Design & Innovation

Technological advancements structure urban people in such a way that, almost without noticing it, they find themselves stimulated by new needs. A watch that tells time is not the same as another that is also waterproof, a stopwatch, an alarm, a calculator, a computer, and an electronic game. In the conception of the latter, the purpose of being useful to a need is blurred with that of innovating to sell as an end in itself, and this is a consequence of the technological boom in a constantly self-reinforcing loop. Both goals can be contradictory because the purpose of innovating to sell contradicts the purpose of being useful and can lead to the creation of the superfluous. The quality of being necessary or useful is inherent to Design; it is an intrinsic, structural, essential reason. Design, as a phenomenon, establishes the correspondence between a state of need and an object of need. By placing itself at this nerve center, it emerges as a total social phenomenon.

Estudio de Diseño, Guillermo González Ruiz (1994, and still relevant)