The breaking point of man vs. machine: a classic moment from the 1999 movie Office Space

Modern life can be really annoying sometimes. Just think of all the little inconveniences, nuisances, and irritants that make your day just a little less enjoyable. I don’t mean the stubbed toe or paper cut or spilled milk variety. I don’t even mean the person who beats you to the last parking spot at the mall (if you happen to drive). Those really can’t be helped. I’m talking about those moments when we poor, wretched humans must deal with technology’s shortcomings.

In a typical work day, who doesn’t smack face-first into some of these gems?

• The elevator “close door” button that never works.
• The printer that literally eats paper.
• The hour of internet down time due to “emergency server maintenance” which was caused by “usage overload.”
• The smartphone sync that completely and irretrievably wipes your calendar clean.

The list could go on and on. But why do we put up with all of this? With all our advances and highly-evolved intelligence we could eradicate so many pesky little problems. Yet we haven’t. Instead, we apply that power to creating more new technology to further complicate our already messy lives. We’ll come back to that in another post.

Let’s pause for a moment. Despite the countless downsides of technology, we should take the time to consider the ways our lives are different and our capabilities enhanced because of this very same technology. On this Thanksgiving Day, it seems fitting to reflect on not just the many great and wonderful things in life we often take for granted, like fresh air, clean water, and the people around us, but also the artificial things that enable and extend everyday activities. I can think of a few things that I’m pretty grateful for, error messages and all:

• A global network that allows me to share my thoughts with almost anyone, anywhere and to tap into scores of information resources, wirelessly.
• A small device in my pocket that I can use to talk to almost anyone anywhere, wirelessly.
• A flat square device no bigger than a magazine that gives me access to an astounding amount of literature and history that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain (wirelessly).
• An astounding palette of tools by which my design work can be created, communicated, and distributed.
• The simple fact that if I can think of saying or doing something, a technology exists (or will soon exist) that enhances the way I create and distribute it.

For some, these facts are already old news; “bigger, better, faster, more” seems to be on many people’s minds. But we shouldn’t forget that we got here from a much humbler place and time, when today’s possibilities were largely invisible and the vast technology empires we know so well were once mere seeds of ideas. We should be in awe of what we have accomplished, however great or small, and appreciate the good that can be brought about by the marriage of circuits and code, imagination and human agency.

We’ll probably never fully debug our lives. In fact, it is in those “reboot” moments that we are reminded of our dependency on technology, both in its fragility and its power. We have formed a symbiotic relationship with technology, its bonds growing stronger every day. In days to come, we’ll see fantastic changes at blinding speed, and we will always struggle to adapt to them, make sense of them. We will continue to confront the gap that exists between human and machine — indeed, it will always be there (at least I think it will). Before we resist the urge to hurl our computer out the window or smash our smartphone to smithereens, let’s remember the time we didn’t have such wondrous, mysterious objects in our lives and be thankful for what we have.

“Smarter Planet,” one of IBM’s cleverly designed Icons of Progress

Solving global challenges is on many people’s minds these days (see my last post). Businesses of all sizes have become much more proactive in rethinking their values, culture, services, products, and operations to serve the greater good while staying profitable. But a select few companies are leading the way with bold ventures in the social and global spheres. IBM is among these titans of corporate social responsibility who are leveraging their powerhouse resources and expertise to improve people’s lives.

Now in its centennial year, the tech giant has commited serious resources to showcase its storied past, its formidable present, and its promising future. Among these efforts, the most intriguing has to be the THINK exhibit, a month-long “unique interactive experience” housed in a newly renovated part of Lincoln Center in New York City. The website’s opening statement succinctly describes IBM’s intent:

Much has already been written about the experience itself, ranging from praise to skepticism. Nearly a week after its closing and after having seen it twice, I thought I’d share my impressions of THINK.

What impressed me most:
This exhibit engaged a broad audience at many different levels, and communicated at different depths. For the young at heart, the entryway data wall was a giant mesmerizing toy that invites you to chase after the fluttering LED data points drawn from sensors around the city. The opening movie flowed briskly but steadily, sustaining the most fleeting of attention spans across multiple screens. In a blink, those same movie screens transformed into touchscreen information displays about different areas of IBM research and innovation around global issues, such as data mapping and technological discovery. Play became the immediate impulse rather than investigation. With each touch of these colossal iPhones, one could control how close or far images appeared and set the pace of reading captions. If boredom set in, there were still four other panels to explore in the 25-minute time window.

What I thought of the design:
Honestly, it’s hard for me to fault the design of the whole experience. It’s not so surprising, considering the design firepower that was brought to bear: the strategic design consultancy SYPartners, the renowned exhibition design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates, and the relatively new digital storytelling company Mirada. Since data are central to IBM’s story, their visualization required great thoughtfulness and restraint. With the involvement of Casey Reas, the resulting data wall succeeded in conveying information in a fluid, textural way without feeling too scientific or too vernacular. The opening movie deftly interwove graphic boldness with artistic nuance in the choice of imagery, juxtapositions, and narrative devices, all within the space of about 12 minutes. I particularly liked the use of six simultaneous video displays in a circle to play with the sense of space and location; when the movie shifted to deeper content, just three displays became the focus to prevent viewers from developing whiplash.

What could have been improved:
A few minor tweaks would have satisfied my fussy designer side. For instance, I liked that image credits were included and easily accessible by touching a button on the bottom right corner of every display, but I would have preferred to save my limited time with the displays and get the information online afterwards. I also felt like there was a missed opportunity at the end of the exhibit to engage visitors to participate in IBM’s grand vision for a better future, either by participating in further research or just building community around the key issues at hand (I should add that there was a general visitor feedback station at the end of the exhibit, which I did not take part in). The most direct way to participate I could find was the invitation on the exhibit website to tweet with the hashtags #IBM100 and #THINK. Finally, I wasn’t sure what the future of the exhibit itself was, or how I could revisit some of the research in the information displays. One volunteer I spoke with was unsure of this herself. I wonder if IBM considered developing something like an iPad app to extend and enhance the shelf-life of this great content.

My Top 5 Takeaways:

1. Great solutions reflect great thinking. This exhibit revolves around strong thematic concepts that mesh well to IBM’s brand, philosophy, legacy, and core DNA. In execution, the core themes really shine: the experience informs, delights, amazes, and inspires with a remarkable economy of means.
2. Sometimes storytelling is more important than information design. Any number of possible outcomes could have materialized, but the one that made it was presumably the most effective because it tells a human story in human terms. Even the data displays were humanized and kept very minimal to avoid taking attention away from the story.
3. People should always be at the center of experience design. Almost from the moment you entered the exhibit space, you were immediately within reach of a volunteer who could help with any question. The area was fully ADA accessible, and I think an app was available at the exhibit to provide subtitles for the movie in different languages.
4. Great design never draws attention to itself. There was nothing about the exhibit that seemed excessive or self-referential of the design. Every word, every object, every moment was deliberately assembled to amplify content, which carried through from beginning to end. 
5. Technology, used wisely, allows design to have tremendous impact. The use of touchscreen panels could have been pretty hokey and pseudo-futuristic, but here they were used in a rather elegant way. Perhaps IBM learned a few lessons from their earlier foray into interactive displays at the 1964 World’s Fair

I will definitely be paying more attention to IBM now, but not so much their stock price as their ability to preserve the sense of wonder and curiosity that fueled the many innovations on which their success is built. How will IBM realize their vision to “build a smarter planet”?

Finally, here’s the conclusion to my four-part rant, picking up from The Boundaries of Design…

Products are passé. Brands are boring. Websites are wearisome. Many designers are trying to break out of the mold of conventional design and tackle bigger challenges. Corporate clients don’t cut it any more. They want their work to have meaning and impact in the world. They want to make a difference. But how? What kind of impact can design really have in the world? Should we even think of design in that way?

Most design schools teach skills and tools to fulfill market demand for “traditional” designers around whom an economy is already built — architects, product designers, web designers, et cetera. The reigning model is to create more goods and services and stuff to support a standard of living that developed countries such as the U.S. have fought to establish and preserve.* Everybody from the unseen overseas manufacturers to the retail superstores to the ad-laden consumer magazines knows we need newer, better, nicer stuff in our homes, on our bodies, and in our culture. Design exists to address these human needs and to drive commerce through a continuous cycle of fueling and satisfying desire.**

Incrementally, design schools and the design industry are broadening the scope of design’s capacity for doing good, though well within the purview of traditional design. Many are rethinking unsustainable practices as they relate to the production, commercialization, consumption, and disposal of physical design artifacts. But addressing environmental concerns only makes for more green design, not “world-changing” design. While that may ease the guilt of buying more stuff that may harm the world and reduce the waste we generate, the consumerist status quo will likely remain unchanged.

Design has increasingly been moving into the social space, further nudging the boundaries of traditional design’s reach. Some designers are directing their efforts toward supporting non-profit ventures by doing design work for existing charities and organizations, as has been the case for many years. Others are launching initiatives themselves to tackle very specific areas of interest (Architecture for Humanity is a great, highly-visible example of this). Again, while tremendous good is being done, design’s impact is still limited to what it can directly affect, whether it’s increasing the public’s awareness or understanding of social issues or helping to provide communities with basic necessities for survival.

Meanwhile at the macro-level of world problems, massive change is sweeping across the world. Regimes are falling, economies are crumbling, jobs are vanishing, and insecurity still prevails. The cost of living and staying alive continues to skyrocket, while quality of life is declining. Cities are aging, infrustructures deteriorating, capacities stretched to the max. Even natural events have become more unpredictable and more destructive, as we saw with the Japan tsunami and more recently with Hurricane Irene. What we’re experiencing now goes beyond independent, isolated events. It’s a network of revolutions — a wholesale paradigm shift in how the world fundamentally works.

Can design solve problems of this magnitude? I don’t think so. Design was never designed to handle large-scale complexity, and for all their best intentions, many designers are incapable of bridging the gap between the work they do and the systemic change that needs to happen in the world. Even the falsely-named “design thinking” as an approach for understanding and solving systemic problems falls short in the face of global turmoil. However, at a strategic level, designers can help map complex situations and draw meaning from data to enable different stakeholders to make sense of a problem (more on this in a future post).

Design alone can’t and won’t change the world, and if you read my last post, I think design actually needs to get over itself and make sense of its own mess first. Contrary to what some in the design cheerleader press like Co.Design think, design isn’t living up to the hype of being “such an important discipline in today’s world.” And I’m sorry to say that “integration, rather than raw technology” has not become “the pressing problem of our world” — complex problems tangled inside other complex problems have become the pressing problem of our world. It takes a lot of different people pooling serious brainpower and resources to even make a dent in that.

I think we should stop celebrating design as the hero and bring our notions of design’s role in the world back down to earth. I know that might not sit well with many designers, but considering the ego trip of the past 10 years or so, it’s about time design was reacquainted with reality and what kind of difference design can actually make.

To close out my rant, I’ve taken a stab at drafting a pseudo design manifesto to sum up my own principles for design in, for, and with the real world:

1. Design is an enabler of change in the world, not the cause or source.
2. Designers should be facilitators of dialogue, collaboration, and understanding, not simply creators or producers of design artifacts.
3. Designers are problem solvers by nature and should be skillful as such, but they should not presume to be able to solve every problem.
4. Designers should provide greater clarity and honesty in services they are qualified to offer.
5. Designers should connect closely and directly with those they serve.
6. Design’s impact should be genuine impact, regardless of whether it’s hard or soft.
7. Design journalism of all types should be practiced responsibly when covering design and “change-making.”
8. Design schools and programs should be proactive in orienting newer generations of designers to be service-minded (not to be confused with “service design”).
9. Design should be an inclusive process that involves more than just designers.
10. Designers should receive recognition not for the aesthetic appeal of their solutions but for effectiveness and impact. Isn’t that the point?

So what do you think? If you’re a designer reading this, what’s your take on the whole “design saving the world” phenomenon? If you’re not a designer, do you think design can tackle big, world-sized challenges?

_____________

Notes:

* I realize that’s a problematic statement. Is it better to say that design is an enabler of the “American,” “Western” or “northern” way of life? Am I digging a deeper hole for myself?

** Another problematic statement, which is directed toward design for advertising and marketing specifically. Design is a big, diverse field, but the most visible and influential aspects of design are manifest in selling stuff.

I usually put more effort into coming up with titles, but this time I settled on what was nearer to hand (thanks to Edward Tufte). In a metaphorical sense, the idea of escaping flatland sums up much of what’s been on my mind lately: breaking free from the mundane “two-dimensional” aspects of daily life and experiencing the world in multiple dimensions. And by that I don’t mean the Michio Kaku sense of alternate realities, but by improving the here and now.

Flatland, to me, is marked by a largely functional existence — just getting by, day after day after day. In the context of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this applies to fulfilling the lowest 2 levels of needs: physiological and safety. I would venture a generalization that many people these days are worrying about and focusing more attention on these 2 levels than the other 3 (social needs, esteem needs, and self actualization needs).

From personal experience, work, finances, and other related matters have absorbed most of my attention for quite some time. The economic decline has caused quite a significant shift in priorities, leading to more frugality and thrift. Consequently, I’ve been visiting my local library more often, partly to curb my book-buying habit, but also to find a brief escape in works of fiction like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The same applies to listening to music, watching movies, and going to art exhibits — in bits and bites, they’re enjoyable, but momentary distractions nonetheless.

So how does one truly escape flatland — even in times like these?
(I’m still working on this, so bear with me.)

The first step for me was to identify the activities that are no longer taking place, or that ought to be part of everyday life but got pushed aside. What was missing for me were the things I enjoyed long before the “real world” took center stage: drawing, painting, playing music, cycling, travel, hiking, and many other pursuits that made life multi-dimensional (sorry if that sounds cheesy). They used to happen spontaneously, without too much thought or effort; several of those activities were once a regular part of my day. Now, many years later, I realize how important they were and seek to bring them back. While travel may have to wait a while because of cost, I’m looking into doing more art-making as well as more light hiking in nearby parks. If I can re-work my schedule to balance out all the pieces, I think it might work.

Almost through the first month of 2009, and I still can’t believe we’re in 2009. What’s even harder to believe is the great number and sheer scale of problems we’re facing in 2009:

• the global economic downturn
• the ongoing wars and conflicts around the world
• the persistent threat of terrorism
• the rapid degradation of the environment
• the energy crisis
• the dwindling supply of food in the world
• the population explosion
• the global health epidemics
• and many, many others…

These are days of high anxiety, for sure. From the consistently jarring news headlines (just search Google News for “worst year ever” 2008-2009) to the unsettling stories of hardship and misfortune that we hear from co-workers, friends and family, or live through ourselves, we may very well be in the midst of one of the most challenging periods in human history.

Yet what I find most fascinating about this rather bleak moment in time is the radical shift in attitude that is taking place in America. The last eight years under the Bush administration were marked with anger and frustration, as the nation’s problems swelled with each passing year (here’s a list of 99 problems), with no real signs of improvement. There wasn’t much reason to be optimistic when faced with a regular barrage of bad news, topped off with the arrogant proclamations of a leader wielding unprecedented power. Of course, not all of the nation’s problems can be attributed to an 8-year presidential term, but there’s no doubt many problems were newly created or woefully exacerbated.

Now, thanks in large part to President Obama’s uplifting campaign, euphoric victory, and moving inauguration (all of which demonstrated huge changes in themselves), a wave of fierce optimism and, yes, hope has swept the nation. Obama has re-instilled confidence in the potential of America — its government and its citizens — to bring positive change, in spite of the enormity and difficulty of problems it faces. The role of every citizen in helping to make an impact figures strongly in Obama’s plan for the nation. This approach signals a distinct shift from the traditional attitude of government towards “the people:” Americans are not merely tax-paying machines that toil endlessly to keep the country fat with prosperity, with little reward save “freedom.” Rather, they are agents of real change and active participants in the success of the nation, supported by a government that has pledged to be more attuned to their needs and more protective of their values. While America is not a democracy in the literal sense (we are a constitutional republic), this administration is restoring the spirit of democracy and faith in its ideals.

The skeptic in me finds this all too good to be true, waiting for those lofty promises to fizzle out or for a gradual regression to business-as-usual in Washington, D.C., but the momentum generated behind Obama seems far greater the man himself. Obama has re-energized the nation, reminding many of their innate capacity to do something important, especially by volunteering locally. Many problems lie too far out of our reach, yet many opportunities exist to better our immediate community or to offer help where it is most welcome.

I will look forward to the changes ahead. They may be slow to arrive, but I’ll remain optimistic while doing what I can to contribute.