The Role of Design in Technology

Here's something to think about courtesy of Esquire Magazine quoting John Maeda, 41 year old President of the Rhode Island School of Design:

I love my iPhone, but the feeling isn't always mutual. Sometimes it just sits there, frozen, doing nothing, completely unresponsive to my touch. I wonder, Did I do something wrong? Is it me? As an MIT-trained technologist, it gives me only cold comfort to know that it's not.

The gleaming devices that surround us are intrinsically different from designed objects of the past. They simply don't work all the time, nor do we expect them to. We're obsessed with the potential of our gadgets, yet we constantly bump into this kind of turbulence. Bottom line: Technology is outpacing our ability to use it. And it's the job of designers to restore balance to this equation.

Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of "I can" than "I should," and never more so than today. Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That's "I can" thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces. (It's easier to sell a device with ten features than one.) But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device.

This is a big reason I left MIT to become the new president of RISD, where clay pots are still thrown and decorated in tune with the ancients. Many who don't know me believe that I've been brought to RISD to "computerize" the college. Quite the contrary. When I welcome my first incoming class this fall, I plan to focus on how RISD's core ideals of art and design can humanize our advancing technologies. Or, put another way, to focus on what we should be doing, not just what we can.