Week Three Summary -  'Notes Towards a History of Change'

In this article Simon Sadler uses the lives of recently deceased, David Bowie and Steve Jobs, to discuss the nature of change.  Throughout their successful careers both men reinvented themselves a number of times and even seemed to have viewed their impending deaths as a final creative opportunity. Sadler believes students study design out of a desire to “change things” but don’t actually get taught the change process which should be goal-directed. Sadler frames his discussion by acknowledging that understanding and predicting the course of change is challenging. He uses the analogy of a new window in his kitchen which will immediately result in a lighter room but will it also improve his lectures and motivate his students? Impossible to predict the impact a small change might ultimately have on the larger system. He identifies a number of different schools of thought all with different views and understandings of design and change, yet all somehow managing to co-exist as a single discipline. Sadler traces the changes in the practice of design over the past 50 years suggesting that it has moved from ambitious self-confidence to less ambitious “ creative problem solving and optimistic design thinking” He concludes by reminding us that while change happens at both a personal and societal level, lasting change requires “people working together with discipline and persistence”.