Redefining a Profession

LONDON — The bet was for $50,000. It was offered by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, to the designer Raymond Loewy, in 1940. The challenge was to spruce up the packaging of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Loewy accepted the wager, and Hill asked when he expected to finish. “Oh, I don’t know,” drawled the designer. “Some nice spring morning I will feel like designing the Lucky package... I’ll call you then.”

Loewy won the bet, and claimed the credit for the subsequent increase in Lucky Strike’s sales. That was nearly 70 years ago, and design has changed dramatically since then, as the designer Tim Brown relates in his new book, “Change by Design.” “Few designers today would even touch this type of project,” he writes of Loewy’s assignment. “What excites the best (design) thinkers today is the challenge of applying their skills to problems that matter.”

He’s kind of right and kind of wrong. Much as I’d like to believe that designers are too altruistic to bother fiddling with the graphics on cigarette packets, many still do. But it is true that more and more designers are devoting their time to serious stuff, like repairing environmental damage or kindling economic recovery, and it is their work that concerns Mr. Brown.

Born in Britain, Mr. Brown is now the president and chief executive officer of IDEO, a design group based in Palo Alto, California. His book?'s objective is summed up by its subtitle: to demonstrate “How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation.” He marshals lots of examples of how this works in practice, although his underlying theme is as much about how design itself is changing, as how it effects change in other industries.

When Mr. Brown, 47, started out as a product designer in the late 1980s, design was mostly about creating physical things, such as the widgets he developed in his first project for a machinery manufacturer, or visual ones, like the graphics on a Lucky Strike packet. Designers now also tackle intangible strategic and behavioral issues, such as helping businesses and government to organize themselves more efficiently and make their services more user-friendly. Mr. Brown describes this as the shift from old-school “design,” which he regards as “technology-centered,” to the “human-centered” discipline of “design thinking” — a term coined by David Kelley, who co-founded IDEO in 1991 originally to develop tech products for clients in Silicon Valley.

Design thinking is an elusive concept, as Mr. Brown admits. His punchiest definition is that it is “about more than style.” In a nutshell, it involves the application of the traditional skills that designers develop, often without realizing, to identify problems and invent solutions in collaboration with experts from other disciplines, their clients and the people who will use the results.

For IDEO’s designers, this has meant working in multidisciplinary teams alongside engineers, computer programmers, marketers and behavioral scientists. One design thinking project involved developing a new type of low-tech weekend bicycle — named “coasting” — for Shimano, the Japanese cycle components maker, to persuade the adult Americans who had loved riding their bikes as kids to take up cycling again, rather than developing a dazzling new bicycle as old-school designers would have done.

Another project encouraged the nurses employed by Kaiser Permanente, the U.S. health care group, to work out how to improve the care of patients by redesigning their own schedules. A third analyzed people’s spending habits to invent a new Bank of America service that helps them to save by rounding up each purchase to the nearest dollar and depositing the difference in a “Keep the Change” account, just like throwing spare coins into a change jar. IDEO’s teams of design thinkers have also worked on projects for nonprofit organizations, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and U.S. government campaigns, as well as on conventional product design and branding programs.

Mr. Brown gives glimpses of what it’s like to work at IDEO. He recalls an executive from the furniture company, Steelcase, sinking into a snazzy-looking chair only for it to collapse. (It was a painstakingly detailed $40,000 foam prototype, not the real thing.) He also recounts the horror of the lead designer on the development of an Oral-B toothbrush, when he spotted one of his products washed up on a deserted Californian beach, six months after the launch. And what designer wouldn’t relate to his description of how: “I cannot count the number of clients who have marched in and said, ‘Give me the next (Apple) iPod,’ but it’s probably pretty close to the number of designers I’ve heard respond (under their breath), ‘Give me the next (Apple ceo) Steve Jobs.”’

There is a danger of books like this deteriorating into sales pitches, as their designer-authors trot out examples of their companies’ prowess. But Mr. Brown writes with a winning combination of thoughtfulness, pragmatism and enthusiasm. IDEO looms large, but the references are relevant, and interspersed with descriptions of successful exercises by other companies, from the development of the Netflix online movie store, to that of United Airlines’s Premium Service between San Francisco and New York.

Mr. Brown also puts design thinking into a historical context by explaining how some of his design heroes practiced it, albeit unknowingly. Take Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great 19th-century British engineer, who designed the bridges, viaducts and tunnels of the Great Western Railway in southwest England and Wales, not only as spectacular structures, but to make passengers feel as if they were “floating across the countryside.” They still do.

Critically, he avoids the trap of presenting design thinking as a panacea. Mr. Brown charts its failures as well as successes, and sees confusingly designed Web sites and dysfunctional help lines, as the latterday equivalents of the Industrial Revolution’s “dark satanic mills.” Nor does he pretend that it is easy. Instead, he depicts it as a messy, uncertain, often inconclusive process, albeit one that is more fun, and much more productive than tweaking cigarette packets.

The Professional Interior Designer Defined:

Interior Architectural Design is a rewarding, creative profession in which the Designer helps people, through the use of original custom designs, using function and aesthetics, in the home, in the workplace, or elsewhere while making the world a better place. It is one of the more varied professions of job opportunity as can be seen from the 40 plus job choices listed on the Santa Monica College Interior Architectural Design Careers website page,

In many installations, Designers work with high-end materials and products, rich fabrics, and beautifully crafted furniture and accessories, but this is only a small part of what is involved with Interior Architectural Design. It is typically demanding and hard work using a multiplicity of professional skills, trade experience, current ever-changing technology, and continual education matched with people skills and being a creative problem solver.

The importance of the Interior Architectural Design Profession is additionally justified with the necessary emphasis on "Designing Green" and specifying materials that are eco-responsible and eco-friendly. Designers can now assist in influencing client thinking to do more with less while using practicality and beauty to protect the fragile resources of the globe.

To further understand this Design Profession, below are two expanded definitions of Interior Design according to the Design Industry and according to the State of California.

THE PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGNER DEFINED BY INDUSTRY:

The Professional Interior Architectural Designer is qualified by education, experience, and examination to enhance the function and quality of interior spaces.

For the purpose of improving the quality of life, increasing productivity, and protection the health, safety, and welfare of the public, the professional Interior Architectural Designer:

· Analyzes the client's needs, goals, and life safety requirements

· Integrates findings with knowledge of interior design

· Formulates preliminary design concepts that are appropriate, functional, and aesthetic

· Develops and presents final design recommendations through appropriate presentation media

· Prepares working drawings and specifications for non-load bearing interior construction, materials, finishes, space planning, furnishings, fixtures, and equipment

· Collaborates with professional services of other licensed practitioners in the technical areas of mechanical, electrical, and load-bearing design as required for regulatory approval

· Prepares and administers bids and contract documents as the client's agent

· Reviews and evaluates design solutions during implementation and upon completion

THE PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGNER DEFINED BY THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA:

Interior Designers plan and design or redesign attractive and useful interiors for homes, hotels, ships, hospitals, office buildings, and other commercial structures. They can be classified by the following general categories:

1. Designers who own and operate design studios

2. Designers who work as assistants or associates in design firms

3. Designers employed by retail or office furnishings stores

4. Designers employed by architectural firms

5. Designers employed in the design departments of large firms and institutions

Interior Designers usually work directly with clients and must consider their requirements, tastes, preferences, and budget. They must keep form, color, scale, and arrangement in balance, and at the same time be concerned with utility, construction, economy, and client satisfaction.

Designers should be familiar with the nature of woods, textiles, and decorating products such as paint and wallpaper. They should be knowledgeable about the historical periods that have influenced the development of furniture style and room design.

Designers often work from blueprints, make detailed floor plans, and draw furniture to scale. They shop in wholesale markets to locate furnishings and accessories, and, when necessary, design original pieces to be made to order. They often work closely with both building and landscape architects in planning the interiors of new buildings or remodeling old ones.

Presentations for client approval usually include a sketch or scaled floor plan showing furniture arrangement, color charts, and samples of upholstery, draperies, and wall coverings. The complete proposal includes an estimate of the cost for the installation. After the proposal is accepted, Interior Designers assemble furnishings and act as agents for their clients by contracting and supervising the services of craft workers.

Some Interior Designers may specialize in color coordination, lighting, furniture or fabric design. Others may teach at universities, art schools, or adult education facilities.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16