W/L/B April 2023

Happy April everyone!

Greetings once again from lovely Durham, NC. We have been enjoying the last vestiges of Spring before the inferno that is summer in the southern United States sets in, with loads of time spent meandering through the forest trails near our house for daily nature-gazing excursions, joining our fellow outdoor enthusiasts in enjoying time kayaking on the nearby Jordan and Falls Lakes, preparing to welcome back the hummingbirds that make the area their home following winter south of the border, and watching the literal seeds we planted in the Fall come into full bloom in our garden, with lilies, peonies, tulips, and more adding flashes of color in our otherwise verdant backyard.

And along the way, we also managed to squeeze in some work :)

Now, onto this month’s newsletter…

The professional activities that kept noodle’s team busy and engaged (and the lights on).

Our collective research activities continued apace, with both Anna and Kevin fully ensconced in projects with public health-facing implications domestically and internationally. It never ceases to amaze and inspire us the manifold ways in which organizations value and utilize qualitative, people-centered research outputs to inform and improve the designs of their products and services, and this is especially the case with those focused on health-related innovations and interventions. The lived experiences of those around us are so rich in insights, and it is a privilege to help design solutions by identifying the latent needs and demands of individuals vis-a-vis their and their loved ones health and well-being.

In addition to our client-facing work, we have been reaching out to interesting folks in an effort to build a network of “fellow travelers” to discuss aspects of our work together. Beyond seeking to identify opportunities to collaborate on projects, this has really been driven by a relatively undiscussed aspect of being a small organization or freelancer: the loneliness that inevitably creeps in. It’s great to have colleagues to bounce ideas off of, be inspired by, and potentially lean on during challenging times, but we also find ourselves more and more missing the camaraderie and water cooler time that comes with being a part of a large team or organization. As such, we have been discussing internally how we could design a series of regular convenings with like-minded practitioners in order to recapture some of the magic of these unplanned, serendipitous interactions that emerge in bigger companies. Right now these thoughts are very much nascent, but we encourage anyone reading this who finds the idea appealing to reach out to us and start a conversation!

As a bonus this month, we’re also sharing links to various media sources that we found useful or interesting this month:

• Hidden Brain’s episode “A Secret Source of Connection”: a fascinating conversation with psychologist Amit Kumar about overcoming the barriers that prevent us from engaging in acts of kindness, and how overcoming these barriers can lead to stronger, happier interpersonal connections.
• Harvard Business Review’s article “To Curb Burnout, Design Jobs to Better Match Employees’ Needs”: explores how reframing professional burnout not as a physical or mental health issue for individual employees but rather as a management and organizational issue can lead to designing better outcomes for everyone; “Think of burned out employees as canaries in the coal mine. When the canary keels over, we acknowledge that the environment is hazardous — we don’t tell the canary that it should take a long weekend.”
• Kenneth C. ’s TED-Ed talk “Why your life needs novelty, no matter your age”: this brief talk posits that, to truly savor life, we must pursue "powerful first experiences". He shares thoughts about how to create these meaningful moments, where mundane routine is broken by novel experiences in small but significant ways, no matter how old you are.
• Nature’s article “Suburbs are a climate disaster, but they can be redeemed”: investigates how a radical approach to planning can lead to reimagining suburbs (i.e., residential districts outside of cities) in the United States to make them more affordable, liveable, and climate friendly.

The personal pursuits that helped inspire and rejuvenate us.

One of the first things that we bonded over after first meeting each other was our shared love of music, especially live music. There is something so fundamental, so important about sharing the experience of hearing people pour their hearts and souls into their music that it instantly creates a connective tissue amongst and between the audience, whether it be 10 people or 10,000; perfect strangers become instant friends through the shared love of that shared experience.

The past 3+ years have been decidedly challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic in virtually every aspect of our lives, including the inability to avail these live music experiences and the sense of community that they imbue. Like many others, we sought to fill that void (whilst also supporting the artists we so rely on for the musical interludes that get us through each day) with live streamed “concerts” and by expanding our vinyl record library, but these fall well short of replacing the real deal.

Thankfully, matters related to the pandemic have lessened enough that, for the first time in ages, we were able to finally attend a live music festival. And not just any festival, but arguably one of our favorites: The High Water Festival in North Charleston, SC. Curated by the local folk duo Shovels & Rope, this two-day outdoor festival assembles an eclectic mix of artists from throughout the country, headlined this year by Beck, Wilco, and the absolutely incredible Rainbow Kitten Surprise, with additional performances by some of our other favorite performers, such as She Returns from War, Big Boi, Guster, and Orville Peck.

There are very few experiences that we enjoy more than spending entire days singing along to favorite songs, dancing until we’re exhausted, and soaking in the joy of those around us doing the exact same thing. In our increasingly digital world spent plugged in and in front of screens, the respite that live music provides is just critical. So much so that we have already booked our AirBnB in North Charleston for next year’s festival and will be counting the days until the 2024 edition!

Here are links to some of our favorite songs from our favorite artists’ from High Water for your viewing pleasure:

• Rainbow Kitten Surprise - “It’s Called: Freefall”
• Wilco - “Heavy Metal Drummer”
• Beck - “Morning”
• She Returns from War - “Swamp Witch”
• Big Boi (ft. Killer Mike, Jeezy) - “Kill Jill”
• Guster - “Hard Times”
• Orville Peck - “Dead of Night”

Highly recommend everyone add High Water to their music festival calendars!

The hybrid activities that piqued our interests and curiosities, while also helping to inform our practice.

Between our composting activities and obsession with growing our own flowers, fruits, and vegetables, as well as an ever-growing desire to disconnect from our electronic devices and screens, we have been spending more and more time in our backyard and garden. The process of tilling the land, identifying what we want to grow, segmenting our garden plots to accommodate the needs of our plants, tending to and nurturing them throughout their growth cycle, and being mindful of the best (and worst!) time(s) to seed everything not only keeps us on our toes, but also reinforces the need for systems thinking and developing a holistic understanding for the interactions between various components or stakeholders. Above and beyond that, it challenges us to reframe our notion of what a “stakeholder” is in order to expand beyond a human-facing approach to our design research activities. This goes hand-in-hand with our burgeoning (and steadily growing) professional interest in design for sustainability, particularly biomimicry and nature-centricity.

We’re fortunate to live in a progressive city (Durham, NC) that is incredibly supportive of efforts to preserve and improve our natural environments. The city is part of The Pollinator Project which seeks to provide healthier ecosystems for our natural pollinators in the area: native bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The latter of which we are increasingly obsessed with and have added hummingbird feeders throughout our yard to support our little friends. We also recently learned of the need for including perches for these amazing creatures to rest on between their incredibly energy-intensive flights. We seek to make our little plot of land as inclusive to as many species as possible, despite our own limitations in understanding the best ways to do so.

Whilst poking around to find additional educational resources, we discovered the illuminating podcast “Learning from Nature” by the biomimic, educator, and nature communicator Lily Urmann . It features other biomimics and their work, while making the practice accessible to neophytes like ourselves. An ancillary benefit of tuning into the show was discovering the incredible website Ask Nature which acts as a “portal to the wisdom nature holds” in an effort to inspire the creation of a world that is harmonious, regenerative, and supportive of the well-being of all Life. It is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to develop innovative products, services, or even systems that are inspired by the billions of years of research and development our planet-mates have conducted.

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