Fixed, liquid, fluid. Rethinking the digital design process through the ecosystem model

According to the visions and conceptualizations from philosophers to design thinkers such as Habermas, Maturana & Varela or Levin, the design applied to digital artefacts, products and services —due to the convergence of media, deceives and technologies— is becoming even more a bio-sphere, or, with the words of Vernadskij, a Noosphere. The cultural shifting is represented both in the process side and in the approach to the whole design materials and outcomes. On one hand, the organizational structure is moving from an “industrial” approach characterized by a waterfall-process —organized in subsequent structured phases— to an iterative activity —that cycle among ideation, prototyping, testing assessing and redesign phases before to implement and release a project— to the agile and lean approach of the information-era in which the project itself persist constantly in a work-in-progress status —where updates have replaced new releases. On the other hand, the object of the project itself is deeply changing according to a vision of a digital ecosystem and consequently to the design approach that is moving from a fixed —a twodimensional page borrowed-model— to a liquid, then fluid solutions beside the divergences of media and devices and the convergence of user context and experience. Paraphrasing Maldonando we’re moving from virtual to real, from intangible to tangible, from the web to intelligent environment, both digital and physical. In this hybrid space design plays its challenge to change process and purpose embracing both a traversal and a deep approach to single elements and the eco-system in its wide complexity. Nevertheless this transition implies design to face with the challenges of emerging and upcoming phenomena: the designer education —skills, competences, methods— in an hybrid context, the anthropological mutation brought up by the new generation of digital natives and finally the social impact and emotional implication of the confluence of virtual and real experience —mediated by technologies— that people live in their daily life.