Changing Lenses
Posted on October 30, 2017
Photo by Paul Dufour on Unsplash
“What does that have to do with design?” is a question I have had to answer multiple times ever since I started the Transdisciplinary Design program. It is a question I personally struggle with at times, and working through finding the answers, allows me to better understand my role as a designer.
Rittle and Weber argue in their paper “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning”, the intricacy of the problems we are facing today extend beyond identifying points of action. Instead, it also includes defining the problem in the first place[1]. Today the idea of working on a fixed brief can no longer apply, as the problems we are facing are becoming more complex and ambiguous. Designers need to embark on a journey that requires them to constantly adjust the lenses through which they view the world[2].
At an initial glance, teaching design students about blockchain technology might seem irrelevant. However, as we unravel the facts of the technology and start to recognize all the implications it could have across the different scales of our society, introducing it to designers becomes essential. Investigating the blockchain from a wide lens, we realize the complexity of the issue starting with just the different players involved in the system: from governments, large banks, healthcare institutions, big cooperations, start ups, and any individual with access to the technology. Analyzing the power dynamics, amount of investments and activity going into the development of technology by the different parties, helps us to better explore what could happen in the near future with blockchain. For instance, would it be controlled by a few, or would it allow for the emergence of a more egalitarian community? By stepping outside our limited position that is influenced by a single place in the system, we start to look at a problem not only as a whole but also through its parts and interconnections— and this is were change starts[3].
Zooming out to view the whole picture is crucial. We can identify general patterns, information flows and guiding principles. Nevertheless, staying only in the bird’s-eye level can greatly restrict our work as designers. Zooming in to the details of the system, the singular moments, the intimate interactions, helps ground our work and give life to the system. Continuing with the blockchain example, as we zoom in to a more individual scale, we start to question how this technology could influence our day-to-day lives. Could it lead to altering our social interactions? Would the decentralized model influence us to be more collaborative in our society or would it fuel our individualism? What would trust mean in the age of the blockchain? Working through all these questions helps us as designers to identify the many different layers that play part in the situation.
As Kanter points out “The zooming idea suggests that we don’t have to divide the world into extremes—idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives.”[4] Thinking of our design process in this way, makes the question of how relevant a topic is to design pointless. Instead it highlight the need for interdisciplinary perspective. And so next time we find ourselves in the position to design using a new technology like blockchain. I hope we would not limit our lens to the level of interface design or product but move beyond, to understanding all the implications our designs could have on the different levels of the system.
References:
- Rittel, Horst W.J., and Melvin M Webber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences, no. 4, 1973, pp. 155–169.
- Burns, Colin, et al. “Transformation Design.” Red Paper , no. 02, 1 Feb. 2016, pp. 1–33., www.designcouncil.org.uk.
- Meadows, Donella H., and Diana Wright. “Chapter Four: Why Systems Surprise Us.” Thinking in Systems: a Primer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015.
- Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. “Managing Yourself: Zoom In, Zoom Out.” Harvard Business Review, 31 July 2014, hbr.org/2011/03/managing-yourself-zoom-in-zoom-out.