Designing Through a Depression

Allison Arieff's commentary in the NY Times yesterday, Designing Through a Depression, has spurred a nice conversation about the role design plays in both the causes and the recovery from an economic downturn.

Perhaps, the most important design project of the next decade will be to redesign the economy for a post-consumer model and experience. As some of the commenters have pointed-out, we can't have a lot of hope for longer-lasting products when the market still rewards continuous turn-over and replacement. We need wholly new models and while this isn't the usual domain for designers, it puts design skills to good use. We need collaborations between enlightened and daring economists as well as designers.

That's what the DMBA program is focused on: changing the conversation towards the real challenges for the future. One of the most influential places where design and business meet is in the imagining of new models for both.