Here’s my philosophical/navel gazing thoughts on this. Design is an innately problem solving discipline. AIGA has written a lot of marketing materials to convince employers that designers need to have a seat at the leadership/management table because they’re good at things beyond typography. I agree with this, and I don’t.

I believe that *some* designers are strategic problem solvers. Some are typography grunts. But, the inherent idea that I like about the approach is that, indeed, design means to plan. Designers are planning, and design work can train us to be strategic planners.

My own design process begins with strategy–make sure we’re making the right thing, before we make the thing right.

In other words, we need to know what the design problem is that we’re solving, before we derive solutions to it. It doesn’t matter how fantastic a logo I design for a client if what they actually *needed* was a redesigned process.

I agree that, in general, the design process can be applied agnostic to the end solution. The same strategic design process can be used for graphic design, web design, interaction design, product design, event design, ritual design. There are variations, and different expertises required, but the basic talents and skills needed are the same at a high level.

The philosophical problem I’m currently facing is, how do I design for things that are important. Most clients that would hire me are going to hire me so they can make more money. There’s a tricky balance in this; ethical design is important to me, and I refuse to do work that doesn’t align with my integrity.

I’m in love with design based on ethnographically-derived needs from consumers. Things that solve problems. The problem for me is when the companies that employ ethnographic/user research methods, and use designers to help them create useful products, is when it’s putting more product crap out there that uses natural resources, creates pollution, and is just to get people to spend more money.

The places that are the most broken can’t afford to pay designers to fix their problems most of the time.

I once heard of a case study where a public housing authority in a city hired an experience design firm headed by Mark Oldach to redesign its logo. The housing authority was trying to organize several of its groups into a new initiative, and thought a new logo might pull several teams together and signal a fresh start. The experience design firm did what they do, and actually discovered what the real problem was. The housing authority needed a whole new process for applying for housing, it needed redesigned and easier to fill out forms, it needed retrained staff. The experience design firm helped them do that, and the initial feedback from housing applicants was incredible. They never realized it could be that easy.

That’s the kind of design that floats my boat, and one of my quests over the next year or so is to find out how I can do design like that, and still make a living.

The design I most enjoy crosses disciplines. I love doing event design, while also managing the marketing strategy and graphic design, designing the web site and registration, and designing the overall experience of the day for the participants.

There are places that teach this cross disciplinary approach. The yearlong program at Archeworks is looking more and more appealing. I’d love to do a Masters at the Institute of Design in Chicago, but I’m not sure I have the patience or money for it. AIGA offers the Image Space Object workshop http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/image-space-object .

I’m interested in your plans/ideas/thoughts on what you want to do to be able to address the problems that matter. It’s an area of navel gazing that I’m pretty invested in as I work to figure out what’s next in my life.