Curriculum - Design

Design:

I find the design chapter to be very interesting, especially since a majority of our students who go into an artistic field will go into a design field. Pink writes, "We may not be Dali or Degas, but today we must all be designers." I think that this is an important aspect of the right brained world to represent to our students. Pink says that design is the activity of creating solutions, utility enhanced by significance. Design is about solving a specified problem in an artistic manner. It falls in perfectly with Imagination First  practice number 6, "Think inside the box." Even if our students don't go into a design field these types of inventive problem solving skills are transferable to all types of tasks.

I loved when Pink wrote about "cute-tensils." The variety of silly kitchen items I own is kind of crazy. Oven mitts that look like frogs, a lemon juicer that looks like a bird, a metal trivet that says "hot", bird salt and pepper shakers, a collapsable cupcake carrier. These items (all purchased for me as gifts) were purchased because of the cute factor more than their utility factor. As Pink says on page 78 these items were purchases "...less on functional or financial qualities and more on ineffable qualities such as whimsy, beauty, and meaning."

I also really responded to the section on building design. I am currently working part time in a neurologist office, where many of the patents have motility and/or memory and confusion problems. However the office is designed like a narrow maze with dozens of unmarked doors. I get confused about where I am going in there. It seems like a terrible design, especially for a neurologist office. On the flip side while I was working in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago they had just finished building a brand new Children's Hospital. All of the rooms have beautiful views of the lake. Everywhere you go there are amazing, playful, colorful areas to explore. It shows that the people who designed this building truly designed it as a place for children to heal and grow strong, rather than just receive treatment. Since reading this chapter I have found myself (as he suggests in the portfolio) mentally redesigning the things in my house that I find to be lacking, my dresser, my windows, my couch, etc.

Even if our students don't design hospitals, kitchen utensils, or billboards the capacity to consider different solutions than those that we have stuck by for so long in many fields will position them to truly innovate and find success no matter how the world may change. The same answers will get the same results. They have potential for so much more.