Why do people use them? Because they don't have a choice. If you lived in a home without electricity like most people in sub-Saharan Africa do, how else would you light it after dark other than with potentially lethal kerosene lamps? Candles? They're dangerous too. That's why the Freeplay Foundation, a charity that provides sustainable technologies to help poor people in developing countries, is planning this spring to distribute Lifelights, a lantern powered by renewable energy, to 100,000 orphaned households in Rwanda.
The Lifelight checks most of the necessary boxes for "good design" in 2009. One, it uses design innovation to help the poorest 90 percent of the world's population whom designers have traditionally ignored. Two, it's environmentally responsible, since it is charged by solar power and a wind-up technology developed by Freeplay Energy, the sustainable energy company that funds the foundation. Three, it has adapted a new technology - the tiny, energy-efficient light sources known as light emitting diodes, or LEDs - to produce something that's genuinely useful for people who urgently need it. And four, it was developed in collaboration with them, rather than by a designer who'd already decided what they "needed."
All of those themes - empowerment, sustainability, innovation and inclusion - will surface again and again in design next year. Many of the most eagerly awaited new projects of 2009 embrace some of them. Take the new Prius, the roomier, more fuel-efficient version of Toyota's hugely successful gas-electric hybrid car, which is to be unveiled next month at the Detroit motor show. Or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that NASA has scheduled for lift-off in February as its first unmanned spaceship for more than a decade. Then there's NASA's new Mars Rover and the collection of sustainable products being developed by Hella Jongerius, Yves Béhar and other designers for The Nature Conservancy. Even design's leap into reality television - a BBC series soon to be broadcast in Britain in which would-be designers vie to impress the rumbustious French design star Philippe Starck - promises to be inclusive. Up to a point.
It makes perfect sense that design, which strove to build a better world for much of the 20th century, should be dominated by such concerns at a time of environmental crisis, geopolitical turmoil and technological change. Similarly it seems sensible that design should be seen as a possible solution to the world's problems in an era when politicians and economists are seeking alternatives to the systems that regulated our lives in the last century, but are no longer fit for that purpose. One question is whether the deepening recession will change this. Will consumers in the developed world be quite so keen on splashing out (and often paying a premium) for environmentally and ethically sound products when they're strapped for cash? Will designers be willing to devote quite so much time to poorly paid or pro bono humanitarian projects? Will their clients feel confident enough to invest in innovation at such a turbulent time?
Much as I'd love to answer those questions with a resounding "yes," I can't. The surge of investment that has fostered experimentation in once-buoyant, now recession-struck, sectors like furniture design is already dwindling, as it is in other areas of consumer products. Without it, established designers will find it harder to develop new ideas, and younger ones to make their mark.
But the recession will also create opportunities for designers to help us to adjust to economic austerity. Consumers will still want to score sustainability points, but to save money while doing so. The new cadre of "service designers," who apply design thinking to help organizations structure themselves more efficiently and behave differently, will be called upon to develop new business models to address this. One example is the recent flood of "rentalist" services, whereby you acquire the right to use, say, a car or bicycle, for period of time rather than buying it outright.
The economic crisis has also squashed any lingering doubts about the urgency of finding new ways to address acute social problems more efficiently - from caring for the expanding elderly population, to improving the management of over-stretched health care services. This newfound realism is already benefiting the emerging breed of "social designers."
Another question is whether designers are ready to respond to these challenges, as "service" and "social" design involve very different skills to conventional design practice. The 20th-century notion of the lone "designer-hero" (there were depressingly few "heroines") shaping his projects from start to finish was always illusory, but the new approaches to design require far greater collaboration, not just with fellow designers but with experts from other disciplines like economists, social scientists, anthropologists and programmers too. Designers also have to make the leap from a material culture where their work generally had a definitive outcome, such as an object or image, to one in which they are applying design thinking to analyze problems and develop solutions that are neither visible nor tangible.
This is a significant shift, which some designers, especially older ones steeped in 20th-century design culture, may be unwilling or unable to contemplate. The next generation of designers are likely to think - and work - very differently, which makes it timely that the leadership of many of the world's top design schools is poised to change in 2009. The Rhode Island School of Design in the United States led the way by appointing the maverick software designer John Maeda as its president. Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and the Royal College of Art in London have since made new appointments, and Art Center in Pasadena, California, is soon to do so. Those schools must now nurture the designers who'll redefine design in 2009 - and beyond.'
