Design is optimism
Where did our positivity go? Here's some for the new year.
I love talking to students for their refreshing ambition. I spoke recently at the UW HCI program (thanks to my friend and host Douglas Pyle) and their energy was delightful. They imagine great projects in their future and can’t wait to get started. Yet we all know after a few years in the workforce, that joy often fades. What can we do to bring it back? Here is one way.
Remember that design is optimism. That’s the best single word behind all that we do. Creativity is pure positivity. Science tells us that having an idea is energy: it’s literally defined as electrons flying at 200mph through your brain1. And to choose to take an idea and move it out into the world is a kind of optimism. It’s a choice to say “I want to see where this goes” instead of just doomscrolling on your phone like everyone else does. Design is believing in the value of ideas, no matter how small or strange, and knowing that big ideas come from little ones, but only if we are willing to tend to them and help them grow.
Design is an expression of hope. It says, “Yes, this is a problem but there is a better way. Lets try to build it.” This means there is no such thing as a hopeless designer. Why? To be hopeless means you are no longer able to design anything. Even if you don’t have as much hope as you want, or have had in the past, if you choose to make something, almost anything, you still have a spark of optimism in you. Even if it’s just a doodle on a napkin, a sketch on a whiteboard or even making diner for your family. Where there is a spark there’s always a chance you can start a fire.
Hopelessness is the opposite of design. This means the choices to be cynical, to give up, to blame others, and to hide behind cop-outs are non-design activities. They negate the conditions that makes design possible. Instead, these choices keep us stuck in the status quo, and in the most unhealthy way.
While it can be healthy to find acceptance, or to quit something to move on in life, these choices, when made too often, keep you bitter and resentful, clear signs you are not designing anymore. Why? They mean you are too stuck in the past to reframe the present to make a better future. These choices reduce the primary condition needed to create anything: optimism.
And I don’t mean the blind or stupid kind of optimism, which has occasional value if you’re stuck or desperate, but mostly the kind rooted in the real world, with self-awareness about who you are, what is happening and realistic expectations for what is possible. Small wins are infinitely better than an angry, frustrated, status quo. This is because momentum is real and creates leverage you will never discover if you stay stuck where you are.
Today is a great day to remember that human survival itself has always hinged on design as optimism. For more than 100,000 years we barely survived, spending our long, fearful days cold, hungry and afraid. It was only when someone had the optimism (or desperation) to go out and hunt and gather that we had a chance. And then to experiment to make tools and shelters to make our lives easier. Without the ability to design collaboratively, and the optimism to believe there is always a better way, our species would have gone extinct many times.
You must remember that you possess skills and abilities few people have developed. They are practically huddled in the caves, complaining, denying, waiting, in doubt, for thoughtful heroes with seemingly magical creative powers to arrive and inspire them. They get a pass for their cynicism. They may be prone to giving up, as they don’t see the world as you do because they are not designers. But if you are one, it’s up to you. You know what to do.
https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/new-techniques-show-how-electrical-impulses-travel-with-high-speed-in-our-brain-1640013-2020-01-25