There is a growing consensus and interest in the role that design can play in solving social problems. At this point, I think it is necessary to consider how design can help solve social problems. What do you think? I believe that design can solve social problems in the following ways.

 

First, from the design perspective of consultation (beautification), design plays a role in beautifying the environment. Design plays a role in cleaning up dirty living environments, replacing old facilities with new sculptures to create new living environments, and adding color to the city.

 

Secondly, design can also be used to mediate social conflicts in terms of communicating messages, which is a broader concept of traditional design. However, it is important to point out that it is the mediation of social conflicts, not the resolution of social conflicts. For example, design techniques can be used to smoothly mediate points where citizens may have conflicting interests, such as the division of smoking and non-smoking areas or the organization of parking spaces. In this case, we can say that design plays a role as a guide for living.

 

Finally, design can also be used to create value for the public, such as painting directional markings on highway on- and off-ramps. By identifying areas that were not previously recognized as problems and solving them, we are providing safety and time efficiency value to everyone.

 

To summarize, beautifying, mediating, and creating value are the solutions and roles of design for solving social problems.

But what competencies do designers need to develop in order to fulfill this role well?


It seems to me that typical design education focuses on creativity and the mastery of design skills to accomplish it.

In fact, mastery of design skills is a much larger part of the equation. From the time you enter design school, you're judged on how well you can express existing problems, and then when you get to university, you're taught more advanced skills and hone your mastery of them. Proficiency in design skills can help designers play a role in solving the social problems we talked about earlier, but it can be difficult to mediate and create value. In fact, I think this is where the limitations of traditional design approaches to social problem solving arise, because it's hard to tell if a designer who is a good learner is also a good problem solver. Design as a solution that designers are taught in school focuses on how closely they can solve a problem that already has an answer, whereas in the real world, designers are always faced with problems that don't have an answer, and they have to solve them in a way that doesn't have a reference book. In other words, they have to solve problems that they don't know how to solve.