Four

Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset

Towards a National Design Policy
Dr. Mara de Mater ONEILL
Rubberband Design Studio, LLP
mmo@rubberbandpr.com

Abstract: In the Caribbean, both Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago seem to share
a social context that has led to the lack of a design discourse and to a limited design
culture. This awareness has provided the author with opportunities to develop a
contextual set of strategic resilience thinking operations, and design-led approaches
and skills to assess the situation. The four areas of inquiry that the author proposes
to focus on, in order to propose ideas toward the creation of a Ministry of Design in
Trinidad and Tobago, are: 1. Local contemporary design history, with an emphasis
on its business aspect; 2. Current local design education approaches; 3. How people
relate to, and experience their mobile technology within their cultural context; and
4. Current financial issues among design practitioners and their businesses. The
understanding of the author is that inquiries in these four areas are needed for
scaffolding a design mindset that could foster an effective national design policy.
This paper presents the authors findings and insights regarding these four inquiries
through the means of four case studies in her native Puerto Rico; three stemmed
from her design studio, and one from the Government of Puerto Rico. This method
could provide actionable roadmaps concerning the creation of a National Design
Policy in Trinidad and Tobago.

Keywords: Design Policies, Design Discourse, Design Culture, Critical Design,

Design Thinking.

Four Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset Towards a National Design Policy

Design Practice and the Caribbean

It is an exciting time for design practice. In many communities globally, it has

become less client-oriented and expert-driven and more people-centred, allowing a
more participatory approach. Designers are increasingly becoming empathisers,
behaviour-pattern identifiers and systems creators, thus proving to be extremely
resourceful in approaching intangible social issues like an ageing population, community
empowerment, or designing lean artifacts for catastrophic events, among others. In the
international community, one sees designers who are comfortable working with
transdisciplinary teams and engaging directly with issues of policy, business, and
healthcare. As for designers practicing in the Caribbean (and likely other regions
enduring similar financial restraints), to paraphrase Charles Dickens, it is also the worst
of times, the age of wisdom and foolishness, and the epoch of hope and hype.
The opportunities of participating in critical design dialogues from a Caribbean
perspective have always been and continue to be quite rare. So when the call was
made by the Visual Arts Unit at the University of the West Indies to discuss the
possibility of a Ministry of Design for Trinidad and Tobago, the author could not miss the
opportunity to share her experience as a Caribbean designer and artist from Puerto
Rico, where craft-based design and applied aesthetics continue to be strong models.

The reality is similar in Trinidad and Tobago, according to Lesley-Ann Noel, the
coordinator of this colloquium Ministry of Design - From Cottage Industry to State
Enterprise, who states that: the general public often understands design to relate
1
primarily to fashion, Carnival and graphic design [and the government] has no design
policies and programs though there is a focus on innovation and competitiveness in
national policies. (Noel 2015). In a parallel way, design in Puerto Rico is often still
perceived as if our society still belonged to semi-industrial times (it does not) when
designers, if any, would have participated exclusively in the last stages of the production
line. Now, however, contemporary designers can indeed assist in shaping business
paradigms and actionable roadmaps for business to grow in a sustainable manner.
Currently in Puerto Rico, and, it seems, in Trinidad and Tobago, there is still a lack of
design culture and discourse, and, in the case of Puerto Rico, at least, there is also the
aggravating factor that the islands designers are under a perfect storm of economic
national default.

Recommendation for Inquiries in Four Areas

The question posited by the organisers of the West Indies colloquium is how to
articulate the roles that design can actively play in economic and social development,
and how to convey this in a clear manner to both government officials and the general
public. That very same question has been on the authors mind for a long time, being

1 It is held annually on the Monday and Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday in Trinidad and Tobago.

25

DR. MARA DE MATER ONEILL

that Puerto Rico, in general, has a lack of understanding of contemporary design

practice and its societal role. In order to create a seismic shift in the way design is
perceived in Puerto Rico, the author has repeatedly tackled these issues as a design
studio owner, producer, educator, strategist, and facilitator.
To scaffold a design mindset towards building a national design policy, the author
has explored four areas of inquiry in her design studio, and wishes to share them with
the Trinbagonian community. These are:
1.

Inquiries into contemporary design history, emphasising on its business

aspects
2. Inquiries into pedagogical approaches, and what is being taught, in design
education, emphasising on the educators context
3. Inquiries into cultural experiences with mobile technology
4. Inquiries into economic statistics relating to local design practice
To cite some examples: eight graders (Third Form students) rapidly learning
nanoscience concepts and teaching them to others; cancer patients sharing resilience
strategies; doctors learning that architectural spaces have the potential to interrupt
their technical operations; food store owners verifying that their service systems work;
mothers arriving on time to their childrens basketball games using the map from the
leagues webpage (avoiding frustrations); these are some of the results from the
authors design studio practice using design as a social tool.
As a relevant footnote to this approach, an essential element in the process of
creating a Ministry of Design for Trinidad and Tobago must be the inclusion of
participatory activities that involve different stakeholders, especially the citizens
themselves.
The aforementioned areas are based on previous independent inquiries in Puerto
Rico; three stem from the perspective of design itself, and one from the perspective of
the creative industry as a whole. Three of the inquiries were forged in the authors
design studio, Rubberband, LLP, using people-centred and evidence-based approaches.
Rubberband is a micro business, operating in Puerto Rico since 2008. The fourth one
belongs to a study (2015) by the Cultural Development Commission (CODECU), a Puerto
Rican government temporary taskforce designed to study the economic impact of
cultural industries, including design.

Why these four areas for scaffolding a design policy?

1. Local design history: Documenting Puerto Ricos (and, surely, Trinidad and
Tobagos) design history is of foremost importance, in order for design studios to
understand which successful business operations and unsuccessful strategies have been
utilised in the local context. There is no documented design history in Puerto Rico
(except for the field of architecture). On the island, mostly in the capital of San Juan,
there is a current wave of entrepreneurship among industrial designers and

26

Four Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset Towards a National Design Policy

technological startups, with the latter relating more to the coding aspect than to the
designers specialised in those areas. In view of this situation, Rubberband set out to
register the design work and analyse the business and design management of a
local firm, Graf Design (1982-2002), the first visual communication studio on the island
to break the $1M (USD) ceiling back in the 1990s. Rubberband managed to bring on
board other collaborators for this task, and eventually helped ensure that the Graf
Design collection was acquired by the National Archive of Puerto Rico (figure 1). The
Graf collection is the first contemporary visual communications collection to be acquired
as national patrimony.

Figure 1
Going over the Graf Collection Registry, from left to right: Dr. Yara
Maite Coln Rodrguez, Dr. Mara de Mater O'Neill, Mary Anne Hopgood Santaella
(Owner of Graf) and Archive Director Karin Cardona. Source: ONeill (25 Oct, 2014).

2. Local design education: It is very important to inquire how new generations are
being educated, and to also understand the design educators context. This is, to our
understanding, the backbone of any national design policy. It is crucial to understand
how both educators and design schools currently approach the teaching of 21-century
skills among other sets of skills needed for collaborations in distributed cross-cultural
teams in real life projects. The author organised a colloquium around this topic; six
participants were chosen via a peer-to-peer review so they could present their teaching
models.
3. Local digital literacy: How regular citizens experience mobile technology as digital
citizens. This is an important factor in an interconnected world, and refers to the
cultural approach of people using mobile technology vis vis their sociocultural
experiences. It is essential to understand the importance of digital literacy in order to
approach effective digital mobile solutions. Designing a digital application does not
necessarily guarantee the general public will embrace it. In the case of Puerto Rico, this
is due to the fact that mobile technology is mainly perceived as a form of entertainment;
one of the findings (and a major insight) was that most participants distrust technology,
and culturally prefer to solve conflicts in a face-to-face fashion.

27

DR. MARA DE MATER ONEILL

4. Local design industry and its financial health: A statistical inquiry into both the
economic impact and designer profiles allows us to understand the actual financial
situation of the businesses and their practitioners. In order to have a National Design
Policy, the government needs to make a comprehensive assessment of its impact on the
Gross National Product so it can create an ecosystem that will allow design businesses
to have better opportunities and thus be able to contribute to the economy in general.

Inquiries Findings and the Authors Insights

Comparison
The following are brief comparisons with the objective of establishing
interconnections between the four inquiries (tables 1, 2, 3 and 4). It is important to
understand the dynamics of design practice in peripheral countries (Bonsiepe 1985) like
our Caribbean islands. The reader (or audience) would benefit from understanding the
context of the current economic situation of Puerto Rico to have a better understanding
of the implications of the inquiries findings and this authors insights. The numbers are
staggering.

In the first 9 months of 2014 there was a net loss of 15, 865 jobs in the
private sector (Garca Pelatti 2015).
Puerto Rico's unemployment rate as of March 2015 was 11.8%, and, of that
percentage, 35.3% referred to heads of families (Statistics Institute of
Puerto Rico, 2015).
The government has a current debt of $73 billion USD (Editorial Board, New
York Times, 2015).
From 2000 to 2010, 300,000 Puerto Ricans left the island (Rodrguez 2014).
In 2013 alone, as many as 45,764 Puerto Ricans migrated. This trend is
continuing: The population has been falling at an annual rate of 1% over
the past three years (Garca Pelatti 2014)2.
45% of Puerto Ricans are at poverty levels (Acevedo 2013) and only 40.3%
are working (Statistics Institute of Puerto Rico 2015).
The cost of living in the metropolitan areas of Puerto Rico is 13% higher
than the United States average (Anon. 2014) and, at the same time, the
median household income was $19,518 during the post-recession period of
2010 to 2012, statistically unchanged from 2007 to 2009 (Anon. 2014).

HISTORY: Graf Design Studio exemplifies how imported business models from centre
countries might not be flexible enough in the context of emerging economies that
undergo volatile cycles (Table 1). Its story should be a cautionary tale in the use of out-
of-the-box methodologies that are not contextualised and harmonised with local ways
of doing. That said, the firm enjoyed 20 years of existence, which responded, in part, to

Puerto Rico is a territory belonging to, but not part of, the United States, and Puerto Ricans have
US citizenship.

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Four Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset Towards a National Design Policy

the fact that the business was incorporated. Still today, Graf owns a milestone that very
few others have achieved, since up to 2013 only 3% of design businesses in Puerto Rico
had surpassed the over $1M USD sales mark Graf had achieved (Table 4). One important
lesson learned from Graf is the importance of focusing on the opportunities rather than
the adversities.
Table 1

Quick comparison on the four inquiries: History.

Area

Inquiry Findings

History:
Rubberband inquiry about Graf Design
Studio (1982-2002)

1. Graf Design Studio was configured

as a semi-horizontal organisation
very early on, and had strong visual
knowledge of the work of past artists
and designers.

2. They worked using what was
available locally, trained people,
engaged in strong collaboration
processes, and were able to export
their services.

A Central Paradigm in the

Periphery: The Rise and Fall of a
Graphic Design Business (ONeill,
Asseo, Hopgood 2013)

3. Although Grafs model was

adapted to the peripheral
practice, it was still centre-based;
Grafs Axiological Model became
too rigid and lost its focus.

4. Grafs designers focused on
adversity rather than
opportunities when the firm was
hit by the loss of a major client.

Authors Insights
1. Freelance operations tend to limit the
growth (both of businesses and in terms
of design maturity overall) in contexts of
weak design cultures. Corporate
structure strengthens design practice as
well as design culture.
2. The importance of using models that
address the dynamics of socio-economic
instability and relate to the experience
of a peripheral country.

3. The importance of a deep
understanding of local cultural
knowledge in order to create cultural
capital in a sustainable manner.

4. Focus on opportunities rather than
adversities, as in a two hand
operation: one deals with the current
problems, while the other continues
with the main plan.

5. The importance of collaboration and
participatory creative processes that
promote a proactive environment
among design teams with the users,
clients and vernacular designers.

29

DR. MARA DE MATER ONEILL

EDUCATION: There are parallels between the education and economics contexts
(Table 2). Neither practitioners nor educators enjoy job stability (Table 4). Although
there is an awareness of the needs to teach management and business in design, most
educators who are practitioners are not business owners. But the most important
insight is the lack of Systems Thinking-minded design schools. There is a lack of
understanding of macro and micro operations. This understanding is required for
administrative development policy operations and for programme development, which
would ideally be both student and faculty-centred. This is important because education
is a springboard for economic growth and social stability.

Table 2

Quick comparison on the four inquiries: Education

Area

Inquiry Findings

Authors Insights

Education:
Rubberband colloquium

Views and Reflections on
Design Education from a Local
Perspective (ONeill 2015)

1. There is disappointment in the practice

itself.
2. The present design curriculums are an
obstacle.
3. The working situation of adjunct
educators is precarious.
4. There is a need to teach the business
side of design.
5. Practitioners who teach do not hold a
permanent job at a design business, or own
one (with the exception of architects).
6. Participants of the Rubberbands
colloquium are keeping in touch with new
processes, some with a reflective practice
mindset.

1. Design education seems to be lacking

locally conceived Systems Thinking-
minded schools. Such model would
allow a leap forward both pedagogically
and business-wise.

2. Educators and students seem to be on
their own.

3. Job instability does not support
growth of pedagogical knowledge.

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Four Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset Towards a National Design Policy

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY: Although it was a success for Graf, cultural awareness (Table
1) in the digital realm has been abandoned (Table 3).

Table 3 Quick comparison of the four inquiries: Mobile Technology

Area
Mobile Technology:
Rubberband inquiry about
Digital Literacy

Digital Illiteracy among Puerto
Rican
Middle Class Smartphone
Users (ONeill, Asseo 2013)

Inquiry Findings
1. Lack of trust in technology and
cultural habits and values. The
participants behaviour can compromise
the multiliteracy skills needed to
navigate critically other social domains
through digital communication
technology, both as workers and as
citizens. Therefore, they might be more
vulnerable to coercion and manipulation
by unethical business and dubious
political ventures. This, in turn, makes
them even more distrustful of
technology.

2. Local (Puerto Rican) designers are not
taking into consideration cultural habits
and digital gaps concerning technology.

3. The lack of contextual research
Puerto Ricos industry or Government
only uses quantitative research, so they
might have been wrongly led to believe
that access is equal to comprehension.

4. Cultural habits and values can make
some aspects of digital literacy optional
(not being perceived as required skills to
be part of the community).

5. Digital Design (User Experience &
Human Computer Interface) can be
dissonant to local users cultural habits,
beliefs and motivations.

Authors Insights
1. There is a need for further
contextual research in the Caribbean in
the following areas:
-Cross and inter-cultural design, and its
impact on digital literacy.
-User Experience (UX) designers role in
digital literacy (their beliefs,
motivations, cultural habits, and how
those interfere with their
methodologies).
-Correlations between digital literacy
and social inclusion as a way to
strengthen the social contract in post-
capitalism (Drucker 1993) societies.

2. There is a need for a balance
between international standards and
inter / cross-cultural approaches. To be
competitive in todays global market,
failing to successfully incorporate the
Mobile Web Best Practices can be
detrimental to an apps success.
Successfully negotiating glocally can be
a challenge by itself.

3. The role of value-driven designers is
very important when establishing the
scaffolding of a network society that
may strengthen liberties and rights.
The responsibility of digital literacy
education that takes into account
cultural behaviours is not exclusively
the designers, but one to be shared
with clients, users and all members of
the community.

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DR. MARA DE MATER ONEILL

ECONOMIC: These findings, an x-ray of the challenging context for the Puerto Rican
designer (Table 4), should be addressed by design schools revising curriculum and losing
opportunities in mobile technologies (Table 3). All the sectors are interconnected, but
there are no strategies to set them up within a national system. It should be noted that
the category of Design seems to sometimes include related production businesses, so
the data is not conclusive.
Table 4

Quick comparison on the four inquiries: Economics

Area
Economics:
Cultural Development
Commission (CODECU)

Inquiry of the Puerto Ricos
Cultural Ecosystem
(Hernndez and Quintero
2015).

Inquiry Findings
1. In 2013, 24% of the businesses did not
report design services sales; 45% reported
sales up to $100,000 USD; 22% reported up
to $500,000; 6% reported up to $1M; and
3% reported over $1M (p.16). (It should be
noted that these numbers include
architectural services.)
2. From 2007 to 2012, employment in
design services (fashion, graphic, industrial,
architectural and interior) had contracted
to -63%. That means that from 824 persons
employed, the total went down to 304 in
only five years. In 2007 they were 105
design businesses, and by 2012, there were
only 80 left. Only bookstores endured a
higher contraction (-70%) (p.16).
3. The design business volume went down
dramatically from $70,729,729 (2007) to
$26,094,463 (2012). This, in contrast to the
arts, which generated $91 million (p.21).
4. There was a total of $95,822,534 in the
gross income of individuals in 2012 (tax
data), which represents a 27% reduction
from 2008 (p.24). Similar numbers applied
to corporations, with a reduction from
$395,078,338 (2008) to $265,823,196
(2012) (p.25). It should be noted that the
tendency is self-employment, since the
report identified that 36% were individuals
and 6% corporations (p.24).
5. In 2012, 1.90% ($1.3 million) of the Gross
National Product ($69,462 million) came
from the Creative Industry (p.25, p.34).
6. At the time of the study, 67.6% of the
creative industry as a whole reported not
having employees (p.14).
7. The average annual income is $20k for
designers working as independent
contractors.

Inquiry Insights
1. Design services had declined by
2012. The economic damage to
Puerto Ricos design industries is
clear.

2. The average profile of the design
practitioner is one of someone who
works on their own, lacking labour
protection and retirement and
healthcare plans.

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Four Areas for Scaffolding a Design Mindset Towards a National Design Policy

Final Reflections

Had the government of Puerto Rico requested proposals for design policies, using
the four inquiries shared with this colloquium as case studies, an assessment of possible
actionable roadmaps could have been:


To create a business environment for design diversification.

To promote incorporation among designers; this would have strengthened
business growth in a precarious design industry.

To promote that the States design schools adopt a Systems Thinking
paradigm to incorporate the teaching of 21-century skills.

To create awareness, in both local business people and digital designers
alike, of peoples cultural behaviour, in order to promote digital citizens.
And to request user-centred designers for digital developing projects.

As for the creation of a Ministry of Design for Trinidad and Tobago, this paper has
attempted to illustrate ways for the government and the general public to see the
potential use of design as a transformation tool; a tool to explore, problematise and
change the rules. The four areas that the author proposes for Trinidad and Tobago in
this colloquium would incite the design community of Trinbago to come up with their
own findings and insights in the local context, which could in turn result in actionable
roadmaps concerning a national design policy for the Sister-Isles.

Acknowledgements: The author wishes to acknowledge Dr. Jossie ONeill,
Mariana Parreo-Rubio and Jos Roa for their critical reading; Javier
Hernndez and Dr. Mareia Quintero Rivera in their assistance with the
National Creative Industries Economic Statistics, and lastly, Sara Marina
Dorna Pesquera and Ta Fernndez-Toledo, for their editorial services and
insightful comments.

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