1. PV 21.9.09
Paolo Volonté
Designing communicating objects
To design, as they say, is to modify the world, to act upon reality in order to transform it. It
is to introduce into the complexity of the real something that enriches it in the manner desired.
Designers are not satisfied with the world as it is, with what they have inherited from their
ancestors or from tradition. They want a new world; they seek to create a new world. They
work so that the world is changed, transformed and improved.
But in what direction? How can a ‘better’ world be attained? Reflection on design has
abandoned the idea that its purpose is simply to make objects more functional, and therefore
the world more practical, easier to use in order to achieve certain goals. Likewise abandoned
has been the idea that the purpose of design is only to make objects more beautiful, and
therefore the world more pleasant to live in. In contrast, it is usually stressed that design has
“the task of enhancing the function of an object through its form” (De Fusco 2004, 197).
From Bruno Munari (1971) to the contemporary designers interviewed by Harvey Molotch
(2003, 53-90), it is widely believed that the fundamental concern of the designer should be
with both form and function, finding an aesthetic solution to a functional problem.
Yet not all designers are satisfied with this conception of their work. The scope of this
essay does not allow me to explore the reasons for this discontent. But a clear symptom of this
dissatisfaction is the fact that many designers have felt it necessary to develop new concepts
with which to describe the activity of designing. Drawing on fashionable terminology, much
use is made today of the term ‘communication’: at bottom, designers are communications
workers, in the sense that their principal task is to ensure that the object is able to
communicate as much as possible by itself, i.e. through its form, its own function.
But can one be satisfied with this conception of design? I do not think so and consequently
I intend to show, firstly, that design has to do with communication in a different and more
sophisticated sense: since the advent of industrial society, design has been a prime protagonist
of interpersonal communication processes. Secondly, and principally, I shall suggest that if
one wants to fully understand the fundamental role performed by design in interpersonal
communicative processes, one ought to discard the ingenuous view of communication as the
‘transmission’, or also the ‘sharing’, of information and adopt a more inferential conception of
the type developed by pragmatics, but reinterpreted in phenomenological terms.
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2. Creating and communicating
In what sense, therefore, is a designer a communicator?
The commonplace view is that designers belong to the category of so-called ‘creatives’: those
in society who innovate the culture by inventing new forms, or by assembling existing forms
and materials in innovative ways, thereby developing new styles and new tastes. It is usually
recognized that such creativeness does not merely decorate or reshape objects, but seeks to
give them the form best suited to their function. ‘Designing’ thus signifies giving the object a
form that does not hinder, but instead helps, performance of the task assigned to it: form
follows function. Contrary to this opinion (sometimes put forward even in the specialist
literature), a large body of opinion maintains that the designer’s fundamental task is to create,
not only forms compatible with the object’s functions but also, and above all, forms that
communicate those functions to the consumer. The most successful design is therefore the one
that replaces the instructions booklet. It is not necessary to read the instructions because the
object speaks for itself: its form tells us how to use it, and for what purpose. This design
centres not on the object and its technology but on the human being who uses it.
The well-known reference for this current of thought is Donald Norman’s successful The
Psychology of Everyday Things (1988). The book is founded on the idea that many of the
dysfunctions of everyday life are due to bad design: that is, design which does not embody in
the object the instructions for its use. Well-designed objects are easy to understand because
they contain visible clues to their operation. On the contrary, since poorly designed objects
provide no clues, or sometimes false clues, they can be difficult and frustrating to use. The
task is therefore to design the object in such a form that it contains all and only the clues
required by the user to understand it; or in other words, to understand its use and operation
without having to conduct tests or read the instructions. In order to concretize this concept,
Norman presents some norms that derive from it, for example, the principle that the number
of controls on a technological object should correspond to the number of its functions, so that
all its possible functions are visible and therefore perceived by the user.
Another well-known manifestation of this current of thought is the notion of ‘usability’,
which since its theorization by Jakob Nielsen (1993) has become a watchword especially in
the design of websites and computer programs. Since usability consists in the degree of
facility and satisfaction with which the interaction between the human being and the
technological device takes place, also in this case the good designer designs the device so that
it directly communicates its functions, and how these can be activated and regulated, to the
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3. user. This is especially the case when a device, for example a computer, comprises an
interface that interrupts the naturalness of the body’s interaction with the surrounding world.
One distinctive feature of this conception of design is that it restricts communication to the
relationship between the user and the object, as if other people did not exist. The object
communicates with its user, more or less well, but it remains indifferent to the interactions
with other people. Hence, the problem confronting the designer is to realize an object able to
speak to those who use it (or who want to use it), nothing more. This is a somewhat solipsistic
conception that has not been substantially attenuated in the most recent developments of
Norman’s thought. He has become aware that the subject’s interaction with an artefact is
mediated not only by perception, but also by emotion (see Norman 2004). But this is not
enough for him to broaden his perspective, which is still confined to the user’s individual
subjectivity. Here, communication takes place solely between the instrument and its master.
This conception of the role of design in the contemporary world leaves me unconvinced,
for it is almost claustrophobic in its view on the object and its user. Thus lost is the social
setting surrounding the interaction between the person and things. To prevent such a loss, it is
necessary, I think, to interpret the designer’s activity in light of the wide variety of forms of
communication in which things are involved.
Objects have a biography
A first consideration in this regard is that the communication between an object and its user is
much more complex than might be thought on the simple basis that every object contains (or
does not contain) clues concerning its functions and its most appropriate use. And it is more
complex because the form of the object is already, in itself, socially situated. It does not
communicate only generic and abstract functions, but also the concrete ways in which the
object has been used in the past, the practices to which it has been subjected. The cup from
which I drink tea not only tells me, with its external appearance (to the sight, to the touch),
that is a cup, but thanks to its chipping and wear it also communicates to me that it is an
object inherited from earlier generations, and therefore ‘sought-after’, whether in the sense
that it has been purchased at a specialized shop or market stall, or in the sense that it has been
lovingly protected against the risk – to which all old things are subject – of being thrown
away. Moreover, the cup also embodies innumerable experiences preceding the old aunt from
whom I inherited it, her personal habits and my need to remember her since she passed away.
It incorporates the experiences of those who have used teacups over the centuries.
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4. A teacup is after all nothing but a receptacle for a beverage (its ‘function’ as a tool). Yet
almost everyone in the Western world would recognize it as a teacup. Its appearance not only
conveys its function (a receptacle for drinking) but also the specific way in which this
function has been interpreted in the course of history. A teacup should be, for example,
sufficiently small to suit the practices of tea drinking habits, and it should have a handle
fashioned in such a way that one can hold the cup without burning oneself. Half-litre teacups
are not common, although there are litre glasses for beer. That a person does not drink half a
litre of tea on a single occasion, while she or he can drink a litre of beer, does not mirror some
‘function’ or any specific need. Rather, it is the expression of norms and social conventions
that have crystallized over time through common practices and have become solidified,
‘institutionalized’, in the objects and technologies that one uses. Every object, in that it is an
exemplar of a certain type of object (a teacup, a beer glass), also conveys the history of the
social uses that are embodied in that type.
Objects therefore convey (more or less well) not only functions, but also history, both their
ontogenesis (their history as a particular thing), and phylogenesis (the history of the type of
object of which they are specimens). Indeed, the "function" is nothing other than the result of
the intersection between the ontogenetic and phylogenetic determinations that have made the
object what it is. By incorporating traces of the uses to which an object has been put in the
past, every object in a certain sense ‘exhibits’ its biography in public. It becomes a social
subject. The first to argue that it is appropriate to extend the concept of biography to
inanimate things was Igor Kopytoff, in an essay in the book The Social Life of Things
(Appadurai 1986, 64-91). Kopytoff showed that, exactly as human life is never complete until
the end comes, neither is the existence of a thing. The history of an object’s vicissitudes
assumes all the characteristics of a life history, a biography.
All this, namely the idea that a thing possesses a biography and is able to exhibit it, at least
partly, through its external appearance, has an important consequence in the world of design.
It precludes the idea that the meanings of things can be determined once and for all by their
designer. The aim of replacing the instructions booklet with the form is inconsistent. The
meaning of a thing is not designed by anybody, but springs from the multiplicity of facts and
events that constitute its biography. Objects are not made of inanimate matter so that, once
they leave the hands of their designers or producers, they present themselves to their users
always with the same appearance. As they traverse the world, they interact with their array of
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5. users and accumulate traces of these interactions. Thus objects, in analogy with human
beings, little by little construct individual biographies that leave an imprint on the interactions
of those objects with the human world. This is why the design of an object is never, nor could
ever be, confined to the designer’s hands alone. The designer is only one of the many actors
who leave their imprint on the product. And when designers delude themselves that they are
the only true protagonists, the demiurges of a certain object, they fail in their task. Awareness
of the social life of things is important to counteract a certain delusion of omnipotence from
which designers sometimes suffer.
Communicating objects
I now return to the main topic and take a step forward. When one speaks of ‘communication’,
the reference is not usually to the relationship between a person and an inanimate thing, but to
person-to-person communication, that is, between two or more subjects endowed with
consciousness and the ability to produce meanings. This is the basic form of communication –
communication in a strict sense.
What, one might ask, have objects got to do with interpersonal communication? Of course
they have to do with it because they are means of mediated communication, and are therefore
media. The point is that not only the media as often understood (television, the computer) are
means of communication. Instead, all technologies, all three-dimensional objects, are by their
very nature active instruments of communication, and in particular of non-verbal
communication.
The underlying sense of this statement becomes apparent, when one observes the
communicative function of objects from a historical-social perspective. This shows, in fact,
the specificity of the current state with respect to previous ages. That objects are, in the broad
sense, instruments of non-verbal communication pertains to their very nature as artefacts or
natural products, and to our ability to infer effects from causal relations. An object is therefore
always the sign of its creator, and it is often a means to communicate – usually indexically but
also symbolically – individual or social characteristics of its possessors. The crown denotes
the king, the oriental carpet testifies to the merchant’s opulence and travels, the parasol may
indicate that its owner is female, a heart-rate monitor transforms a jogger into an athlete in
training. Indeed, in more general terms, objects can be conceived as elements in linguistic or
semiotic systems (Barthes 1964).
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6. However, the advent of modern society has given a new imprint and different importance to
this ancient phenomenon. Modern society has changed the social conditions in which the
encounter with the Other, and therefore interpersonal communication, takes place. And the
role performed in such communication by material objects has accordingly changed.
What has happened in the modernization of society? Put extremely briefly, the capacity of
social stratification to organize and order the daily lives of people, and to confer distinct
identities upon them, has greatly weakened. During the twentieth century, the constant
increase in the flexibility of social structure, and therefore in social mobility, generated
widespread uncertainty about the positions of others. Urbanization and population growth in
general, even in rural villages, meant that people much more frequently encountered strangers
in their everyday lives (the postman, the shop assistant, and the passer-by) whose behaviour
was in principle unpredictable. Such uncertainty required new and more agile means with
which to identify people, and instruments with which to facilitate the typification process on
which social relations are based. These served not only to identify and typify the Other but
also to construct the Self, the personal social identity. Objects have thus become, besides
other non-verbal signs (such as posture, body language, accent, etc.), fundamental tools of
communication, in that they signal much more rapidly and reliably than words the status and
other important features of people (Leonini 1984). I am referring, obviously, to clothes, but
also to accessories, vehicles, home furnishings, and in general all objects of daily use.
Whereas people would once slake their thirst by drinking from just one receptacle – a wooden
bowl or a glass according to social status – today many use half a dozen. This is not explained
by functional distinctions alone (after all, drinking tea is not that different from drinking
water), nor by the average growth of the population’s wealth and its capacity for
consumption. Laying the table with one glass per person or with two, pouring brandy into a
snifter or into a jam jar, is to communicate to others (actually or potentially present)
information about oneself: one’s identity, style, tastes, and position in the world.
The system of industrial production has responded by multiplying the types of objects
available to the consumer to satisfy a particular need. With the advent of modern urban
society, consumers have an increasing need to communicate their identities rapidly and
overtly, and therefore to surround themselves with things able to communicate when there is
no time or occasion to communicate verbally. Modern urban society requires, to an
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7. unprecedented extent, a system of signs sufficiently diversified so that it can act in the stead
of the language used in interpersonal communication. Industrial production, with its
proliferation of models, series and variants, responds exactly to this social need – an aspect
that seems to have escaped Baudrillard’s notice (1968). Unlike in pre-modern societies, the
system of interpersonal communication to which objects today belong is extremely complex,
for it is the instrument with which roles, positions, hierarchies, forms, and frames of
interaction are not simply exhibited, as happened in the past, but also negotiated and defined,
and therefore constantly constructed as individuals interact with others in the contingent
social situation. And not only roles and positions, but also such personal characteristics as
credibility, professional ability, types of habitus (likes and dislikes), as well as forms of
shared culture such as daily rituals or symbolic universes. All the three-dimensional objects in
our world that are in some way used by human beings inevitably act as media of social
communication in everyday life.
Jochen Gros called this set of tasks the domain of the “symbolic functions” performed by
objects (Steffen 2000, 82) in order to distinguish them from both the practical functions and
the capacity of objects to furnish their users with clues as to their characteristics and
possibilities. The increasing importance acquired in industrialized society by the symbolic
functions of product language, compared with the other functions, also has consequences for
the role of the designer today. The objects of industrial production, and therefore the design
objects that constitute a subset of them, are distinct from pre-industrial objects not only, and
perhaps not even primarily, because they are mass-produced but also because they are
intended to meet a new type of need – the need to manage the interaction with the Other in a
social environment that is fluid, unstructured, mutable and complex or, to use the fashionable
term, “liquid” (Bauman 2000). In this situation, the balance between material needs (slaking
one's thirst) and immaterial or symbolic needs (slaking one's thirst in a specific way that
communicates a particular social type) is clearly tipped towards the latter.
If this is true, then also the social role that designers perform with their profession has
changed. Designers are no longer confronted with the somewhat banal task of rendering the
object’s use ‘natural’ for the user. They are also faced with the task of making the object
useful as an instrument of social communication. Here ‘useful’ means usable in the various
situations of everyday life, and therefore malleable, interpretable, and able to convey the
meanings desired by the consumer. Designing consists among other things, and in many cases
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8. does so principally, of inventing new ways for human beings to communicate. Designing
makes the world ‘better’ because it equips people with new tools to communicate with others
in a world where communication has become the individual’s main source of identity,
satisfaction, and self-realization.
The hydraulic model of communication
I now turn to my second topic. The particular role performed by product design in
interpersonal communication can be adequately explained if we discard the naive view of
communication as the ‘transmitting’, or the ‘sharing’, of ideas among people and adopt a
model better able to take account of the multiplicity and variety of forms of human
communication.
What, then, does ‘communicating’ actually mean? In this case, too, one must deal with a
‘scientific commonsense’ which is difficult to dispel. Frequently used to describe
communication is the model of a message sent by an addresser and received by an addressee.
The model is based on examples of sound that travels along a telephone line or a datum that
transits from computer to computer. When describing this model, reference is very often made
to Roman Jakobson’s (1960) well-known scheme: the addresser reaches the addressee with a
message sent through a channel and, thanks to its conformity with the rules of a code,
transmits certain content. It is assumed that there is an open physical channel between the
addresser and the addressee, a contact that has enabled transfer a message from one to the
other. The meaning conveyed by the message is not in question, because the presumption is
that it pertains to the message itself and is therefore, in principle, the same for the addresser
and the addressee. Correct encoding and decoding procedures allow both parties to access the
authentic meaning of the message, even though it is filtered by the subjectivity and the culture
of each. Therefore, subsequent to the transmission of the message, addresser and addressee
share (notwithstanding their individual and cultural differences) the same mental state, the
same idea, the same meaning.
Jakobson’s scheme, like so many subsequent theories based on it, is an authoritative example
of what Umberto Eco (1975, 51) has called the ‘hydraulic model’ of communication, and
whose first formulation is usually attributed to Shannon and Weaver (1949; see Jakobson
1961). This is a very natural view of communication, but precisely for this reason it is also
naïve. In its standard formulation, it envisages a content that passes from the addresser to the
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9. addressee, without considering the problematic nature of this ‘passage’. How does an idea, an
item of information, an image, pass from one mind to another? What real channel is opened
between two communicating subjects? The naivety of the natural attitude consists, in this
case, in a failure to address these questions, which concern a fundamental issue: the data of
consciousness are given to each single mind in its singularity and cannot be ‘transferred’ to
another mind; nor can they be ‘shared’ among two or more minds (see also Sperber and
Wilson 1986, 1; Krippendorff 2006, 56). What is given to me ‘in flesh and blood’ can only be
‘presentified’ by those to whom I speak. There may be an analogy between their
presentification and my givenness, but there is never identity. All the more so because the
others have a standpoint in the world different from mine (but for many other reasons as
well). Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology highlighted this aspect. Although it was not
concerned with the issue of communication, it showed that it is not possible, in principle, to
access the consciousness of others, and that only on this basis is it possible to address
correctly the question of how, in fact, each subject is able to deal with others – to the point of
producing the astonishing event that is the construction of a shared vision of the surrounding
world (see Husserl 1963, fifth Cartesian Meditation).
Hence it is necessary to explore other avenues to move beyond the ingenuous view of
communicating. In the past forty years, in semiotics and linguistics flourished a conception of
communication that, though not originating from phenomenology, furnishes a useful
conceptual tool for my purposes here. This is a conception of communication able to give a
better account than others of the role performed by ‘functional’ objects, by things and
technologies, in communication among human beings. It is the inferential model of
communication, and in particular developments brought to it by relevance theory (Lewis
1969; Sperber and Wilson 1986; Grice 1989). This theory, treated from a phenomenological
perspective, aids understanding how three-dimensional objects enter interpersonal
communication.
Signification
The starting point of a phenomenological theory of communication is the notion that
communication is only possible because human beings are capable of producing signification.
Semiologists define ‘signification’ as the act that unites a signifier with a signified – an
expression with a certain content – the outcome being what we call a ‘sign’ (Barthes 1964, §
II.4). It is therefore the act (or process) through which actual experience (very often)
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10. transcends itself and functions as a sign of something other: that little hole in the snow is not
only a hole but becomes for me an imprint, an index that a fox may have passed by. In other
words, signification is the source of meanings, the act whereby they are formed. Or, even
more generally, it is the moment when being suspends its causal bond with the surrounding
world, distances itself from the relation of mere stimulus/response, and becomes able to
interpret stimuli and react to them in a free and unexpected way. Being becomes an
‘intentional’ subjectivity. Signification creates sets of possibilities for action, and this
distinguishes the human agency from mechanisms (Krippendorff 2006, 56): smoke is no
longer something that irritates my eyes; it is also, and above all, something that signals the
existence of a fire to me.
Consider more closely the classic example of smoke as a sign of fire. This is not an act of
communication in Grice’s sense. But neither is it a case of causal interaction with surrounding
people. Let’s assume that we see the smoke coming out of the windows of the flat above ours.
It is not actually the smoke that forces us out of the house. The smoke is relevant as a vehicle
of a content that is something else: the burning. That is, in semiotic terms, the smoke is a sign
of fire. The smoke does not force us out of the house until we have understood it as a vehicle
of meanings, as a meaningful event. And this happens through an act of signification.
Whereas when one burns oneself on a flame one immediately withdraws the hand, even
before one understands what happened.
I have dwelt on this example because it yields understanding a number of things. Firstly, it
shows that besides causal interaction with the surrounding world a second possibility exists:
one that occurs whenever a material event is perceived by someone as meaningful. Secondly,
it shows that this second possibility – meaning – is the product of activity by someone, and is
therefore an act performed by a subject. It is not the state of an object. Here again are the
reasons for what I have called the social life of things. I argued above that meaning cannot be
impressed once and for all upon an object by someone, not even by its designer. The ultimate
reason for this is the fact that the meaning of an object exists only in the consciousness of
someone who experiences it. And this someone continually changes.
Meaning is the product of an act of the experiencing consciousness: the result of what in
German would be more appropriately called a Sinngebung. As soon as we consider meaning,
not in a linguistic sense, but in a sociological and pragmatic one, it proves to be not a property
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11. of the object, of the material sign, but a property of the experience that someone has of it.
Therefore it cannot in any way be fixed by the addresser, to be then ‘communicated’
(transmitted) to the addressee. Meaning is the product of the signification process performed
by the recipient of a sign or a text. Even Grice's “utterer's meaning” (1989, 86) should be
interpreted as the meaning of the particular recipient of a sign that is the announcer. It is not
the object as such, in its materiality, that possesses a meaning (not the image, not the sound
emitted) but the object as experienced, the object of a particular person’s experience: what
Husserl (1976, §§ 88-90) called the noema.
Communication as modification of a physical environment
Now, if the capacity of the signification is a constitutive characteristic of intentional
consciousness, it follows that the acts of signification and communication are not logically
equivalent. They are not on the same level. It is possible to conceive signification without
communication; it is not possible to conceive communication without signification.
Communication that does not result in signification has failed; it is not communication at all,
it is only a failed attempt to communicate. If a recipient is missing, so too is communication.
This is because signification precedes communication and makes it possible. They are not
phenomena of equivalent level, but one is a more general phenomenon on which the other is
grounded. This is, to me, the fundamental theoretical key to understanding what happens
when people communicate.
The ability to produce meanings is a fundamental skill of human beings. The world we live in
is not merely a world of things. Above all it is a world of meanings. One’s ability to
communicate draws on this fundamental competence of signification to introduce into person-
to-person relations – alongside processes of physical interaction – cognitively mediated
interactions. If, in fact, one’s competence of signification enables each one to ‘interpret’ the
surrounding environment – that is, to see beyond brute facts and grasp in them signs of
something (the smoke for the fire) – then for all the others, for one’s potential interlocutors, a
new possibility opens up: they can modify the surrounding environment in order to direct
one’s act of interpretation to the construction of those meanings that they desire. It is thus
possible, for example, to use smoke to send signals.
Every social actor knows that she or he can influence the behaviour of others not only by
materially influencing their bodily dispositions, but also by influencing the horizon of their
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12. meanings through change in their physical environment. Hence, to communicate is not to
transmit or to share pre-packaged meanings, but to act by changing the surrounding world in
view of the recipient’s presumed ability to make sense of the new reality experienced.
Communicating is a way to exploit the signification competence of others to one’s own
advantage; or in other words, to the advantage of one’s need to induce certain behaviours (or
mental states) in the addressee. As Sperber and Wilson put it:
Communication is a process involving two information-processing devices. One device modifies the
physical environment of the other. As a result, the second device constructs representations similar to
representations already stored in the first device. Oral communication, for instance, is a modification
by the speaker of the hearer’s acoustic environment, as a result of which the hearer entertains thoughts
similar to the speaker’s own (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1).
It makes no sense to think that, together with the sound waves leaving the mouth of the
speaker and reaching the ears of the hearer, there is something like ideas that follow the same
trajectory and pass from the speaker’s mind to that of the hearer. No meaning can pass from
one mind to another. The blots that you are reading are nothing but a minor transformation of
your environment which I have made in the awareness that, thanks to the existence of a shared
code, it would induce you to form mental representations similar to those that I want to arouse
in you.
Codes are no more than devices useful to standardize the physical environment and its
modifications. As such, they facilitate the task of communication. But they too derive from
the basic ability of human beings to construct meaning. To communicate is not to transmit
messages, but to transform reality in which one lives, so that one’s interlocutor is able to
produce acts of signification similar to those one desires: if one wants someone to pass the
water at the table, one must modify the physical environment (by emitting sounds, by altering
the position of one’s body or of objects: for example, by holding one’s glass out) so that the
other will realize that one wants to drink.
Relationship-centred design
To conclude, I must briefly clarify how a phenomenological-inferential model of
communication is better able than the hydraulic model to interpret the communicative
function of objects in contemporary society. I will restrict myself to two considerations.
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13. In our society, objects, as said, are valuable instruments for interpersonal communication. As
a result, their design has become an activity that occupies a prime position, particularly
among the activities of those who develop communication media for the collectivity. Defining
the sensible appearance (the ‘form’) of an object is to define its communicative potential, and
therefore to open one array of communicative possibilities while innumerable others are
closed. Designing an object or a technology means making available to its users a device that
enables them to communicate with each other. In this sense, the work of the designer can be
well interpreted through the category of communication. But the hydraulic model is unable to
explain this form of communication, because it presupposes the existence of a code shared by
the user of a certain object and her or his social world, a code concerning precisely the
meanings of objects. And this circumstance seems highly unlikely, especially in the case of
complex technologies or branded items. The inferential model, by contrast, describes
communication as the production and interpretation of clues by drawing on the shared
experience of the surrounding environment, and this is much more compatible with the
communicative use of things, which is practical rather than logical.
As elements in experience of the surrounding environment (not only visual experience, but
also tactile and corporeal in general), objects belong to the set of stimuli from which
interpretation of the world springs. Their transformation (for example by creating a new car
model, launching a new trend in fashion, etc.) contributes to the transformation of this latter,
and therefore of the meaning that the surrounding reality has for people. In this resides the
second feature that makes the phenomenological-inferential model more suitable. If one
admits that communicating means altering the state of affairs in such a way as to arouse a
desired reaction in the interlocutor, then it must be said that design is a very powerful means
to alter the state of affairs. To design is to modify the world. By modifying the world, the
designer changes not only the physical environment (the system of causal connections) but
also the experience of people and therefore the processes of signification that they enact.
Altering the physical environment arouses in the addressee, the consumer, new acts of
signification.
This also implies, however, that designing today is increasingly less the creation of
meaningful objects (‘products’) and increasingly more the creation of states of affairs that are
not rigid and closed in upon themselves, but open, available to the user, easy to use
communicatively in the diverse situations through which life unfolds. To design is not to
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14. produce meanings, but material situations that are potentially meaningful. And the
responsibility for opening up such possibilities falls to a designer. It seems to me that on the
basis of a phenomenological-inferential model, this role of the designer in contemporary
society emerge with all its potency. The designer opens (and simultaneously closes) new
possibilities for communication and, therefore, for the production of identity in contemporary
society. As Lucius Burckhardt pointed out some decades ago, neither the object nor the
human being is at the centre of the designer’s activity, but social relations:
The discipline that I would want to represent teaches that at the centre is not the object, … ‘but
the human being’, one often hears. False. The building blocks of the world are not human
beings, nor things, but the invisible rules of social processes, be they called roles, relations,
expectations of behaviour, or whatever else (Burckhardt 1970).
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