Design is a very useful process and method for exploring, understanding, learning and developing forward-thinking approaches and attitudes to legitimate change that helps society.

As a verb (you know, that word that describes an action, which ironically, in this use, is a noun!), design is to: Do or plan (something) with a specific purpose in mind.

The book, Design, When Everybody Designs, is a very good read and while there are many good, quotable parts, here’s one that made a good point...

If, technically, resilience means diversity, redundancy, and continuous experimentation, it also means that the corresponding society must be a diversified, creative one. Taking seriously the meaning of resilience, this compelling and deeply human image of society becomes much more than just a wish. It indicates the direction in which, very practically, we need to go if our society is to have any hope of lasting. In short: in a resilient society, cultural diversity and creativity must flourish. Indeed, cultural diversity and creativity must be an integral part of any scenario.

In sum, to move away from the mainstream ideas of the past century, one of the first steps must be to reposition the notion of resilience: to move it from a mainly defensive meaning (resilience as a necessity imposed by the risky times in which we live) to a more positive one: resilience as a deeper expression of the human character and, at the same tie, as ground for a possible reconciliation between human beings and nature, between human beings and the irreducible complexity of our world.

Ezio Manzini Design, When Everybody Designs

Albeit with the benefit of a tiny bit of hindsight, I also like to think many of my approaches and attitudes towards design (certainly in my case, a foundational graphic and digital sense) early on in my career and also in a wider, collaborative and thoughtful way in my latter, more managerial years as a leader for its approaches and abilities to challenge and work with wider organisational intentions, that also come across in this book, wasn’t always understood, explored or appreciated by (certain) senior colleagues, who, in my opinion, had a very twentieth-century (and not very helpful extroverted) attitude and approach to ‘delivery’ and being seen as someone ‘getting thing done’ regardless of that thing’s efficacy... but, hey, what can you do (indeed, as a natural introvert as well) when different approaches don’t fit in, it’s harder for you to find a way to make them count and people’s perceived notions of success seem to just treat it as more, unnecessary work, so the approaches don’t get followed...

Anyway, getting away from my soapbox, here’s another well written passage from the book that also rang true with me...

Working in specific coalitions means playing the role of trigger (introducing ideas and visions to feed and orient the conversation within the coalition) and of facilitator (helping the other participants in the coalition to make best use of their design skills, and augment them).

Working for coalitions (whether existing or potential) means collaborating with other experts and appointed bodies in making the whole environment more favourable (in terms of policies, technological infrastructure, public and semipublic spaces).

With regards to the latter point, design experts play a special, fundamental role: they collaborate in the creation of an environment favourable to such coalitions, meaning (social, economic, and technological) ecosystems in which diffuse designing capability can emerge, increase in competence, and give life to a variety of design processes. In this case, design experts must use their design culture (and its characterising critical constructiveness) to steer the turbulence around us toward sustainability.

Ezio Manzini Design, When Everybody Designs

But, after all those words, let’s finish with a short and concise paragraph from the book which may finally help compel you (even the non-professional designers!) to read it in full...

In my view, ‘to make things happen, to listen to feedback and reorient the action,’ is the most concise (and precise) way of describing the design expert’s role in the co-designing processes that we normally refer to when talking about design for social innovation.

Ezio Manzini Design, When Everybody Designs

For the record, despite my own attempts at humour and using it to help break down barriers and assumptions in the professional environment, I have always known design isn’t colouring in and making things ‘look good’, in straight lines or is just pretty pictures with a bit of text on them.

Design offers much more and those particular outputs are just byproducts of graphic design, not design itself.