Ergonomics in design or design in ergonomics

Design in Scandinavia has a long tradition of participation in the development of society. Designers in the Nordic countries have taken pride in concerning themselves with problems of everyday living and the design communities at large have been committed proponents of a socially responsible approach to design. This has over the years created many points of contact between designers and others concerned with a healthy and rewarding working life. Looking back one can see both continuity and change in how designers has dealt with this responsibility. From an early recentment towards the modes of modern production, over a subsequent embrace of the opportunities that the industrialized society could bring to all, designers have over the last decades shared with many others an ambiguity towards what design can bring to a society less defined. Like in the early days where designers such as the Danish architect Kaare Klint sparked a new and prosperous venue for Schandinavian furniture design by studying what people stored in their household cabinets, so are designers today studying how people live their lives and make sense of a complex and fluid world where roles and identities are shifting at rapid pace. But unlike in the days of the Bauhaus and Ulm schools of design designers cannot find their programme by looking to new technologies. So where do designers go with design today and how do they connect to the world around them? Who are they, and whom to they collaborate with? Will ergonomists and other work-life professionals be partners to the designers? Or will they have to learn the trade of designing themselves?