The design profession itself has become as complex
The design profession itself has become as complex as the various aspects of life that call for design solutions. It obviously requires a high level of competence; reducing design to a mere mastery of form and function would be far too simple.
Designers are expected to process design tasks analytically, find creative solutions, be informed about the newest technologies and materials, and be able to use them strategically in their work. They are expected to create designs for the future, know target groups and manufacturing processes, and of course, to develop aesthetic, sensible forms. In short, they are expected to inhabit the roles of artist, structural designer, visionary, sociologist, and marketing expert, all at the same time.
Every designer possesses various levels of expertise for each of the above skills. Yet in order to successfully create products for the market, designers also need “material literacy,” which is an additional ability that consolidates their know-how. Material literacy is at its core a communicative competence, whereby designers implement the effect of color, form, material, and surfaces in such a way that gives new designed products a semantic (meaning a nonverbal) significance. The reason there are so many watches on the market, from the techno pilot watch to the nostalgic chronometer with moon phases and various gadgets, is that they all reflect an array of semiotic needs. Good designers are able to play the entire range of symbols like a virtuoso pianist, to anticipate and respond to the expectations of both the client and the seller. Design competence would be meaningless if companies and consumers did not respond to it. The design of a product first has to be “read,” appreciated, produced, and bought. Design competence is an important market factor today, as scientific research has confirmed.
The British Design Council recently published a study that examined 1,500 small, midsized, and large companies. Alarmingly, the results showed that regardless of size, those companies that had not invested in design were in gradual decline. Many companies have long recognized that an investment in design has a significant impact on attracting market attention. Increasingly decisionmakers today are beginning to understand the value of investing in an aesthetic that is suited to a brand informative and distinctive packaging and user-friendly product designs, for instance. The impact on the industry is far-reaching: car manufacturers sell their products primarily on the basis of their surface designs (Styling); tool manufacturers and plastics companies advertise using design competence as a catchphrase; advertisements for design firms list design prizes as significant accomplishments. A brand with a high level of design competence invested in its products, messages and services implies high quality and will distinguish the brand from others.
Although consumers are at the center of the efforts made by companies and designers, they have always been the least calculable factor. Despite rational arguments, shopping discovering, deciding, and paying is still a very emotional act, whether browsing or focused. With a combination of impulse and calculation, consumers orchestrate themselves and their everyday world more or less consciously (Consumption). The need for individual expression uses the codes in the culture for a highly differentiated nonverbal communication. No-name computers, brand watches, and IKEA shelving units are all part of an orchestra of symbols. Consumers’ design competence is demonstrated by their deployment of product associations. Designers create the “correct” differentiation of products and this is their essential competence for businesses.
Futurologists, trend agents, and business consultants are speaking of a change in the traditional distribution of roles between designers, companies, and consumers. With the growing significance of e-commerce and the availability of new technologies like 3-D printing, the borders between these three roles are becoming more and more blurred. As “prosumers,” former consumers have in effect become their own producers in that they “design” product prototypes according to their own needs, and can even produce them at home with a 3-D printer. The designer’s role here is to consult, to make design suggestions to would-be prosumers, or to equip the printer with the appropriate print data. In this way, ordinary consumers influence the market during production, and not simply afterwards with their selections of existing goods.
According to this theory, designers’ competence will increasingly be directed at customers, whose own design competence in turn will be increasingly challenged as the possibilities of their influence increase.