“I’ts just a matter of communication”
“Only an engineer…”
Engineers are idiots. (I should know… thus I’m one of them).
I assisted to a “retirement” of the directives of a big company of an aerospacial company. The firm was stuck in dog crap up to their eyes. At the end of the second day, over a docen ‘hot matters’ had emerged and it was the moment to asign responsbailities towards “improvement initiatives”.
The bigest fish, who was an engineer, admmited “the mess” would be “very simple”. After all, added calmly, all those issues are “simple matter of communication”.
(I’m not playing you).
“Only an engineer could say that”, said to my inside. Well, not only to my inside. The Human Resources Vicepresident (who was the only woman in the room) who was sitted beside me, looked at me and couldn’t avoid to smile.
Israelies and palestines. “Just a matter of communication”.
New York’s Firemen and police Department. “Just a matter of communication”.
Finance and Marketing. “Just a matter of communication”.
Mom and Dad in the court that judges divorce. “Just a matter of communication”.
This matter is THE MATTER. In one side, is eternal (or even genetic…). In the other side, this “eternal” matter is now, more pressing than ever and lightly more treatable, thanks to new technologies.
Tom Peters. Re-Imagine!
Communication is THE MATTER. Without going to far, we can see this reflected in the main problems which the country (Colombia) is going through; and it also seems that the only way out of this catastrophic overview is communication itself: we have to find new ways of communication among us. Now, are the actual profesionals ready and aknowledged with the communicative powers that organisations, countries and the world requires? That is still to bee seen and proved, but I pretend to propose the relevance of designers and it’s potential incursion in this fields.
If we understand the communication process as the transmission of information with a series of factors that enrichen the experience according to its relevance on the process (emisor, code, message, channel, reciever), it seems that the process of communicating, is itself a design process; and in the other side, may also the design process considered, itself, a communication process. Doesn’t the designer (emisor) manages to configure signs (code) in order to, through a significant or representation (channel), a desired meaning is transmmited (message) to a particular person or group (reciever)? Designers are itselves communicators, reason why they shouldn’t have communicative powers and skills as a plus, but they must have it as a must.