Design without a customer: the Exploring Design path

The economic crisis that has hit countries in the west in recent years has generated a decline in the presence and the strength of the entrepreneurial class and also of its traditional role of “customer” of the design sector. Design has recently responded to this new situation by generating new working methods. Politecnico di Torino has evolved its classic demanding approach to design and brought it up to date by incorporating “explorative” capacities into the training of its students, providing them with the necessary skills to cope with an absence of market, proposing the designer as a key figure capable of exploring existing situations and offering new solutions. The aim of this paper is to show how, in the absence of market, the strategies that Exploring Design can implement generate system-product, process, service design projects that are always original and innovative, capable of leading quite easily to new methods, business ideas and spheres of activity in which customers can become involved later on.