Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 5)

SM: The human factors movement then becomes a definitive note in design history?

BK: The human factors movement becomes a very big deal. Part of the reason is the increasing rise in competition from China, India, and other parts of the world after the turn of the millennium. Silicon Valley design services are getting extremely expensive, relatively speaking. The question is, what can we add to this process? An industrial design group in Shanghai can do a very credible job on a plastic part for less than one-sixth of the price of a firm like Frog. As a response, the Bay Area consultancies are moving increasingly towards understanding a range of cultural factors associated with design that will reinvent them and keep them ahead of the curve. The upside of this is the industry is flourishing. The downside is a lot of the original players, engineering-oriented designers, are looking around and don’t feel that the future includes them. There are linguists working for consultancies, and it is throwing the engineers. Some feel like they are not engineers now, and others can’t see themselves in a new role.

SM: In your Hewlett Foundation talk, you quoted Alexander Mendini. He posed the question, “What designs have the moral right to exist in the 21st century?” But you said, “What objects?” In that light, what objects do have the right to exist in the 21st century?

BK: I don’t know the answer to that question. In my opinion, when I look at the things that Mendini has made, I can’t stand his work yet he is a great hero of mine. Why am I so drawn to this guy? It is not a personality thing; I don’t care much about personality. It is because he has repeatedly raised astonishingly penetrating questions.

Let’s look at that question through an example. Somebody recently asked about the Tata car. I could say a gas-guzzling SUV won’t pass the test, but that is easy and a cheap shot. I think what is mesmerizingly interesting to me is the question itself and what happens when you apply that question to everything you are doing. In effect it becomes a moral standard and an ethical yardstick by which you can measure what you are doing.

SM: How does that get adopted into the design firms?

BK: Around 1990, IDEO which was the first of the companies to use human factors in a big way, got to the point where they ensured every product that went through their door went through a rigorous human factors analysis. It was not just engineering, function, design, and aesthetics but also usability in the deepest sense. What I am now pressing when I talk to these people is that the next thing they must be doing is guaranteeing that everything going out their door will pass a rigorous sustainability analysis. I can’t tell them what that is because they are the technical people.

SM: The analysis is going to be different for different objects.

BK: It has to be. In some cases that analysis is going to be rigorous and 100%, and in other cases it won’t be because there are other issues. Compromises must be made. There are medical devices where the precision of the apparatus has to be so uncompromising that it must always come first. It is very much the same kind of thing with the Mendini question. I would like to get to a point where everything goes through a Mendini analysis.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz
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