Design and digitalization

Technologies permeate all areas of our lives thanks to digitalization and Artificial Intelligence. But do the improvements felt economically and societally actually make our lives better as well? Or is the pressure to change causing all of our previous certainties to evaporate?

The garage as breeding ground for the only good new ideas to have come out of the last two decades is a powerful narrative – one reflecting Californian ideology. Over time this narrative has built up a false dichotomy in the eyes of the public: The big companies with their sluggish bureaucratic organization, which, like a resistant layer of clay hierarchically and authoritatively nip any renewal in the bud versus the nimble start-ups, ingenious lone wolves inventing great new products and asserting them against the prevailing opinion and market power.



If we are redefining the role of design in the process of digital transformation, then we as designers must first of all precisely describe the world we live in. Digitalization affects us all, changing the economy, society and our democracy. Digitalization determines the way we work and live in the future. What the digital transformation means for the economy is clear: It is on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution, so the situation is historic.

Driven by the Internet, real and virtual worlds are growing together. At what speed and to what extent, we have experienced with the introduction of smartphones and tablet computers: Here, telecommunications merged with information technologies and digitalized content fed by the disruption of entire industries – photography, music, film, media, etc. The result: Within a few years, large parts of the value added by Europe's telecom companies migrated to Silicon Valley because Apple and Google were developing solutions there that were simply better suited to the needs of customers.


The merging of the physical world with cyberspace continues. Embedded systems consisting of electronics and software play an important role as a major driver of innovation for export and growth markets of German industry. They decisively expand the functionality and thus the utility value and added value of vehicles, aircraft, medical equipment, production plants and household appliances – keyword: Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet. Today, around 98 percent of microprocessors are already embedded and connected to the outside world via sensors and actuators. Increasingly, they are being networked with each other and with the Internet.

Cyber-Physical Systems are emerging, which are part of a future globally networked world in which products, devices and objects interact with each other. With the help of sensors, these systems process data from the physical world and make it available for network-based services that can directly influence processes in the physical world through actuators. This is a mammoth task for design, provided that man-machine interfaces exist here. During production alone, Cyber-Physical Systems open up enormous efficiency gains. Decentralized production structures become possible – right down to the consumer, who becomes an environmental designer and producer himself with the help of 3D printing technologies.

The factory of the future will integrate production, supply chains and individual customer requirements in real time. This mass customization will make it possible to manufacture highly individualized products under the cost-effective conditions of mass production.

Just in the production process alone (the keyword here: Industry 4.0), Cyber-Physical Systems are obtaining huge efficiency gains. Decentralized production structures are made possible – going as a far as to make the consumer the producer, designing his own environment thanks to 3D-printing technologies. The factory of the future integrates supply chains and individual customer wishes in real time. Connected to this mass customization, the production of highly individualized products under the cost-effective conditions of mass production is made possible. Yet, it is not all about the transformation of analog markets into digital markets, innovative products, services and business models, or technological progress bearing unknown chances for new economic growth and greater quality of life, but also about the immediate area of action in human life. With increasingly versatile man-machine interfaces that will go far beyond today’s usage of devices such as smartphones and tablets, people will ultimately be connected with the virtual world of things, data, and services.

The digital transformation is not only about the economy but affects the people themselves. At the present moment, technologies that are rattling the limits between industrial progress and individuality are developing. Particularly the quantum leaps that we will experience over the next few years in developing Artificial Intelligence will raise questions as to what will happen if machines become more human and the human body itself becomes the tool. One example can be seen in the activity with the soon antiquated iPhone where the human hand is used almost like a prosthetic or application organizing work and social life.

Our whole lives will ultimately change in the course of the man-machine-continuum, as we have seen reflected in literature and Hollywood with romantic-critical cyborg visions for decades. The fusion of work and life is the really relevant aspect here, hidden behind the discussion of digital transformation on solely industrial policy. The world of tomorrow will very soon be a different world: when all certainties and institutions begin to liquefy and in industry and everyday life the lines between virtual and material begin to dissolve, then something is arising that Zygmunt Bauman years ago described as “Liquid Modernity.” Step by step, this is now replacing “Heavy Modernity.”

Everything that was once “Heavy” – machinery, big factories, hardware, large quantities, huge volumes and Fordist labor organizations, will increasingly liquefy. Everything that was once hard and solid is now losing its firm shape. Liquid structures only stay in shape for a short period of time and are subject to constant change. Also, they lose their solemn weight and gain lightness.

For the social world, “Liquid Modernity” first of all means a precarious process of dissolution. As Zygmunt Baumann writes, “What is a truly novel feature of this social world, and makes it sensible to call the current kind of modernity liquid in opposition to the other earlier known forms of modern world, is the continuous and irreparable fluidity of things which modernity in its initial shape was bent to solidifying and fixing.” The main focus for the designer should therefore be the question as to how people’s everyday lives will transform under the conditions of “Liquid Modernity” and with what new strategies they will adopt to this reality.

The consequences of a life and work fusion is not yet predictable. It remains to be seen if this path would lead to a realm of freedom or to the complete loss of control over one’s own life. The discussion about the social and political form of the digital transformation is in full motion – and shouldn’t be held without designers.

Essay by Philipp Thesen

“With increasingly versatile man-machine interfaces, people will ultimately be connected with the virtual world of data, things, and services.”

The digital transformation is not only about the economy but affects the people themselves. At the present moment, technologies that are rattling the limits between industrial progress and individuality are developing. Particularly the quantum leaps that we will experience over the next few years in developing Artificial Intelligence will raise questions as to what will happen if machines become more human and the human body itself becomes the tool. One example can be seen in the activity with the soon antiquated iPhone where the human hand is used almost like a prosthetic or application organizing work and social life.

Our whole lives will ultimately change in the course of the man-machine-continuum, as we have seen reflected in literature and Hollywood with romantic-critical cyborg visions for decades. The fusion of work and life is the really relevant aspect here, hidden behind the discussion of digital transformation on solely industrial policy. The world of tomorrow will very soon be a different world: when all certainties and institutions begin to liquefy and in industry and everyday life the lines between virtual and material begin to dissolve, then something is arising that Zygmunt Bauman years ago described as “Liquid Modernity.” Step by step, this is now replacing “Heavy Modernity.”

Everything that was once “Heavy” – machinery, big factories, hardware, large quantities, huge volumes and Fordist labor organizations, will increasingly liquefy. Everything that was once hard and solid is now losing its firm shape. Liquid structures only stay in shape for a short period of time and are subject to constant change. Also, they lose their solemn weight and gain lightness.

For the social world, “Liquid Modernity” first of all means a precarious process of dissolution. As Zygmunt Baumann writes, “What is a truly novel feature of this social world, and makes it sensible to call the current kind of modernity liquid in opposition to the other earlier known forms of modern world, is the continuous and irreparable fluidity of things which modernity in its initial shape was bent to solidifying and fixing.” The main focus for the designer should therefore be the question as to how people’s everyday lives will transform under the conditions of “Liquid Modernity” and with what new strategies they will adopt to this reality.

The consequences of a life and work fusion is not yet predictable. It remains to be seen if this path would lead to a realm of freedom or to the complete loss of control over one’s own life. The discussion about the social and political form of the digital transformation is in full motion – and shouldn’t be held without designers.