What can we learn from COVID-19 pandemic for design creativity research?

Abstract

In less than a quarter, the time between two consecutive issues of IJDCI, the COVID-19 outbreak has suddenly revolutionized the life of almost every human being. The daily reports by the World Health Organization depict a dramatic situation at a global level (more than 4,4 million cases and about 300 thousand deaths reported until May 15) and pictures of everyday life from all over the world are not less impressive. In a very short time, people had to radically change their habits and adapt to circumstances they were not prepared for (Figure 1). The analysis of what happened in the medical sector is out of the scope of this journal. However, it is apparent that organizations at any level (not only health-related), just like complex systems as well as simple every-day products, turned out to be unfit for the pandemic and most of the improvised solutions people put in place were largely due to individuals’ intuition and endeavor. What could be learned for improving the design of the next products, systems, organizations? What is the actual contribution of design creativity in ensuring the resilience of society and its means? Is design research well-oriented and structured to improve the humans’ capacity to cope with unexpectedness? The debate on how to face the global economic crisis that might follow is just at the beginning, but the impact is likely to go way beyond economics: we might be in the turning point of our social, political, economical, and educational life. Everything could be significantly different afterward. It is interesting to notice that the design community has been debating for many years about the speed of changes we are observing nowadays. Nevertheless, only a few science fiction writers had imagined such a sudden revolution in people daily life due to a pandemic and there is a lot to learn from this experience. This is an opportunity to turn into practice the so celebrated role of creativity in finding new solutions for the wellbeing of society, in producing responsible and sustainable design to increase the resilience of our organizations. After all, in ancient Greek, the term ‘krisis’ did not have a negative connotation compared with how the term ‘crisis’ is used in today’s languages. Krisis used to refer not only to separation, but also to reflection and assessment. To further develop this ambition, Nathan Crilly, member of the editorial Advisory Board of IJDCI, suggested the closing paragraph by Arundhati Roy in (Roy, 2020): ‘Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.’ The IJDCI journal would like to contribute to this debate hosting position papers, as well as open letters, that propose constructive reflections on new practices the design research community should adopt to interact more proficiently, to target better our research endeavor, and to have a more tangible impact on society. As a first step, the Editorial and the Steering Advisory Boards of IJDCI were invited to share their preliminary thoughts emerging from the recent experience. In particular, we asked for reflections on the following points with the current understanding and awareness of the challenges that COVID-19 introduces to society: