Rob Walker‘s piece on this week’s NYTimes.com discusses the multiple factors and fields currently contributing to what he calls “a golden age of design.”
Towards the end of the article, citing a discussion with Allan Chochinov, he mentions how crucial it is for young designers to be fluent in Arduino and Raspberry Pi platforms:
Allan Chochinov, head of the Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts, talks about how design has moved “from the aesthetic, to the strategic, to the participatory.” In his thinking, the “open source” ideology we normally associate with certain corners of tech culture has made its way into design. Engineering and design are melding; code-y enterprises are making objects; and object makers are hardwiring all kinds of things with code. Young designers need to be conversant in tools like the Arduino platform (inexpensive hardware for programming interactive objects) and customizable Raspberry Pi computers (credit card-sized circuit boards that can plug into monitors and keyboards). Style, functionality and engineering are now one and the same, and even mundane objects are virtuously designed.
What is certain is that all these combined elements — style, function, social impact, creativity and profit motive — have yielded an original vision of what design is and why it matters. Design has fundamentally changed the way we experience the world, from the way we interact with objects to our expectations about how organizations are structured. It’s a new and exciting moment for design — that is, until the next one comes along.
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