Process is a term we give to the forces shaping that which changes: our daily work. But process is an flimsy word at best, because it gives conceptual form to what is more organic in our world than we would care to admit.
This friction in our profession between the orderly plan and the tidal flow of ideas is what drives our passion for holding in our hands the tangible results of our labor. Much in the same way that two friends can stand outside for hours, chugging beers while souping up a V8 engine in a vintage hot rod, we want the ride in the vehicle and what the vehicle represents from how people see it on the outside. And while you're at it, please throw in monthly cash payments made out to our bank of choice and maybe an award or two.
This is sheer illusion—a myth that we've perpetuated based on our desire for culture to remember our contribution. And the following meander is about the myths we should be exploring: those that reshape the processes that inform our culture and our practice.
Design is inherently selfless: a merciless act of will wrapped in empathy. The act of designing is an emotional effort tempered by the forces of our intellect and the never-ceasing tides of our culture—which is a somewhat wicked and ambitious goal no matter what the project, considering the factors at play.
This is what Victor Papanek asked us to consider in our profession many decades ago through telesis: a striving for planned social progress. But what we are most oft asked to create, and the resulting processes that arise from it, lead to a mercurial volatility in what ideas stick in a culture overloaded with data. "This idea just feels right," will always be the rallying cry between designer and client as we meander through the dark corners of unexplored conceptual space, pulling out into the light what, to our blinking and dazed eyes, seems like a jewel of an idea. Two years later, that same idea may resemble cubic zirconium rather than a diamond in a social context. It's a challenge to measure the impact of our ideas on both our selves and our culture. And the process that we go through forging that idea across a designed experience is a flimsy cobweb compared to the power of the decisions we've made across a lifetime.
However, the decisions that matter most are always the ones that you're making right now. This is the curse of the idea well-fit to its social context, as opposed to the idea that lasts through multiple generations. Our hope is that our society has progressed through our deliberations, but we are the first of the group to change as a result of encountering said effort.
I struggle with this idea, because in my work I'm most interested in seeking what is timeless rather than what is of the moment. I make decisions very quickly, and it's often when I've moved further through the process that I end up re-assessing my decision and walking backwards in the hopes that the damage can be undone. I think every designer is concerned with making the wrong decisions through a process—"wrong" in that what you create won't function properly for a substantial length of time. It won't mean anything.
And to me, meaning is what we should be pursuing above and beyond any ornamental detail as we progress through the design process. If you want what you're creating to last forever, you should be designing to embrace myths instead of thinking of the way to shine up that brochureware website or logo. This is the dirty secret of the branding gurus—products and brands that hook securely into the zeitgeist contain too much information contingent on brief trends, as opposed to designing for myths that are somewhat stable over time, stay relevant and meaningful, and aspire towards persistence over time. (Though myths do change, the overall container for a myth can be tested, designed, and generally does not exit cultures as the speed of, say, a LOLcats meme.)
Do we fit ourselves to the myth, or is the myth always there in our culture, forming us? I like to look at everyday processes and see where they fit into this intellectual puzzle —as the artifacts in our lives fit into the myths that shape our daily activities.
Take the process of selecting and brewing a cup of tea. I am thirsty (or not awake) and I know I want tea, but what kind will I choose to drink? I have 120 varieties at my local store, from organic herbal tisanes to high-test gunpowder that hits your tongue like a mouthful of hot sand. How will I heat the water? Will I use filtered or tap? Whom will share this tea with me, and how?
Beyond the process of making and enjoying tea (which can last minutes or hours, depending on the context), what's most important here is that the concept of tea hasn't changed as a drink—only the context of how it has been selected, consumed, and ritualized from culture to culture. Teas that have survived in the market have done so through a curious blend of attraction (on the part of the plant to our ancestors, who chose to cultivate it) and process as ritual. Whether served on fine china with milk and sugar, or from a powder whisked into water in a rough-hewn cup, the shift that happened as a result of shaped change only happens due to controlling a few variables in the overall equation we call tea.
So if we were to be designing for myths, then we would be determining the equations, not the variables.
And any new process is just that—an equation whose form has not yet been proven, over time, to accommodate change in a manner that ascribes to an emotional shape. Whether tribal, hardwired, or enforced by our environment, we keep rewriting and retesting the equations, hoping for a measure of certainty.
Nothing is certain from moment to moment, except for the air that moves in and out of your mouth as you read these words. And these words are shaping you, just as you seek to begin again, with some measure of control. But you embody the process, whether you like it or not.
This is the beautiful illusion that every designer harbors, in yearning towards what is certain, meaningful, and stable in our culture. But what we would consider meaningful is most often what strips certainty away, leaving us naked in the wind. What is most needed now are things and processes that can accommodate change gracefully. And we have yet to learn how to do that well.
At its purest essence, this is the chain that we struggle against—and what binds us to our practice and our world.
Comments