Becoming a social designer
Vision
In current society I notice a change of people becoming much more self-aware. We take more responsibility for what we do to our world seeing the increase of demand for biological, environmental friendly, fair, honest and handcrafted products. But it has also made us more individual and lonely, because we don’t know who to trust anymore.
We try to take faith in our own hands, for example replacing banks, by creating crowd-funding websites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and in the Netherlands Crowdaboutnow. But also sharing new technological possibilities and making them open-source such as 3D-printing.
I believe in the power of social design. In the juggling community of which I am part of, we share our knowledge, stimulate creativity and give opportunities for people to grow. Shared passions bring people together and they stimulate each other to get the best out of yourself. It results in innovation by more people exploring the possibilities of a shared passion. This is also the way social design works, since it contributes to improving human well-being and livelihood.
"Creativity is contagious. Pass it on."
— Albert Einstein
I want to create products that evokes social interaction with other users and stimulate creativity of the possible uses of the product. A product is more than a solution to a functional need and can bound people together. By this you can return the faith people have in society, since they can contribute to it themselves.
Becoming a social designer, I need to keep improving the depth and variety of my skills. According to Satu Miettinen, Researcher at University of Art and Design Helsinki that tells about Social design at a conference in Helsinki 2006 about multivocality of design history & design studies:
"Designing systems that join the elements of communication, new product development and the environment is a challenge. It is argued that no single area of design is, by itself, sufficient to drive sustainable social development. What is needed is a system of design, one that encompasses all of the areas of design, towards an open system with multiple, self-adjusting and complementary actors that aim for a vision of a loosely defined common set of goals."
Future Job
Exploration Report
In order to find out for myself what I want to do in the near future, I talked with a lot of different people. My first question was, what kind of designer I should become and if there is potential of what I had in my mind. When talking to Herman Meijer about this, the strategist of Knab (Dutch bank), he explained me that it is very valuable to work at a big company in order to know there procedures. After that you can start up your own company.
At the Dutch Careersdays I wanted to find out what the value is of a master degree in the job market. A lot of answers where that it has to be valuable for yourself, but that didn’t answer my question. At the end of the day I spoke with a man who was in the same situation I am in and he decided to start working right away. Later he regretted this decision and convinced me to not whine and just do the master, since it is only 2 years.
On the internet I searched for the requirements somebody has to have for the jobs in the future. This are mainly soft skills, which designers have a lot. I am sure that the demand for designers becomes bigger since there value will be more appreciated.
