Design is strangled by innovation. Some people (including my wife) say "If there is no innovation to a design, it is not design, its craft or folk art. Innovation is thereby not a progressive act for a designer; it is in the nature of design. Since we are neither folk-artists nor craftsmen, we are driven to innovate,"
I do not agree with that and argue with my wife about it frequently. I think designers are much too focused on the innovative. Innovation has been the collective obsession of the design world throughout the last century. I think we should let go of this obsession in order to make more objects of quality. Because quality does not necessarily equal innovation.
The second problem I have with the relation between design and innovation is that I think the role of designers in the innovative process is over-estimated. If we look closely at a lot of innovative design, the innovation is not the work of the designer. Let me explain a bit more about this before I go on to argue that we should be less focused on innovation in design.
Innovation can emerge from different stages of the design process. It can be part of the assignment. If that is the case the designer is often held responsible for the innovation, whereas actually the commissioner has called for it and thereby caused it to be a design factor. I think this was the case with the Senseo or Nespresso and the Ipad. In these cases, it was primarily the brief, released by the commissioner, that led to these extraordinary and innovative products. There are thousand of examples like these. When it comes to the design, the iPad is a boring rip off of the iPhone. But it is still an innovative product.
Closely linked is the type of innovation that arises from the function of a product. The product is then able to do something that couldn't be done before. Skype is one example. We can't say it is brilliantly designed, but its functionality is brilliant. The same is true for car navigators or twitter. Any designer would have made this product into an innovative product because the functionality called for it, and hence the design brief must have as well. We tend to honor the designers in all these examples, whereas I think the commissioners have done their part to make these designs innovative.
Production method and techniques
When a new technique or production-method comes along a whole field opens up. Look at lighting design. Because of the prohibition of the light bulb we have been converting to LED lighting, which can lead to completely different shapes and typologies. Due to this conversion, there has been one innovation after another lately. Now we need the innovative qualities of designers to make really smart lamps. It has always been that way. Dieter Rams showed the new producing techniques among the Braun products. Eames demonstrated what we could do with laminating. Corbusier and Tadao Ando showcased different ways of using concrete. Using the new possibilities in a creative and useful way, this is the core of innovative design work.
Over-focused
As a said, I think innovation is the collective obsession of the design world: designers focus too much on it. Imagine what would happen if-only for one year-the whole design world stopped trying to innovate? What if we paused the innovation?
I think a lot of good products would be made that year, because if we didn't put energy into trying to make the new, we might put energy into trying to make the good. Quality does not necessarily require innovation.
Yes, in the last century innovation played as crucial a role in the design profession as Freud played in psychotherapy. But I have the feeling we are ready to leave the Freud era behind us. (My wife disagrees). There are certainly fields in which the old need for innovation is still obvious, but more and more fields arise in which we don't need the innovative. We need sustainable quality.
In architecture the turn-around is already visible. The renovation and restoration departments of universities grow bigger everyday. There is more work in these fields than in new developments. It requires a different attitude towards designing (because the product already exists). The stars of innovative architecture are not the stars of restorational architecture. More 'new stars' are emerging outside the innovative field. In product design there is not yet truly an equivalent, but the underlying development is the same.
Although I realise that design and innovation have stayed so close to each other, I do wish I could see how good less innovative designs could be. I will have to wait.
