Designing for a Better Tomorrow

 

 

In my internet reading yesterday morning, I came across a GOOD post posing an interesting question: is it important to promote awareness to a problem, even if you aren’t promoting a solution?

In short, yes of course. Upon greater consideration, can’t we do better?

The two cases mentioned in this article are both about American health and obesity, Jamie Oliver’s new LA  Food Revolution, and Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. For both, certainly an increase in awareness is beneficial. However, it seems the solutions are falling short, or missing completely.

This is a particular sore spot for me.  As a designer, I feel that I’m more “whole package” oriented and less likely to appreciate solutions which don’t go beyond addressing a problem.  A great deal of my job is working with clients, asking questions, moving something towards the tangible. Bringing an idea or product into a cohesive identity, telling a story, and putting it in context. Getting it out to the world in the clearest way possible – to me – includes asking “What do we want them to do now?”

This past year in Germany, I’ve grown a little more objective about the US, and a lot more fond of it. As Americans, we have an inclination toward the new, shiny, provocative, and sensationalized. More so than here in Bavaria, at least. I was shocked the first time someone here referred to a tabloid-esque paper as “American style news” but, it’s quite telling. Our world changes quickly and we have a laundry list of complaints that we will easily write about in our blogs, put on bumper stickers, or express in whatever voice comes most naturally. Our communities are large, and often quite disconnected. For example, I don’t believe that obesity in San Francisco is as large a problem as it is in Huntington, West Virginia so it’s easy for me to misunderstand life there and point at the obvious. I experience people here frequently making comments about how big Americans are, but I’m speechless because all I can think is, the America I know isn’t that fat. We have less of a community based identity than Europeans, and it may feel like we are less adequately represented by our larger national identity. Maybe it’s easier to have something wise to say about problems within the US, even if you don’t have much connection to them than to just admit that that life is nothing like your own.  But, frankly, sometimes it feels like we’re a land of squeaky wheels. For what it’s worth, I’d like to be a part of the solutions instead.

I’m all for ideas, innovation, and awareness, of course. And I do recognize that both of these projects are moving the world forward. For my own work, if an idea is to become a thing, I feel it must first have a purpose, and a place, and a method for implementation. It has to make the world a better place, it has to say something to people they haven’t quite heard before, and then give them tools in which to move forward.

I’ve been doing research lately on some programs that proactively provide solutions, one of which is Code for America. I’m amazed at how excited I would be to be part of something like this: helping people connect with their government through technology. I’m tired of seeing people point out problems with the United States. It’s a great place that I’ve grown to miss, and appreciate over the last year, and I can’t wait to go back and be a bigger part of it.