Vector of Organizational Change: Design Attitude

A vector is both a force or influence and a course or direction. There are four of what Dick Buchanan calls "Vectors of Organizational Change;" four "things" that can be used separately or together to affect organizations. The second of these is the design attitude, a way of thinking and doing.

The Design Attitude is about the way designers think. It's about rising above analysis and "paralysis by analysis" to find solutions, not compromises. It's not about the facts, but the connections between the facts and this is where design comes in: making connections. It's about synthesis, about not being mechanistic and bloodless. It's about re-animating what has lain dormant in organizations for the last 50 years, smothered by too much analytics. And this vector is about people; it is people who possess the design attitude.

And, since this is Dick Buchanan's class, the design attitude is also about rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion through invention. It is not the decoration of messages, but the creation of arguments. The model of rhetoric (speaker/audience/speech) is also the model of design (designer/user/product). Products are arguments about how we should live our lives.

Products have three characteristics: Ethos, the voice of the product, or its desirability; Pathos, which addresses the values and expectations (physical, cognitive, and cultural) of the audience; and Logos, the technological reasoning, or how the product works. We are persuaded by all three aspects, sometimes one more than the others, sometimes all in balance. Good products and good arguments combine all three.

People in organizations should be involved in rhetoric all the time. When every person in an organization participates as a speaker or audience, creativity permeates the organization.

Originally posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2005