It's the time of evaluation at work again. Of course the question of goals came up. Mulling over the matter on the bus on the way home just now, I suddenly thought of the rush of emotions I had when I was at Xi's birthday party.
Kids in Singapore are so blessed. Their parents have all the means to pamper them - fancy parties, pretty dresses, videos and photos to remember. This time, there was a balloon artist who created impressive cartoon characters out of balloons, much to the delight of all kids present (elder sister Jing had one last December complete with henna artists adorning the guests with pretty flora motifs).
This, in comparison to all the children who are just happy with their simple toys from a land before their time, whom I've met in the poor neighbourhoods of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia and of course, China. Next week will be the first anniversary of the Great Sichuan Earthquake. While the fortunate kids here are lamenting their "suffering" in school, the children of Sichuan are desperately trying to rebuild their lives, to go to school and be useful persons in future, to prove their worth of being spared from the deadly earthquake that brought school roofs down on their fellow classmates.
I can still vividly remember that afternoon when the earthquake happened. While tremors buried lives across Sichuan, I worried about the boss' tsunami of wrath because I was half an hour late for a meeting. The memory is especially vivid because while people in Sichuan would encounter what could possibly be their lives' greatest suffering and challenge, I was feasting on a sumptuous lunch and worried about the most minuscule things which couldn't even begin compare with the magnitude of destruction that the earthquake would cause to the lives of the people in Sichuan.
What have all these got to do with being a design researcher?
Not to say that we shouldn't be happy when others are sad. But the stark contrast in people's lives gets to me sometimes. And that somehow leads me to question what my role as a researcher is, what it could be and how design research can be an even more enriching field than what it has been conventionally tagged with.
In this regard, and very simply, I see design in 2 very distinct light. One, in the traditional perspective, when one mentions good design or designer's products, it's about exclusivity and extravagance which more often than not, comes at a price the owner can be proud of paying to own this status, or as it is more fashionably known as now, taste symbol.
The other school of design thought, which I subscribe to now, is about solving problems and enhancing lives. Not the lives of MAC fanboys/girls who want to be seen with nothing but a partially bitten Apple, but the lives of children like Sichuan's Lin Hao and those whose fighting spirit to excel in life has not waivered in spite of the lack of money, infrastructure ... or limbs.
This is the type of design researcher I wanna be. One who can channel her knowledge and insights into helping those who need good design the most.
