On Doing

We are supposed to, every week, write these reflections for 313. The idea is to sit down and just think, about something related to design, and then to post it here. I did so a couple of times already, although it is sometimes hard, specially because there is always a “forming” to be done, which doesn’t have necessarily to do with thinking.

image link: http://www.etcracingprograms.com/images/videos/wheel%20images/forming-panel.jpg

A few weeks ago we were at David Kelley’s house, close to Stanford, and he talked about how he disliked the name of the program (Product Design) and that he was thinking of renaming it, rather “Design Thinking” or “Design Strategy”…I like none of both, for the same reason why its harder to post than to think. There is a doing to be done. There is a sense of completeness to be achieved**.

At first, I thought you can escape the “Industrial Design” world of artistry and trendy motivation that’s dangerously close in the “Product Design” name, you should just name your program “Design Doing”…but then, doing is nonsense is nothing was thought before or, at least, “during the doing”.

So we came back to the reflection, but now not as a thinking but as a  mirror. What’s been done should always reflect what’s been thought. Why? I don’t know for sure, it’s just that every time I experience a new something that’s good, if you look closely, it reflects it’s authors and time thinking.

**Next week I will post on completeness.