Chapter Three: Pursuasian and Communication
Persuasion within the organization
Design consultancies face difficult challenges if they wish to be considered as top-tier partners for the process of end-to-end product development. It is no longer enough simply to be creative. Product-design consultancies need to be able to communicate their creativity easily inside of a large organization, which requires a unique set of communication and facilitation skills. Creativity needs to be obviously and visibly linked to business value and technological feasibility, and the story of the design needs to be easily communicated to individuals who may not be familiar with discussing subjective topics like behavior, aesthetics, or appropriateness. Although product designers have long viewed themselves as storytellers, the focus of the narrative now must extend beyond the physical object to an interface, a brand, and ultimately the internal socialization process to drive consensus toward a given solution. Designers can no longer count on being present to sell their design solutions to skeptical clients or audiences— instead, various “User Experience” managers will likely evangelize the design inside of the corporation by themselves, and they need enough communicative ammunition to become designers-by-proxy.
Persuasion outside of the organization
Design can be thought of as a form of communication not only within the organizational confines but also in a much broader sense: as a form of communication into society and with humanity. This does not imply that combining shapes into forms is like combining letters into words. Instead, a designer associates and embeds existing words into his design, which then becomes a proxy for the designer himself. This view of design language is the view of designer as large-scale persuader and characterizes design communication as rhetoric. This is discussed at length by Richard Buchanan in his “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice.”
Buchanan, Richard, “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice,” in Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism. Ed. Victor Margolin. The University of Chicago Press, 1989. p. 111.
Buchanan explains that all forms of design encompass some aspect of argument. These are defined either by the individual designer's world view or design philosophy or by the overarching social world of design (which could be thought of as corporate policy or branding). As technology becomes more influential in pushing product innovation, successful design rhetoric—or persuasive language—becomes immensely important.
A product not only speaks but in fact attempts to convince—a designer makes an argument that comes alive each time a person considers her creation. Buchanan argues that designers cannot help but persuade and that technology is often used as smoke and mirrors to insert an empty dialogue. But instead of relying on the coolness of technology, form, material, and function can be successfully combined to create a cohesive argument. A pursuit of argument can be viewed as an attempt to shape someone's attitude. Design is to communicate, and this communication is not a monologue. It is a dialogue of persuasion, argument, and learning.
Rhetorical argument implies a sense of purpose: “Indeed, design is an art of communication on two levels: It attempts to persuade audiences not only that a given design is useful, but also that the designer's premises or attitudes and values regarding practical life or the proper role of technology are important, as well.”23 A designer may develop the next generation of cell phones, dealing with the physical form of the telephone, the material and manufacturing choices, as well as the software interface that a user encounters to perform calls. This designer's communication can be viewed on several levels. On a highly superficial level, it is possible to discuss the implications of using brushed aluminum and long, slender lines to illustrate a sense of futurism and references to technology in architecture. A deeper analysis might consider the usability of the phone—has the designer created a well-structured dialogue so the user and object can communicate efficiently and effectively? Finally, it is possible to consider the argument the designer has made by choosing to design cellular communication at all. She may be—implicitly, obviously—making a statement concerning the benefits technology has awarded society with rapid communication across geographical boundaries. Or the commentary may be considered more trivial: The designer may be simply stating that she Prefers to Make Cool Things.
As another example of design rhetoric and argument, reflect on the form of a music-playing device. Specifically, picture a portable audio tape player. What does it look like?
Most will envision a similar—and archetypical—image of a square device with a clear panel in it. It is easy to picture the small spools upon which the tape twists, and this imagery allows an easy conceptualization of how the object functions. The cognitive accessibility of the device's functionality makes it predictable. In addition to simply picturing the item, most people—however technical—can form some sort of mental model of how the device works. This mental model may be technically inaccurate, but it allows for a quick analysis of the essential method of operation. The rhetorical stance taken by the designer (be it a designer at Sony or a designer at Aiwa) is probably going to be fairly similar.
This same sort of analysis can be performed with a portable compact disc player. Most people have a fairly clear understanding of the formal characteristics of a CD player that have been driven by the functional characteristics of a CD. The device is flat and roughly the size of the compact disc. Arguing that form follows function leaves little room for the individual aesthetics of brand (the color of the plastic or the placement of the buttons), but the general archetypical form resonates easily with the audience. A CD player is a CD player.
Now consider an MP3 player. What does it look like? A more difficult question may be: What should it look like? In this case, the pliability of digital technology affords huge leniency with regard to form, material, size, color, and weight. The designer is not constrained to follow a mechanically driven function and must instead make decisions based on external characteristics. An MP3 player can look like anything at all: It can be a square white box with radiused corners and a round click wheel in the middle, or it can be shaped like a carrot. The importance of persuasion—of convincing an audience that the MP3 player is correctly designed—increases dramatically when functionality is nearly invisible. All too often, this rhetoric is left up to the advertisers, who may resort to brute force tactics of persuasion in loud television ads or huge billboards. But argument, either through form or advertising, need not be loud. Would the iPod succeed without the subtle and refined dancing silhouettes reminding us that Apple has discovered the proper form for an MP3 player? The argument of this advertising campaign, combined with the care and attention to detail of the physical iPod, has created a rather ubiquitous sign of what an MP3 player should look like.
Designed artifacts identify an underlying culture
Designers Shelley Evenson and John Rheinfrank established, through years of designing products and systems at consultancies like Scient, the Doblin Group, and Fitch, a theory of visual and functional product language. Like Buchanan, Evenson and Rheinfrank considered language as the strong connector between artifacts and people and discussed how design languages become a connector for how people experience products, services, and systems in the world around them. People do not simply use product form language—they live with it. Product form language is the basis for how people generate and interpret their surroundings. This has great implications for the design of mass-produced items. These items do more than simply provide a function or some form of functional utility. When viewed under the guise of language, these products become the fabric of society and allow people to express themselves, to communicate with others, and to shape their environment in unique ways.
The late John Rheinfrank can also be credited with the definition of Interaction Design as accepted in this text. He was a principal at Doblin Group, an Executive Vice President at Fitch, and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Kellogg School of Management. He also began the publication Interactions, offered by the ACM, which is still the only notable publication discussing topics of Interaction Design without resorting to the more mundane and pragmatic view of Interface Design, GUI Design, or Web Design.
Evenson and Rheinfrank were referring to the physical form, material, and visual style of an artifact. Digital products are generally more complicated than their analog equivalents, and so their physical and visual form alone may not be enough to offer a clear indication of use. It is difficult for people to rationally consider and analyze a personal video recorder because the form language of the recorder is often arbitrary—perhaps inspired by older, analog recorders or the whim of the designer. Form no longer has to follow or even relate to function, and so a designer has a new opportunity to relate a form to both emotional and social qualities instead.
The art and science of socialization
In many ways, the role of design in a corporation has shifted dramatically from one of craftsmanship—making artifacts—to one of facilitation—or driving an agenda. Designers find themselves operating in a space between project manager and consensus driver—and that's not a particularly creative or invigorating place to be. For those who end up in this role, the following may offer guidance to rekindle the creative embers that are beginning to burn out.
What you choose to socialize is as important as to whom you socialize it with—have an opinion of the work itself. Within a large corporation, anyone engaged in design, or UX, will quickly become the shepherd not only for communicating the work that has been designed but also to ensure that the work is at a certain caliber. This is a role of critique and criticism, and even if the work is produced by an outside vendor, agency, or partner, these groups require constructive criticism of the work itself and not simply of the correspondence of the work to some vague business requirements or technical constraints. Instead of positioning yourself as the intermediary between a production team of designers and internal constituents, which is the common and unfortunate role of the UX manager, consider how you can actually add creative value to the artifacts that are being socialized—either by adding to them directly or by pursuing a creative vision that is both aesthetic and conceptual.
Your role is not only to drive process and method but also to offer material expertise. The material, in the case of most digital products, is bits and bytes. Do you have enough of a fundamental knowledge of how bits and bytes work as to appropriately add material expertise? If not, how can you gain this confidence? This deep knowledge of the substance of digital tools and devices will reposition someone from a position of consensus generation to one of persuasion: You can argue for a particular idea, offering suggestions on how something could best be accomplished or how the material could be appropriately shaped to achieve an intended goal.
This view is formally grounded in the study of semiotics.
“A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound, for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.” (Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics (trans. Roy Harris). London: Duckworth.)
Semiotics is, literally, the study of signs. A sign need not be a printed object, but instead can include the theoretical understanding of the process of signification. By signifying something (or signing as a verb), humans can communicate meaning, and a sign itself is thought to carry some form of meaning. The sign (either physical or conceptual) uses various codes to help communicate the meaning and values embedded within it. A sign can be a visual element—like a street sign—but can also be the way one uses his body language or the sound pattern of words used to communicate to another.
Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered the founder of the semiotic movement. He considered language as a scientific and independent notion that could be separated from elements of culture or comprehension. Saussure believed that words are embedded with semantic meaning and therefore stand for other things—the word chair (in any human, spoken language) is deeply associated with the idea of sitting and the idea of the object that we sit on. The rules that make up the system become universally more important than the application of the rules—that is, the notion of chairness exists whether or not we are using, considering, or speaking about a chair. One can consider and theorize on the nature of signs independent of particular usages or examples.
As if this isn't complicated enough, many notable contributors to the field of linguistics have subsequently critiqued this rigid notion that the structure of language can be separated from its use; contextualizing language seems to change meaning, as was pointed out by Valentin Voloshinov (Voloshinov, Valentin, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik). Seminar Press, 1973). Voloshinov felt that the “sign is part of organized social interchange and cannot exist, as such, outside it.” Voloshinov theorized that the meaning of a sign is not as related to other signs but instead to the way it is used—to the actual context of use.
If designed artifacts (such as objects like chairs or even complicated computer interfaces) follow Saussure's view of semiotics—and are thought of as signs rather than as simple physical and static elements of function—one can start to understand that the process of signification is deeply related to Interaction Design and the process of behavioral understanding in experiences. This might include the name of the object (often arbitrary—what does DVD player really mean?), the body movements necessary to manipulate the object (the sunken, pressable nature of buttons or the round and turnable style of a dial) or the proper way to consider an object (“I am a serious piece of consumer electronics. Do not play with me.”). A sign, by definition, should be fairly universal and easy to understand. One should not require training to comprehend the message being communicated (in fact, semiotics frequently implies that users can't help but be affected by the process of signification—it happens automatically).
The ethics of persuasion
It becomes clear that a view of design as rhetoric imparts a sense of power and authority in the designer, who is now in a position of control. In a sense, this is similar to the dissemination of propaganda upon an unwitting culture, and the horrifying events of Nazi Germany have been characterized as measured, particular, and exacting displays of design strategy, albeit for purposes of evil.
Death By Design: Science, Technology, and Engineering in Nazi Germany
Because designers work with artifacts that are disseminated into culture en masse,, an argument is amplified and extended with a dramatic sense of reach. And, because the argument becomes part of the cultural landscape of all designed artifacts, the rhetoric of the designer is simultaneously extended and also diffused: the argument has a subtle, nearly invisible, immediate effect on the audience of consumers but in aggregate contributes to the powerful and tremendous level of cultural change that continually affects society. It's doubtful that any of us wakes up in the morning with the intent of manipulating culture, but that is precisely what our job entails—and perhaps we would be better off if we acknowledged at least the potential for our work to cause massive societal change.
This topic is explored in Citizen Designer, as represented by Steven Heller's introduction to the anthology: “A designer must be professionally, culturally, and socially responsible for the impact his or her design has on the citizenry.”
Heller, Steven. Introduction. In Citizen Designer. p. x.
To recognize this vast responsibility is to understand two fundamental points. First, designers must realize that their work has a lasting and substantial effect on the world. From the obvious effect of physicality so impressively visualized by a landfill, to the more subtle effect of attitudes, design work—good design work, bad design work—is always consequential, and therefore every design decision matters.
Next, and more important, designers must both realize and control the rhetoric of their designs. Whether the designer intends to communicate a personal message, a brand story, a political commentary, or simply an aesthetic contribution, designers must be cognizant of the argument that is being stated on their behalf, albeit frequently anonymously. This anonymity cannot act as an excuse; simply because designers are rarely named or associated with their products does not provide carte blanche to avoid the responsibility of the argument.
