The First Survey
11/04/2021
I sent out this survey, containing three simple (or alternatively, complex) questions, to understand a general picture of the three key ideas that my hypothesis is based on. The Good, the Bad, and the Future. The respondents consisted a mix of design students, educators, practicing designers, and artists.
Here are the responses:
Q1. What's a good thing designers do/have done?
Make life easy
They shape the societies in a lot of ways. They are the visionary who have painted the scenarios by extrapolation of present into future.
Made a job opportunity for people like me who are too dumb for STEAM and too logical for Arts.
New ways of seeing the old one.
Small making large difference
The plurality and diversity that exists in the design fields and amongst designers, makes it difficult to answer this in a singular context. But I guess the facilitation of ease in carrying out a task, or to make life more livable/ refined/ better, may be considered as a good thing that designers do/ have done.
Diverted attention towards the user
Made and make quality of life better.
Give people the power of choice
Make things easier, interactive and more fun
Bring positive change, support local livelihoods, make life easy and support traditions (old or contemporary) through their works.
Creating story from a simple object
Empathizing
Explore
providing solutions
Sustainable design
Created massive employment opportunities.
Widen the scope of visual identities and channels of art
Always try to think out of the box
Designers have brought more attention to the relationship between humans and the components of their built environment. One can also say, they've made it possible to capitalize on it.
Bring about a conversationDesign comfortable, user friendly products
Made incredible products
Improved quality of life.
Harmonized physical and visual world.
Designing for medical needs
Make the world a better place to live for humans and others
Tech. Leading tech
not done very often but articulating design - beyond the visual - like white papers
The Concept of Whats Next
solve problems, create entertainment, support entrepreneurs through advertising, make life cooler and simpler
Solve problems for complex situations bring visuals in the best way for ease to consumers of visual communication
Idea, research
Whatever the final outcome of a design intervention, it strives to improve upon what existed before. Designer's have played a vital role in our collective evolution.
Hmm.contribute back to the community, enable people to look at objects more than just mere objects, create spaces to make the existing better.
Multi taskingDesign for change, design to facilitate things, design for social impact, design as a tool rather than aesthetic improvement.
Helping clients to make their imagination come true.Holistic thinking while creating anything
Create new objects to define future.should consider environment as a factor while designing. ( not only human centric )They get involved in the world and make good things
Q 2. What's a 'bad' thing designers have (directly or indirectly) done/enabled/been party to?
“What you resent in others is present in you “ is a famous saying. For years designers say they are solving “USER’s” problem in reality its their own problem, you cant spot a problem if you dont have that problem.
Designers phaff quite a bit. Most of them lack any ethics. Many designers are apathetic and actively enable sexism and abuse of power.
Too much plastic
Anything new makes something old and useless.
To be judgemental, or to have a sense of superiority when working with communities which are not a part of one's social or cultural milieu. This also eliminates possibilities of co-creating/ co-thinking with the actual stakeholders.
Consumerism
Taken things for granted like users, spaces, etc.
Increased consumerism/ creating more waste materialExploiting crafts and not giving credit and appropriate monetary benefit to artisans, cultural appropriation, helping big companies throw around the word 'sustainable' without realizing the depth and gravity of it.
What comes to my mind right now is that designers today are very attached to their work which sometimes prevents/stops them from doing the greater good of the society. Sorry I can't think of an example right now. But all the best for your project.
Harming nature indirectly
Short term problem solving
Comparing other design and following the trends
indirectly encouraging designs that take up or deplete resources.Taking away work from some poor workers
Created massive employment opportunities that doesn't do more than being a mediator and controlling the ones who actually do the actual job.
Become money oriented than design or art oriented.
Not ask for the money they actually deserve (sometimes)
The capitalization of the concept have resulted in problems ranging from ethical concerns to impact on planet. One of the reason might be the "profit generation" mechanism built in capitalism.Complicate things without complete awareness of it.
Design or work with brands helping them create products harmful/problematic for people/ planet just for monetary gain
Creating excess, hierarchy, catering to and feeding the seven sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth)
Planned Obsolescence of products
Industrialisation has its negative effects on the climate and several communication designers can participate in iffy communities according to their own beliefs
Manipulating user for company profits and encouraging unethical behaviour
Made us dependent on external help (from products or services)
aesthetics over accessibility and empowerment
THINKS A LOT TO DO- BUT WORKS ON THE JUST AT PEAK POINT
create super addictive ui/ux designs, indirectly managed to ignore cultural differences in design
Working for projects that invole replicating designs
Less Effort
CONSUMERISM
I feel like designers play a role in the whole competitive rat race, we glorify unhealthy woking patterns. other than that there are situations where there is an unnecessary exoticism of our culture.
Not being aware of their rights as a professional
Obsolescence: designers made sure to create products that aren't sustainable and hence promote consumerism till some extent.
Design that promotes classism: a certain level of aesthetic through appearance and products to define your 'class'. We throw this term around lightly saying a form or typeface is 'classy'. Whereas design always comes from a place of personal experience.
Increasing consumption, Faster Obsolescence, Interventions in unsolicited and precarious contexts.
Generalise opinions.
Designers do make things/product with non environmental friendly materials, even though they aware about its harm (All the industries are business driven, Profit oriented.So, MBA have more voice than B.Des/M.Des)They don’t know enough about the impact their work will have, mostly things done in the name of convenience
Q3. What scares you about the future?
Having designers who are not systems thinkers.
Being raped and killed in the middle of a street.
Will life be more fast in the future?
Living in virtual world.
Human apathy.
Covid 19 trajectory
The uncertainty and the ambiguity.
Design becoming redundant in terms of how something looks because of overload of design that is beyond comprehension and now just rebels but isn't functional
the attractiveness of shortcuts
Right now its mostly related to the health of me and my family. The uncertainty to prove my metal in the industry because of the shortcomings and compromises made (work wise) during the pandemic sometimes gets the best of me.
Literally the fact that everything that can be done has already been done and familiarity fatigue
AI design will be more popular than real human designer
That there could be no future.
Stupid humans not understanding the importance of environment and totally destroying it
There will be more designers.
The take over of capitalism on intuitive design skills and artist freedom.
Thinking where will I end up after 10 years from now.
Well, flying cars didn't appear in 2020, and that's scary. Also, the deteriorating living environment/conditions.
Lack of empathy.
People losing morals and depth and becoming super selfish and destructive
Disparity, scarcity and degraded human-human and human- nature relationship, safety of all things living due to human greed
Lack of empathy in peopleLosing hope eventually, someday
Ux not reaching the heights it deserves
Too much dependency on external resources will lead to decreased general life skills (Take OLA/UBER/Autonomous driving for example, services or products like this will lead to people not knowing how to drive a car in future)
uncertainty
Scope & integrity of what i am and what could i serve for to make world little ahead of what it is.Everything is becoming very radical, there is one right one wrong and no in-between. we’re being controlled by social media algorithms, and greed
Lack of good projects...that at any time now, it would be too late for us.that its never gonna go back to what it was
Everything regarding return on investment
Our inability to keep up with things, the balance between development and upliftment? I'm not sure, too many things, government, climate change.
Failure
Destruction of the planet and the nature we are very much intertwined withCrowding
Environment, Quality of Food, Life style, Health
That there won’t be any natural spaces left
How to analyse this information and synthesise potential working points?