Designing Change in Emergency Management: What is design? Part 2.

Introduction

In part one, design was presented as an innate human capacity already being exercised by the emergency management community and framed as a process of bringing something new into the world  to transform “existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1988, p. 66; Nelson & Stolterman, 2012). Here in part two this understanding will be expanded to include a concern for what the designer designs; the outcome of a design process.

What the Designer Designs

The first part of this post explored design as it is usually understood as a something someone does – an intentional act of deciding upon and creating a preferred future. Understanding design as an innate human capacity where current situations are transformed into preferred ones through the creation of “something” is a key first step in grasping design as a means for changing everyday life. A possible next step is to consider what it is that the designer designs (e.g., process, product, event, service) does once it is put in…