Design Empathy or Design Tastemaking?

[Alert: controversial take] Design empathy based on gathering insights is rarely how good designers work. While I wish good designers were empathetic and worked to deeply understand people and their needs, it has never been a primary design approach.

AI-bot teachers only make sense if there are AI-bot students who pay tuition.

When talking about designing, it is better to say proposal-making rather than problem-solving.

Designing suggests desirable futures combining intuition/imagination with evidence/theory. Other practices typically suggest an expected output based mostly on evidence/theory.

“Transdisciplinary design” is a redundancy. Transdisciplinarity is the nature of design; design practitioners must integrate knowledge to make compelling and effective proposals.

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In ideal co-design activities, facilitators give participants the power to (1) define the design process and (2) make design decisions.

Some designers want to enjoy crafting visual communication, products, or spaces…
…they might not want to be strategic designers — not participating in decisions about creating and capturing business and social value.

I often hear designers say things that suggest designing is done after framing and defining the situation. For example, "We are ready to design the product." This communicates that designers are only good at coming up with ideas and creating pretty stuff.

"Co-design sessions" are not real co-design. These are just sessions that are part of a longer and more complex design process where experts and leaders are likely to keep holding power.

Design is a practice that defines and influences how we live, play, and work. Good designers need solid foundations in critical thinking, ethics, politics, and business.

Design is a series of activities in a process. These activities are conducted iteratively and differently in every process. For this reason, it is not possible to identify *the* design method. The design method is no method.

Designers tend to laser-focus on the features, characteristics, and forms of the products and services they are creating.

Data-driven approaches conflict with systemic approaches. Measuring will narrow the view of the system. In a systemic approach, observing and assessing emergence is more meaningful.

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It is insufficient to tell design students and designers that there is a lot of power in designing.

We also need to tell designers who hold power and what types of design practices and approaches have power.

Designing "end-user" artifacts is the last element in the chain of power.

The most meaningful and impactful Thing we can design for today is public opinion.
The challenge is understanding the ethical and political responsibility that involves designing for public opinion.

I am skeptical that AI will help us with the boring, administrative, repetitive tasks we do in design and other professions. While it is possible that AI can actually help with that, it is not probable.

Hey, I also miss the days when we, designers, felt that we could develop a unique style and dream of becoming famous designers.

I try hard not to use the term “non-designers.” Design is a human ability, and professional designers have no right to exclude people from the design activity. I prefer “non-professional designers.”