ID Chronicles

It is a reality that designing for a culture you have no connection with mentally, physically, or geographically, can be twice as hard. But it is also a reality that it can twice as important.

I’ve always been a competitive person, sometimes not in my favor, but it makes for an interesting game night and a successful poker night generally. I view almost every situation day to day as a challenge, something I have to overcome, and something I have to win. That is why I believe my interest in humanitarian design is so fierce. To me it is quite possibly the biggest challenge we are facing in the design community today, and it is something I take quite seriously.

Recently, thanks to my current studio class, I have been volunteering at a Refugee Resettlement Program here in providence. So the lecture on Monday was fascinating to me because I had real human stories, and relationships to relate to. I help take care of the children while their parents take literacy classes, all of these children for the most part grew up in refugee camps. I have never been around children that were more caring, or more loving than these. They aren’t shy, and are so beautiful. I have gotten more out of it then I could have ever imagined, and it has solidified and made more tangible my desire to help people who are not in a situation to help themselves.

These children only represent a small fraction of the international community, and in no way can have any significant composite role in my frame of reference as a designer. Certainly my relationship with them and everything I learn about them is important, and can be used as research, but it is always a part of a much larger scheme. This is the key to being able to design for people you do not know, constantly re-analyzing the larger scheme, and reimagining you design process. If you consider it in this way designing for a retirement community in Boca becomes as easy as designing for and elderly community in Cambodia. It takes a commitment, to agree as a designer that you are willing to change, and adapt in order to help as many people as possible. It is very possible as a designer to find a niche and crawl into it, knowing that it will be there to provide you with a creative outlet. But it takes a different type of designer to evaluate their job and understand that maybe the mandate is a far cry from the answer.

Green Design, Humanitarian Design, Eco-Design, Design for Social Entrepreneurship, whatever you want to call this trend, new ideas are out there, and movements are happening. If you want to call it cliché there are lots of opportunities and reasons for you to do that, but it cannot be denied that a significant portion of the goals within these communities are desired, and incredibly necessary.

I view it as my personal challenge to question my role as designer, and walk out of RISD with an ID degree quite possibly without the desire to develop any new products.