“THE EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN: FROM LOW TO HIGH”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Allan Chochinov, Partner/Editor, at Core77, USA
Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is editor in chief of Core77.com, a widely-read website focusing on product design, Coroflot.com, a job and portfolio site serving designers and employers across all design disciplines, and Designdirectory.com, an online database linking design firms with corporations seeking strategic design services. Chochinov writes and lectures widely on the impact of design on contemporary culture, and teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
According to Chochinov, as designers confront a future of growing consumer demand for designed artifacts, along with an alarming increase in the environmental, social, and economic consequences of producing, distributing, and using those artifacts, there is an urgent need to reassess the real imperatives and mandates of design. “Classically, it has been viewed as a way to “problem solve” in the built environment, but more and more, the discipline of design is seen as a way of creating value—through artifacts, systems, brands, and services”, says Chochinov.
Here, however, he points out, it’s important to examine just what we mean by the term “creating value,” since the word means different things to different people. “Value to a consumer will be different than value to a manufacturer, distributor, advertiser, or regulator. It is here that the design professional is perhaps most needed, since understanding, sympathizing, and navigating these often-contradictory needs and perceptions is key to determining the consequences of any design act.”
Since design is currently enjoying a big new or resurgence in interest, and since notions of “innovation” and “design thinking” permeate the business press today, there is now a greater curiosity about just what the design process is, and how it resonates through business and culture.
The short answer – according to him – is of course that good design is all about experiences: that a designed product or artifact is a prop in an experience that users move through. “Experiences can be enlightening or banal, satisfying or deflating, life-affirming or depressing. Designers – at least when they succeed – have the tools to modify behavior, bring joy, ease burdens, and yes, solve problems. But unless we take the wide view of experience and culture, it isn’t possible to create things – even if they’re things of beauty – that have resonance beyond their immediate materiality.”
If design is a tool to solve problems and celebrate life, “experience is the power” in that tool, Chochinov asserts. “It brings context, wisdom, humility and common sense to the process, and in so doing, ennobles both the designer and the design.”
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