Humanitarian Design

During my foundation year, I was lucky to have 2D class with Lee Dejasu. One of projects from his class was to express the word “disguise”. So, I decided to make my Korean friend, Grimm Lee, to wear my clothes, glasses, cap, and backpack and sent her to the class for me. I did not mean to skip the class. It was out of curiosity if anybody would notice that she is not me. Surprisingly, only four people including the professor noticed. Even more surprisingly, Grimm accidently interacted with some of my classmates during another classmate’s presentation.

I came to U.S. when I was sixteen. After I came to U.S., I struggled to find who I am. I was often categorized and stereotyped as an Asian or Korean. People assumed my personality based on how I look. I was no more than just Korean girl. That was when I started drawing which did not need any word to explain. Through drawings, I told people stories of who I am. Through paintings, I put things on the canvas what I really care. For me, art was a tool to find my voice. Also, art was a way to communicate with people.

I applied to RISD as a painting major student. After a semester at the design school, I decided to change my major painting to ID. I had very little knowledge about what design was. (I still do not know everything about design) The major difference, I found, between fine arts and designs were that fine art is more self-expressive and self-discovery then design. Design tends to tell stories of others, rather than the author. Especially, industrial designers have the most opportunity of telling stories of various types of people, such as stories of the rich, the young, the old, the poor, and the unhealthy. (Later, I found this process is specifically called user-based design.) I think Industrial designers’ job is to tell stories of others’ needs through products, services, and system. Their products, services, and systems have specific purposes to satisfy people’s need and represent the need to other people.

Whole thing about what I think of design is might not related to humanitarian design that I am supposed to write about. Here is my opinion about designers who are afraid of designing for user groups from extremely different cultural and economic backgrounds, such as refuges in their world countries. Without totally understanding circumstances and needs, designers might create nothing helpful for people in the third countries. However, designers should still keep working on developing humanitarian design. As I said, design is not just to satisfy the user group. Design conveys other people that there are people who desperately need this products, services, or system. Design makes the world aware of this need.

During Dr. Bruce Becker’s presentation, he mentioned that many products do not meet the users’ demand well enough to solve their problems or do not fit into the challenging environment. Even throwing out the unsatisfying products, designers do the jobs of making other people and other designers to think realistically about what people in the third countries really lack. With continuous efforts, designers will slowly improve their products to solve the problem.