#time

"When it comes to the design of social and societal systems of all kinds, it is the users, the people in the system who are the experts. Nobody has the right to design social systems for someone else. It is unethical to do so. Design cannot be legislated, it should not be bought from the expert, and it should not be copied from the design of others. If the privilege of and responsibility for design is "given away," others will take charge of designing our lives and our systems. They will shape our future."

React to this quote

More by Béla H. Bánáthy

See all

“Faced with new realities, our systems have to transform — as the society has transformed. They have to learn to co-change with their constantly changing environments. Thus, it is imperative that we understand what these transformations and new realities are. We have to grasp their implications for systems, and apply our understanding of these implications to the transformation of our systems. We need to learn how to recreate our systems, how to redesign them so that they will have a “goodness of fit” with the emerged new realities. No small task by any means!”

“If solutions could be offered within the existing system, there would be no need to design. Thus designers have to transcend the existing system. Their task is to create a different system or devise a new one. That is why designers say they can truly define the problem only in light of the solution. The solution informs them as to what the real problem is.”

“Participation is empowering and design is empowered by it.”

“The learner is the key entity and occupies the nucleus of the systems complex of education.”

“In sharp contrast the systems design approach seeks to understand a problem situation as a system of interconnected, interdependent, and interacting issues and to create a design as a system of interconnected, interdependent, interacting, and internally consistent solution ideas.”

“We cannot improve or restructure a horse and buggy into a spacecraft regardless of how much money and effort we put into it.”