The New Language of Design

Recently, Allan Chochinov gave a talk at Emily Carr University in which he used a word I can't shake: Fluency.

During his talk, he suggested that fluency was a skill that designers needed to exercise. We often associate fluency with travels to a foreign land. If I can acquire some key phrases like "Where is the toilet?" or "How much does this cost?" then I feel more comfortable making my way in an unknown environment.

Translate this idea to the design space and one could suggest that a designer needs to be fluent in their particular craft, process or software. While this is part of it, the kind of fluency I'm curious to uncover is the kind that I need when I'm travelling in a foreign land of business. Or health care. Or politics.

I wrote about this idea awhile ago in considering how design education could influence one's fluency. But I don't believe we should rely on educators alone. As I've stepped away from school and into the business, health care or non-profit sectors, I've experienced my own need for language and insight as I worked alongside these other disciplines. In many cases, we might be talking about the same thing but we often find ourselves using different terms and this simple nuance can cause much confusion and frustration (especially when it comes to the journey from idea to outcome/process to deliverable).

Maggie Breslin is a senior designer/researcher in the Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic. In one talk, she identified herself a junior doctor with the amount of learning she had acquired after working for four years in this self-pioneered role at Mayo.

Derek Miller is the director of Policy Lab and is participating in a variety of activities and research around the implementation of design into public policy. In a recent email exchange he said,

It is barely on the radar screens of the public policy world yet, and while development work has contracted designers to come up with physical solutions to things, the notion of design as a process — and the area of service design itself, for example — is entirely alien.

These two scenarios suggest that designers do have a role to play in other spheres but in order to move design beyond the "alien" or physical solutions, one must acquire the ability to converse articulately on the issues involved in these realms.

So this begs the question, "If design can play a role in these "other lands," how can designers become more fluent so as to make an effective impact?"

What do you think needs to happen for new designers/students? And what about people with years of experience who are seeking to contribute their design in other spheres like health care, public policy or international development?

How do we become fluent?

Reading Robert Bringhurst's words about typography could be compared to savoring a glass of fine wine: the notes are layered so you don't want to rush it.

"Letters are microscopic works of art as well as useful symbols. They mean what they are as well as what they say. Typography is the art and craft of handling these doubly meaningful bits of information. A good typographer handles them in intelligent, coherent, sensitive ways."

"Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness."

The pictures above show:
1) some student work after only one class of introductory typography
2) a graphic designer in rural Africa

Every time I sit down to prepare for this course, I am reminded of the complexity of language. I'm sure I could write a diatribe on the topic. From being in Rwanda (where I didn't speak the language I needed) to being in Canada (where I aim to teach students how to use the language they know), I am amazed by the common challenge we face: to make and show the meaning of our words.

Learning #3: Just because we speak the same language, doesn't mean we understand each other.

"...dialogue characterizes an epistemological relationship. Thus, in this sense, dialogue is a way of knowing...I engage in dialogue because I recognize the social and not merely the individualistic character of the process of knowing. In this sense, dialogue presents itself as an indispensable component of the process of both learning and knowing." (Paulo Freire)

As I reflect on my work in a cross-cultural context, I realize how much complication can arise from the lack of a shared language. Getting on the wrong bus, saying the wrong thing in a meeting and ordering the wrong food are but a few examples. But back in my own city, where I am able to do most of these things, I think I can take the shared language notion for granted. It may allow you to get where you want to go but it doesn't guarantee you'll really know or learn. In looking ahead, I hope to continue to work on projects that require cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary teams because I find that these experiences help equip me to avoid the perils of assumption.

One of twelve in this series

Visually Literate

While my current research focus is on design for health care, I can't shake the thoughts I'm having  about technology and literacy (which I suppose aren't completely unrelated). When I first started my design training, I was given an assignment to create a newspaper ad that would present a concept of the how the rate of HIV/AIDS in Africa would lead to increased deaths, which would have a direct affect on the next generation's acquisition of knowledge. I take note of this piece simply because the quote suggests that these statistics will arrive by 2010. That's coming up soon, right?



I also recall my participation in a science and technology conference in Rwanda (and how the research activities of the participants could impact the economy of the country). What was notable to me during this experience was how many of the researchers did not have a backed up copy of their work that could shared (because it had been typed once on a typewriter). In this case, how does their knowledge get passed on and/or developed further? If there are hidden innovations, how can we learn about them?

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This article caught my attention this week because it speaks to how we value literacy in this media age. How this gets measured is a whole other conversation but I'm left wondering how media literacy applies to those who might still be waiting for the media to show up? I continue to hear about technological advances in the urban space but am getting more excited to see how this gets translated to those who dwell in a rural context. There are innovations waiting to abound but how do they get realized, shared or built upon?

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What would it look like if we allowed people to create a visual business plan instead of a textual one? What if presenting an evaluation to a potential funder meant creating a video? Or a book of sketches? What if a farmer, looking for remedies to a low crop yield, received all his information visually?  On a mobile device?

If text hinders someone from moving forward economically or otherwise, are we limiting the innovators who have ideas but can't write them down?

These are lofty questions at this point. I'm not completely sure what to do with them, except get them on a page and consider how their adolescent qualities might mature. If you have thoughts or ideas to contribute to my ramblings, I'd love to hear them. Or better yet, see them.
Image source

UNESCO says, "We're Losing Language"

Via TED blog

"Even at the purely semantic level, the term 'development' is difficult to replace. If you dislike it and its derivatives - 'developing', 'developed' - and try to avoid using them, nothing else quite works. To understand that development is an artificial construct and has earned much discredit does not help get rid of it. The concept has become ingrained in economic language and philanthropic endeavor. In default of some better terminological alternative, we will probably go on using the one we have. It would be helpful, however, if it was more used with greater care, and not assumed to be invariably beneficent and politically clean."

Maggie Black
The No-Nonsense Guide to International Development

The Boy with the Incredible Brain

Communicating through sketching

This clip comes from a longer piece. I appreciated the way this illustrator used his sketching as a means of communicating with people when language was not shared. And a book to help you travel isn't a bad idea!

Afrikan Alphabets

This makes me happy.
The book.

Lester Beall and Information Design

Lester Beall designed these posters in the late 1930s for the US Government's Rural Electrification Administration.

The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was an agency of the United States federal government created on May 11, 1935 through efforts of the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The REA's task was to promote electrification in rural areas, which in the 1930s rarely were provided with electricity due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads. America lagged significantly behind European countries in rural electrification. Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to compete with or regulate private enterprise, despite many of these utilities having refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Since private power companies set rural rates four times as high as city rates, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These posters are an interesting point of discussion for me as I consider how communication design can articulate environmental messages to the rural communities of Africa. On one level, we can look at these posters as somewhat ironic (because of our current awareness of energy consumption). But the graphic design (in its modernist form and attempted function) are simple, seemingly clear and almost fit into an information design category. In these post-modern times, does Beall's poster have a relevance we might typically overlook? Can this form influence how one might consider communicating universally?

Clearly, the ideas inherent in the rural electrification administration process are outdated but I like how these images present data pictorially (and without being obvious suggest a place for some leapfrogging):

Languid

Since being in Rwanda, I can't get the word languid out of my mind.

The people here are languid.

Well, some more than others. And I mean it the best possible way. The word itself has an elegance and gait that can only be considered peaceful. The way the word rolls off my tongue is the way the people move and interact. There is a word for this (when words equal something active), isn't there? I can't recall it right now. Something like onomatopoeia but not quite.

This languid quality is incredibly attractive and almost soothing (as opposed to the lazy definition above. With the amount of work these people do just to get by, I can hardly dub them lazy).

So the word of the week is languid . Try using it in a sentence.

Language is so beautiful and powerful.

Friday Afternoon, Just Because

These are some things I'm noticing.
That seem to be shaping my thoughts about my project for the applied part of my studies.







And this.

Telling stories with type

I'm curious about how text holds authority. Of late, I've been reading Heidegger's What is Called Thinking? and J.L. Austin's book, How To Do Things With Words. Both these writers challenge some commonplace notions about how we interpret the information offered to us. In light of my curiosities about sustainability and the way it is revealed, these writings become interesting forays into some philosophical underpinnings of my research.


You can see this work in action by downloading the version that suits your operating system. Poetic and typographic delights.

We must guard against the blind urge to snatch at a quick answer in the form of a formula. (Heidegger)

Can saying making it so? (Austin)