What is the goal of design?
Last week I did go to Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. It was
a costly trip by train and the admission fee was also much too high. Oh yeah
and it rained cats and dogs, so that sets the scene!
Basically (former) students are sharing their work in
various places.
However I did not see anything that I would consider to be
useful, with the exception of a good-looking bike. The intent was to allow the
manufacturing to happen here, rather than in China. The rest of the pots,
carpets, lights and sites was not making me enthusiastic.
I might be mistaken, but isn’t the goal of good design to
make a connection between the product and me, the customer? And it was not only my experience; I did hear
the same reaction from more people, that the show was very disappointing.
It looks like something is wrong with the way we are educating
students. They should learn to design with the customer in mind, right from the
start! Also I did ask the Design Academy whether they were focusing on service
design (more than 80% of our economy is service based) or on sustainability.
The response was a glaze of not knowing what I was talking the about. They were
doing “ all kinds of design”.
The lack of interest in sustainability was also shocking, as
many designers were having studios in the former Philips factories. These
factories are huge concrete building with very high ceilings. I did ask what
there were doing with respect to sustainability. The answer was “nothing” and they
did complain about the costs of heating in the winter.
I would say that this is another missed chance. Students
should be familiarized with sustainability in every aspect of their education.
How can we change as a society if we don’t teach students
new and necessary approaches?
Enthusiasm drives Excellence!
