Design Transitions: Inspiring Stories Global Viewpoints How Design is Changing, Joyce Yee, Emma Jeffries, Lauren Tan
This book was suggested to me as part of trying to answer the question: how is service design being impacted by current professional practice. This is a FANTASTIC book full of stories on how professionals working in the field of design are impacting lives and communities.
I particularly enjoyed Benny Banerjee on the Identity Crisis of Designers. As I also believe that while it is a nice sentiment to say ‘we are all designers now’ in truth, we aren’t. Many people don’t have the right mindset and this democratisation serves to undermine the skills of trained and experienced designers.
I see this identity crisis in my students. The d.school is exposing graduate students from all disciplines to the power of Design Thinking, while the graduate students in our degree-granting Masters program in design spend two years delving deep into the nature of design activity.
There cannot be a clear understanding of what constitutes design expertise in a world where the rudiments of design thinking are becoming a commonplace as basic numeracy, and that certainty creates the potential for a crisis of identity.
Our economics and business students acquire a genuinely powerful toolset through their exposure to design thinking, and yet there are also people here who have spent decades honing the ability to bring their design skills to bear at an entirely different level of expertise.
jessleitch 