Hitchcock Design
Current Design Evolution
I envision the current direction for designers to be to create products that cause positive long term benefits for all beings. Many products and business models are based on immediate profitability and don't take into consideration long term effects of their activities. We need to imagine how future generations will view our work.
Successful design still needs to be compelling enough that the public will pay for it.
Some means for attaining this are:
Minimising material consumption.
Lengthening the expected life of the product.
Creating great value with minimal input of energy and material.
Utilising the geometry of existing materials and manufacturing methods to optimise function with a minimum of cost/waste.
Devising strategies for utilisation of waste material and energy.
Currently the technological environment is incredibly ripe for transformation of large segments of the population. How we communicate, conduct business and even how we create relationships are all changing with amazing speed.
Examples of this are every where. Consider the open source movement. Microsoft has dominated the communications commons ruthlessly since its inception. Even the federal government can't pry them loose. Yet don't you think someone in Redmond lies awake at night thinking about people giving away his market to each other. Thanks guys.
Moveon.org Now large numbers of people can be mobilised and alerted to many subjects that the corporate/government media are remiss in informing their citizens.
Wi-Fi. In my opinion this is one to the most exciting areas of techno / socio evolution. As you may recall many telcos went bust because they put so much data capacity in the ground, yet couldn't connect to the last mile. Now this unruly upstart is springing up everywhere, often free. Imagine the thought of people setting up communications networks in all kinds of settings and giving the bandwidth away. This is truly the triumph of the commons.
Like Linux these successes are not an accident but is the result of well thought out plans which are asking the question "What is good for all beings?" in their design philosophy
