MacroDesign


 for nation building

Science + Technology + Imagination

MacroDesign for Nation Building
Uday Dandavate
May 9, 2011

This article is written with the purpose of drawing the attention of policy makers –
politicians, government officials, and public policy consultants – to a new way of
improving how citizens interface with public institutions, services, infrastructures,
and processes.

As the design community in India is mobilizing ideas to co-create a new vision for
the expansion of its design education infrastructure, this article aims to help
public officials better appreciate the contemporary relevance of design in
conjunction with two other practices that have received greater attention and
public investment: invention and innovation. Understanding the interrelationship
between the three practices will help policy makers plan for and boost creative
energy nationwide.

The concept of MacroDesign provides a public policy perspective in

understanding the role of design and design thinking. MacroDesign can be better
explained by comparing it with the concept of Macroeconomics and its
relationship to Microeconomics. Ragnar Frisch coined the term Macroeconomics
in 1933. The concept deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of a
national economy as a whole. The comparison between Macroeconomics and
Microeconomics can be better understood using the analogy of the forest and the
individual trees. Macroeconomics is the study of the behaviors and activities of
the economy as a whole – hence, the forest. Microeconomics looks at the
behaviors and activities of individual households and firms – the individual
components that make up the whole economy – hence, the individual trees.
Microeconomics takes a bottom-up approach in analyzing the economy;
Macroeconomics takes a top-down approach.
The traditional practice of design can be compared to the practice of
Microeconomics. It is focused on delivering results to a specific organization, a
commercial enterprise, or a segment of consumers. On the other hand,
MacroDesign, like Macroeconomics, concerns itself with the development of
public infrastructures in sectors such as education, health, energy, transportation,
and employment generation.

Making MacroDesign an important part of a national planning process will help

cultivate, grow, and harness a society’s creative potential, and will also help
serve high-level public policy objectives, such as management of gross national
happiness (an indicator that measures quality of life or social progress in more
holistic and psychological terms), building social capital (trust, reciprocity, and
networks), implementing the Right to Education Act, managing cultural diversity,
and managing international relations and collaborations. Design communities’
ongoing discussions with Indian government officials – especially the Prime
Minister’s Advisor on Public Infrastructures and Innovation – have provided an
opportunity to the Indian design community to introduce the concept of
MacroDesign as an integral part of public policy. Understanding the critical role of
design in upgrading the creative infrastructure of a nation will ultimately help put
in place benchmarks for evaluating and improving the interface between public
institutions and citizens.

Three key domains of MacroDesign are invention, innovation, and design. There
is a need to correct the imbalance of governments’ investments in the three
sectors. Governments worldwide have traditionally invested large amounts of
money in pure sciences. More recently, the concept of innovation has gained
high visibility among public policy makers. When a breakthrough technology
affects billions of people around the world (i.e., the Internet), it attracts the
attention of politicians and public policy makers who want to claim a share of the
credit. For example, in a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, former Vice
President of the United States, Al Gore, claimed, “During my service in the
United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
Chandrababu Naidu, a former Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh,
championed e-governance through computerization of public information
systems and, thereby, radically improved the interface between common people
and the government. More recently, the President of the United States, Barak
Obama, in his State of the Nation speech, turned to the American innovators for
help in turning the economy around. Obama followed up on his announcement
with a visit to the Silicon Valley. There he met with chiefs of technology
companies, including: John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers;
Carol Bartz, President and CEO, Yahoo!; John Chambers, CEO and Chairman,
Cisco Systems; Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter; Larry Ellison, Co-founder and CEO,
Oracle; Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix; John Hennessy, President, Stanford
University; Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO, Apple; Art Levinson, Chairman and
former CEO, Genentech; Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google; Steve
Westly, Managing Partner and Founder, Westly Group; and Mark Zuckerberg,
Co-founder, President, and CEO, Facebook. Obama stated,

“But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic
research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge
scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That's what
planted the seeds for the Internet. That's what helped make possible
things like computer chips and GPS.”
He promised the nation investment in biomedical research, information
technology, and especially clean energy technology.
While departments of Science and Technology are often grouped together by
public policy makers for budgetary allocations, funding for design (education,
research, and promotion) remains relatively low. In this background, the critical
role of design in delivering innovation to people can be better explained to the
public policy makers by focusing on interdependence of invention, innovation,
and design as integral parts of MacroDesign. Investment in science and
technology is critical from the perspective of incubating breakthrough theories,
ideas, and technologies that have the potential of transforming the lives of
everyday people. At the same time, these breakthrough ideas and technologies
can become workable solutions for everyday people only when designers apply
their imagination and turn those ideas into products, services, processes, and
systems that have compelling human interfaces and meaningful forms. Tim
Brown, CEO of IDEO, a San Francisco-based innovation company, succinctly
describes the value of design:
“Often I define design as getting the interface right between technology
and people. If you accept Kevin Kelly’s definition of technology in his
recent and excellent book, “What Technology Wants,” then technology
means all manmade things including business and political systems.
Therefore, design can be about getting the interface right between
businesses and people, politics and people, or gadgets and people. We
are surrounded by instances where these interfaces do not work; places
where they confuse, confound, annoy, frustrate, or miss serving altogether
the users (us) for which they were intended. Whether it is navigating our
on-line bank account, programming our digital alarm clock, or managing
cancer treatment, the experiences we have of our systems too often
degrade rather than enhance the human condition."

Sam Pitroda, Advisor to India’s Prime Minister on Information Infrastructures and

Innovation, echoed this perspective during a recent meeting with the Vision First
team:

“Every process we have today is essentially obsolete. For example: how

do we get admission in schools; how do we get birth certificates; how do
we get land records? We need to redesign processes, tools, and
technologies if we are going to be really globally competitive and create
the kinds of jobs that we need to create for 550 million youth below the
age of 25. We have no options but to innovate into things differently.”

Sam Pitroda’s ideas reflect deep understanding of the concept of MacroDesign.

He recognizes the designer’s role in building systems, processes, institutions,
and other intangible systems with a focus on human needs, human sensitivities,
and social and cultural compatibility. Today there is a need to train
 MacroDesigners who can participate in public policy formulation – not as
outsiders or consultants – but as public policy makers.

The framework proposed in this article is meant to communicate a point that

development of innovative solutions through MacroDesign will better serve and
be more meaningful to people regardless of where the impetus for that solution
came from – an invention, an innovation, or the imagination of a designer.

The three rows of the MacroDesign framework outlined on this page represent
the impetuses (Science, Technology, and Imagination) that drive the three
domains of MacroDesign (Invention, Innovation, and Design) respectively.

Invention Innovation
 Design


 

Movie:
Impetuses of MacroDesign

Solar Science
Electricity Power of
Energy
Ten



Microwave Geodesic Technology

Internet
Oven Dome



Theory of Operation
LEGO Imagination
Relativity Flood

Domains of MacroDesign

The darker cells of the matrix represent home base for each of the three domains
based on the primary impetus of MacroDesign. The lighter cells represent
secondary impetuses of MacroDesign. The diagram illustrates examples of
MacroDesign’s output processes from the past, which have transformed people’s
everyday lives in profound ways.

A key to maximizing the returns in public investment in building a nation’s

creative capacity lies in incubating ideas in each of the three domains of
MacroDesign and in creating opportunities for cross-pollinating ideas between
the domains. The United States has made large investments in encouraging a
culture of invention through the National Science Foundation and by encouraging
a spirit of innovation among developers of technologies. There is an appreciation
for developing learning resources at the K-12 education level and in colleges for
training people in critical and creative thinking. As a result, the United States has
been a leader in bringing breakthrough solutions and ideas to the world. The
value of design education in the United States, though relatively much under
rated, is beginning to receive attention largely from the private sector. President
Obama’s recent emphasis on driving economic turnaround through support of
innovation can succeed only if the three domains of MacroDesign collaborate
with each other.

Back home in India there is a need to inject investment to cultivate the nation’s
creative potential. India’s one billion people are eager to learn, compete,
succeed, and live a life of dignity by creatively participating in the affairs of their
community. Design thinking and design education will help cultivate a new
mindset that will be focused on designing innovative solutions with enhanced
human interfaces. The creative potential of a billion creative individuals can take
India to an era of renaissance and will encourage them to collaborate with teams
from around the world to address unresolved problems of humanity.

India needs schools of MacroDesign and a ministry of human interface where

MacroDesigners will have the opportunity to monitor and improve the interface
between people and the public infrastructure. This process will require closer
collaboration between the inventor, the innovator, and the designer. It will require
bringing parity of funding between pure sciences, technological education, and
design. An enlightened political leadership can lead India to a new era of
transformation through MacroDesign thinking. We can build a public
infrastructure that works for common people.