In Research We Trust: The New Age of Design

By Gjoko Muratovski

Gjoko Muratovski was a Mentor in Residence for February 2022. He is the author of Research for Designers encourages us to think like designers, and cross disciplines as needed to develop innovative approaches. See this video interview with Dr. Muratovski. Also see this open-access article he wrote for Forbes magazine: “We Need Better Design Thinking.”

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The field of design is now entrusted with solving complex and impactful challenges across all social and economic sectors. But in order to make meaningful contributions, designers first need to learn to ask the right questions in order to identify what the real problems are. They also need to learn how to conduct research in order to resolve these problems. In the process, learning to navigate through a range of crossdisciplinary issues in order to understand the broader socio-cultural, political or environmental impact of their work is necessary.

Design and Crossdisciplinary Research

Designers aspire to deliver new and innovative solutions to existing problems, or at least to transform less preferred solutions to more desirable ones. While some of the problems that designers try to address are evident, others still need to be detected. In either case, designers need to demonstrate new levels of understanding of what these problems are before they begin to develop solutions. This is a process that always begins with a basic question: What is it that we want to resolve?

The answer to this question is rarely straightforward and pursuing it can be best described as a journey through the field of knowledge. This investigative process leads designers not only through the creative industries – where they often look for inspiration – but also through other disciplines where they will need to look for existing knowledge in order to make informed decisions. Once the problem is identified and placed within a given context, the search for gaps in this knowledge and possible resolutions continues. Once this information is gathered, a process of analysis and interpretations begins – and only then should design interventions and solutions follow.

Large and complex design projects tend to transcend disciplinary boundaries and require involvement of teams of diverse experts. In such cases, designers may be required to assemble and lead crossdisciplinary teams, become experts in areas that they never worked before, and develop briefs and reports on behalf of their clients. In order to do so, designers will need to demonstrate management and leadership skills that constantly challenge the limits of the profession itself. This is a lengthy process that may span across ones entire career and requires a new kind of education and ongoing professional development.

The Importance of Evidence-Based Research

Traditionally, many designers used to base their work on intuition, ‘rule of thumb’ principles, and general assumptions. With some exceptions, this kind of design work would often focus on surface solutions related to form or visual expression. Nevertheless, achieving an esteemed status by doing this kind of work was not easy. A high level of skill, discipline-specific knowledge, and aesthetic sensitivity was required. Many famous designs that we can see in galleries and museum collections today continue to celebrate this kind of work. However, many of these designs are to a great degree self-serving in nature and have very little purpose about them, aside of being beautiful or curious. At best, many of these designs are nothing more but functional forms of art. This way of working, while it was widely accepted once, is no longer sufficient. Designers now need to demonstrate a higher level of accountably for everything they do.

Designers today need to know how to conduct their own research in order to gain better understanding about people and the socio-cultural-economic contexts that define them. They need to be conscious of the environmental and political impact of their work. They also need to understand how new and emerging technologies are impacting people’s way of life. Essentially, designers need to put people in the centre of everything that they do and they need to design solutions around people – with the benefit of human kind in mind.

Generating this kind of knowledge through evidence-based research is especially important for designers interested in disruptive innovation and complex problem solving. This kind of research allows designers to put aside their own personal biases, beliefs and preconceptions. It also allows them to see the world from other perspectives and to imagine designs that are not just beautiful and functional, but also sustainable, meaningful and appropriate. Being a designer today means working in far more demanding environments than ever before. For the new generation of designers, research is not an afterthought; it is a starting point.

Design in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

We now live in a time of infinite possibilities and difficult challenges. New transformative technologies that connect the physical world with the digital world have become pervasive and omnipresent; in some cases, for better, in others for worse. New advances in automation, internet-of-things (IoT), robotics (including collaborative robots or ‘cobots’), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), are transforming the way that we design, manufacture, market, and distribute goods across the planet. All of this is enabled by big data analytics, new business intelligence (BI) capabilities, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) systems), and additive manufacturing (3D printing).

The benefits and the opportunities that come with these new and emerging technologies are hard to ignore. As with all industrial revolutions before, the rationale behind Industry 4.0 has been the same: increased speed and efficiency, streamlined productivity, flexibility, agility, new customer experiences, and higher profitability. When seemingly anything is possible, and when how is no longer an issue, the most important questions that we need to ask is what precisely we need to transform, and why? This premise, of course, assumes that we already know exactly who are we designing for. 

How Will the Field of Design Change?

As with all major changes, the economic transformation caused by Industry 4.0 also comes with some major challenges. According to the World Economic Forum, these new developments will cause major disruptions not only to many of the existing industries and business models, but also to the labour markets. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labour, but now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research and analysing data, can be performed by machines.

The field of design will be affected by the influx of Industry 4.0 technology as well. For example, the generative design software that is being developed by Autodesk is already changing (and replacing) the exploratory process of design. Designers can now input design goals into the generative design software, along with parameters such as performance or spatial requirements, materials, manufacturing methods, and cost constraints. By using AI, the software can explore all possible permutations of a solution, quickly generating hundreds or thousands of design alternatives. At the same time, the algorithm learns from each iteration and tests what works and what doesn’t in a matter of seconds. The software enables exploration of design solutions that would have never been humanly possible.

This doesn’t mean that the designers will eventually become obsolete. It does mean, however, that certain tedious and highly technical design tasks can be replaced by a much superior process. Worth highlighting here is that this is also a process that allows designers to focus on why something needs to be designed, rather than how. Essentially, generative design technology has the ability to shift the role of the designer from that of a producer, to that of a curator. For designers who have well-developed critical thinking skill, are highly analytical, and are comfortable framing complex problems, this kind of technology will be an asset. For designers who primarily focus on technical execution and need a detailed design brief to operate, this technology will be a detriment