Everything is a Design Problem

Not too long ago I was working together with Alberto Rigau in what used to be a corner office of his father’s architecture practice. We were a two-man design team tackling multiple projects in multiple fields using graphic and environmental design, and often would collaborate in projects managed by Rigau Sr.’s studio.

There was a lot of work in that office. Truckloads of the stuff. And I only got to truly experience the workload on a few of those projects, the ones estudio interlínea (Alberto’s practice) was collaborating in. That’s not to say we weren’t busy; we had our own projects on the side. The Rigaus, however, have a particular talent for hoarding tons of work, musing about it indefinitely, taking baby-steps towards completion, and then spending the last three to five days holed up in the office twenty two hours out of each day to crank out the final details (an euphemism for the majority of the work). And more power to them: in the end, I believe their work is as good as it is thanks to all of that time and talk and back burning that’s put into the thought process, the shaping of the idea before it is a thing, while its only physical manifestation is a smörgåsbord of rough sketches on notebooks and loose sheets of paper.

It was in one of those last-minute heats, while attempting to find my way through the small serpentine halls and tight spaces that passed for an office back then, that I stumbled upon Jorge Rigau (the father) walking out of a room while dishing out instructions, as he often did, to the designers still inside the room. As I stepped aside to let him pass through the narrow corridor leading out of his office and meeting room, he looked at me over his glasses, as if surprised to see me there, and said Todo es un problema de diseño. Everything is a design problem.

Note: I believe I am still pretty impressionable. Or so I like to think.

Needless to say, my then impressionable self held on to this moment for the longest time. Weeks went by and I would recite the great wisdom of this experienced designer in my mind countless times a day, not quite sure what it meant, but dead certain that —whatever it meant, if anything at all— it sounded damn cool. Everything is a design problem. It is one of those all-encompassing statements that sound great in the heat of the moment, in a very gung-ho kind of way, but that the slightest attempt at studying it makes it look shaky, at best. Surely everything can’t be a design problem, can it? One can’t possibly live inside such a tight self-imposed bubble as to blind oneself and see life and all the issues the world presents to us as little more than tasks to be dealt with strictly in terms of one’s chosen profession, or even vocation. Right?

Months after having moved from that office into the new one, having helped Alberto close off estudio interlínea until further notice, and even a brief Holiday stint in late 2007, as a year and a half have gone by, I still remember this affirmation. It still rears its funny head at least once every other day. And, indeed, I have found myself in many everyday life situations in which the problem could be boiled down to one of design, in many occasions a looser description of design than others. It is in this mundane half-pondering —in the warmth of the back burner, if you will— that I discovered the value of this phrase. Everything is a design problem speaks not of the problem, but of the solution, or how we approach the task of finding or producing a solution. And therein lies the the truth: Jorge Rigau is talking about Design Thinking.

The latest and greatest buzzphrase in business today, Design Thinking seems to be saturating proposals, mission statements, job descriptions and headlines everywhere, with instances of the phrase springing up in in the private business sector just as much as in philanthropic efforts. It is permeating our way of life from the way we deal with social issues to the way we make money and the way our software is developed.

Probably the strongest hold that Design Thinking has on our way of life is in the manufacturing industries. Programs like 6σ (Six Sigma), lean Manufacturing and systems thinking, have been all the rage in recent years, with an entire industry springing up from the expertise in the application of these and other strategies that use Design Thinking as a basic template —or inspiration— for their approach to problem-solving.

I know a couple of people in this field, both of which I worked with to design a promotional piece for their consulting practice. The way they talk about these process-polishing methods sound eerily similar to designers talking design. The first time I met up with these clients/friends about their marketing needs, they explained to me (at my request) what they offered, and then asked if I understood what they meant. I said I did, “It’s design, that is all. You’re thinking like designers”. (This was before I was hip enough to wise up about the buzzphrase itself, Design Thinking.) And I think there is a lesson to be learned from an experience like that: it shall soon be no longer the norm for clients to be necessarily design-challenged. When it is becoming increasingly apparent that our clients are adopting Design Thinking as a business resource, as something they value enough to take the time to understand and possibly master for the advancement of their business objectives, then it follows that we will eventually face a generally better informed client.

I can see how some might see this as a bad thing, what with the superiority complexes that sometimes characterize designers. Yet, I can’t help but look forward to it. A client who understand design and the thought processes that designers undertake should help make for a less irritating client/designer relationship. It’s not that Design Thinking will get them to agree with us, it’s that Design Thinking will at least help them disagree for the right reasons, lead them to the right questions and a better understanding of how we arrived at our answers. In the end, it can only mean good things for our future projects, more peace of mind for the designer and, why not?, a more fulfilling profession.

Now let’s take it back to the beginning: Everything is a design problem. When you’ve repeated this to yourself as many times as I have (more out of curiosity than anything else), it becomes a map of sorts, a looking glass. It has reminded me time and time again to ask the right questions, and then to flip the question on its head, and look for a different answer because why the hell not. It has enabled me to better understand the trajectory of the solution, and thus better understand what Design Thinking really is about: empowering ourselves with curiosity.