Serendipity and the Third Definition of Design
By sheer chance, right when I was thinking of taking my mind off all things Product Design, I had the joy of discovering multidisciplinary thinking that sparked new ‘restless and generative questions’ about our tech-augmented world and our humanity within it.
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The provocative thinking (and coinage of ‘restless and generative questions’) came from Design Researcher, Sara Hendren , author of ‘What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World’; winner of the 2021 Science in Society Journalism Book Prize.
My medium for this serendipitous discovery was the ‘low tech’ digital intimacy of good ‘old fashioned’ audio – i.e. the ubiquitous podcasts of our age that continue to give a platform to long-form deep conversation and well-researched journalism/documentary; and my go-to antidote to the fly-by scroll-by binge content consumption of our times. And all from the comfort of my beanbag, staring at the ceiling as I revisited the On Being Podcast for the first time again in a long time…in a place far, far away from Linkedin.
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As the year draws to a close and we decompress from our content feeds exploding from a world trying to make sense not just of ‘AI’ but the potential threat vs opportunity of AGI; it was nice to feel human again as I walked, albeit briefly, in the shoes of Sara Hendren – as artist, design researcher and mother of three beloved children. Her first child, Graham, has Down Syndrome; and his very being and gift of being in touch with pure ‘qualia’ (the experience of being alive); heightened her sense of calling for:
????????????? ‘[D]esign to be a portal to…those ‘what if; kind of questions, not just the questions of professional expertise, what could be built tomorrow…but really, could we cultivate the kind of agency, and openness, and surprise, and joy and difficulty that disability makes evident?’
Much like what has been said of her book – of how she renders familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous; I started to look upon the command buttons on something as ‘rudimentary’ as a word processor like a layman looking upon hieroglyphics; and came to a sudden awareness of how we have unconsciously adapted to our tech augmented environment as an assistive tool for how we interact with the world around us. I started to think of technology through the lens of ‘prosthetics’ and how as I adapt my fingers to QWERTY, I get to upload my mind so my voice can be heard; and existence, validated.
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I felt compelled to unpick why I was so drawn to what she had to say; about the strange juxtaposition of our engineered built environments and the porous vulnerability and mortality of us in the flesh – and it came down to the ‘third’ definition of design. I call it the ‘third’ definition just to create intrigue – but also to highlight how it tends to be one of the more secondary (or specifically, third) ‘dictionary’ definition of ‘Design’. i.e. Design not just as a set of aesthetic considerations; but the ‘PURPOSE or planning that exists behind an action, fact, or object; a la "the appearance of design in the universe".
When I extrapolated Sara’s thinking on the physical environment to digital reality and the technological artifacts of our digital environments, it made me think about digital exclusion (social exclusion, economic exclusion); how digital disruption has already changed how we connect and conduct commerce; and who might get left behind. And if the power to design for a more inclusive future were to be in our hands, how might we, design for a future that will better ‘meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires’?
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As I extend my domain from human/consumer/user empathy to the world of digital product design and the alluring human-centric Nonlinear -ity of design thinking; it is less about bandwagon chasing as it is about gaining access to a window through which to view our tech-augmented humanity, through the lens of ‘design’.
Could we, by design, change the corner of the world with us in it?
Are we designing ourselves out of our own humanity – or could we enrich it?
As we all try to sensemake through our career pathways while we live on or lurk in, love or hate Linkedin; the lucky ones among us will be able hold on to our humanity and wisdom of real, lived career experience…or as On Being calls it, our embodied intelligence. i.e. a counterpoint to ‘pattern finding’ ‘processing power’ paradigm of (artificial) intelligence.
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Those of us who will not be designed out of our own humanity will have the capacity to keep asking ‘restless and generative questions’; will see new ways of framing the familiar and ubiquitous; and will honour wandering minds capable of serendipitous discoveries.
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?Photo by Erik Brolin on Unsplash
I help startup founders accelerate Product Discovery using Design and Content. | Fractional CPO
1 å¹´Putting our fingers to QWERTY is ok but what is not is to accept it as the only way to reach out to online souls out there. Likewise the 1st and the 2nd ways should just be pointers to a 3rd and a possible 4th and so on. It's not just black or white or even grey. Let's not take the pointers for what they are pointing.