Designing With, Not For: A shared ownership of design

The day I was sure I wanted to be a designer was the the day my dad handed me a modern furniture design book he got from Barnes & Noble. Each glossy page had a full-bleed, color photo of some of the sleekest and sexiest chairs and chaise lounges I had ever seen. I spent two solid hours pouring over each artfully designed piece, wondering how I could ever be as talented as the designers who conceptualized and constructed these sensuous artifacts. Six years after being given this shiny design book, and four years since my first day of design school, my reasons for wanting to pursue a design career have changed dramatically. The appeal I initially found in gazing at custom-made $5,000 furniture piece is no longer there. Now when I think of design, I imagine products and systems that improve people's lives not just the appearance of their living rooms. This developed perspective on design is one of the reasons I chose to take this Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship course. However, over the past two weeks of readings, we have not yet reviewed a product or system that has been truly designed WITH the end-user, rather than FOR the end-user. This is a key difference for us to understand if we want to have a lasting impact with the social innovations we create. It is easy and tempting for designers to assume they know how to best design for their end-users. Designers may gather a base of knowledge about their user group through surveys, economic data, demographic data, and literature reviews. While they can complete this research with the goal of gaining insights, true understanding of a users' attitudes, education, goals, and cultural context, cannot be found without full immersion into the environment of that user. OLPC, for example, was developed largely away from the very communities and individuals it was being designed to serve. In the case of OLPC, there were no serious consequences from this lack of immersion. However, what if the OLPC team HAD fully immersed themselves in the African and Indian villages the laptops were meant to serve? Would there have been an even better solution? Emily Pilloton, Founder of Project H, believes this type of immersion for the sake of lasting, impacting, design is essential. She also believes this immersion will result in a shared ownership of the design process. Her work in Project H is a direct reflection of this philosophy. Stationed in Bertie County, NC, Pilloton is using design thinking as a way to transform methods of community improvement and public school education. She and her partner follow these rules in their design process and also share these rules with the high school students they teach design to: 1) There is no design without (critical) action 2) We design WITH, not FOR 3) We document, share and measure 4) We start locally and scale globally 5) We design systems, not stuff 6) We build Pilloton and many others believe that following this list of tenants results in empowered communities and a growth of creative capital. When you can give end-users and stakeholders a highly participatory role in the design process they become invested in a way that would never have been possible had you just handed them the newly designed product. As we navigate our way through the field of design for social innovation, we should remember the importance of designing WITH rather than FOR. The user knows best and it is our job to fully understand their needs.