Design for Everybody, by Everybody
How the pandemic accelerated the democratization of design
Covid-19 has re-engineered billions of lives in ways we could have never anticipated. It’s crippled entire economies, collapsed public health systems, and halted social interaction for the foreseeable future. As we emerge from our isolation, the need to change our social behavior has resulted in tremendous transformations to our environment. To keep up with this reality, rapid solutions are required now more than ever for the sake of public health. Across the board, there’s evidence of simple innovations to ensure a safer environment to return to routine.
For example, shared facilities have an overwhelming visual mayhem of signs, stickers, and tape instructing customers on the new normal. Retail locations and restaurants too are grappling with keeping their patrons comfortable while also safe-guarding the wellbeing of their staff. To do so they have invested in creating plexiglass walls, extensive outdoor seating and QR-code menus to take measures to prevent a health hazard. Still dealing with non-complying consumers, employees are doing their best to manage a population in shock. These kinds of hacks take us to the true essence of design — a practice not limited to some fancy software, but a process built upon creating practical solutions to fulfill a societal need. As your corner mart re-architects their entire store overnight or your favorite restaurant hacks their way into maximizing seating while still adhering to government protocol, it has never been more obvious that good design is a function of creating under constraint.
Under such immense pressure to deal with this unexpected calamity, people have turned to using cheap and humble materials to innovate in real-time. Budget crunches and a lack of time have every person now playing a role in mitigating the effects of this deadly virus. A shopkeeper dabbles as an architect, a policeman as an urban planner and a receptionist trying their best as a graphic designer. This kind of behaviour is often linked to a concept called “Tactical Urbanism” — using short term, low-cost projects to fulfill long term goals or often small scale inventions that have achievable missions to benefit the community. The key objective is to take action and make things work. In the initial days of the lockdown, as stocks were low on protective equipment, people invented their own temporary gadgets to adhere to social distancing. Google trends reflected this, with the most searched term starting with “how to”, being “How to make a mask with fabric” for April 2020.
On the other hand, we witnessed cautionary inventions like Wash Your Lyrics which provided an intuitive measure for hand-washing, combining pop culture with pandemic pain points to assist in rescripting common human behaviours. People have even collaborated to revamp environments to adhere to the social distancing era like creating these chalk circles for parks to to recommended guidelines or these comical hats that students in China wore so they would limit interaction amongst each other. Many of these designs were thought up by desperate parents, inspired office-goers or even panicked shoppers. Such hacks show us that now more than ever, design thinking is a skill not limited by any engineering or design education but rather a means to problem-solve and survive. Tim Brown, chair of IDEO, similarly reiterates that the need of the hour is design which is able to scale up rather than implementing a top-down approach. With an upcoming recession, it’s easier to make this type of attainable design ubiquitous.
This argument brings to light a greater divide between professional dribble-friendly creations and the reality of execution. It seems as though as designers we have lost touch with the truths of the pandemic and perhaps an understanding of the complexities of human behaviour. Take for example this beach tape box — consisting of a colorful ribbon and wooden stakes assembled for “space control”. Given the current economic climate it’s unlikely that people would readily purchase a specialised toolbox of household items to imitate a distancing behavior that is generally innate. Humans internally always measure distances, so this kind of equipment is very quickly futile. Similar to this, much of the output on scroll-friendly inspiration platforms often seems archaic and created in a vacuum.
In her article in McMansionHell, Kate Wagner describes this concept as coronagrifting. Designers create cheap mockups of COVID-related design “solutions” that can sometimes be thoughtless or even tone-deaf to the hardships people are facing. They may even be using such a crisis for self promotion through the generation of superficial social-media appreciation, while providing little to no material benefit to those at risk and on the frontlines. It’s a reminder that with the commercialization of design skills, people have forgotten what sits at the crux of our work — people. Design doesn’t just happen in Photoshop, it happens everywhere, everyday. This humility of creation, is often neglected when we get involved in the inhibiting world of theory. Sometimes it can create a hurricane of creations that just capitalize on topical events, rather than pushing designers to seek out areas where they can truly contribute skills to make a positive impact.
Not all of the designs prove ineffective though, for instance, a see-through mask for people who lip read or rely on expressions to communicate is a clever invention that solves an important problem for a marginalized population. Another example is this open source desk kit that can be assembled at home with cheap materials and easily disposed of when office spaces start to re-open. Designers collaborating and sourcing from real problems are a lot more effective in creating compelling products. Another critical consideration that is often neglected in most designs is sustainability, which, thanks to Greta Thunberg, was the buzzword before the C. While working from home and lesser travel may be reducing our carbon footprint, single-use personal protective equipment produces enormous amounts of waste.
The overwhelming question to address is how the world can prioritise combatting the virus along with maintaining our long-term developmental goals for a sustainable future. Some products like this face shield that is upcycled from a plastic bottle, aim to tackle both. With the dramatic change in our outlook of the world, and the economic impact of the pandemic, COVID-19 has put many purchasing decisions into question. Consumers are gravitating towards more socially responsible behaviour and they expect the same from the large companies and products they patronize. We can see the impact of this bleed into all industry sectors — from fashion to even food. This “conscious consumer” is driven by needs rather than wants. So now the world must adapt to design with a sustainable narrative.
Critics who say that design may not be an essential service, need to move beyond its pixel-pushing definition. It has never proved to be a more effective mechanism for change. Perhaps this article was much too harsh on designers, who like the rest of us, are just channelling their creativity in this time of adversity. However, there is much to learn from this solution-based practice.
As we come to the realisation that this pandemic may not be a short term struggle, some of these hacks might be deemed unnecessary. People have been re-programmed to avoid natural instincts, to touch or interact with others, limit exposure and take cumbersome precautions from the fear of this unknown disease. Eventually we might move from a stage of persuasion to a design language that is universal, the question remains if this will be developed by a high up design group or a just some makeshift hacks that create a unified system. As this unravels, only the test of time and the aggressiveness for a medical solution will determine if COVID-19 will just be a distant memory or create a lasting impact on human behavior.
Chief Design Officer at Logitech, Alistair Curtis said that these kind of hacks allow people to gain a sense of control and take personal responsibility, empowering them to make things themselves, and hopefully view themselves as agents of change.’ It has been inspirational to see the kind of design and engineering solutions that have resulted from billions of fertile minds improvising in a resource crunch and building collaboratively. Whether these may be as small as stickers in a super market or as large as creating the newest low-cost ventilator, it remains true that design is a practice that can be owned by anyone.
Thanks for reading! I’m still navigating my design journey and learning how to create impactfully. Please let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts to share. Would like to thank Isha Vazirani, Zara Patel and Harsh Kedia for helping me get here with my first article.
