Guidelines
Design postures & principles
The four postures of the designer within a collective, and the principles that guide their choices.
The postures say who I am in a project. The principles say how I choose.
The 4 postures
Four roles to orchestrate a project’s complexity (from the Manifesto):
- Design Strategist: I weave the links that keep objectives in step with their measures and spread design practices.
- Design Lover: listening and argument are the basis of what we hold in common; I create the team’s rites and rhythms to replace “getting others to do” with “getting others to think”.
- Design Thinker: with empathy, I create the right workshop to turn each problem into a collective opportunity.
- Design Maker: with method and teaching, I ensure the quality of product design, from discovery to delivery, with user impact as the compass.
Principles
Proposal. These eight principles are drawn from Denis Giraudon’s texts, each with its source. To keep, rephrase or remove.
1. Connect rather than separate
The designer’s job is first of all a job of connections: between disciplines, people, uses, rules and consequences. A deliverable that isolates one part of the system without saying what it touches is incomplete. Source: the text “Lier plutôt que séparer” (Connect rather than separate).
2. Make it readable without simplifying
The cartographer does not delete the difficult roads: they make them readable. We clarify the structure and keep the complexity that carries the meaning. Source: Itinéraires, the route map.
3. Get people thinking rather than doing
A successful workshop leaves the collective with a shared understanding, not a task list. Rites and rhythms are there to think together. Source: the Design Lover posture.
4. Walk around the object before deciding
Before deciding, we look at the project from every angle, weigh it, handle it, check its connections. The decision comes afterwards. Source: the methodology of the object.
5. Beliefs, not certainties
An internal conviction is a hypothesis until it has been tested against the field. We state it, test it, measure it. Source: the “Purpose, Pillars, Principles” and “Building a user research practice” cases.
6. Measure what we claim
Impact has to be proven: a quantified audit, the level of evidence behind a finding, the RRL and PRL of a fiction. We say what we know, and with what degree of certainty. Source: the audits, atomic research, the RRL/PRL method.
7. Being ethical is a choice
A method, even a systemic one, does not make you ethical. We ask who benefits, who pays, and what the frame leaves out. Source: “By éthic, by design”, the Yuka example.
8. Form in the service of meaning
Form does not dress an idea, it carries it. A colour codes, an image documents, a word shifts a frame. Source: the Preamble, the Bauhaus.