Reading for Class • 10/15/07

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Design for the Real World
Chapters 9 & 12

I have very mixed feelings about this reading. First, I just can’t help but wonder that if industrial design relies on mass production, can there be industrial design without mass production? If, for example, Ikea did not exist and people got their furniture from a local carpinter (if they did not inherit it,) then would the industrial designer and the carpinter merge back to one?

Second, the concept of “designing for the other 90%” for me raises so many questions that I don’t see raised in the discourse around designing for the other 90%. The biggest question to me is, why is there that “other 90%?” To me, the term “designing for the other 90%” can be rephrased “designing for the accumulation of wealth in a system of global capitalism.” I wish it were called “designing for a new world of redistributed wealth.”

This is not to say that I am against all the design concepts illustrated in the reading. For example, the bicycle and tricycle designs I would consider to be “designing for the redistribution of wealth” because it helps people be less dependent on automobiles and petroleum.


 

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