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Aug 25, 20187 min read

When Are Misfits Better Products? My Conversation with WDCD’s Nanne Brouwer

Updated: Apr 18, 2019

During my first summer in Amsterdam I walked into a room at the Stedelijk Museum lined with posters displayed by the Dutch organization What Design Can Do.

The posters announcing questions that initially seemed absurd, then riveting. It made me think of the kind of questions we sometimes ask at CSW; questions to make you realize the norm is not the only way of doing things, or even the best way.

Some of the questions posted on the gallery walls were:

Will fashion end fighting?

Why does stuff matter?

What if we designed out crime?

Can the city grow wild?

Is wandering the way to go?

How can design help us out of the crisis?

Is there art in the ordinary?

How can you design self-esteem?

When are misfits better products?

And

How can school educate change makers?*

The first thing that popped into my thoughts (not that I agree with it) is the stereotypical grown-up American response of “of course not, in the real world....”

I have always thought that phrase shows a lack of vision, and lack of creativity. So instead of entertaining the “yes/no” dichotomy in my head, I started to consider fashion that could bring about peace, cities with plants gone wild, and designs that could uplift instead of sell.

I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast recently, trying to figure out ways to encourage students to see potential within questions such as the WDCD posters asked. I listened to the Rebel With a Cause podcast (link below), about the value in breaking rules. When recounting the story of a chef who was breaking the rules of Italian cooking, the narrator's first thought was "WHY is he doing that?" then quickly "Why am I NOT doing that?"

Those are the kinds of questions WDCD's poster prompts ask.

(*After many years at CSW, I already knew it is possible to educate change makers.)

From What Design Can Do's 2015 show at the Stedelijk Museum.

That show at the Stedelijk in 2015 was my first introduction to social design and the organization What Design Can Do, and the impetus for my interest in bringing a social design curriculum to CSW.

From their website:

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO

—

SHOWS AND QUESTIONS THE IMPACT OF DESIGN

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IS A PLATFORM WHICH SHOWS THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF DESIGN, WHERE ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE OUR SOCIETY CAN BE EXCHANGED.

—

IS AN ACTIVIST CONFERENCE: TOGETHER WITH INTERNATIONAL TOP SPEAKERS WE ASK QUESTIONS AND FORMULATE ANSWERS.

I have followed them closely since 2015, reading their blog, watching videos of their conference talks, often sharing them with my classes (Selly Raby Kane’s Afro-Futurist fashions and community work is a favorite). They inspired the CSW Social Design trip to the Netherlands in 2017, and ultimately my grant research.

This summer I was able to meet with Nanne Brouwer, a Program Manager with WDCD to learn more about their work, and to talk through some questions I had about social design in general.

Nanne Brouwer, Program Manager at What Design Can Do

Nanne attended the Master Crossover Creativity degree at the University of the Arts Utrecht. When he described the program, he used the word “playground” to describe the atmosphere. This sense of play, imagination, and experimentation relate to the incubator spaces I have seen (and the one for CSW I dream up in my head) where the unimaginable is used to lead to new places. It harkens back to my question “why not?”

Nanne talked about the many things WDCD does, including:

Design Challenges to challenge designers and design teams to create usable solutions to global concerns (with central themes based on UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development)
Annual Activist Conferences: a place for cross-pollination of ideas
An online platform to support this cross-pollination
Working with different organisations and companies to help them investigate how they might use social design to make improvements within and beyond their organisations

I asked Nanne a few questions about social design that I have been processing:

How do social design and product design relate? What does it mean to be an object maker in the context of social design?

Nanne thinks a certain level of consumerism is inevitable, but talked about designing smarter objects. Is it possible to design to eliminate objects, i.e. one takes the place of two? Ultimately, what is the impact of each item? Marcus Engman, the lead designer for Ikea, touches on the same idea in his WDCD talk: making things better to avoid replacement, to make them financially accessible, and to design objects to change human behaviors (he illustrates this point nicely via a glass water bottle design that is designed to encourage drinking tap water vs. single use plastic).

What does it mean for social design to be seen in a museum format?

When the Stedlijk was promoting its show Dream Out Loud: Designing for Tomorrow’s Demands, they had a Facebook post of a cardboard house for Haiti, and text roughly said “Seen for the first time ever at the Stedelijk!!!”

This struck me as problematic. Shouldn’t it be seen in Haiti for the first time? In use? I wondered who the piece was designed for: the potential inhabitants, or to make the privileged designers and audience feel better. Many in the field warn against social design becoming a form of colonialism.

"But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in...Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?"

-Bruce Nussbaum

https://designobserver.com/feature/humanitarian-design-vs-design-imperialism-debate-summary/14498

Nanne agreed it was important that the design should not “be a gimmick” or stop at the museum, but that spreading awareness of an issue was also important. This made me think of my Plastic Whale excursion, and the symbolic leading to awareness and also change.

Nanne spoke of WDCD efforts to address cultural power imbalances within design: the locations of the conference (Amsterdam, Brazil, and next year Mexico City), the recent conference theme of “What Can Africa Do for Europe?” (focusing on projects with origins on the African continent), actively seek out designers of color, as well as designs from non-western countries.

Images from What Africa Can Do For Europe (link to online version below)

What is important in a good (social) design education?

The main points Nanne touched on centered around the ability to work with and communicate with others:

knowing a language other than your native language
collaborating as a skill
the power of diversity

My copy of Nanne's sketch of the iterative thinking process, and the importance of the process of failing, and then remaking

He talked about diversity’s importance in bringing multiple views to a problem, therefor creating a stronger ultimate solution. He also mentioned design thinking and iterative thinking as being important ways to spark creativity, and work through a problem.

Nanne stressed the importance of authentic collaboration. Getting beyond “design culture” of the academy and studio, and to go “down to the street” are the best ways to stay true and authentic in a design process. Designers (or anyone working in creating solutions for/with others really) need to go to the source in order to research and collaborate with first hand knowledge.

WDCD’s mission does not include design education per se , but they have worked with educational institutions. Nanne spoke about a project helping institutions connect around a common goal. This would allow each institution to add their specialised strengths and resources to an integrated and stronger collaboration.

What does an authentic collaboration look like?

An example of a collaborative process is Makers Unite, an organization that was a finalist in WDCD's Refugee Challenge in 2015.

From Makers Unite website; https://makersunite.eu/programme/

Makers Unite is an organization that recycles lifejackets used by refugees into new products including bags, computer sleeves, and more (see link below). Makers Unite touches on recycling, social inclusion, sustainability, and most of their products are co-designed with the majority of the staff having origins outside of the Netherlands, many having been refugees. I was happy to see they used the word “newcomer” on their website, as the CSW students and myself learned the importance that word from Boost while on our field trip.

From WDCD website:

"Makers Unite connects refugees and EU locals by co-designing engaging products and narratives, starting with upcycling life vests and boats collected on Greek shores. The platform offers the first steps for refugees to regain dignity, to connect with locals, to build new networks and to restart their lives. It enables newcomers and EU citizens to develop meaningful relationships while creating products that support the circular economy. Started in Amsterdam and Athens, Makers Unite is a collaborative journey about learning how to share and develop a new common culture collectively. The revenue of the Makers Unite design collection will be directed to the makers and the refugee’s cause."

Makers Unite is an organization that recycles lifejackets used by refugees into new products including bags, computer sleeves, and more (see link below, it shows so much more than I can explain in this blog). Makers Unite touches on recycling, social inclusion, sustainability, and most of their products are co-designedwith the majority of the staff having origins outside of the Netherlands. They also worked with another art-crush of mine, Dutch fashion designer Bas Kosters to create robot bag, as well as Dutch ceramic designers Cor Unum to develop new glazes related to traditional Syrian soap making, showing the idea of collaboration extends to other Dutch creatives. Their work is now included at the MOMA design store and available online. (I want a robot bag)

“Connecting people by making products with a story that matters."

-from Makers Unite website

Images of Makers Unite's collaboration with Dutch designers Bas Kosters, as well as their own designs. (images from Makers Unite Website...you can BUY it there!!!! Support them!)

Some of my main takeaways from my talk with Nanne:

How we collaborate matters
The need for diversity on all levels in order to do better work
The need to leave the design world and go to the “street”, to collaborate with those the designs aims to serve
The values your design works towards matter

Three questions this leaves me with: