Everyone is a designer
I’ll be straightforward here. I am one of those who believes this to be true; that we have gone well beyond the “sole genius working in a dark room” model of design. The future is collaborative, disbursed and networked and the design process provides a wonderful means of addressing otherwise intractable business and social issues.
David Burney at RedHat writes eloquently about the democratisation of design.
May 4th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Given the awful things created thorough “design by committee” I can’t say I agree with that statement. Everyone has an opinion on design and doesn’t hold back in expressing it.
People’s opinion does need to be respected and asked, and integrating them in the design process is crucial, but you need design leadership to guide them along a path. If you can do that effectively you can achieve great designs, but with strong design leadership it’s a perilous path.
Also, I know he works for redhat, but noone in their right mind would refer to the open source movement as an example of good design. Indeed, the most successful open source movement are those with critical mass where they can say no to features and have the product leaders make the critical decisions.