McCoy, Katherine & Michael, 'Design: interpreter of the millennium, U&lc, New York, vol 22 no 4 Spring 1996, pp. 4-5.

As we approach the end of the century, powerful forces are reshaping the design landscape. The internet, interactive multimedia and smart products as well as the end of the mass market, individual customization of products and services and an emphasis on the design of experience will change the way designers are educated and the way they practice. As a profession, we will need to develop new design tools and strategies to deal with these challenges. As design educators we will need to be involved in creating and teaching these methods and insights to students.

INTERPRETATION
As all design educators know, design is one of the most complex professions in the world to teach, embodying everything from technology to psychology. The good news is that the increasing complexity of technology and information in our culture is going to make design more important than ever. The bad news is that there is even more for designers to learn. One can think of design as the interpretation of technology, information and situations for people. Design education should be about imparting strategies for interpretation that students can use as tools in their work. These strategies should be robust enough to allow students to deal with the complex situations they are going to encounter in their careers into the next millennium.

Some of the tools that designers will have to add to their toolbox involve understanding how people construct meaning when they encounter information, objects or situations. There are very useful theories emerging from the social sciences, philosophy and cognitive studies that help designers understand what impact their work has on people's lives and perceptions. For example, by using communications theory we can look at the differences between seeing an image and reading a text. This leads to the realization that we also can read images and see text. And this in turn can lead to some significant reinterpretations of both typography and of imagery. It can open up new possibilities for multi media and computer interface design. New strategies can give designers new insights, or new lenses, with which to develop their work.

Design for interpretation can also work the other way, to engage the audience's interpretive powers. This is a way to engage the audience in the creative process, to counter the passive couch potato syndrome. Interpretive design can challenge the viewer to participate and affect the outcome. This is going to be especially important in interactive multi-media design if we are ever going to move beyond a simple card shuffling approach to programs.

Designers will be much more involved in the design of experience, rather than discreet objects. Understanding the elements of experience involves getting more deeply involved in the situation. New design research methods like video-ethnography, appropriated from cultural anthropology, can give designers advanced insights into the effects of their work on the audience's experience.

END OF MASS
Technology is dissolving mass production and mass media. Five hundred interactive cable channels, wireless communication, the world wide web, high quality desktop publishing and low run color printing, flexible manufacturing and other trends which allow small audiences' needs to be addressed mean that the designer can play to a smaller, more select group.

Many designers are now involving themselves in the sub-cultures for which they are designing, including snow boarders, Harley Davidson motorcyclists and net surfers. This allows them to speak to and with their audience with an intimacy not seen before in design. Narrow casting (as opposed to broadcasting) allows design of very specific and intense flavors to happen. Since the designer doesn't have to speak to the lowest common denominator in the audience, there can be more of an intense conversation between peers. And the design can be stronger, more innovative and experimental. Design is part of cultural production. It participates in the making of the informational and material culture in which we live. It makes sense then that designers should understand how the culture works and how it is constantly re-making itself.

New interactive technologies will make it possible to customize or individualize all kinds of products and services including personal magazines and newspapers. Designers will have to create systems that can respond to individual needs and desires

CONVERGENCE
For the first time since the early modern movement there is now a trend towards convergence of the design disciplines. Graphic designers and product designers will be working much more closely together than ever before to accomplish the harmonious integration of electronic information and the physical world . The goal is a fluid blending of hardware and software that will make the accessing and manipulation of information and entertainment a comfortable and satisfying part of our lives. If we do it right, design can empower individuals and groups by allowing them access to information that they need to make intelligent decisions regarding their lives. We can move towards a situation where the lines between software and hardware are blurred. The essence of this condition is "haptic software", or software you can hold in your hand.

The trends driving the convergence include the advent of smart products that interact with the user and with each other. The search now is for a paradigm beyond the desktop metaphor for electronic interface. What are non-linear models for navigating through the cosmos of information and entertainment? To fully access the possibilities of interactive television, new navigational models will have to emerge. This is the realm of design.

DESIGN EDUCATION
Given the above trends it is crucial that the design disciplines begin interacting with each other and with related disciplines. The days of specialization are over. We need designers that have read philosophy, communications theory, cultural anthropology and understand technology and cognitive human factors. Design as a field is about to get richer, deeper and more exciting. But it also is going to become more demanding of its practitioners. Sophisticated desktop publishing and multimedia software that allows virtually anyone to do everyday design work means that designers can no longer rely on their skills base alone. They will have to deliver conceptual innovation and new insights, the things that computers can't do. That is what will lift design above a service trade to the role of interpreter for the culture.

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© 1998 High Ground Design. Reprinted from www.2011_highgrounddesign.com