4 things a week: Digital twins

From the great RTO (return to office) to upcoming events I'm speaking at, it's my 4 things a week!

1. World

I’m pretty sure most people know someone who vacated the city during lockdown and spent a year boasting about how peaceful it was in the countryside, how their kids loved having a garden and how they should have moved out long ago. Only to sell up and move back to the city. Whether it was just the FOMO once the city re-opened or because they realised that the permit to WFH (work from home) was not permanent and relying on the UK train service on a 90 minute commute was soul destroying. With WFH once touted as the ‘new normal’ more and more companies are now demanding their employees come in to the office.

It seems that whilst most employees believe they can get their work done from home, the stats now show that fully-remote workers are 10-20% less efficient that those working in the office. A statistic that only serves to fuel the distrust that 85% of leaders have that their team are productive working remotely. Elon Musk famously demanded a strict return to office policy as early as September 2022. Other companies have held off for a little longer, but more UK business including Tesco, Boots and Salesforce have followed suit. Curiously there has been more success in getting workers back in the office in Europe in general compared to the U.S. I’m not sure why this surprised me, perhaps I think of American businesses being more ruthless. London however doesn’t follow the trend with workers in the office on average 2.7 days a week (New York is 3.1). This is, however, up from 2.2 days last year.

Unsurprisingly one of the barriers is transport costs. For those who haven’t had to fork out the train fair for the suburbs for the past 4 years, putting up hundreds every month in a country with some of the highest rail fairs in the continent is going to be tough to encourage. Paris may have a solution though; employers in the French capital are required to cover 50-100% of workers' travel costs. As a result Parisians average 3.5 days a week in the office.?

So what are my thoughts? At Morrama we have a hybrid model. Everyone is required to be in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the rest of the week is flexible. We have invested in a beautiful big, bright office space that offers an enticing alternative to the kitchen table and most people come in 3 days a week. This in-person collaboration is vital for us to do our best work, but the days from home allow for distraction-free focus. Sure, in my case, my 5 month old is a distraction. But I know I’ll get the work done. Working from home means I can start at 6am, take an early lunch, break at 4pm and finish up admin at 8pm. It means I can work when I’m feeling motivated and go for a walk when I need to escape. This freedom is not only better for my mental health, but it makes me more productive. It does mean that on these days life and work are more interwoven, but then I’ve never much liked compartmentalising them anyway.?

2. Innovation

AI has accelerated the use of digital twins. From optimising fuel efficiency and performance on a cargo ship or experimenting with different treatment options on a computational twin before performing IRL surgery on a patient, the applications for this technology are vast. We already have the ability to capture more data than ever about what’s going on inside our bodies. Sensors for sweat, HR, breathing rate, hydration levels etc all give us a window into our health. To date much of this information has been presented as figures on a screen, but no more. Imagine if you could see how your entire body was performing. Or how the long term effects of certain diet, exercise or lifestyle decisions would have on your body over 1, 5, even 10 years time. Realistically this is level of multi scale digital twin of an individual person is decades away, but it’s exciting to think we might one day be able to actually get more insights into what is actually going on in there.?

The question is, with more data, are we losing touch with what makes us human? Is technology slowly eroding our ability to connect both with ourselves and others? Are we going to be spending so much time chasing the analytics that we no longer listen to our own feelings and instincts.?

I asked a few people these questions, and across the board the answer was yes. But if that’s the case - why are we still pushing to quantify everything? I guess the answer to that is ‘because we can’. And that is ultimately the problem.

You can read more about this topic in our project Issé where we explored how wearables might evolve as a result of the rise in the AI assistant.

3. Design Declares

It’s been almost 2 years since Design Declares was launched as a campaign to encourage designers across service, digital, industrial and graphic communication design to embrace more sustainable design practices. Myself, along with 3 other creatives have since set Design Declares UK up as a not-for-profit and helped teams in Ireland, Brazil and Australia set up their own D! Chapters. Collectively almost 1000 design teams, and design businesses have signed up, pledging to take action. This action is embodied in our 8 Acts of Emergency. Starting with Sound the Alarm; simply acknowledging the climate crisis, through to Bring Clients with Us, Measure What We Make and finally Amplify Voices for Change, these Acts are stepping stones for designers and design teams to take to ensure they are truly putting the needs of our planet at the heart of their process.

This week I’m fortunate enough to be speaking about Design Declares on the main stage at the B Corp Louder Than Words festival alongside Abb-d Taiyo . Come and see us on Wednesday at 11:30am.

Check out the website and sign the declaration (it's free) today. www.designdeclares.com

4. Inspiration

In 1997 a huge storm caused sixty-two containers to fall off the cargo ship Tokio Express dropping over 5 million lego pieces into the sea off the Cornish coast. Years later they are still washing up on the shore. Now, why is this inspirational? These tiny pieces of plastic pollution are treacherous for sea-life getting mistaken for food or caught in gills. The damage they have done is impossible to measure. But what is interesting is that because these little lego pieces are so iconic, people are obsessed with looking for them. They make beach-cleans more fun, beach combing an exciting prospect and have raised awareness for the whole issue of marine debris and ocean pollution, especially among children. It’s ironic that dropping a load of toys into the sea is what it takes to get people excited about cleaning up our shores. Even more ironic that the lego pieces were all sea-themed.

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P.s. Just incase you got to the end of this and aren't sure who I am, I'm:

• an industrial designer (I design and engineer physical objects)
• founder of Morrama | Certified B Corp
• former tutor of Design Futures at the Royal College of Art
• co-instigator of Design Declares