John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

viewed as a bridge between technology and art. However, I think what is new is
that in the publication of several books designers and design companies in
general are now faced with adopting and utilising techniques and approaches
that really until recently have been comparatively uncommon to them. One
example is the use of anthropological techniques. There is a big word which is
quite ‘buzzy’ at the moment in design circles and that is ‘ethnography’ and that
is used increasingly badly by designers throughout the world. But I think if you
look at the investment that designers and design companies make in
anthropology and ethnography it is fairly significant. One company in particular
involved in this is Ideo [www.ideo.com] and also Sonic Rim
[www.sonicrim.com]. A lot of this is coming out of the USA at the moment.
Threefold changes
So we can say that designers are now asked to transcend many of these separate
disciplines. What I’ve tried to do is categorise or distinguish the change that
design faces at the moment. In my view these changes are threefold:
professional – there is really a blurring of traditional design disciplines. I think
the changes are also linked to economics, funding and employment patterns and
also obviously the easiest one is technological developments in computing and
manufacturing power.
If you look at a couple of weeks ago in Design Week, Richard Seymour (who is a
partner in Seymour Powell a fairly well-known design consultancy in London) is
on record in a fairly lengthy article stating that design is mutating. He actually
claims that design is on the verge of splitting into to two separate disciplines.
He states that what is needed in a modern, dynamic and highly competitive
world is a different breed of designer. He suggests there are two types of
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