Design for understanding

What is Design and what do we design when the world is facing a turmoil of battles it cannot face alone? For long, the concept of design had mostly covered everything aesthetics, the betterment of experience, be it concrete and visible to the touching, feeling, encompassing all senses. Design was synonymy to process, creation, development (it is still).

With times, we have begun to shift focus to experience and everything that does not fit a single category. Design has allowed us not only to be creative by default but to embrace the different, the unusual, and the long-lasting commitment to cooperation as we so advocate in Service Design. We have shift focus from attaining to the aesthetics of the process to what you can't feel: the pursuit of the beauty of impermanence.

But what is impermanence in the realm of design? We speak of user needs, of mindful listening to what kind of needs might arise from our observations.

But design is also a representation of the world we live in. Design serves a multi-purpose to make sense of the world and speak to people in languages we barely know of.

When it comes to Education, Design may play a major role in many areas that we might not see it as essential to the structure of a school or perhaps to the core of the curriculum. We may refer to it as simply as of a structure. But right now, with school closure taking up to 60% of the enrolled children around the world, how do we bring a spirit of togetherness in the sense of urgency about education and foremost equity?

But what makes sense? To whom do we make sense?

Seeing the numbers above, you might get a glimpse of what kind of problem we are facing. And this problem is not going anywhere for its impact on our current society will last for decades. An even alarming data (published by Unesco in September 2019) shows that 258 million children, adolescents, and youth are out of school. The above numbers showed children who are currently enrolled in a basic education institution. Add up to the number of those who do not even have the opportunity to belong to that community.

I ask you again? Why do we design?

We speak of virtual platforms, numerous resources, infographics, tutorials, discounts on courses, you can name the wealth and the great realm of the internet of things and how design has compelled to see that we are indeed in the age of information.

Yet there are billions of people without access to the basic needs of a human being. According to the World Bank, this claim equals to 3.4 billion people. So, when you think about the abundance of resources, you may also think about how do these resources meet the needs of those we are catering to? Or to whom are we designing when we think about virtual resources? Or to whom are we designing when we design a personalized learning curriculum with an emphasis on the 1:1 device policy?

It is hard to imagine a time when the challenges we faced so vastly exceeded the creative resources we have brought to bear on them.

Tim Brown - Change By Design

So here we are, living a unique situation and this is the chance you have been perhaps awaiting: we can indeed make a change. We don't have to design the next great device but we need to design environments to nurture the development of families, sense of urgency, and agency.

Design works better when things go wrong when you see nothing else worked and now you have the shattered pieces and this one thing that you will have wherever there is something broken: hope. Design is about understanding, observing, living, accommodating to the needs (Thank you, Human-Centered Design) of those you co-create.

I urge you to join us to make sense of the world we live in, to bring our global community together and design for understanding. Design for hope and for action.

If not now, when. If not we, who?

Drop a line, an invite for a call, and let's improve the lives of our brothers and sisters, one iteration at a time.

Luciana Pölönen is the Head of Service Design for Escola Concept Schools Brazil (Grupo SEB). She is an avid advocate for educational service design, an Innovation Ambassador for HundrED, a global organization for innovation in education, and above all, she believes in the civic responsibility of equity education for everyone.