As the incoming national president of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), I am excited to have the opportunity to communicate and share ideas with the design industry through Interiors & Sources. This is a challenging time for the design profession, yet there are many opportunities for us to be stimulated by the changing environment and to be more deeply connected as a profession.
Over the past year, ASID has invested in an extensive strategic planning process to envision a future that is focused on the collaboration and communication necessary to advance the profession.
We know that interior design can impact the human experience, and communicating that message is important to stakeholders at multiple levels. For this reason, technology is a focal point of our vision and will play a large role in our organization as a powerful tool that allows us to deliver a strong message about the impact of design; it will also provide the channel through which project solutions can be implemented.
At the same time, we understand the challenge of balancing the new innovations that inundate our daily lives. A few years back, journalist and humorist Dave Barry said that the Internet was “the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call-waiting,” and maybe that’s not so off-base. I would venture to say that many of us recall a time when call-waiting was a novelty, or perhaps you recall your first car phone that lived in a carrying case large enough to check at the airport. Much has changed since then, and we will continue to experience these technological advances in all parts of our professional and personal lives.
Constant access to information has transformed our “knowledge” economy to a “creative” economy, one in which technology is ubiquitous across creative, collaborative and interdisciplinary activities. In a world driven by technology, designers can embrace these new tools not only as a means of communication, but to stay informed about products, and the environmental and social issues impacting the built environment.