After the day after.

There was the day before Mount Vesuvius blew and the day after. 

In a matter of hours Pompeii, a vibrant city in the Roman empire whose origins dated back to the 8th century BC, turned into a fossilized memorial buried in volcanic ash. 

Nearly 2,000 years later the completeness of the devastation—and preservation—is still breathtaking, attracting millions of tourists—and millions of tourists' dollars. 

Until of course, Covid-19, another, much larger, completely invisible disaster, not only shut down Pompeii and Rome and Italy, but every country on the planet.

One day the world looks pretty much the way it always has. The next day whatever you knew to be true is slammed so far into the past it’s now history. It's now the “before.” “After” is yet to be determined.

At our company, our job is to help companies define the future and then shape their part in it. But the truth is this: There ain't one future. There never has been. There are many, all in constant competition—mixing, sparking, shifting, merging, emerging, changing. It’s dynamic, disruptive, chaotic and brilliant. And from the vantage point of a far distant future, seemingly inevitable.

Of course: the lightbulb, the automobile, the airplane, the computer, the cineplex, communes, the space race, social networks, mega-cites, traffic jams, Girl Scout cookies, free two-day delivery, same-day delivery, theme parks, competitive gaming, podcasts, telemedicine, smart phones, housing bubbles, AI, robots, Alexa.

A clever advance in one future (music file-sharing) jostles its way into another future and in a blink all the futures align just in time for a pandemic lockdown. I've been watching reruns of the 1960s TV series Bonanza ( “In living color!”) with my 85 year-old mom in between Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Hollywood on Netflix. Our creative team just posted all of their favorite lockdown songs - branded Quarantunes - on Spotify. 

Who knew “streaming culture” would be a thing?

?Mess is more.

Our work can no longer be about designers' endless fetish with reductive “simplicity.” That's thinking from the middle of the last century, anyway. Leave it there.

Our work must now be about embracing complexity, connection, possibility, imagination and transformation. As designers we spot shifts. We sense critical mass. In the mess we see the potential. And we make it real.

Yet all of these futures—big and little, the good, the bad and the decidedly mixed—are nested within A Future ruled by the rhythms of the sun, moon, planets and the occasional wayward asteroid. This is NATURE, writ large. And small, across time and space. This is the greater whole, the backdrop against which all our stories—our futures—play out.

We've lived our lives assuming we were center stage. Human-centered design, anyone? (Yes, words matter. ) So it is beyond humbling that an invisible, microscopic virus should be in the spotlight, teaching us a Yoda-ful of lessons about division and connection, ignorance and intimacy.

There is only “do.” Seriously.

Covid-19 has driven us apart. Six feet apart—at least. Wearing a mask, please. But it has also pulled us together, giving us a chance to be a part of something important and good and bigger than any one of us: Pooling research to develop vaccines and drugs. Hacking solutions for mask and ventilator shortages. Using YouTube and Tik Tok to share music, dance and theatre performances. And using Zoom, early and often, for just about everything else. 

Here's a kid flying his drone camera, speeding through an empty, silent Rome. Here are dancers from l'Opéra de Paris, documenting their practice session on their phones. 

I've rarely seen videos like these. Yet here they are in the thousands.

Against impossible odds and old barriers, some amazing people in San Francisco are trying to engineer (uh, hack) ways to quickly turn common, cheap surgical masks into solutions that are as safe as the N-95 ones. The result has been remarkably successful as this small team of engineers from MIT worked around the clock - designing at speed, designing for scale.

Incredibly, there are celebrities who, instead of doing sing-alongs with other celebrities on YouTube, refuse to virtue signal in public. Instead they quietly place their resources into work and donations that make immediate, life-shaping differences for families in need. (If you wish, you can help those families out, too. Here.)

All of this behavior speaks to our best selves.

But there is plenty out there that speaks to our worst selves, too, starting with the reason for those mask and ventilator shortages in the first place. From fraudulent phishing scams preying on the vulnerable, to protests that conflate a disdain for science with patriotism, the crisis has also revealed a meanness of spirit where selfishness trumps compassion, lies trump honesty, and bigotry trumps all.

Futures that seemed so clear, so prosperous, so obtainable only a few weeks ago have been swept aside, replaced by new, far more disturbing suite of futures defined by massive unemployment, shuttered schools, a real estate market in chilly stasis and a global economy tumbling into an abyss — even as stock markets soar.

Every trip to the grocery store has become a risky lesson in supply and demand: the toilet paper aisle as Exhibit A illustrating the phony bounty of “just-in-time" inventory. We are only beginning to see the knock-on effects of this crisis - or imagine the cascading implications.

But unlike that day after in Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago, we still have futures. And those futures behave as they always have: in constant competition—mixing, sparking, shifting, merging, emerging, changing.

We are now at that big fork in the road. The past is behind us. There is no going back. There is no “again.” But we do have choices, which is a good thing. 

We can change direction. We can create new paths. As designers we're in a position to ask important questions about the impact of our work: Does this project help make our air and water cleaner? Our skies bluer? Expand opportunity? Broaden prosperity? Advance knowledge, science and truth? 

Potent truths are surfacing, including the fact our very society depends entirely on a nurse tending to a father now sick, a front-line dock worker lifting medical supplies off a ship, a grocery clerk safely placing milk and eggs safely into a family's car and a first-grade teacher helping a child learn to read over Zoom. Historically, these people have been the most undervalued among us. The next time you see an “essential worker” - thank them. Again. (If you are one, thank you for everything on my family's table, their health and for all that's being taught to my young nieces and nephews.)

We can learn from the past and we can do better. This is a rare moment when just about everything is being reimagined from supply chains and healthcare, to education and elections. Everything is up for grabs. 

It's our time, designers. Yes, some of are suffering through unbearable loss. Two professional friends of mine are now gone. But I am not locked in volcanic stone or covered with ash. Neither are you.

As designers, we play a pivotal role now.

Our futures are waiting for us.

..........