"A few years ago, during one of the periodic booms and bursts that are part of business as usual in Silicon Valley, my colleagues and I were struggling to figure how to keep my company, IDEO, meaningful and useful in the world.
There was plenty of interest in our design services, but we also noticed that we were increasingly being asked to tackle problems that seemed very far away from the commonly held view of design.
A health care foundation was asking us to help restructure its organisation; a century-old manufacturing company was asking us to help it better understand its clients; an elite university was asking us to think about alternative learning environments. We were being pulled out of our comfort zone, but this was exciting because it opened up new possibilities for us to have more impact in the world." - Tim Brown, in Change by Design
I think a lot of you would agree when I say that COVID-19 has thrown us all outside our comfort zones and pushed us to rethink how we've been living our lives. This may be the existentialist-introvert-cat-mom-designer in me but two questions have been keeping me up until early morning since the start of the quarantine:
1. What can I do to help, at any scale, in my own ways?
2. As a designer, am I doing enough?
This pandemic has caused tremendous frustration, grief, anxiety, pain, loss, and at a much less degree: inconvenience. But if I am to bounce back, it would probably do me good to use the past few months not as an analysis paralysis continuum, but as essential and hard lessons learned.
I found some notes I scribbled down on the 41st day of the lockdown. These were my realisations then, that still seem relevant now. I will use these as a guide, at least for myself, in navigating my way forward and I hope that I do find like-minded folks out there who I could trek this uncharted path with in the same ways.
Day 41: Designing Life Around the Inconvenient Truth
1. Mindset: Be open to new, and perhaps better, ways of doing things
COVID-19 has greatly inconvenienced us in terms of how we shop, how we dine, how we commute, how we relax, how we work— the list can go on forever. But this inconvenience also gave us the chance to discover a lot of other, maybe even better, ways that could work for us. This gave us an opportunity to reflect on what could be outdated processes and behaviour that we've been so used to that changing them would just be a great, well, inconvenience.
For example, in the context of work, there have been lots of talks on whether work from home could be the next standard set-up. While there are some companies whose nature of business practically cannot function with WFA or WFH set-ups, one cannot deny that an evolution to this kind of arrangement really does offer numerous advantages for others.
For those who are willing to break away from "as usual", they would probably see the benefits of the likes of: less hours spent in commuting, having more flexibility, or simply discovering that adapting new processes and tools in their daily workflow may actually mean less steps and more time to focus on other equally important matters.
2. Explore, recognise, embrace the importance of digital solutions
Initially, it felt weird writing this down because for some reason this has been an accepted fact for quite a while. A fact, though, that we all seem to have mindlessly accepted, and never completely grasped. We all know that the world has gone digital— to the point that the term digital transformation has been used too many times that it had fallen prey to misinterpretation. But do we really understand what this means to each one of us?
When I say "digital solutions", I do not at all intend to use big words and get into industry changing conversations— because I don't even know much about that. But what I know is that simply understanding that digital tools exist not to command and complicate our lives but to actually make it simpler, is already a big step. I still really, really do believe that habits, behaviour, and mindsets are the main components of digitalisation more than the technology itself.
In the course of designing my way around this inconvenience, I've discovered simple solutions that make daily tasks more efficient for me. Faster and more integrated ways of file sharing, real-time editing, shared libraries, using a single source of assets, live documents, automated signatories, and others. I've also been able to create a system for having essential goods and groceries delivered to my house and to my mother's house. Setting frustration aside, I monitored the pattern and schedule of the sellers, adjusted my inventory tracking, and based my ordering system based on those factors. Through these systems, I've made sure that we neither hoard, nor run out of essential supplies.
3. Do something about new opportunities— and fast
Opportunities are born out of problems. This is the worst time to keep doing what you've always done, and the best time to make a change in your life, your organisation, and your community. So many of us, even businesses, have been reset and are all starting from almost equal footing. Nobody knows exactly what to do so if you had wanted to try, suggest, or prototype a solution you've been meaning to put forward, now is the time to do so. Speed is also essential— fail to evolve and you will get left behind.
In the workplace, proactiveness is key. It is not the time to wait and be told what to do (though there was never really a good time for that) before doing something, anything. Opportunities don't only exist outside the organisation, but internally as well. As a designer, I made an effort to try and help colleagues navigate our way through these uncertain times via even in the simplest of design solutions.
4. Navigate
Seek control through owning a semblance of predictability. Build a system around your behaviour and rhythms, and help others build theirs. Designers usually have an innate sense of spotting patterns and making sense of it— not only visually but even in realms that, as Tim Brown mentioned, 'seemed very far away from the commonly held view of design.' There are a lot of sectors that could use even just a little help in navigation now— households, schools, retail, and even leaders or people teams of organisations. The beauty of applying design in this aspect is that navigational tools can actually take any form that is appropriate for whom they are designed for.
5. Care
Navigation and Care are 2 words that stuck to me from the beginning of lockdown. "Navigation", I've mentioned above, and "Care", because it became everybody's language and means of connection. We utilised on-call courier services to send out care packages to loved ones, we all became Zoomers (and Zoom has now become a verb) to continuously communicate with family and friends, we bent policies and set new ones to make sure that employees' mental health and well-being are taken care of. So even in items 1-4 in this list I have made for myself, I am reminded that "Care" should be a common theme and language.
So, back to my question: "As a designer, am I doing enough?". I probably should have done so much more. But I should know that I still can, and so I will. As a popular Chinese proverb says:
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
09 June 2020: Total COVID-19 cases: 22,992, fresh cases: 280, late cases: 238, with 1,017 who've passed, and 4,736 recoveries
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