respective
direction. It is these inflection points, these moments of tension and
collaboration that frame a project and give it a reason for being.
Looking back, that may be what Mark was looking for - more substance on
each project. Less breadth and more depth. And maybe this was a curator's decision in relation to scope and
target audience. Designers want to see process, they want to be taken on
a journey. I wanted to fully understand the challenges each project was
facing and the decisions that the teams chose as they developed their
solutions. Immerse me into a world of sights, sounds, images,
infographics, or anything else that can tell the intricacies of a
story beyond just a before and after photo with caption.
However,
the general public may not want that much information. They may want the 800 word
summary with a process photo and final artifact. Some may simply need to
be exposed to this type of design and want to see progress happening.
Exposure to social design and garnering support is just as important as
telling the correct story. Change doesn't happen overnight, it is a slow
process that takes involvement and dedication. The more people doing,
making, talking, and helping the better. I am not advocating dumbing
down content for the masses, rather providing a succinct synopsis that
captures the overarching themes and highs and lows to help people
understand the struggles intrinsic to these types of projects.
The
challenge with social design is two-fold, one that educates the masses about it's potential and the other of establishing a form
of best practices to help guide participants as they begin
collaborating. Both are valuable, they are just two different audiences that require different
types of content. I was not blown away by the Cooper Hewitt exhibit, but anything that exposes this type of work and gets people talking about it seems like a good step in the right direction. If you are in the area, I would definitely stop by to see the projects first hand.
