Hasta La Ideas

Warren Berger’s gave his new book Glimmer the rather lofty subtitle “How design can transform your life, and maybe even the world.” We at Core77 are certainly biased, but there’s no doubt that we’re occasionally guilty of the same hyperbole. What the “design will change the world” camp often ignores is that major social problems they try to solve with design are just that, social problems; issues that involve a diverse range of constituencies, largely amoral economic forces and self-interested politics. Idealistic designers can’t simply push “good” design into the marketplace, but often presume that transformative design can be done at the drafting table instead of understanding that manufacturing product is only the beginning (or maybe even that a manufactured product is the problem). Consequently , after reading a multitude of “Business = Design” books, this reviewer was thrilled to read the term “wicked problem” about halfway through. In the glossary, Berger defines wicked problems as “multifaceted and complex problems whose incomplete or contradictory nature is such that each attempted solution often seems to create a new problem.” Unlike many design books, Glimmer goes out of it’s way to focus not only on designing objects for human interaction, but also to designing systems and structures for human behavior.

Not content with one subtitle, Berger also offers a co-pilot after his byline, “featuring the ideas and wisdom of design visionary Bruce Mau.” Mau became famous for his collaboration with the Institute without Boundaries, Massive Change, which was an unabashedly positive exhibit and book about socially conscious design. While Glimmer uses Mau’s life and ideas about design, Berger interviews and discusses enough other design luminaries that Massive Change seems more like a jumping off point than a framework. Each chapter is titled with a principle, and while some of them are taken from Mau’s Manifesto: “Ask stupid questions,” “Go Deep,” “Work the metaphor,” and my favorite “Begin Anywhere,” the other six chapters are from other sources. Indeed it feels as though Berger has been shadowing Core77 for the past several years, having been in the audience with us as we listened to Cameron Sinclair and Emily Pilloton at the ICFF and heard Michael Wolff berate the audience at Designism 2.0. Next time aspiring design students ask me which books to read to prepare for school or work, I’ll just give them Berger’s bibliography.

Broadly, Glimmer is broken into four sections, involving progressively smaller social groupings: Universal, Business, Social, and finally Personal. All of this seeks to answer the question he asks at the end of the introduction, “What if we looked at the world as a design project — how might we begin to make it better?” In the beginning, the answer is to think like a child. The first chapter is entitled “Ask stupid questions,” and references IDEO’s “Five Whys” methodology, where the design researcher or ethnographer is instructed to engage in the child’s infinite regress of asking why over and over again to get to the bottom of a problem. In constructing Glimmer, the reader is taken on a journey as Berger asks seemingly everyone, “why?,” until he gets his answer.

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