Why World Leaders Will Be Designers

Otto Neurath. (Vienna,1882 - Oxford,1945)

The answer is simple: There are no suitable words to explain the world...and new ways of understanding are needed... And all possible ways of understanding lead us to a holistic comprehensive view of humanity that involve visual communication and designers.

Facts are overwhelming but: Why is not happening yet?, What impediments do designers need to overcome to be taken seriously?

While reading Otto Neurath's "From Hieroglyphics to Isotype" (1943-45), I came to this quite simple yet visionary explanation:

"What are the origins of the critical and obstructive attitude shown by some people as soon as the question of pictures arises and especially if pictures are systematically used to covey information?

In the middle ages, from which our civilization has inherited so much, those who were literate were particularly word-minded while the lives of the illiterate masses are circumscribed by impressive buildings, sculptures and paintings. As literacy spread and became general and environment grew up in which there was a rather puritanical attitude towards pictures. British parliamentary papers very rarely contained pictorial material. Neither orator nor journalists, both men of words serving topical purposes, nor even writers of more permanent literature in prose or verse were in the habit of using illustrations, although these were sometimes added afterwards by other people. Perhaps it is this tendency which has led to lack of appreciation of informative pictures and to a feeling that any kind of verbal communication must, of necessity, be of higher order than communication by pictures.[...] I think that the day of "eye-consciousness" is rapidly approaching. Communication of knowledge through pictures will play an increasingly large part in the future."
In other words: 

This is a world ruled by exclusively word-minded leaders...turning into hollistic-minded by necessity.

Have to give in...



Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Before he was to flee his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle. During the 1920s, Neurath also became an ardent logical positivist and championed 'the scientific attitude'.

Thinking About Empathy (1)

 

"I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river."
Chuang Tzu

I'm not participating much in my favorite Groups lately: Besides my regular work, I'm quite busy thinking about empathy. It might sound freaky, it's ok: I'm a nerd. I admit it. The thing is that I'm confused and need answers to my questions.

Suddenly, everyone talks about empathy. It feels almost as a new capability that never existed before...a brand new tool of understanding and innovate...


There are workshops that would teach you how to develop empathy, and conferences, books, and talks...and Empathy Tools that would use simulation devices to gain first-hand insights into particular problem related to customers that can can prompt an empathic understanding of users in a role playing situation...Are we learning a kind of functional Empathy? 
In other words: 

Are we learning to be empathic just to understand better our clients? Do we need to master empathy just to succeed in our professions? A product-oriented-empathy?

I don´t get it. Or maybe I do:

This obsession with mastering empathy is, at the end, another trick to engage customers back to the track? In other words, are we all faking empathy? 

I don't know. 


Empathy as the ability to understand what someone is feeling, is the essence of human kind: It is what differences us from animals. Being empathic is inherent to all of us. So let's say than being empathic is being human, isn't it?

Does it mean that we have been acting in our professions in a unhuman way till now? I mean: This "discovering" of empathy by  business and companies... is it just the evidence of our previous dehumanized procedures? Have we been living two lives: the dehumanized one at work, and the empathic one in our personal life? How can one be empathic a few a hours a day and then...choose not to? 

I don't think so. Empathy it's not only about understanding: It's about emotion.
The inner emotion of recognizing a common link, a common ground with another human being. Being one with others. Recognizing yourself in others. Real communication. What Einstein wanted to achieved, simply to "experience the universe as a single significant whole." This is possible through real empathy. 
 

How can you understand what anybody else feels if you don't understand your own self? Does it mean that empathy need to be mastered through personal experience and awareness?

How can you understand joy, if you have never felt it?

We need outsiders into our business and economic establishment.

In my opinion -let's say my theory- there are people that
dive deep into LIFE (the life that occurs outside an office), experiencing other worlds in first hand and learn awareness and meaningful insights completely out of our reach.


This people are almost impossible to find in a business and economy related world because, as we all know, we -professionals- are surrounded by other professionals like ourselves working, in similars environments since our graduation, with lives quite identical to ours, and so are our friends...
It takes a lot of effort and dedication to build a successful career... so most of successful professionals, CEOs and world leaders haven't had had the opportunity to know "other worlds" besides their similar own world.

Everyone talks -in our design and business context- about innovation and mastering empathy...I believe that we need to include outsiders to our business world: Empathic-outsiders to help us with their meaningful, real-life insights.

Maybe real innovation would be to permit the rest of the world in our little business world. 
And see what happens...

(Design thinking and design process, by the way)

Image courtesy of NOAA

Economía Mundial: Revolución de los Nichos

¿Cuál es tu opinión sobre el estado de la economía mundial y específicamente de España? Me ha preguntado John F. Moore como miembro nuevo que soy de la comunidad A Better People.

Soy diseñadora y tengo una opinión basada en la observación y análisis de la realidad desde la perspectiva de las personas.

Tal y como yo lo veo:

El mundo, antes de la determinación de los mercados y las marcas en conquistar el planeta, era un conjunto de aislados nichos dentro de otros nichos: Eran nichos muy confortables, convenientes, que aportaban seguridad y control además de sentido de pertenencia. Aislado e incomunicados, fáciles de manipular, conformar... y de evangelizar. 

¿Qué pasó? Los mercados y la marcas iniciaron su escalada de crecimiento desenfrenada con la estrategia y nueva nueva filosofía de---More, bigger, faster, cheaper, now--- (Umair Haque, Director de Havas Media Lab).

¿Cómo? Primero se preocuparon de conocer muy bien a sus targets, nosotros, e inventaron herramientas muy muy efectivas para saber qué nos gustaba y porqué; qué necesitábamos, a qué aspirábamos y con qué soñábamos, etc, etc..,  y así crearon productos y más productos, muchos de los cuales han sido paradigmas de progreso de la humanidad. Otros no.

Esta voracidad del mercado y la competencia de las marcas les creo la necesidad inventarse nuevas forma de llegar a todos los potenciales no captados hasta ese momento: invirtieron en investigación y desarrollaron herramientas, competencias y tecnología y volvieron a ser muy muy efectivos: crearon nuevos canales y plataformas de comunicación que han conseguido lo que se propusieron: todos los habitantes del mundo conocemos sus productos...pero también conocemos todo de todos.
La conquista del mundo por parte de los mercados y sus políticas económicas ha sido prepotente, endogámica, carente de valores y nada empática: esto ha hecho que se menospreciara el impacto que iban a tener estas actuaciones en la sociedad y prever la revolución social o socialización solidaria en la que estamos y que definitivamente ha parado sus planes.

¿Y cómo vivieron las personas en su papel de conquistados?

El nicho era muy cómodo e incluso podías hacértelo a tu medida. El deseo de salir ahí fuera no era apremiante: tampoco parecía que hubiera mucho ver y en mucho casos no estaba permitido.
Hasta que empezaron a llamar a nuestra puerta y nos mostraron lo que soñábamos; la belleza; escuchamos a personas que pensaban como nosotros y vimos sus nichos parecidos a los nuestros y empatizamos...y empezaron las preguntas ¿Qué hago aquí?, ¿qué está pasando?, ¿por qué no...? ¿Y si yo...?, 
¿Por qué me tengo que conformar?



Mis conclusiones: 

• Durante la conquista económica, se crearon medios ajustados a los fines de una minoría. Ahora será los medios  sometidos a la mayoría.
• El Diseño ha sido y es un socializador de la belleza. No olvidemos que antes estaba al alcance de un un minoría y que La aspiración estética es revolucionaria. Como dijo Schiller:" Lo bello se considera, entonces, resultado de la fusión de lo racional y lo sensible, y esta fusión es la verdadera realidad". 
• La conquista económica mundial ha supuesto la creación de una objetividad compartida por la comunidad planetaria: a través de los objetos, ideas y estética asociada a los productos y las marcas, se ha conseguido crear una nueva cultura social entretejida a nuestras aspiraciones personales. Al no ser el objetivo vital el dinero, somos todos más libres.

La aspiración de las personas en el s. XXI yo la resumiría en un revolucionario deseo de VIVIR o LA VIDA, como ya dijo Aristóteles: "La Vida o el Ser (la persona), que se ejecuta a través de la ética, la estética y la política"

Voy a volver a citar al filósofo español Ortega y Gasset, que escribió en 1921 un libro titulado "La España Invertebrada" y que no deja de fascinarme por su análisis visionario de la realidad de entonces en España pero que aplica de forma universal a lo vivimos en el siglo XXI:

Vaticina Ortega un "nuevo tipo de hombre [...] que surgiría después de un proyecto terapéutico basado en el cambio de sensibilidad (modificación de actitudes vitales, entre ellas, respeto hacia la ejemplaridad, y sobre todo, respeto por la ciencia y la disciplina intelectual)".

Y para mi país y el resto del mundo: "España tiene que darse así misma una sociedad. Esta es la gran tarea de nuestro tiempo".


“(...) lleno de asombro y de ternura por lo maravilloso que es el mundo”. Ortega, O.C. T.I: 364 

FAQS: Design Thinkers' Personal Questions

Before taking on any project, a Design Thinker has to analyze the situation to try to get an overview and personal insight. You are not always going to obtain all the information needed, but at least make sure that you do have compiled all the information you need to know about yourself in relation to the project that you are going to face. These personal FAQS are essential for you to decided if you want to be IN this concrete project. Of course, the answers to these questions only you will be able to evaluate them positively or negatively, but it is very important that you go through this personal process because it is of great to help you consolidate how to develop, nurture and settle the skills and behaviors you are going to need to confront the proyect....and because there are always comes a time in the course of a project when you doubt everything or have a particularly moment of weakness and uncertainty when you just want to run away... then remember the personal FAQS and the answers you gave to yourself: they will remind you why you got involved in this project!






FAQS >> DESIGN THINKER PERSONAL QUESTIONS :

1.  WHY I'M GOING TO DO THIS? Have a clear goal from the beginning. Never forget the beginning: It'd give you perspective.
2. WHAT FOR WILL I GET INTO THIS? Any personal developing you want to master?What impact will the project have on you once you' are done? Is it a good project for...?
3. DOES IT TAKE ME... WHERE? Try to get an overview of the steps you have to take to develop the project and assess if you are interested
4. DO I WANT TO GO TO THAT PLACE? Be aware that becoming involved in some projects may change your current personal and professional situation
5. DO I HAVE THE MEANS? In addition to the tangible media, do you have strength, are you focused, have the time?
6. IS VIABLE? Is there involvement in the participants, are they professional, have passion about it?
7. IN WHAT WAY DOES IT BENEFITS ME? Does it make me feel good? Personal or Professional.
8. DO I HAVE ANY PREVIOUS IMAGE? Or vision, insight, intuition?. Do not forget.
9. WHAT PARTICULAR ASPECT DOES INTEREST ME DEVELOP? Are you arriving this project at a particular time in your life when you want to develop certain skills ? Human-centered?
10. WHAT SHOULD I DO IN CONSCIENCE? Do not forget your own values ​​and keep them in mind
11. IS IT A SUSTAINABLE PROJECT? Or, Can I make it sustainable?
12. DOES IT GO WITH THE  FLOW? This is something you feel or not...
13. DO I HAVE A VISION OF IT? Do you See IT?
14. WILL I BE IN CONTACT WITH MYSELF OR AM I GOING TO LOOSE MYSELF IN THE WAY THERE? No personal neglect: do not become a new person and don't forget who you are. Work just as you are. At once. 
15. AM I READY TO FACE THE PROJECT? The answer is: Yes, No, or is a complex challenge but I will give everything. I take responsibility from beginning to end.

Important note: During the process of Project's Development could occur substantial alterations from the initial approach. For this purpose are also useful Personal FAQS: they function as personal thermometer and a device that keeps the cruise speed throughout the process. If you notice significant misalignments, have to stop and analyze. If changes are not assumable, must take action.


And ask questions!


Icons by http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com/

Design Thinking and Innovation experts

Experience is essential in the practice of Design Thinking and today, experts are design professionals who have practice DT systematically, because it is a KSF (Knowledge and Skills Framework) in their professions.

Design Thinking is not a practice learned in a manual nor a textbook: It needs to be internalized through practice. Seriously: does anyone really believe that Design Thinking can be applied with a manual in hand? or maybe with a few questions predefined in a form or reading a power point presentation? Experience is essential: a few encapsulated methods are not equivalent to the insights gained and internalized from the experience and analysis of years. Nor is empathy applied to a particular purpose and neither is integrate intuition in rational processes ... for example.

Most of the information about DT is about WHAT but none about the HOW: What is the KSF of Design Thinker, which are the skills needed to become a DT practitioner? By the way, this is a lifelong learning.

• Cultivate, care for and feed your personal MATRIX (set of life experiences, experiential analysis, conclusions, visions, revelations, ideas and images).
• Analyze what you do and draw objective and personal conclusions to each case or experience.
• Defend your certainties and learn to convince with arguments.
• The more connections you find to previous experiences related to a new analysis of a situation, the more security you'll have in your intuitive decisions.
• Feed your own theories. Create personal systems of knowledge.
• Do not forget your values at home.
• Listen, observe, learn.
• Share knowledge with anyone who wants to listen.
• Practice empathy. Need to care for people.
• Learn the rules and play by them
• Project the future in order to be sustainable:  you as an individual and everything else

Passion and positive ambition is requiered