Ideation as eco practice

Design ideation, as a social activity placed within a 'culture of innovation', often conjures up the never ending call for "What new?" or, "What next?" Or, to borrow from literary criticism, ideation may be seen as a form of  'stream of consciousness' - a narrative mode that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator, in which case the ideator is the narrator depicting, or visualising a myriad of thoughts and ideas. Stream of consciousness followed by an apparently endless stream of consumer products and gadgets. But this striving in modern consumer society of always doing or getting something new, whether that is creating or buying a new product or service, is controversial. And as technology brings an increasing pace of change into everyday life, including the design sector, more responsibility is being placed on designers, and their ideas to ensure that innovation is aligned with global issues such as sustainability. This may suggest that the culture of innovation, where innovation seems confused with change for change's sake, and arrived at via the free market system, is no longer sustainable to meet urgent environmental concerns. The question, then, will a new ecosystem of innovation, or knowing when to change be championed by designers themselves, as part of distributed leadership in industry and education? Or, will the necessary change happen through external forces and market regulation?

Design as rhetoric of things

Rhetoric is commonly regarded as language designed to motivate, persuade, or inform, or the art of persuasion through speaking and writing. In Ancient Greece, oration, or public speaking, was the primary use of rhetoric. Aristotle outlined four types of rhetoric, or modes of persuasion, that can shape words into effective rhetoric: Logos - appeals to logic and reason. It relies on the content of the message, including data and facts, to support its claims. Ethos - relies on the reputation of the person delivering the message. Pathos - establishes an emotional connection with the audience. Kairos - appeals to timing, such as whether the argument occurs at the right time and in the ideal surrounding context to be accepted. For designers, however, there is more to rhetoric than expressed in classical rhetoric because in the digital age the persuasive power relies much on computer-based images, both 2D and 3D, including 3D printing and so the designed "thing" (or object), is a design argument in itself. Indeed, Dieter Rams, the industrial designer closely associated with the German consumer product company Braun argues that designers cannot remain at the level of words: 'They must transpose their insights into concrete, three-dimensional objects'. Similarly, Richard Buchanan, a professor of design, management, and information systems, says that while the word design is the natural word for all forms of production for use providing the intelligence, the thought or idea that organises all levels of production, design is an architectonic art in respect to things made for use that is not simply the old verbal rhetoric but, rhetoric of things.