Making Stuff vs. Making Stuff Up
It’s a weird time for designers.
At a time when we’re on the cover of Business Week and Jonny Ive is getting knighted by the Queen, we’re simultaneously being told by the people praising us to stop doing one of the things that defines our profession: namely, making stuff.
Our real value, we’re told, is in thinking (as in “design thinking”), and that the dirty work of, you know, making things is a commodity that will be outsourced somewhere offshore — presumably to some 12-year-old in Southeast Asia making a dollar an hour.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate being appreciated for our brains (which is a little like being told you have a great personality). But divorcing “thinking” from “making” reduces design to “concepting.” And while concepting is valuable, concepts are much easier to have than finished products. Almost anyone can have a concept.
It is in the detail work that design really happens — that the clever, delightful moments of a design occur. Those are as important, if not more so, than the concept itself. The details are where we earn our money and our respect, and the details can only be worked out through making stuff.
Dan Saffer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path, an international speaker, and author of Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices. Jennifer Lew makes time to make many things about making things. She does not; however, make much time for sleep.
Remarks 41 total remarks were added before the post was closed.
Anne
Very true! As in “The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School” by Michael McDonough, one of the thing he mentioned is: it all comes down to output. If you can't output it, distribute it, and make it know, it basically doesn't exist.
Jeff Croft
Great piece, Dan. I have been largely glad that there is somewhat of a shift towards more "design thinking." I do believe designers are very valuable for their strategy and conceptual thinking.
But, you're right -- we shouldn't lose site of "making stuff," because, as Anne points out, it will always be what really defines us.
BTW, this is definitely my favorite ABM design yet. Well done, Khoi and Jennifer (and anyone else involved). :)
Joel
To be fair these ideas apply equally to areas such as architecture, programming and engineering that have had global "outsourcing" occur over the years. What you have failed to identify here with your reference to the "12-year-old in Southeast Asia making a dollar an hour" is that parts of the world that are developing have got a far greater capacity to undertake jobs previously the exclusive domain of the developed world, through investment in education.
Don't write off off-shoring so quickly without identifying quality of that off-shoring (which has changed substantially in certain locations) without resorting to stereotypes that may not necessarily still be accurate.
Note: other than that I agree with you on the major thrust of your argument.
Chris Wilson
There are just some things that don't translate well across cultures, and the combination of design + strategy is one of them.
It's one of the reasons I don't just move to Mexico and do everything remotely. Eventually I would get sucked into the culture and would have a hard time relating to the American culture. Sure there is the web. I could do a quick search to see what the design trends are, and many trends cross cultures easily, but it's the strategy side that gives the design it's legs.
And where do strategy and design come together? Like you said. It's in the details.
Jonathan Baldwin
I think that's one of the worst misinterpretations of 'design thinking' I've ever read, and a needless romanticisation of 'design'.
It's the fact that most people think design is just 'making stuff' that leads to designers being undervalued, and non-designers doing all the thinking..
Design is much more than just 'making' - it starts with identifying problems and challenges, and ends (if it ever ends at all) with evaluating the impact a design has had on people.
But much design never gets 'made', it's 'enacted' - systems, services and so on.
It worries me that so many people think design is sitting around waiting for a client to come with an idea, then making something that fits, and moving on to the next thing.
"Design thinking" is a concept that forces us to see design as much, much more. We have so much to offer public services, education, the environment, businesses, communities, and that means sometimes we have to stop "making" stuff for our own pleasure...
Armin
Wow. How 180°-ily misguided. "Almost anyone can have a concept"? But not anyone can design? I hate sloppy design and non-attention to details as much as you, but almost anyone with an inkling towards making, be it on the computer, on paper, on a wall, or in any other medium can design. If you are placing importance on the beauty of a ligature, or the perfect crop of an image, or the elegance of properly letterspaced small caps, over the importance of how these design manifestations enable and support a concept, message or idea, your services are no more valuable than that of the 12-year-old in Southeast Asia. As far as I have experienced, we earn our respect by our ability to rationalize our design decisions and how those work in support of any given piece of communication, not so much by how nice our gutters and baseline grids are.
Dan Saffer
I never said design was ONLY making. It's thinking AND making. There is value in the thinking as well, but designers can take it to the next step via making. The making can even be of an intangible system like a workflow.
Where did I ever say that not anyone can design? Anyone can design, but not everyone can design well, and fewer still at a professional level.
As far as outsourcing goes, I admit that was a cheap shot for a laugh. There are many fine designers around the world. My point was that the creation of form (physical, digital, system) is not a commodity. It's not manufacturing (although manufacturing itself is a skill we shouldn't undervalue either) and shouldn't be left to others to work out the details. The details matter.
Oh, and designers need to stop whining about being undervalued. Undervalued professions aren't getting on the covers of business magazines. There are obviously companies and organizations that do value what we do. Most agency designers have billing rates that rival those of lawyers and doctors. That's not undervalued. JANITORS are undervalued. When's the last time you saw one of those on the cover of Fast Company?
Dennis Eusebio
I think the reason people stress "design thinking" over "making" is that makers will always be expected to do things faster and cheaper as technology progresses and skills change.
Design thinkers will always provide a value to the strategic process and its something that will not change as time goes by. Its a valuable process that isn't affected by ever changing software, print technology or web standards.
Dennis Eusebio
That being said, I do agree that as a designers our craft and concepting have got to be spot on. Having just one or the other is not acceptable.
Becoming a skilled maker is just step one for a designer. Becoming a brilliant "design thinker" is the final goal I believe. Hopefully you won't lose those fundamentals along the way.
Gong Szeto
i am confused by something. is saffer talking about the general process by which designers make rough models? or is he talking about the production of real economic goods?
if the former, then this post is odd. no one is asking designers to stop making rough models. if the latter, then i stand by the the request to stop making more real economic goods. we have enough carbonated vitamin-enriched sugar water and sexified luxury staplers.
here's a quick list of "urgent human problems":
1) hunger
2) economic and social inequality
3) climate change
4) greed
5) corruption
6) natural disaster
7) too much stuff
if design can explicitly address any of those 7 things with aplomb, then yay. but you know and i know that design hasn't. and it hasn't because we are tuned into only one channel - the channel of the needs of capitalism and the profit mechanism of selling more and more shit we really don't need.
i don't have a problem with designers making more shit. just make the right shit. posts like this totally and utterly miss the point which lead me to believe that 99.9% of the design profession is simply naive and unprepared.
Gong Szeto
i also object to the trophy example of design being emblazoned on the cover of businessweek. DUH. design helps to generate more (manufactured) desire for...DUH...more shit.
when design gets on the cover, of say, 'foreign policy' magazine, i'd say we've "arrived".
don't tell me that design cannot have a seat at this table. everybody and their uncle is talking about designing systems as if it were the holy grail. well, they are right. politics, society, economics are SYSTEMS.
Dennis Eusebio
@Gong
Interesting perspective. Never thought of things in that way.
Vince Tardy
Ah, this is the sort of on-topic discourse I've been waiting to see on ABM. Great piece Dan (and Jennifer) - very insightful and relevant.
High-concept, tangentially design-related musings are fine every once in a while, but I'd love to see more pieces like this one, Khoi and Liz.
Well done, and keep up the great work.
Stephen Taylor
Dan says: "Where did I ever say that not anyone can design? Anyone can design, but not everyone can design well, and fewer still at a professional level."
"Anyone can design." Yes--exactly like "almost anyone can have a concept." As with design, the real question is whether the concept is done well.
If we're going to make comparisons, let's compare commensurables. Is generating an inspired, inspiring concept really easier than nailing the details in a finished product? (The latter might require more labor, but laboriousness is not the only measure of difficulty.)
Jonathan Baldwin
Making is to design what voting is to democracy. It's just one component of a big and complicated process involving lots of people.
A 'design thinker' can design a product, a service, a 'thing', that is then 'made' by someone else. Design courses turn out 'makers' by the shed load, but they don't produce enough thinkers. We need more people who are geared to the bigger process and fewer who are focussed at the one end, the 'end product'. An end product without any thought is a waste of space. Or art.
I can train anyone to use Photoshop, it's a different matter to educate someone to come up with the ideas the Mac Monkey will visualise.
Thinkers are designers too - often more so than many makers. Making something is not necessarily design, and design is not always making stuff.
ryan sims
this article seems to present a false dichotomy of strategy vs. design - as if strategists are some napkin-wielding-overlords that push the designer-monkeys around.
the outsourcing analogy is off-base. there are similarities in the shearing of craft from thought, but i offer a different on - the product manager vs. the in-house creative at a tech company. those with the credentials of having an MBA often have the 'thought' role at many companies - driving the strategy that is executed by the creative and technical staff. that relationship exists because of history and also training. i won't generalize the pedagogy, but the educational system creates two different types of people.
what's the reason for this trend? is the business community waking up to the need for hybrids? are designers wanting more influence over the process of making things?
making things is a long process - starting from ideation to the fine-grain execution of the idea. involve someone versed in design methods earlier in the process, and the better the outcome.
ID's MDM requires that candidates have a track record of creative output. from an educational perspective, schools seem to be attempting to brigde the perceived gap you're writing about.
AnkurJ
Interesting comment Gong. I too have been pondering the same...
Tanner Christensen
Really great article.
Jonathan Baldwin brings up some interesting points as well.
Randy J. Hunt
Gong's hit the nail on the head. While there's plenty of value in debating making v. thinking v. making/thinking, let's not forget that whatever you're making or thinking has a greater impact or influence than the perception of us "designers" or as a profession.
We need to take responsibility for our actions, and that means smarter making and smarter thinking. That's valuable.
Shane
Ain't that the truth and a half!
justin powell
A great idea poorly executed is a bad idea. This was the basic premise I've taken away from Dan's entry.
I do think the language is a little disjointed and why there are objections to it. The design "making" (process) is where discovery happens. The "concept" (strategy) means nothing if it isn't reflected in the final execution.
Design is at its greatest when everything comes together. The strategy, design, and execution. And like Jonathan Baldwin implied its the "Design thinker" that has the capacity to bring it all together.
So many times "concepts" have little to nothing to do with a companies' objectives. And everything to do with "making" something that just looks cool. Hold onto the strategy thorughtout, its what makes good design great.
Thomas C. Sullivan
Thanks for the article. Very interesting.
My 2 cents: it all depends on the exact definitions of thinking and making.
Certainly in some areas (like architecture & industrial design) the design "thinking" is what matters. It is detailed and has to be "makeable" but that making is by others.
In other areas, it's all in the doing/making because the "concept" only gets you so far. Think about all the things that are made based on the same design concepts: some suck and some are genius, based on the execution.
On the writing side of the creative conversation, I can't imagine anyone caring much about ideas for novels or poems without the making of the novel & poem.
Christopher Fahey
@Dan Saffer: As you know, I agree with you.
@Gong: I'm not sure you're getting what Dan is railing against. He never advocated that designers shouldn't be "at the table". What he's objecting to is the idea that the value that a designer brings to the table has nothing to do with their ability to make things.
And, yes, we *are* being asked to stop making things -- simply by virtue of the fact that we are constantly being told that making things is a lesser pursuit (both in the larger context of business and in the smaller context of one's own career) than thinking about making things. The implication is that to become a design leader, one must stop designing.
This logic (and this is me talking here, not Dan) is a back-door argument for putting people with no design experience in charge of design-centric businesses. Want to be the CEO of a cool company making sexy products -- but you can't design for shit? Go to d-school and learn "design thinking"!
The idea that anyone, especially a designer, can both sit at the table *and* design and make stuff is, to the "design thinking" world, very hard to understand.
Christopher Fahey
@Gong: With respect to your list of urgent human problems, well, sure, designers like any other type of person should be doing what they can to not wreck the world and solve some of our most challenging issues. But, for one thing, I'm not sure that designers have anything to offer towards solutions to these problems that is of more (or less) value than what politicians, businesspeople, artists, journalists, or people from any other area of human expertise might offer.
And in any event it's not what Dan was talking about -- and it's certainly not what design thinking is about.
Gong Szeto
@Fahey
map-man*: thanks for clarifying that i misread dan's argument. that said, upon re-reading it through your lens, it is not much clearer to me than my first reading. to be honest, i don't fully understand the argument that he's railing against, though your references suggest some things i've read at nussbaum's corner. (by the way, d-school in my opinion, is a sad shortcut in a single degree that, if one were serious about cracking the business school nut, would get an art/design degree + a bonfide MBA, but maybe i'm just old school.)
if saffer's argument is correct, my only take is to ignore it. he is right, you cannot divorce thinking from making. that is like (in other posts' examples, divorcing thinking from writing, thinking from painting, thinking from jotting down equations) the whole thing is dumb.
nb: i think this whole "design thinking" is really describing "kinesthetic" thinking (visual) vs. the "other kinds" (verbal, aural, and logical). problem solving is nothing new, nor is how one chooses to go about it. it happens that designers are mostly kinesthetic in their ways, which rocks. but it's not the *only* way.
nb2: i still think designers can solve world hunger.
Dinu
I agree with what you say about separating the 'thinking' from the 'making'. That would make the designer an idealist, and I don't think that's a flattering term.
That said, I am a designer/developer from SE Asia, and I'm not 12, nor am I paid a dollar an hour. I know you probably didn't mean it that way, but it comes out as a blanket stereotyping of out-sourced work.
Globalization took over the earth a long time ago. It's highly sensitive stuff, but when it all boils down, designers in the west can either whine about it, or embrace it and use it to their advantage.
Jennifer Lew
From my own experience as a graphic designer that makes things, there is a huge difference between thinking conceptually and creating an object. I try to marry the two. Nowadays the idea of a 2-dimensional/print designer does not mean we need to produce any of our ideas. We can send it off to the printer or to someone to do the production work. We know that the process in making an object is laborious, isolating, and tedious. We need a lot of attention to details in making something correctly and beautifully. Besides, all we need is an image anyways (look at this piece).
Often times the value of a produced object is less than the concept of it. We have stereotypes of who is the person making these objects, as this article jokingly refers to Southeast Asians as child sweatshop workers. I am Asian, my parents and my parent's parents worked in sewing factories both in Asia and in the States. We forget that as designers, no matter what medium we choose to pursue, that how we choose to solve the creative problem should be respected equally. Whether or not we are making it or if we thought it up.
TheUprock!
THanks Gong, it's so refreshing to know other people out there in the design field think and feel similarly still...
Chris
Only that Jonny Ive wasn't knighted! he recieved a CBE. Although a CBE is an honor betowed apon an individual, it does not come within the ranks of Knighthood, only Knight Grand Cross (GBE) or Knight Commander (KBE) or Dame Commander (DBE).
If your going to write about it, get it right! Surely its within the premise of this article and journalism?
Christopher Fahey
@gong: The MBA "design thinking" program is not about how designers think visually (versus linguistically, etc), but rather about how we use abductive reasoning (imagining what can be instead of deducing what should be) and even trial-and-error to come up with solutions, rather than by trying to deduce solutions from datapoints.
For example: I know a guy who started a very successful business selling fashionable clothing to teenage girls via mail-order catalogs. He chose to get into this business after analyzing market data in the clothing industry, the demographics and content of the fashion industry, and national population trends in general. He didn't know anything about teen girls, mail order, or the fashion industry -- it was a purely numbers-based business decision.
This method is often successful, as it was for my acquaintance, but in the world of product design it's been a mixed bag. Allegedly, countless focus groups and market studies showed that the Aeron chair would be a massive flop. But, as the legend goes, the "design thinking" at Herman Miller triumphed over the number crunchers.
MBAs look at stories like Herman Miller, and at Apple's track record, and wonder if something about the designer's brain is worth emulating.
Phil Dunstan-Brown
Design is never going to be a cure for cancer, and sure we take ourselves too seriously at times. It is my belief that design can only really have an impact if the power of the idea or the core central thought is at the heart of what we do (The thinking).
All to often designers are accused of being stylists, merely applying detail, colour and composition (the making).
If thats all we are then this is a totally benign profession.
We are about change. Change in the way people see their world, react to it. We are about making this planet a better place to live.
Execution without an idea is like designing the wallpaper on a wall. We as designers should be about the window, revealing a vista to a viewer that they've never seen before.
Ideas are our currency. Detail and execution are merely the components of our craft. Thinking is therefore far more important than the making. Yet, all said, great execution is going to propel a great idea much, much further.
dave
Hang on, isn't this called Art Directing?
Ok, so mac monkeys aren't designers. But hey, try getting anything done without them.
Gong Szeto
@fahey: thanks for the explanation, but i still don't get it. so you're saying that design thinking is more empirical than quantitative? is d.school just all about softening the quant edges of MBA school? sorry for being a dolt, but i still don't get it. i am a designer, i attended business school. and i still don't understand what design thinking is. help! it's funny, all this time i thought it was the other way around, to get the qual-jocks (designers) more quantitatively oriented. it seems the world wants it backwards. i guess i am backwards.
Dan Saffer
Again: I wasn't slamming Asians, designers, sweatshop workers or some combination thereof. I was using the stereotype to make a point about the seeming commoditization of design work. I was suggesting (perhaps crudely, but hey, I had 200 words here) what the tone of these articles tend to be.
And, yeah, Jonny got a CBE. This ain't journalism. :)
Gong Szeto
doh. so i just googled it. d.school. design thinking.
shucks - this is simply the IDEO-ification of the business world.
...breakthrough products...really hard problems...interdisciplinary...blah blah -- ok i get it.
did you notice that the faculty at stanford is 99.99% mid-career smiling open-collared upper middle class silicon valley white people?
i am not sold. why? because fundamentally "design thinking" is socialism-lite. and they are trying to convert dyed-in-the-wool capitalists to "get ethno". it is a fundamental mismatch in cultures and i think it's hysterical that there are so many on this bandwagon.
i am a socialist dressed in capitalist clothing. i know what i am talking about.
i work for a brokerage, hedge fund, and derivatives and futures trading firm. to the degree they like design is "whatever makes stuff sell".
it is possible to be cynical about this, bumt it's just the way it is.
designers, keep doing your thing. the only thing that will stop it is a total collapse of freemarket economics. which won't happen in your lifetime anyhow.
@saffer: thanks for the apology. i did take note of your less than PC wordsmithing, but i wasn't offended.
Jennifer Lew
Dan, I appreciate your reasoning for the sweatshop comment. No worries. I hope that your article inspires others to make things.
Gaz Shaw
I too was ready to digress about the description of a CBE and how it differs from a knighthood, but Chris has already pointed it out. Although I wouldn't have been so arsey.
Ryan Singer
Right on Dan. Concepts have no size and shape, no borders, edges or pixel counts. It's only when they hit the paper, the screen, or the code that they become real enough to discuss, develop and critique. Up to that point it's all hot air. Thanks for the great post.
Frederik Andersen
Great article, Dan. It reminds me of the "innovation" paradox.
I know this sounds off topic, but it isn't; if you, like me, believe that "Innovation is the process of creating and delivering new customer value in the marketplace" (Curt Carlson), then design is a natural part of a bigger process.
So the thinkers *have* to actually deliver (ie. design and manufacture/print/implement), and the designers *have* to think or let other people do it for them.
If the thinkers do not deliver, you don't have a product, you have a business plan.
If the design does not fit in a bigger chain, you have a starving artist instead of a good product.
Some people can do both, but you shouldn't opt for one without the other.
Hope it makes sense - I really enjoyed reading the discussion in this thread.
JW Kim
Dan, I agree that the making portion of design is unfortunately left out of our education and our jobs as well. My comment here is about your gross misinterpretation of "design thinking". "Design thinking" is exactly what YOU are advocating. I've said it before in response to your blog post "design thinking"is a methodology where MAKING is an essential part of it, unlike it's literal meaning. Even you had your own definition of 'design thinking' that I think was quite accurate a couple of years ago (wikipedia has a good definition too). The term has been used way before AP existed so to perpetuate the misinterpretation is I believe irresponsible on your part. It's unfortunate you are a design thinker in my mind and yes the same type of design thinking that Nussbaum is passionate about. You guys have more in common than you think but I feel your personal bias has blinded you to ignore what you have in common, which is the last thing we need in design. I've long held a good regard for the AP brand and ignorance was never part of it until now.
jw kim
@gong- a lot of people including Dan Saffer made this misinterpretation.
Stanford's dschool is an INSTITUTE, it does not grant a degree. It's goal is to spread "design thinking" to other disciplines and expose other students to design so that they appreciate what designers bring to the table. Re: social issues dschool from the beginning worked on helping social issues, most notably with the extreme affordability class, so I'm not sure if your point is valid.