Page 28 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

16 Design Meets Business
Scholars also argued that it can be beneficial for managers to develop design skills (Boland & Collopy 2004) and develop a ‘design attitude’ (Michlewski 2016). Indeed, in the academic world it has become a more dominant thought that design is more than a tool to update and improve existing products and services (Gardien et al. 2014). In most firms, design is seen as a strategic capa- bility and a core part of innovation processes. Before further delving into the application of design in business, let me further explain how I understand ‘design’ in this dissertation research.
Throughout the history, design is associated with a process of creating physical objects or spaces. Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses. Charles Eames created chairs and other pieces of furniture. Coco Chanel became famous for designing haute couture. What all these designers have in common, is the shared belief that ‘good design is good business’. In other words, design ‘sells’. Over the years, this principle has been applied in more and more contexts and in particular in the corporate sector. It started with Herbert Simon (1969) who described design not so much as a physical process but as a system of knowledge. This means that he saw design as a rigorous and scientific method aiming at transforming “existing conditions into preferred ones” (Simon 1969: 4). Later conceptualizations of design, challenged Simon’s positivist stance and rather embraced a more cons- tructivist approach to design. In particular, Schön (1983) described design as a “reflective practice”, which is not oriented at solving neatly defined problems but at designing solutions for messy and, what Buchanan (1992) called, “wicked problems”. It was therefore the responsibility of designers to develop a more artistic and intuitive approach that can help “organi- zing complexity [and] finding clarity in chaos” (Kolko 2010: 15). Building on the work of Schön, scholars introduced notions like ‘designerly ways of knowing’ (e.g. Cross 2001) and ‘design skills’ (Boland & Collopy 2004) and ‘design attitude’ (Michlewski 2016) and argued that acting like a designer could help business solve complicated problems.
In expanding the meaning of design, interest in design moved from the purview of design practitioners, such as architects and product designers, to the field of business and management. This started in the late 1990s, when high tech firms asked designers to design the layout of hardware. For example, IDEO was asked to design the first mouse for the Apple computer. Around 2000s, designers were also asked to use their skills to create the look and feel of software, such as graphic user interfaces on desktop websites. It did not take long until designers were asked to move beyond the hardware and software, and design the overall user experience around products and services offered by companies. For example, desig- ners were asked not only to design airplane chairs but also the entire (non-)