T

he notion of design unleashes ideas of fashion, hotel interiors, advertising billboards, all the designer bling consumers so happily devour: Design is not a term we usually equate with progressing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals of reducing global poverty, improving the status of females, access to education and improvements in health and environmental protection.

But design is at the heart of speeding MDG outcomes, according to long-term designer, author and UN MD Goals High Level Advisor, Canadian born David B. Berman, who was recently in Indonesia touring his book do good …design, recently translated into Indonesian and published locally by Aikon.

The title for the book comes from Berman’s philosophy, “Don’t just do good design – do good,” highlighting design has too long been about creating and selling ever more bling, about creating a “want it now” society, rather than bringing to light inequalities in the world and applying design to re-balance this – to use design to “do good” for the world.

Berman fervently believes it is design and technology that can open doors to small business development at village levels, lift educational access, put new tools in the hands of society’s vulnerable and improve government transparency, which can change how we live and access information.

Berman met with the Under Secretary of the UN for Human Development during a conference in Mexico. “I was later asked to become a high-level advisor on how design can accelerate the fulfillment of the MDG.

“[The UN] are going to miss the deadline, but there is all this wonderful stuff that can be done when you have design on your side, so we look at how design can help,” says Berman, adding that design and technology such as the Internet and smart phones could change people’s lives, however, to date, the uptake of these technologies has been limited globally.

“A huge factor is how we all go on about the Internet, but only 21 percent of Indonesians have ever used the Internet; that is, 79 percent of Indonesians have never been online. Globally the numbers of people using Internet technology is just 31 percent, so two thirds of humans are not online. There is an information denial – a digital divide and that creates the risk of a widening gap between rich and poor – between the technological haves and have nots,” says Berman pointing out this technological divide denies people access to the information that could enhance their lives and educate them out of poverty.

“In the evening I meet a student of design here in Bali. In the day I meet a bright lad on the beach selling Coke-a-Cola. He is denied access – he could lift himself up through online activity if he just had the access,” says Berman adding both young men were equally intelligent, but the design student had access to education and information technologies, the young man selling Coke on a beach did not.

Berman expects by 2017 that lad on the beach will have access, will be online and his worm hole into a new future will stem from design and technology.

“By 2017 it is expected that 50 percent of the world’s population will be online. Their first access will be a device like this [a smart phone] – a phone that can access the Internet – in 2017 people will be using this – it might be recycled phone, but they will be cheap so accessible.

“This is where design comes in – Apple, as of three weeks ago, has the highest brand value of any company in the world, because of technology and it’s in the design interface that people find delightful – experience design – is the term for this. People want easy and phone applications offer this,” says Berman of phone apps that can be specifically created for farmers or village based businesses.

“We are in the age of the long tail economic theory – an example is eBay. Ebay makes it possible to sell an item for $1.25. [In a non online world] these tiny transactions would not sell – now the long tail economics offers a system and a place where these can sell. It opens the way for people who have never been involved [in global markets].

“I could design an android application for a phone from a tiny village in Sumatra and have a global customer base – so this creates economic power for all. But there is a dark side to this where all people can be publishers, it can spiral to the negative.

“Are we going to share health and benefit issues or the style issues, if you don’t have this perfume you are not in the club,” says Berman explaining too many designers spend their time, “Creating mountains of crap we don’t need,” while others are creating the advertising to sell the “stuff we don’t need.”

He gives the example of the BIC disposable ballpoints, an easy and convenient item until you learn the facts: BIC makes one ballpoint for every person on the planet every year; 14 million ballpoint pens are thrown away daily. Re-designing the ballpoints to be refillable would save millions of tons of plastic and metal waste each year.

And this is where “design thinking” comes in, says Berman. Design thinking looks at ways of making things better, more accessible and answerable to the environment – even the law.

“Design thinking applies the process of design to non-visual challenges. Currently, I am on a project with the Canadian Government to re-design the national laws to make them more accessible – why should a citizen have to have access to a lawyer to understand the law? So we a re-writing the law in plain language – making the law something you can read – published in a better way – it is clear, delightful,” says Berman.

That idea of accessibility through design thinking can be applied at government levels he says. “Imagine design thinking applied to transparency in the government,” says Berman highlighting crowd sourcing leading to change in societies as has just been seen in the Middle East: Indonesia’s has the second highest penetration of Twitter users, opening up great possibilities for the improvement of governmental transparency and communication between the government and the people.

Where Indonesia slots into the world’s design of the future is unknowable, but Berman is impressed by both the thinking and visual design taking place across the country.

“It’s world class. I keep hearing people apologizing for the standard, but it’s up there with New York,” said Berman at the opening of the Wonderground Res-ponsible Lifestyle Prototype Products by NAFKA designer’s exhibition in Denpasar recently.

“Indonesia is fascinating in a hopeful way. In Canada and the US for instance we talk of China all the time, we speak to people in India all the time for phone maintenance. These are the three biggest populations in the world, but Indonesia is the fourth largest population and it flies under the radar. We never hear anything except when a natural disaster occurs. In China you have got huge control – here in Indonesia it’s a lot more open – you can go online and do just about anything,” says Berman of the great possibilities facing Indonesian design, technology and access for all into the future.