Designing Memory: What prevents past tragedies from recurring—objects or ideas?

This post is a quick English translation of an article I originally wrote in Turkish, which was published by Radikal Newspaper's monthly Design supplement on 28 February 2010.

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Last January witnessed hundreds of people gather in front of the Agos Newspaper headquarters for the third anniversary of Hrant Dink's assassination. The slain journalist's son Arat Dink delivered an impromptu speech to those who gathered in memory of his father. Halfway through his public address, he pointed toward the Agos offices and said the following: "Placed inside is a memorial bust depicting my father. I want to demolish it. I like people, not busts." These words, which may first come across as a sentimental outcry, in effect indicate an important call for designers. They may even be perceived as a contemporary design critique regarding the problematic relationship between 'memory', and artifacts that are designed to keep it alive.

If the essential purpose is to remember and commemorate past tragedies, and perhaps to also prevent their recurrence, how effectively this purpose is served by object-oriented design 'solutions' is highly questionable. Be it a bust or a museum, it is possible to argue that more than keeping the memory of past tragedies alive, these 'objects,' on the contrary, bury them forever in the depths of history. Recent history is teeming with case examples whereby such tragedies end up being instrumentalized in order to serve a number of very different purposes. Relatively more innocent forms of such instrumentalization are embodied by the phenomenon of dark tourism. Yet worst cases occur when such objects are employed as props in rituals, which then lead to the mobilization of masses that often create new tragedies. Here, it would be apt to tune into Kemal, who is the main character of Orhan Pamuk's last novel Museum of Innocence. How does he elaborate on his idea of founding a museum in memory of his lost love?

"I want to teach not only the Turkish people but the world at large how to take pride in life. I have traveled, and seen for myself: Western peoples know well how to take pride, while others live in shame. But when things we are ashamed of in life are exhibited in museums, they instantly turn into things that are to be taken pride in" (2008. İstanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık A.Ş. Pages 571-2).

Nükhet İpekçi showing her father's bloody shirt to TV cameras

Another recent event that helped museum discussions in Turkey gain momentum was the 30th anniversary of Abdi İpekçi's assassination. The slain newspaper editor's daughter Nükhet İpekçi exhibited to TV cameras his father's bloody shirt in demand for justice. By doing so, she kickstarted discussions of founding a museum in memory of slain journalists like İpekçi and Dink. An idea that quickly gained popularity was that this museum should display objects which used to belong to those journalists. But perhaps the most interesting remark as part of this larger debate came from another assassinated journalist Uğur Mumcu's daughter Özge Mumcu. She said that such museum should display not only objects, but also ideas.

The notion of 'ideas' that Mumcu put forth vis-à-vis that of 'objects' points toward new horizons for design's relationship to memory. In fact, the past few years have witnessed works of design that adopt novel approaches regarding this relationship. These works focus on representing ideas and helping them to be openly articulated. A recent example to those works is Rafael Lozano Hemmer's "Voz Alta" (Loud Voice) project, which was installed in Mexico City in 2008. Hemmer says he was briefed to design a piece in memory of the 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco student massacre. What the Mexican artist did was not to generate yet another object-oriented 'solution,' but instead allow people to voice their opinions through a system that consisted of a few components. As these people were sharing their statements with the wider public, they also practically controlled a 10 kW projector, which the artist installed at the "Plaza de las Tres Culturas" square where the massacre had taken place. What is more, the intensity of the light sent out by this projector would change according to that of the soundwaves transmitted through the megaphone. If the megaphone was silent, the projector did not send out any light. When the light at the square was dimmed, then the three projectors across the square at the rooftop of the Cultural Center would start to work. These projectors would turn into light the sounds of the interviews with survivors, old radio recordings and popular songs from the time of the massacre. By doing so, this work was able to blend together memories from a past tragedy and the everyday reality of the present. And, in case anyone was curious about what was actually being said into the megaphone, all statements that went into the system were broadcast through a local radio station called UNAM. The "Voz Alta" project witnessed thousands of people participate without any moderation or censorship. Naturally, the messages transmitted through the megaphone ranged from marriage proposals to statements coming from survivors of the massacre.

View from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's "Voz Alta" project.
(Photo: Antimodular Research and Alejandro Blázquez)

Last year's urban riots in Greece witnessed young protesters utilize, in a rather unforeseen way, a monument depicting one of the most respected heroes of the country. What the protesters did was to take down the bust of the anti-Nazi hero Kostas Perrikos, in order to use it as a building block in their barricades against the police force. This unique choice was put under scrutiny by old revolutionaries, who accused the youth of being ignorant toward history, and of disrespecting past heroes. However, may we not suggest that the young protesters in Greece, just like Arat Dink, realized what purpose is really served by busts? As far as design is concerned, recent history suggests that such objects do not 'perform' so successfully in preventing the recurrence of past tragedies. Therefore, what 'users' could better do is perhaps to attribute new roles to those stagnant objects; to somehow give life to them by demolishing the myths that they have long been in the center of. And, designers' contribution may happen by producing dynamic mediators that will help ideas and emotions to be freely communicated.

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Fast-realized design ideas challenge mass-produced industrial designs

This post is a quick English translation of an article I originally wrote in Turkish, which was published by Radikal Newspaper's monthly Design supplement on 31 January 2010.

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"Always go to your customer with at least three alternatives" is perhaps the most well-known advice given to design students as they prepare to embark on their professional career. The initial stages of a typical design process indeed witness a quantitative variety in alternatives. But as the process draws to a close, the number of ideas in consideration gradually decreases, eventually falling to one. Quite naturally, this decrease is quantity assumed to give birth to an increase in quality: after all, the commercial world's first and foremost expectation from designers is unique and flawless designs that are apt for being manufactured by the error-intolerant process of mass-production.

While a typical design process displays the above characteristics, a number of recent examples of practice suggest that some designers choose to maintain a contrary approach. These designers are not interested in providing the 'customer' with a single flawless design idea that is to be mass-produced. Instead, they are in pursuit of realizing as many of their design ideas as possible, with or without flaws. This is precisely why they strive to finalize their design processes as quickly as possible. They steal the notion of 'rapidity' away from the industrial context, where it typically connotes a 'systematic efficiency' and 'perfection.' Fostering an affection for intuitiveness, they bestow this notion to the studio-workshop realm. Thus they shift focus away from working for industrial mass-production toward fast-realizing their design ideas.

The first project which I believe exemplifies this recent trend is ”speed-furniture” by the Israel-based design studio Godspeed. These designers conceive and finalize each of their furniture designs within a duration of only one hour. They use scrap pieces of wood reclaimed from carpenters in Tel Aviv as raw material for their designs. A similar example from the field of furniture design is Martino Gamper's "100 Chairs in 100 Days." The London-based Italian designer maintains an approach akin to that of Godspeed to create brand new chairs using material he locally reclaims. As part of his design process he uses some pieces just as they are, while he subjects others to radical changes according to new roles he conceives for them.

The cover of Şerifcan Özcan's Ten Plus One project portfolio

For diversity's sake I now want to mention an example from graphic design: The New York based designer Şerifcan Özcan's ”Ten Plus One.” The project comprises eleven different design ideas, realized from scratch in eleven hours. Özcan says what led to this project was nothing but the pressure exerted by a school deadline. Upon realizing that he was short of projects for a thick enough portfolio, the designer came up with the idea for ”Ten Plus One.” Ironically, the designer was even contacted by one customer who was interested in buying one of his 'one-hour' designs.

As suggested by the above examples, the approach that I have called 'fast-realized design ideas' follows a process which ensures the full execution of design works within a short and/or limited time frame. As part of such process, the traditionally distinct phases of 'design' and 'production' merge into one another, blurring the distinction between the notions of 'prototype' and 'end-product.' It can easily be argued that these works compromise on the characteristic of 'flawlessness,' which is essentially assumed of the end-products of a conventional design process. In fact, the very flaws caused by these unique fast design processes often serve as a positive quality; an 'added-value' of sorts. It is this phenomenon that places such works somewhere in the intersecting worlds of arts, craft and design.

A packaging design from Şerifcan Özcan's Ten Plus One project portfolio

Are these designers influenced in any way by a specific stream of critical thought? At first glance we can suggest that designers have, with the aid of the recent crisis, finally acknowledged their historical role as consumerism's driving force. In the light of the above examples, could we not suggest that designers have realized that the relentless demand imposed on them by the industry for creating 'flawless' and 'unique' designs has turned their creative process into a vicious cycle? It is possible to argue that by hacking those two key notions of 'flawlessness' and 'uniqueness', these designers aim to break the creative bottleneck and the above mentioned vicious cycle. More cynical views may suggest that these designers instrumentalize the prestige often attributed to 'designed' objects. Some may go even further to argue that they exploit this prestige, not unlike what their 'star designer' colleagues have done throughout the last few decades, this time through a more underground manner; with a touch of 'planned imperfectness.' Whatever perspective we may maintain as we look at this trend, what all of its examples boldly underline is that we are witnessing a reversal of the traditional hegemony of 'product' over 'process,' whereby the latter is on the rise as the more valuable asset compared to the former.

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'Designing for what?' rather than 'designing what?'; or The Designer's Disciplinary Anxiety

This post is the English translation of an article I wrote in Turkish, which was published by Radikal Newspaper's monthly Design supplement on 27 December 2009.

Cover of I.D. Magazine's June 2009 issue. (Copyright: Kenzo Minami.)

The last month of the year witnessed I.D. Magazine (USA’s oldest product design magazine) cease publication after 55 years. The fall of such a symbolic institution took the product design world--especially, its young and aspiring design students--by storm. Most reactions on the web portray anticipatory lamentation with a touch of anxiety, best captured by a blogger who says he is "scared for the future of design in the US." I, on the contrary, suggest that this development can be interpreted as one of the first calls for an inevitable transformation towards a brighter future for design, let alone as a sign for a darker one. Let me explain.

Last September, Jon Kolko from the San Francisco based studio Frog Design told of his impressions after the IDSA Miami Conference: "the IDSA is now essentially irrelevant." In order to lay the grounds for his argument, he pointed to a number of developments concerning design's position in the developed West: First, product-oriented design services, which have been provided largely by 'Western' designers up until today, are now demanded by the industry from designers in the developing world (especially Asia). To be sure, the primary reason for this shift has to do with the fact that the costs for the latter's services are much less than that of the former's. Second, the professional expertise necessary to handle industrial processes with confidence is increasing in depth. Subjects like materials science and manufacturing technologies, which were until recently considered to be well within the professional scope of designers, now require high levels of specialization, transcending the range of a conventional product designer's competencies. Add to those the rapid advances in digital components and networked services, which has already led to their enormous expansion to include the traditional commodity "product" as a detail, a prop. The question that sums up all these observations is "does the conventional role of designers (in the developed world) who entirely rely their practices on specific branches of the industry (hence, categorized as 'industrial designers') really continue to hold any relevance at all, let alone that of their professional organization? Product-oriented 'solutions' that used to lie at the core of their profession are fast fleeing to India and China; the increasing digitalization in their own culture is shifting the focus of the practice from material to immaterial value creation; the scientific knowledge presented as part of their design education is limited to the traditional frame marked by "wood, metals, plastics and composites"... If that be the case; if designing products/graphics/textiles is losing relevance in the West, what is replacing it?

A view from the IDSA Miami conference, entitled 'Project Infusion' (Copyright IDSA)

Before jumping to any conclusions, we first need to ask the right question: that is, 'designing for what?' rather than 'designing what?' It was precisely the former question posed by Bruce and Stephanie M. Tharp, in an article they wrote last February, entitled "The 4 Fields of Industrial Design: (No, not furniture, trans, consumer electronics, & toys)." For reasons not unlike those put forth by Jan Kolko, they suggest "commercial design," "responsible design," "discursive design," and "experimental design" as the four new fields. What they boldly underline in their article is that today's designers should focus on not only what the end-result/product of the design process will be (e.g. product, graphics, textile), but more importantly, for what primary purpose it will actually be used (e.g. to create commercial value, to improve lives of the underprivileged, to experiment with materials, to start a discussion). And so should design education and its institutions, by reforming their curricula according to recent shifts in global culture.

To be sure, new proposals toward a taxonomic and/or academic reform do not only come from design spheres. Another example comes from Mark C. Taylor, professor of religion at Columbia University, who wrote an Op-Ed article last April for the New York Times. In his article he proposes a six-step action plan for transforming higher education into one that fosters innovative and agile individuals who could address crucial needs emerging from contemporary issues. In the second step--perhaps the most relevant one to our discussion--he suggests the following:

Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.

Assuming that Taylor's groundbreaking action plan will soon be realized in all areas of higher education may sound a little too idealistic. However, why should we not be able to start pursuing such idealism in the relatively narrower realm of design education? Even the very idea itself is extremely exciting: Imagine that four-year long, conventional product/graphic/textile design departments give way to brisk and temporary ones focused on crucial issues such as 'drought in Konya Basin,' 'floods in Istanbul's outskirts,' 'communication problems between government officers and locals due to regional language differences'... Does design not have any words to say, or any 'added-value' to create, regarding such matters?

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Generative Design: Toward a World of 'Unique Copies'

This post is the English translation of an article I wrote in Turkish, which was published by Radikal Newspaper's monthly Design supplement on 29 November 2009. Images are taken from Kram/Weisshaar's website.

Breeding Table No. 7 (Photo: Frank Stolle)

Art critic Rosalind Krauss was posing the following questions almost a quarter century ago: "What would it look like not to repress the concept of the copy? What would it look like to produce a work that acted out of the discourse of reproductions without originals?"* A contemporary approach named 'generative design' is creating the very culture of 'reproductions without originals' Krauss was envisioning.

Recent technological advances provide designers with the possibility of modeling not only the form but also the 'DNA' of artifacts. This is precisely what is of primary concern to 'generative design': how to design not only the artifacts themselves but, more importantly, the processes that will produce those artifacts. Therefore, what 'generative design' actually designs--thanks to software such as Processing and Mathematica--are algorithmic processes, which then result in the production of unique products.

Stockholm based design studio Kram/Weisshaar's project ‘Breeding Tables’ is one of the best examples to generative design. Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram intend to revert the conventional idea that has long since lain at the heart of industrial product design profession: coming up with 'original' designs for mass-production. Their goal instead is to be able to create an infinite number of unique products--in the case of this specific project, tables. In order to do so, the duo turn to contemporary manufacturing technologies. Eventually what they design is a process, which is based on a computer code developed specifically for this project. Forms that are distinct from one another are physically manufactured by laser-cutting and steel-bending machines which are again controlled entirely by computers. To be more clear, each process results in table legs that each have a unique geometry.

The diagram showing parameters set by the Breeding Tables software

(Image: KRAM/WEISSHAAR)

It is important to examine in further detail the impact brought about by 'generative design' with respect to the ethical and legal issues that evolve around the concept of intellectual property. The notion of 'the copy' continues to have nightmarish connotations for designers in newly industrialized societies, due for the most part to the loopholes in intellectual property law and/or the application thereof. (An example is Turkey where professional designers are currently lobbying in order to fill such loopholes. Their effort resulted in a draft law that was presented to the Parliament last February, which suggested that all designs, officially patented or not, should be protected by law.) However, there is another side of the coin: the fundamental shift brought about by the Information Society paradigm opens up for debate the very established notions such as 'intellectual property.' A popular example to such debate evolves around the 'open-source' phenomenon, which has enabled individuals to share the fruits of their creative processes with one another with almost no legal protection. As a result, especially in the post-industrial West, conventional design processes that focus entirely on the 'end-product' are increasingly abandoned. The pioneers of 'generative design' also hint at a future where designers adopt process-oriented approaches: exploit possibilities presented by the latest technology, and work with time as their new medium--and information, their new material. Furthermore, advances in manufacturing technologies reduce the cost differences between mass-producing the same product, and fast-producing unique products--in other words, "rapid prototyping". As Kram/Weisshaar’s 'Breeding Tables' shows, generative design does not aim to produce an infinite number of copies based a single, unique design but rather pursues to create infinitely many originals without being based on an initial prototype. This is precisely why the validity of the notion 'end-product' is threatened by such projects: in the last analysis, the commercial value/intellectual property to be protected by law is not the 'end-product' but rather the design process (including the software and algorithm) that allows designers to create those products.

Generative design stands out also as a strong alternative to the recent method of 'mass-customization', which is often preferred by designers who aim to provide a diversity of alternatives to the end-user. The sneaker giants such as Nike and Converse, who popularly prefer to use such method establish platforms on their websites with the claim of allowing users design their own unique sneakers. Here, their aim seems to be to increase the number of unique options for end-users and perhaps include them in the design process. However, to what extent this aim is accomplished is rather questionable. As many color, texture, pattern options as 'mass-production' can claim to provide, the number of truly unique products defines a limited domain. Additionally, it could be suggested that such method delegates a good portion of design tasks to users, which in turn consumes their time and energy. Given that generative design invalidates the very notions of 'originality' and 'copy' by allowing the production of an infinite number of unique copies, it would not be unfair to suggest that it will soon surpass methods like 'mass-customization'. Finally, the world of "unique copies" Krauss was talking about twenty years ago, seems to have been realized by 'generative design'--and in a rather legal and ethical way, too.

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*Krauss, Rosalind E. 1986. The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths. MA: The MIT Press.

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I come from "The Idiot Factory"

Life in Stockholm is pretty easy to get by for the most part, it is rare that one experiences social tension or feels unsafe in public. However, as I walked through the doors of the Central Train Station several days ago, I felt a weight of unease fall down on me. My reason for being there was to do some fieldwork for one of the courses I am taking, as a part of which my group and I are to propose a new media art/design project for the Central Station. I was going to take a bunch of photos/videos, interview people, and who knows, maybe even do some situationist private detecting if I had enough motivation to. You might think that it was natural for me to feel uneasy being involved in such 'suspicious-looking' activities, in a major public space, with a Turkish passport, in the wake of 9/11 or 7/7 or 11/26, etc. Surprisingly enough, it was not my nationality, but rather the school I attend, that gave me the shivers. Let me explain why.


About three weeks ago, Anna Odell, a 35-year-old student from Konstfack faked to commit suicide by trying to jump off a bridge in Stockholm. Let's tune in to thelocal.se for the rest of the story:

As a part of her final project before graduation, Odell pretended she was going to jump off a bridge to commit suicide. Horrified witnesses called police, who then tried to restrain the kicking and screaming Odell. After arriving at the hospital’s psychiatric ward, Odell proceeded to scream at the medical staff who attempted to help her, even spitting in the faces of several nurses. She was eventually restrained on a gurney and given drugs to calm her down, remaining in the hospital overnight as doctors attempted to diagnose her psychiatric condition.

The whole thing caused a big public outburst with citizens saying that they cannot possibly believe that this is a part of an academically-approved project, which means it is being funded by Swedish taxpayers' money. Views ranged from inquisitions saying why art students cannot just paint nice pictures instead of doing such crazy things to doctors saying that the artist is "welcome to come back so I can give her a shot of Haloperidol, and then we’ll see how much fun she has. That would make a great installation.” All in all, this hot issue evolving around Konstfack was beginning to cool down, just when a second 'incident' took place to set things off once again.

Last week, Sweden's minister of culture Lena Elisabeth Adelsohn Liljeroth visited an exhibition in central Stockholm to witness an artwork that was apparently not her cup of tea. The work was a performance video that showed the artist--in disguise under the nickname 'NUG'--breaking train windows and tagging in the subway. She went on further with her fury to ask the gallery owner for more details about the creator of this work, upon which she was informed that it was another Konstfack student behind 'the heinous act'.

Now, SL, the urban transport authority in Stockholm, claims that travelers and customers feel offended, and asks for a compensation 100000 SEK (approx. 10000 euros) for both the moral and the material damages this act has caused. Dr. Ivar Björkman, president of Konstfack airs on major TV channels to answer questions, and school is visited by reporters. One of the viewer comments on the Dagens Nyheter--a major daily Swedish newspaper--website, calls Konstfack "The Idiot Factory".

Considering the fact that the Konstfack campus is an old telephone factory, the second half of that analogy might not be so irrelevant after all. And my group and me will try to do our best to substantiate the first half of the analogy.

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Reflections after the 2009 Stockholm Furniture Fair

Those of you that are obsessed with furniture fairs, and have missed the Stockholm one that took place recently, can sit back and relax. Call it the crises or a design-bottleneck, what I have seen during my recent visit to the Stockholm Furniture Fair was not so satisfactory. However, a couple of projects I stumbled upon at the fair helped confirm an emerging trend I have been observing in a number of design fields. It is a trend I call by the name "mass-production of design ideas"--artefacts that are executed within a very limited timeframe—where, this very characteristic of the artefact's design process is also being used as a way to promote it.

One example to this trend comes from the Israeli design studio Godspeed, who exhibited at the fair a furniture series by the name "speed-furniture". To describe briefly, the material used to make these pieces is waste wood that had been reclaimed from Tel Aviv carpenters. How this project specifically relates to our trend is that all "speed-furniture" is produced from scratch within a time limit of one hour.

Another example from the fair to what I call "mass-production of design ideas" was a project carried out in University of Gävle's 'Design and Wood Technology Programme'. Here, participants of a ten-day workshop produced unique pieces within this limited timeframe. Similar to Godspeed's case, they had defined material limitations too, using only lycra and birch.


Of course, these two examples do not stand alone to represent the trend we have been discussing. Another example that comes to mind from the field of furniture design is the "100 Chairs in 100 Days" project by Gamper Martino. For the sake of diversity, another example I'd like to give is from a graphic designer named Serifcan Ozcan, who has created a ten-hour portfolio of ten works, by generating a new project each hour-- and, afterwards, ironically sold one of those projects to a client. I would prefer not going into further detail about these since both projects could be studied in detail via the hyperlinks I've provided. I would rather use the rest of this entry to give my own viewpoint on this emerging trend in design.

According to my interpretation this phenomenon has several sides to it. First of all, designers have been realizing, for a good while now, that they are not only designing for mass-production, but also mass-consumption. With the ongoing crises, designers are very well aware of the fact that they have long been operating along the paradigm of the throwaway culture. Therefore this approach to design might as well be their reaction to this very paradigm.

A more cynical view might suggest that an increasing number of designers are aware of the prestige that is attached to the 'designed' object. They might as well be exploiting this opportunity, much like star designers have in the past two decades, though this time in an underground fashion, with a 'designed sloppiness' approach.

A view based on the labor and economics side of things, which is not very far away from what we have discussed in the above paragraphs, could provide another interpretation. As manufacturing processes become more automatized and globalization of capital is on the rise, the traditional definitions of blue- and white-collar labor are going through a major shift. The flexible markets and the conditions brought up by globalization are pushing forward for a shift in the division and distribution of white-collar jobs. Today businesses talk about the outsourcing of consultancy work, such as design—just like they were starting to talk, a few decades ago, about the outsourcing of manufacturing (blue-collar). Design is increasingly being given as a by-product of the whole consultancy package provided by companies. This is especially evident in the services offered by competent businesses from developing countries.

The examples we have discussed above, might be considered as one type of reaction to these recent phenomena. Can there be another way to react? Ronald Jones suggests the "experience design approach" as another way, where designers develop their skills in an interdisciplinary manner, and move away from an object-oriented practice towards one that focuses on creating intangible commodities. In his article "Are You Experienced?" he provides more insight to this :

its [experience design as a 'business art'] emergence will quicken as China and India begin acting on the obvious, giving design away for free because their economic advantage is with mass-manufacturing, not designing prototypes for mobile phones. China and India’s efficiency at mass-producing physical commodities frees up small but growing sectors of the Western design community to create and distribute intangible commodities, including experiences.

In the wake of these recent phenomena, what is your take on the future? Will we see a furniture fair where exhibited pieces are being designed and executed in real-time? How about an 'experience fair' of "intangible commodities"?

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On Alchohol Consumption and Automotive Design

A recent pattern of innovation I've been recognizing is related to businesses' attempts to prevent undesirable use scenarios of their products/services, caused by users under the influence of alcohol. Among several examples are new cellphones developed by LG, Samsung and Nokia, that aim to prevent drunk phone calls. Another recent example comes from the online giant Google, whose e-mailing service Googlemail now has a feature called Mail Goggles to "prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't".

These new product and service features are well-celebrated by online communities and have discovered a channel of innovation that could potentially spread amongst other businesses. I myself have to admit that I find these new features very interesting, but unfortunately, at the same time, trivial.

While drunk-phoning and e-mailing could potentially cause regrettable consequences, there is another area of products/services where preventing these consequences could be even more crucial. If you wonder what that area is, I guess, the phrase "drunk-driving" would be enough to strike a chord--in my opinion, the sociography that has evolved around automobiles desperately awaits a similar kind of innovation to be translated into a mainstream practice.

Donald A. Norman coins the term "forcing functions" to indicate certain functions that are inscribed in a product, which prevent undesirable shifts of direction in the use-scenario of that product ["The Design of Everyday Things." (Basic Books, New York, 1988). Pages 132-40.] A simple example he uses is on the types of cars whose door can only be locked by using the car-key, as opposed to a car that locks itself automatically, which would result in forgetful drivers getting locked out.

One cannot help but wonder why similar kinds of features are not studied and developed by the car industry. Hopefully design has a couple more tricks--than just styling--up its sleeve. Could adding a couple of relevant "forcing functions" result in the reduction of accidents caused by drunk-driving?

But, then again, as a civilization, we would be running other risks; like losing the profits generated by the hospitalization of accident victims, car repairs and purchase of new cars. Right?

`Smash up your car, the insurance will do the rest!' Indeed, the car is without doubt one of the main foci of daily and long-term waste, both private and collective. Not only is it so by its systematically reduced use-value, its systematically increased prestige and fashion coefficient, and the outrageous sums invested in it, but -- without doubt much more deeply than this -- by the spectacular collective sacrifice of sheet-metal, machinery and human lives in the Accident. The Accident: that gigantic `happening', the finest offered by consumer society, through which society affords itself in the ritual destruction of materials and life the proof of its excessive affluence (a proof a contrario, but one that is much more effective in the depths of the imagination than the direct proof by accumulation). [Jean Baudrillard. "The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures." (Sage, London, England, 1998). Page 48.]

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Uncomfortable Ideas: How Close Are They?

"It is not too early to think about the future difficulties that intelligent and emotional machines may give rise to. There are numerous practical, moral, legal, and ethical issues to think about. Most are still far in the future, but that is a good reason to start now – so that when problems arrive, we will be ready."

This is how a cognitive scientist named Donald A. Norman, in his 2004 book Emotional Design, briefly touches upon different dimensions to consider about possible scientific developments in the future. A very similar hypothetical question was raised by Magnus Lindkvist (the head of our course "Trendspotting and Future Thinking" at Konstfack) when he told us not to "be afraid of uncomfortable ideas", to which he provided an example by naming a possible future debate as "sex robots in the shape of children".


Personally, I can't say this debate would be much to my surprise. Ethics are not at the top of many people's lists even today, and this creates even more controversy if those people are in a powerful position in the society. And I'm not even talking about child pornography here—at least not in the traditional sense.

Take the marketing and advertisement business, for instance. In Turkey, there are, apparently, no rules whatsoever regulating the abuse of children as a marketing tool. Therefore most of the largest brands are free to develop marketing strategies that are mainly based on children (e.g. using them as main characters). And if those brands were ones that sell diapers, infant food or toys, etc. I maybe might have had more sympathy for them. However, one of those brands is in the business of providing mobile communications services. That's a bit out of context, huh?

One cannot find a good reason behind such abuse—other than breeding fresh new generations of greedy consumers. It could very well be argued that this is as valid an ethical debate as "sex robots in the shape of children"—or, at least, that such "uncomfortable ideas" are closer to us than we think they would be.

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A review on Don Norman's book "Emotional Design"

The first book we had to read as students of the Experience Design MA course at Konstfack, was Emotional Design, written by the cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman. As an interdisciplinarian he has been working both as a professor at Northwestern, and consultant to many design-oriented businesses (e.g. Apple) where he brought a new approach that emphasizes usability and user-centered design.

In his book, Norman provides us with three levels of design: Visceral (related to appearance and first impressions) behavioral (about usability and user experience) and reflective (about our memories, previous experiences, stories and narratives we could tell). Then he goes on further to advocate his theory that a good design has to “excel on all three levels”.

Given the contemporary hype about sustainable/socially-responsible design, it is possible to see this book as a reminder for designers to the idea that using sustainable materials and processes does not always make designs qualify as 'good.' In other words, one shouldn't take human factors and psychology for granted while giving great importance to minimizing his/her impact on the environment. Norman's theories provide an interesting perspective in that sense.

However, I would like to give some thoughts on the coherence of the examples Norman gives to substantiate his theory. Unfortunately, most of the products he talks about do not perform even at a mediocre degree, and surely not an excellent one, on those three levels. Take Starck’s Squeezer, which illustrates the book's cover, for example. Norman argues that this is an extremely successful product, although he confesses that some parts wear out because of acid; although he has really used it once and displays it on his window; and, although, even the designer of this product has said that it is not meant to squeeze lemons. It is possible to ask many questions to contradict this perspective: If the product is not being used, or not even meant to be used, how is one going to taste the pleasure? If its usability is not high, or its parts wear out, does that still mean the design excels on all three levels? In summary, if it is so pleasurable only to look at and display on one’s window, is this an art object (e.g. sculpture) or a designed product?

Another argument Norman makes is could be defined as ‘love vs. hate’ during our experiences with products. He gives the Mini Cooper as an example for the ‘love’ side, claiming the flaws of this product might be ignored because it is so cute and fun. However, on the ‘hate’ side, he talks about how people hate computers and can even get physical with them when their usability is low. I believe this argument is not strong enough since the substantiation of its two sides are not equally coherent. On the ‘love’ side, the determining factor is cuteness and fun, whereas on the ‘hate’ side it is usability and functionality. The former are much more subjective and abstract whereas the latter are more scientific and concrete. Had Norman said that we love products because it is such a pleasure to use them; or as another option, had he claimed that we hate them when they are ugly and not fun to use, his argument would have been much stronger in its own sense.

Of course, this is not to underestimate the whole book. For instance, one of Norman's arguments that is much stronger and more convincing was about the notion of kitsch. In his own words: “Kitschy objects ... do not pretend to be art—they are aids to memory.” This is a unique perspective compared to that of an artist’s or an aestheticist’s, one that perceives souvenir objects as ‘product’s and evaluating them mainly by their function, rather than their looks.

It would not be unfair to say that the book is one of a strictly material-oriented nature. However, it is quite impossible to interpret the material world solely on the design level. Given the interdisciplinarian Norman is, one would expect from him to indicate several more paragraphs on matters related to sister disciplines, for example one sub-section could be about: the influence of marketing and advertisement on our visceral level. Similar to this neglect, in the last chapter, he makes a strong distinction between technology, and political&social sciences; saying that technology is not the one that creates problems—with the argument that our world’s problems should be solved by politics and social sciences. One would have a right to expect a much more holistic approach from him. As a result of all these, the book runs the risk of being perceived as the 'bible of materialism', a cure for the post-modern consumer society's guilt of having bought too many useless things.

In the last chapters, Norman does a great job of informing us about the latest developments in the field of robotics and raises a few ethical questions worth thinking about. There's a lot of 'stuff' to give designers an urge to do further individual research about the topics mentioned. To sum up—without losing the critical eye—it is a very useful read for any designer that would like to see beyond the conventional approach.

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Forgive me father, for I have sinned

The breaking news were delivered by German weekly newspaper Die Zeit: Philippe Starck is “fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years”. The renowned designer went on further to claim that “design is dead and his work ‘unnecessary’”.

Well, there are people who hate the French designer and others who adore him, as is the case with star names in any business. Some of those tree huggers out there might even be celebrating. Blogs are filled with outraged people arguing that they will not accept Starck’s confession, for he has done so much damage and made so much money out of it. I will approach this piece of breaking news from another angle.

Change is good, and there is no right timing for it. It is great that Starck had his sudden change of heart today, rather than tomorrow. His confession is to be appreciated.

However, there’s another problem here, which is the content of the confession. One could still feel the arrogance in words like “in the future there will be no more designers”.

It seems like Starck has made a thorough analysis of what he has been doing, but not of what he could do in the future, using his skills. He still thinks that there is only one way of designing–which is his way–and now that he has realized it is causing too much damage, he thinks the world will be better off without it.

What he misses is that there is a whole lot more ways he can design, and help reduce his past damage while doing so.

I am not going to advise him to take a look at what socially and environmentally responsible designers from all around the world have been up to.

I am actually going to recommend him to take a businessman, named Ray Anderson, as his role model. Mr. Anderson has had his sudden change of heart about a decade ago, and instead of throwing in the towel, he has continued doing what he does the best, but this time doing it responsibly.

Take a look at this excerpt from the documentary ‘The Corporation’, and see for yourself.

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