Progress versus conservation is a matter of determining the cost and benefits of change versus the cost and benefits of keeping things as they are.
This distinction is extremely important to understand. As someone who doesn't identify politically, I tend to be labeled as 'conservative' or 'progressive' when I express certain views about topics, but what it really boils down to is common sense, keeping the above quote in mind. When progress makes sense, by all means, make it happen! But if we're barrelling forward changing solely for the sake of change—whether in a political, design, or any other sense—we're setting ourselves up for disaster.
Whenever we are asked to create a new design or rethink something, or whenever we realize we are faced with the same things over & over again & begin to think about a change, we should always consider all elements of the problem, including the cost of progress versus conservation.
Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries and frequent contributor to The Rumpus, was interviewed at Smith Mag, mostly about his book. The topic turned to the process of writing:
It’s a common misperception that for some reason we should be telling stories about other people instead of ourselves. It’s completely wrong because it overlooks the most important person, the reader. Writing a book without accessing your experiences is like building a house without a hammer. The person living in the house doesn’t care whether or not you used a hammer. She only cares if the roof leaks. The book is no more or less valuable because the writer is present within the text. It’s a false concern. It’s like when we were adolescents and we couldn’t wait to denounce our favorite band. It’s not really about anything. It’s just bitter cynicism. And it’s irrelevant.
Ultimately, Elliott is giving a rewording of the tales-old statement to "write what you know", which has always been debated. But Elliott's point is that while writing what you know tends to produce more 'real' results, it doesn't really matter if you're writing from your own experience or creating someone else's. What matters is the feeling of the text—to use Elliott's example, the soundness of the house.
While this sentiment is obviously meant to apply directly to writing, I feel it could just as easily be taken into account in design, as well. Design what you know, not what you think others want. Listen to your own design voice. And know that you can draw on other voices and other methods so long as they don't affect how soundly you build your own house.
On Friday, Karin Fong published a thoughtful piece in Fast Company entitled "Lost in Translation: Five Words We Should Import". Leading with the example of the German word schadenfreude, which has made its way into American pop culture, Fong suggests other words with similar universal connotations that might change the landscape of American communication, at least a little.
Image by Karen Fong, from Fast Company. The illustrations of all the words are really gorgeous and thought-provoking, in & of themselves.
The words she suggests are worth examining. The first is mokita, which she translates from New Guinean as "the truth everyone knows but nobody says." Following that, wabi sabi, a Japanese adjective describing the beauty of the irregular; gezellig, Dutch for a communal, interactive, warm-fuzzy feeling; and lagom, Swedish for "just enough". I'll give you a little time to let these sounds roll around on your tongue. Give it a try.
Ready? Okay.
As a living language (unlike, say, Latin), American English is constantly in a state of change. The rules of grammar and syntax are continually bending and shifting, and the spoken word is a completely different from from what it was a decade ago. (To illustrate this point, most people would say that things now are "different than" other things; this is a relatively new construction, as it started out as "different from".) Because of our proximity to other languages, geographically and culturally, our vocabulary is continually being updated. No one is arguing against this point.
But it is interesting that these specific words are the ones Fong chooses to suggest that we need. It is telling about American culture that we do not have a word for "just enough". (We are a culture of more; what use would we have for "just enough"?) Or, that the warm, fuzzy, communal feeling of gezellig is unpronounceable to most Americans. (Is this a surprise, especially in cities or the East coast?)
It seems to me like these words could all be put to excellent use in smaller environments—among groups of people who follow the Slow Food movement, for example. Book clubs. Suburban kindergarten parents. Of course the adaptation of any word must start somewhere, however small; still, I find it hard to see that most of America will be able to use a word like gezellig often enough in their daily lives to get over pronunciation problems.
Sometimes I watch television. Not very often, and mostly when I am in my parents' house, since for some reason the television seems to be on a lot there. In fact, the last time I went to visit, I think I watched part of a marathon of some show about an American man going to third-world countries and eating their food, making a big show about how "interesting" the traditional food is—meaning, nowhere near the cheeseburger and fries he'd rather be eating.
Maybe having this image in my mind made me get excited about this article from Design Observer about the Chula Stove, designed by the Philips Philanthropy by Design unit.
Image from Design Observer; photo courtesy Philips Design
This is the Chula stove. If you are used to American kitchens, it might not look like much, but read the description:
The Chula is a simple, modular concrete-block stove covered in brown clay. It features two potholes: one for circulating hot air for steamed foods such as rice, and the other for heating flat pans holding chipati (fried bread) and similar dishes. ...[O]ne version priced at 9 to 11 Euros ($13.10 to $16) has a double oven and hotbox; a pricier model, at 13 to 15 Euros ($18.90 to $21.80), includes a steamer. Both stoves feature a decorative pattern common in India, which could be described in marketing terms as a lifestyle upgrade. After all, notes Rocchi, "Design solutions for poor people don’t have to be ugly."
This is clearly not an item designed for the sleek New Yorker whose kitchen gleams chrome. It is designed for the family for whom 13 to 15 Euros would be a substantial amount of money. Yet more than providing low-income families in developing areas with a new, flashy cooking tool, the Chula is designed to increase the quality of life for those who use it. According to the article, current stoves in such areas are health hazards, with insufficient ventilation causing serious respiratory illnesses: "[T]he World Health Organization estimates that 1.6 million people — mostly women and children, who are more likely to cook or to be confined in the home while cooking is done — die annually from indoor air pollution."
The Chula stove is remarkable in that it fills a need in a way that provides the consumer with a better quality of life. If only all design were this thoughtful!
Here's a quick post off the heels of a string of very long ones. The Thing's seventh issue is having a launch party tomorrow at Printed Matter! Jonathan Lethem, author of (among other things, like bestselling novels) the latest issue of The Thing, will be signing copies of issue 7 from 5 to 7pm. I'm debating whether to buy an issue or not, but I think it'd be worth it to go to chat with the minds behind The Thing, and to see Mr. Lethem himself!
From the website:
THE THING Quarterly is a periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by the editors (Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan) to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text.
I've been lucky enough to be involved with some amazing publications (Opium Magazine, briefly; GIGANTIC Magazine, currently—be sure to check out our site, as it's just gone through a major renovation!), and while it's a very different sort of project, I love the idea—and the realization—of The Thing. It's an art object and a storytelling object, yet it's accessible and (for a work of art by a famous artist) fairly affordable, at $40 to $60 an issue. Each issue encourages a level of interaction with text (or with a story) that is impossible to achieve through the printed word alone. As one of the creators says in the press release, “We liked this idea of a publication as an object, and we liked to imagine the paths of these things out of our hands, through the mail, and into other people’s homes.” It's about time more people respected and encouraged the potential of the publication (or text, or story) as object, I feel.
So, I'll see you at Printed Matter tomorrow evening, right? Right.
Robert Fabricant wrote a great piece at FastCompany today about the future of the Kindle, called "Is the Kindle Destined for SkyMall?" As someone who has worked in publishing and who has an inextinguishable love for reading (and books), I've been following Amazon and the Kindle—and the discussion thereof—for some time. There has been some concern for the Kindle and what it means for books and for publishing: from the earliest days, when publishers were concerned that it would "steal" physical book sales, to today, when no one seems sure that it will continue with as much success as it appears to be seeing.
This brings me to my first point about the Kindle. To date, Amazon refuses to release information about how many Kindles it has sold or how many copies of books have been downloaded for the Kindle (this I know firsthand, having had authors ask how their Kindle sales are; it is impossible to determine). Because there is so little information about how the Kindle is really doing, we tend to latch onto gossip and personal experiences to come up with how we think the machine is selling, which might be far from the truth.
But Fabricant makes some very compelling arguments as to how Amazon can bring the Kindle back to life. Using similar corporations and examples—the TiVo phenomenon; iTunes and the App store; the Nintendo Wii; and MySpace—he argues that Amazon needs to make a stronger commitment towards its product's future by taking into consideration now what its consumers will want that no one else can give them.
His fifth point, which discusses how MySpace successfully built a platform and a brand around community, is the most compelling:
Amazon has a huge lead in this area, successfully building social layers within their online store long before it was fashionable on MySpace or Facebook. Amazon's online community is their biggest advantage in the e-book race, but one that they have not even begun to leverage. We all have too many books to read, and too little time to do it. If the Kindle is the only viable platform for sharing our recommendations, commenting on our favorite passages, and building our reputations as readers, then Amazon will stay out in front for a long time. Books need to go social to maintain their relevance--just like movies and music have done. And Amazon is perfectly positioned to lead the way.
I have long believed that the next step for the Kindle is to create a stronger community among Kindle users. While the act of reading is almost necessarily an isolating activity (not including the act of reading to others), much of the joy of reading comes from sharing your experience with others who have read the same things. There is huge potential for building a community based on books, which Amazon has already started, but could clearly work to continue. Perhaps Amazon should take a few lessons from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and work on connecting people: readers with authors, readers with other readers, publishers with readers, etc.
One huge problem I have with the Kindle is not addressed in Fabricant's article, but is in this CBC Radio interview with the brilliant designer Chip Kidd:
It's long, so I'll sum up the highlights. Kidd discusses some of the aesthetic problems of the Kindle: not only does it look aesthetically unappealing ("like something you would use to test your glucose levels in your blood"), but its interior design is extremely limited in scope. The Kindle only has one typeface. (Kidd calls this "pathetic", and I have to agree.)
Regardless of how you may feel about the physical design of the Kindle (or how often you test your glucose levels), it is clear that the machine is designed to read a book—and nothing else. To me, presenting and selling an object that is decidedly not aesthetically pleasing, or that prioritizes function over form, is a sign that the object is still not finished. It suggests that the producer (in this case, Amazon) does not take its product seriously. And this therefore paves the way for someone else—perhaps Apple—to take the same functionality of the Kindle and package it in a much more beautiful way.
If Amazon truly wants the Kindle to succeed, they must work both on their platform—how to get people excited about using their product in a way they can't be about anything else—and their product. Creating an object that people truly enjoy interacting with, as opposed to merely facilitating an experience (reading), is the first step.
Illustration by Ellen Lupton, 2009, from FastCompany
Before this summer, I wore a watch faithfully every day. As soon as one bit the dust, I was quick to go find the next one, making sure it fit with my personal style. But at the beginning of a beach trip recently, I decided to forgo the watch on the grounds that I was on vacation and didn't need to know what time it was (that, and watches at the beach mean awkward tan lines).
Ellen Lupton had a piece at FastCompany in July entitled Time and Identity: What Your Clock Says About Your Personality, though I only discovered it recently. While she chooses to focus mostly on aphorisms and advice for how best to structure the time in your life, she does briefly discuss the use of watches and clocks in everyday life:
For centuries, church bells have signaled the passing of time; the bells are still tolling where I live in Baltimore, reminding the neighborhood every 15 minutes that time is, indeed, marching on. I recently hung an outdoor clock on my shingled garage as a civic offering to the countless morning dog-walkers who frequent our quiet street. Marking time is a social act.
There is something to be said for communal observation of the passage of time, but I would argue that marking time is a solitary, not a social, act. Each individual marks time by his or her own life, and the demands and schedules set for it. For example: I am fortunate enough to be able to operate on a somewhat nocturnal schedule, working late into the evening and sleeping in the next morning; yet those with obligations (such as jobs) that require them to be up very early cannot operate on the same schedule. The way I pass time does allow me to fall in with others who operate similarly, but we do not choose to pass time communally.
Yet from a design standpoint, it would be possible to create different forms of watches or clocks for those on certain schedules. For example, for those students who stay up late and sleep early, there could be a modified version of the Onomatopoeia Watch, perhaps with a cup of coffee (or a Red Bull) at the 12hr mark, and a computer at 3. Just as different people choose different calendar or planner formats, why shouldn't they also be offered different ways to observe and mark the time?
Emergence: encouraging communication and teamwork in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. Image from DesignObserver; artwork by Philip Lin
DesignObserver had a great post recently about a developing MMOG called Emergence ("Emergence"). While most MMOGS—like World of Warcraft, EVE Online, or Halo—tend to focus on destruction, Emergence encourages players to work collaboratively to further the game:
Emergence’s creators — Lenoir (a professor of new technologies and society at Duke University, who is affiliated with the school’s Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution), Casey Alt, Patrick Jagoda and Harrison Lee — believe that the mastery of diplomatic, economic and social dynamics that is essential to excelling at Emergence will ultimately hold as much appeal for players as clubbing monsters or machine-gunning adversaries. While the game doesn’t completely ignore violence — one can choose to become a bounty hunter, for example — you must, in order to advance, form agreements and coalitions, establish trust, acquire knowledge and employ other nonviolent tactics to resolve conflict. “The game is not going to work like others where there are no consequences,” says Lenoir.
While the game is still in alpha stage and is not scheduled to release until 2011, I wonder if it represents a change in the way games, especially MMOGs, are considered. The design of "traditional" games such as World of Warcraft are misleading: the apparent focus may be on raiding dungeons and slaying beasts, but most gamers who play do so for the social aspect as much as in-game rewards. Nearly all MMOGs encourage teamwork, whether in the form of raiding parties or guilds, and there is often a strong element of communication between teams. Developing a game whose main goal is to create and encourage teamwork and communication seems worthwhile, but runs the risk of falling flat. If there are no broader goals within the game, there is very little reason to interact with others, aside from a pure socialization—and we've already got Second Life for that.
However, the design elements and inspiration ("the cool, dystopic futurism of Minority Report and Gattica with a hint of Denari and Hadid...[with] Obama-era diplomacy and The Wire") are provocative, and seem to be in keeping with the post-apocalyptic visions already established by science fiction. The development of such a game suggests that video games are beginning to be taken seriously as more than just an amusement or even an art form: their potential as a medium for sophisticated communication is starting to be realized.
