The responsibility of the Designer

The human being as the bottleneck in times of change

The most limited resource when it comes to digital change is man’s ability to adapt to the shifts that occur over time. It is not technological, economic or ecological resources that determine change, but our individual ability – and the ability of society as a whole – to remain flexible. The cultural integration of our rapidly changing living environment will become the major challenge all societies on earth will be faced with. The correlations and coherences that are able to find ways of accepting new technologies, products and trends will be those that survive. It is not about attracting attention, but about acceptance. And digitalisation is not a phenomenon that is confined to the IT environment alone. Digitalisation affects all areas of our lives, steps up the pace of progress and change in all social contexts. There is going to be so much in the way of change in the next 25 years on the labour market alone that far-reaching social dispute and debate is practically inevitable.

In his book entitled “Retropia”, which was published in 2017, author and sociologist Zygmund Bauman pointedly describes the global tendency towards an overall reactionary aversion to future change that can be observed in the political spectrum in this part of the world and in the increasingly neophobic social climate. He writes: “... while we have lost our faith in utopias of all hues, the human aspiration that made this vision so compelling has not died. Instead, it is re-emerging today as a vision focused not on the future but on the past, not on a future-to-be-created, but on an abandoned and undead past that we could call retrotopia”.

If we do not succeed in counteracting this retropic climate, we will find ourselves heading for a backlash against technologies, the inevitable consequence of which would be a huge social divide and the emergence of a neoconservative digital precariat class of people. Nation-state thinking and right-wing populist ideologies will gain ground to an unprecedented degree.

The responsibility of the Designer

we need to acknowledge that we as designers make a substantial contribution towards providing contentious contexts that are rendered available and accessible for society as a whole through our design work. Every design we create involves us working on principles that lend us new expertise when working in this world of increasing complexity and change. Simply transferring old design principles to completely new communication tasks is not only inadequate but also negligent and careless.

Design as a ritual

In this context, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk reveals his remarkable point of view in his essay entitled “On the Birth of Design from the Spirit of Ritual”. He describes design as a bridge that frees us from the feeling of helplessness we sense when dealing with complex advanced technologies, and that has its origins in the ethnological expression of ritual:

“Assuming that the Flood falls from the sky with thunder and lightning on your roof of leaves, if you can survive the storm at all you can survive it better if you chant a song for the weather god. It is not important to be able to make the weather yourself, but it is important to know a technique for keeping fit in bad weather... Only someone who knows what to do when there is nothing to be done knows enough efficient and continuing games of life to prevent him/herself collapsing in panic or freezing into immobility”

And in another part of the essay:

“For design, seen from an ecological perspective of competence, is nothing but the competent liquidation of incompetence. It secures the individual’s competence limits by providing the subject with processes and gestures for navigating as an expert in the ocean of his/her incompetence” (quote).

This interpretation of the design task initially frees us from the claim that we can immediately change anything about the shortcomings of our world through our design work. That said, it places yet another kind of responsibility on us. As designers, we are the ones who can save people from sinking into a feelings of anxiety and insecurity feeling of helpless or overwhelmed and facilitate the way they lead their lives. We are the ones who can build the bridge that enables the individual to free him/herself from feelings of anxiety and insecurity, and grants him/her the means to gain the necessary overview, providing him/her with support when navigating his/her way in the ocean of life.

Against the backdrop of a constantly changing world, this responsibility will be of central importance. Even if we do not provide any direct answers, it is still our job to build the bridges in order to help people overcome being socially paralysed by shock that is driven by fear and mental overload. Design therefore plays a central role when it is a case of macrosocial values and political orientation. When people find themselves in a desperate situation that leave them powerless to respond or act, they will inevitably develop radical tendencies. Such developments have been recorded in literature through the ages, and thanks to historical evidence there is a general consensus where such trends in radicalisation can lead.

But to refer to Sloterdijk again: as creative minds, we are the medicine men who invent the narrative through which the coherence of the world can be restored. The gap through which helplessness, panic and mental overload penetrate our lives, has been closed from time immemorial by rituals. In this sense, we act as creators of rituals and design circle dances that enable us to correlate with a hyper-dynamic world. Even if we cannot really change anything in the crazy world we live in, let us at least compose a song about it in the hope that the people in the world will sing along with us.