Aestheticising Change: simulations of progress

Abstract

If, following Rancière, politics revolves around who has power to articulate 'the sensible', then designers, as aesthetic practitioners, must be caught up in questions of politics. This is particularly so when design practice becomes part of the way public sector actors negotiate, envision and catalyse change in relation to public 'problems'. However, this is also typically a form of design practice that eschews any talk of aesthetics-presenting as de-skilled, democratic and 'de-aestheticised', in a sense. By analysing and re-describing such design practice in aesthetic terms hereillustrated with an example from practice-we provide an alternative characterisation to the more instrumental account of design as a reliable route to innovation for public sector managers. This opens up a different perspective on what such practices function to achieve, and what is at stake: an effacing of the political nature of design decisions, and an obscuring of the real work of change by the seductive techniques of simulation.

Assessing design approaches' political role in the public sector.

“…Despite the enthusiasm with which design has been introduced into the public sector (Bason, 2014;McGann et al, 2018) there are also critics of how such ways are presented as "new and superior approach[es] to social problem solving" (Clarke and Craft, 2018, p.1). In particular, there is today a growing body of research concerned with the political implications of design in the public sector (Bailey and Story, 2018;Kimbell, 2016;Mazé, 2018;Opazo et al, 2017;Vink et al, 2017;Keshavarz, 2015). By focussing on how the methods and tools of design being imported into the public sector are developed in an instrumental and fast-paced environment with an emphasis on 'value creation' where value holds a market-based imprint, they question whether design can be portrayed as 'neutral'.…”

“…This process has now become relatively mainstream, with governments across the world incorporating a myriad of design approaches into their activities. Moreover, design has rapidly spread with the help of design thinking training to 'non-designers' (Bailey and Story, 2018;Mazé, 2018). Innovation mandates and technological and digital goals in government agendas also nurture the narrative through which design approaches are being introduced in the public sector (Bailey and Story, 2018;Tunstall, 2007).…”

“…Moreover, design has rapidly spread with the help of design thinking training to 'non-designers' (Bailey and Story, 2018;Mazé, 2018). Innovation mandates and technological and digital goals in government agendas also nurture the narrative through which design approaches are being introduced in the public sector (Bailey and Story, 2018;Tunstall, 2007). In this context, such tools and techniques are by their proponents presented as a 'neutral' innovative (or even anti-political) approach absent from political 'complications' (Bailey and Story, 2018).…”

“…Innovation mandates and technological and digital goals in government agendas also nurture the narrative through which design approaches are being introduced in the public sector (Bailey and Story, 2018;Tunstall, 2007). In this context, such tools and techniques are by their proponents presented as a 'neutral' innovative (or even anti-political) approach absent from political 'complications' (Bailey and Story, 2018). Furthermore, understood as a social technology (Liedtka, 2020) design appears to be presented to help in material and technological ways to 'transcend ideological differences' (Barry, 2001, p.8).…”

“…So much so, that design thinking is often seen as 'divorced' from public political and bureaucratic structures (Lewis et al, 2019). Several scholars (Bailey and Story, 2018;Kimbell, 2016;Mazé, 2018;Opazo et al, 2017;Vink et al, 2017;Keshavarz, 2015) have therefore questioned the perceived neutrality of design approaches, and whether the introduction of design approaches into the public sector have a political dimension embedded in them.…”