Design and organisations

I had a phone conversation with a friend who works in a planning department of one of the largest corporations in the world. We were discussing the experiences of many employees in large organisations (she is a fan of Dilbert therefore).

I was reminded of the »Design and organisations« seminar I did five years ago. I love to browse the accompanying weblog once in a while. Everytime I do, I am confident, that I will offer another seminar like this one day. I still think that there is a huge potential for designers to work on “inhouse communication”. Many corporations employ designers only when it comes to communication with outsiders – mostly customers. Many don’t sense a strategic possibility for design when communicating to their own employees. Ironically – whenever I talk about that with people – most people agree that inhouse communication is an issue.

Dave Pollard wrote a fabulous and brilliant post last year about the psychology of information and why people often do not share information within an organisation. Designers really have (or should have) the skills to implement and operationalize many of the “effective workarounds” he proposes.