The Strength of Olistic Design for Organisation, between effectiveness and disruption

Design refers today to many different aspects, such as product, interior, communication, brand, service and so on. It is possible to provide a coherent perception of a whole environment, designing all the aspects so that they can communicate coherent values and univocal interpretation. This is possible by making the design driven by principles starting from metaphoric models of the mission of a company, translating them into perceptual aspect involving both static elements (layouts, interior design, logo, etc.) and dynamic (interaction protocols, services processes, processes, and so on). Beside the evident advantages of such an approach, problems can arise from conflictual points of view between the company (intended as a unique organism with specific mission and values) and the employees (requiring personal satisfaction, not necessarily coherent with the mission of the organization). The paper describes real experiences exemplifying what indicated, and presents: i) a quick description of the design approach able to design coherent solutions for different artifacts/ services (values identification, required emotions specification, metaphors supporting them, perceptual aspects supporting the metaphors, design of any aspect); ii) the description of a similar approach followed in designing some department in a relevant hospital; iii) the positive effect of the approach evaluated by the positive reactions of patients and nurse; iv) the opposition of the doctors, feeling themselves as interpreted less relevant for the therapies effectiveness; v) the corrective actions taken in order to avoid a disruptive effect of the cohesion between doctors (as more relevant actors of the services) and the rest of the environment. The paper describes the experience, and points out the differences between the design of artifacts for external customers (e.g., cars, white goods, etc,) and the design of environments in which customers and “producers” share the same space and processes, and suggests, for these cases, approaches going beyond User Centered Design.