As in other academic disciplines, there is a certain “lingo” in design research. I wonder whether it is necessary to have this specialized language in design or if it is just a strategy to gain credibility in academia, similar to disciplines like law or physics. Could we still achieve the same depth of discussion using simpler language? And in doing so, could we make design research more inclusive? After all, isn’t inclusivity part of what we dream of when envisioning a "better" future?
Frankly, I must note that my first language is not English, but I lived in England, where I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, and I never really struggled with daily communication. Years passed, and I moved to Switzerland to pursue a master’s degree in design. During the very first lecture, I was left flabbergasted. It was a guest lecture taught in English, and Marto Lago, a healthcare innovation and design expert, introduced the book Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. I would love to tell you what it was about, but I did not understand it. Only later did I learn that the book is about the rare mushroom matsutake and what they teach us about sustaining life in the fragile Anthropocene.
I was excited for the lecture, armed with pen and paper, ready to take notes and ask questions. But instead, I found myself in despair, feeling lost and unable to keep up. How on earth was I supposed to make it through this master’s program? I barely understood half of what was said. I was amazed at the other students, who seemed to ask insightful questions during the discussion. It made me doubt myself, was I even smart enough to be here? Maybe they had made a mistake with my admission. When I asked other students, I found out that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
Terms like Material Experience, Speculative Design, Stakeholder, Double Diamond, Anthropocentrism, Non-Human or Polycene, all seemed like a foreign language to me.
Gradually, after attending more of these lectures and painfully reading essays on design, I started to have an idea of what it was that I was studying. But so much time was wasted just trying to understand the terminology. I’m convinced that many of these concepts could be explained in a much simpler way, which would have helped me engage in the conversation much sooner. However, I do understand that words allow us to be precise and categorize ideas more effectively.
“But so much time is wasted just understanding the terminology.”
In her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira explores the idea of "wording the world." By labeling things, we limit our perception of them, whatever doesn’t have a name, in a sense, doesn’t exist in our reality. This is why many of us spend our lives searching for meaning. On the flip side, words can help us find our place in design and connect with like-minded people. Now, I also see that my role as a designer is to translate these complex ideas into objects, materials, graphics, or services.
That said, I have a proposal: What if we had a design vocabulary on Duolingo? Something to help us understand design more quickly and easily so we could dive into the conversation sooner.
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