Design is invisible
A talk by Lutz Schmitt
In 1982 Lucius Burckhardt a German design thinker published an essay called “design is invisible”. The central idea was to ask designers to design for the system and context of the objects, they are asked to design, instead of just designing the object itself.
He gave profound examples, like hospitals, which are very complex and the design of all present objects, services, processes and information are forming the system. A system that nobody really designed, as it forms itself - unless the designer stops to design only a product but to design the invisible impact the product will have on the system.
This talk will reflect on those basic idea, that we should design with systems in mind - an idea that seems in urge to be refreshed. As even in our current hyperconnected information age, we still design and architect information and services with build in walls to actively set our field of work away from the rest. While we hope to reduce the complexity of our task, we miss to acknowledge the impact on the whole system.
I propose, that especially IA, which job is to think about structures and semantics, are able to bring more benefits to the whole systems we’re living in, while doing their job - invisibly in the background.
Lutz Schmitt
Lutz calls himself a professional diletante and is a studied designer. He started to design interfaces and media somewhere in the nineteen nineties before the first bubble. He taught interface and game design, wrote a book about the perception of time and did some other stuff like cofounding the Cologne Game Lab.
Today, he is the head of interaction consulting at nexum, a digital agency, helping teams and clients to focus on the quality of projects and their outcome. In his spare time he directs the “Design for” conference series.
