Design & Thinking, to be shown on 5 May in De Balie as part of the What Design Can Do Film Festival is an excellent take on combining two seemingly separate tools to improve our surroundings and its accompanying unsolved issues.
By Rozemarijn Koopmans
Design & Thinking (2012) explores the concept of Design Thinking and its potential in fields other than design. The film was made by two Taiwanese graduates, Mu-Ming Tsai and Iris Lai, from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Today they run their own production company Muris Media in Taipei.
Dreaming, experimenting, failing and conquering: almost every designer is familiar with this cycle of developing a product. Challenging existing creative boundaries often kickstarts innovative solutions.
The film gives the example of Google’s head quarters where employees hang out in the playground, the organic garden or one of the hammocks, and take the slide instead of the stairs. And guess what: this works. Google’s employees value their jobs better and breaking with existing conventions also proves its success business-wise.
Better understanding
But Design Thinking is not simply about making money. The documentary shows how mastering the thought process of designers leads to a better understanding of the world around us, and consequently to possibilities for improving it. We get to see the experiences in this field of business people, designers, social activists and other individuals. Their examples are meant as a plea for conventional minds to change their thinking, collaborate, and to learn by doing.
The concept is quite clearly summarized by Paul Pangaro of CyberneticLifestyles.com, who says: ‘Design is the act of seeing something that we want to be better. And then the activity of making it better. It’s a tool, it’s not a luxury.’
The documentary shows that the ‘activity’ part is crucial. Experimenting and prototyping is essential for Design Thinking. By testing the strengths and weaknesses of our concepts, we think better. So when performed in the right way, Design Thinking is a loop of thinking, doing and rethinking.
Design & Thinking is a highly informative movie exploring the ways in which Design Thinking can potentially influence solving problems of many different kinds.
Design & Thinking
5 May 2014, 21:15h.
De Balie
Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
020 5535100
www.debalie.nl
Rozemarijn Koopmans is a designer and part of Multitude, a graphic design studio in Amsterdam