Thoughts On Designing The Future
A few times a year, I will binge on simulator computer games. Whether it’s the latest clone of your favorite SimCity-like game or a game that’ll let me sim hundreds of baseball seasons in a few hours; I find something enjoyable about being able to see the history play out before my eyes in a quick span.
When it comes to designing cities, things are often too idyllic for the real world. For instance, I don’t ever think to build slums. It doesn’t occur to me where the “poor people” live, because I’m too busy worrying about how to raze a particular block to build a stadium akin to real life. While I am complicit in designing a utopia, the game mechanics do not really give you the option of reflecting the world as-is, leaving the human immersing himself (me, in this example) on world building to either imagine a scenario where people in my town do not have access to clean water or where we’ve decided as a community to sell of their public schools to the highest bidder because it makes more financial sense.
I used to worry about sharing too much personal stuff on social media for fear of being deemed less serious. I don’t even tweet many of my articles anymore, because at a certain point, it starts to feel like only the most polished, well-coifed things can be presented for (possible) consumption by a massive few. It’s weird that what used to pass for authenticity now just feels like shouting into one of those abandoned pipes inside a park where you can walk to the other end. Maybe someone will hear you, but chances are, you weren’t loud enough or maybe no one was around when you were shouting.
I’m thinking a lot about innovation, execution and the way we design things. Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot about politics. Except, I’m thinking about the everyday challenges that communities face. I care about the sorts of politics that doesn’t make anything other than the local news, because that’s just where my head is. When I have discussions with my friends these days, it’s about the homeless problem in our small city or the glacial pace at which innovation seems to happen, despite so much home and promise.
It’s probably apropos of my generation that we think we have answers to big problems, but the thing about local politics is you can actually go to the board meetings and be heard. You can be involved. Make no mistake, it’s laborious, it doesn’t pay anything and the work is generally anonymous. Nobody will fete you or care too much about it and your gains will be marginal in comparison to the effort expended.
Nonetheless, I cannot help but believe that what we need are more people rolling up our sleeves to give voice to the issues that confound our own communities, all the while we raise hell about whatever grand problems we hope to solve. I’m a firm believer in being able to be outraged by many things at once.
I’ve been reading a lot about redlining lately. I knew about the federal government complicity in ensuring segregation was maintained during the Post-World War II boom of federally secured home mortgages. What I was not aware of, was how pervasive it was and even instances where well-meaning developers wanted to flout the rules to create integrated housing or at least separate-but-equal housing for non-whites; they were prevented by the Federal Housing Administration from doing so under the guise of maintaining order.
What does any of this have to do with design? As I think listen to pitch after pitch, and people tweet their best ideas, there are a dearth of ideas attempting to solve local problems. Everybody wants to scale the mountain of “free” money hoping to kick an idea to the stock market, get rich, cash out and then maybe focus on the things they’re passionate about. For all of the grief we give people who play the lottery, the delusions are a lot more similar, except playing the Powerball results in a bit of daydreaming. Whereas building a startup that you’re convinced will “change the world” involves a far grander set of delusions that may or may not jibe with reality.
A lot of folks on Twitter have been asking what the responsibility of a designer is. Contemplating an ethical code is a valuable direction, but I’m more interested in the granularity of our everyday experiences. I want to envision a world where we highlight the people doing the unglamorous tasks that make our everyday lives function.
Who are the people designing interfaces for grocery store self-checkout machines? What about warning microcopy on the back of industrial machines? I have a bunch of questions about so many systems we take for granted, that our conversations defy this reality unless you have people in your life (as I do) so removed from the world you inhabit away from them, that it forces you to stay grounded.
I like to say (jokingly) that somebody has to do the unglamorous work, even in an industry that’s all the rage right now. It’s not only about style manuals or designing better looking government websites. All around us, there are school districts re-segregating; industries that once fed families and put kids through college folding up. We’re being sold a basket of lies and it doesn’t impact us daily, so we ignore it or feel ourselves too powerless to do anything about it. We can do more than just swipe right and hope someone else designs better solutions to the problems.
Eventually, we’ll become the auto workers of a bygone generation. We’ll dream wistfully of massive tech campuses, delivery services that provided anything we needed in an instant. We’ll talk about drones for fun, not for sport or state-sanctioned, extra-judicial murder. If our grandkids have learned anything, they’ll ask us why we were asleep at the wheel.
At a certain point, we’re going to need to stop designing toys and start designing a future worth inhabiting.
For so long, I’ve been trying to tailor my practice to resonate with strangers. I know I can’t begin to solve all of the problems I see. I don’t even feel comfortable always raising hell. Yet, I can see opportunities to design better education for practitioners and tailoring my talks to reflect the present as-is, rather than a sanitized, idyllic world free of the complicity that we’ve all been sold as a necessary part of our existence here.
More to come.
Inspired reading:
The Color of Law — Richard Rothstein
Where you live matters (via Deadspin)
Disrupt The Citizen (via N+1)
Schools Become Whiter Due to Secession (via EdWeek)
What It Means When Algorithms Start Telling Stories (Vice)
Mule Design’s Mike Monteiro on responsibility in experience design (Intercom)
Privilege Centered Design (AIGA)
