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Singularity vs. The Craftsman

Denise Gershbein — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:19:16 -0500

I know some of you out there just HATE the very word "singularity." But for a second, forget your distaste of trendy, intellect-flaunting memes. Instead, pull up a chair, crack open a book - or in this case, two - and ponder a serendipitous juxtaposition.

Two widely different theses are stuck in my head, begging for a way to be brought together in harmony. The source is two books circulating our studio at the moment: Raymond Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" and Richard Sennett's "The Craftsman."

Thesis 1/The Singularity: Think of the singularity simply as the idea that digitally enhanced intelligence (ours) is becoming exponentially stronger, exponentially quicker. Before you wrinkle your nose, consider: how would you work - creatively, socially, temporally - if you didn't use "computers" and everything that term encompasses (the web, mobile, Wikipedia, social networks, surfing, blogs, etc.)? I'd say that in the last ten years each of our personal capabilities has been exponentially enabled by our digital tools. In other words, you've already incorporated the web into your brain as part of your intelligence, part of your reach, part of your skill and talent. You could work without it, but why would you? You can do so much more WITH it.

Thesis 2/The Craftsman: Contrast the implications of the singularity to the concept of craft. Think of craft not as "crafty" or "handmade," but rather about skill, attentiveness, problem solving, commitment, and art + intelligence together. Consider that becoming an expert at a physical task (like playing an instrument, being a carpenter or a professional athlete) takes 10,000 hours of practice. Think about how our culture has forced the separation of "the head and the hand," not only through devaluing manual labor and over-valuing intellectual, white collar work; but also how capitalism, competition and forced processes reward results over quality. In your own work, think about how using a computer takes you away from the hand/head practice of putting pen to paper and going back and forth between a creative, meditative state and a thoughtful, problem solving state and instead (sometimes) allows for easy, pre-fab answers and processes.

So in my view, the singularity is just a fact of life: it's already here and you've already embraced it, whether you realize it or not. At the same time, craft and skill is a beautiful part of human nature that likely won't be replaced by machine intelligence. So the question is not which one is right or wrong, but how do they exist together?

Desire Lines + Relativity

Denise Gershbein — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:57:33 -0500

Have you ever tried to read Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? Wouldn’t you like to really know it and understand it? That glorious theory of the way the universe works, asking us to examine who, if anyone, is really at the center of space and time. It’s not easy reading. There have been many attempts to parse the idea, to translate it for us poor unwashed masses who are unversed in quantum mechanics. I recently came across “Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters of Less” and was completely charmed by this particular attempt. Not only was the author trying to explain the mind-bending theory in layman’s terms, but also to do it under a constriction of four letter words. That’s quite an exercise in constraint and simplicity for any piece of writing, let alone for humankind’s peak scientific idea. The desire to comprehend, to share, to teach people in a common language and understanding for the sake of grasping our world is perhaps worth the attempt.

In a very tiny nutshell the Theory of Relativity asks, who is the center of the universe? You? The sun? Some other body in space nearby? The answer depends on your perspective, your sense of movement relative to other objects, and whether you shift your center from yourself to somewhere else. I think the question and the answer also holds true for desire lines, those footworn paths created by people or animals shortcutting the most easily traversed line between places. Desire lines represent our attempt to circumvent throughways that are created on our behalf by someone other than ourselves; although those throughways are designed to accommodate human traffic towards a destination in a sensible and ordered way, the very fact that they are created by someone other than ourselves means that they come from a different perspective than our own. Who is to say which perspective is “more right”?

If you look at the flickr photo set of desire lines, you’ll notice that they are taken from a first-person point of view from some point on the desire line path – in other words, not from the architect’s or the official path’s point of view. The tendency is to believe that the architect or designer got it wrong by somehow not accounting for the easiest path, the most human path. And often, this is exactly the case. The desire line is there, quite simply, because a group of people commonly desired and created a better way of getting from “here” to “there.”

So why should architects or planners or designers go the hard way? Why not cave to what people really desire, which is simplicity? Obviously human-centered design is already a well-accepted philosophical approach to creating things, systems or services that have empathy for the end user in mind. There is no arguing its validity. But like any other approach, without thoughtful application and consumption, the approach itself becomes a shortcut and eventually loses all substance and meaning.

Think about the "Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less": even though the human-centered attempt at delivering a complex idea through simple language is successful formally, it still requires that the audience takes the time to read the entire text, to think about it and to absorb it. It requires effort by both parties, the creator and the receiver. Shortcuts don’t equal a passive or automatic user experience.

If architects and planners actually observed, formalized and built all the possible desire lines, might the world become one huge mesh of crisscrossing paths with no negative space between? An infinite number of direct paths from point to point, but with no common, shared trails? Where is the threshold between accommodating desire lines and overcrowding a design with too many unique possibilities? And at what point to those desire lines themselves become too indirect and require yet another desire path or shortcut?

I believe the answer lies somewhere in between a human-centered approach to simple, effective designs and an acknowledgement that as designers, we can’t ever completely eliminate the need for our users to actually participate in the conversation, to engage, and to think.

Triangulation

Denise Gershbein — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:40:33 -0500

I find myself using this word in conversations a lot recently. I don’t remember the first time it popped up, or even the second; but by the third time I heard myself say it I thought to myself, “Ahh. Yes.” The word represents a natural progression of the learnings and strategies I’ve used over time, now moving from the background and into my consciousness as a truth of what we do in design.

The definition of triangulation involves mathematical constructs and measurements that don’t read well in prose form. It’s the essence of the definition, rather, that moves me: establishing the relationship and position of two or more points (ideas, constructs, systems, etc.) by thoughtful consideration of their very juxtaposition. If “convergence” is the uber-design of today, then triangulation is the process that makes it happen.

What I really mean to point out is less a comment on the idea of convergent design, but more a nod to what it means to be a designer right now. I once believed that being a designer was about being a specialist, but now I’m in the camp that believes designers should be generalists with specialist skills. Likely this is somewhat influenced by working in a consultancy, where each new program presents a new and unique challenge and opportunity; nonetheless, for me, design has always been about problem solving. Problem solving is the meta-methodology that allows me to move across domains, industries and design problems and create successful solutions.

When I say “problem solving,” what do you imagine? A nicely constructed, detailed and contained scenario or question? Maybe. But design is inherently messy. The problem stated is often not the true question, and part of what we do is tease apart the assumptions and hidden conditions to understand the greater scope. Once there, we have to build out our world of inquiry. We sometimes seek the analogous stories that offer a tilted perspective. We often need to research users and their habits, desires, quirks. Inevitably and necessarily there are business factors to consider: feasibility, market share, growth.

But the building out of our world of inquiry is only half of the equation. The seeking out of those possible points of inspiration and direction certainly makes for a rich conceptual space. But it’s the triangulation of those points that hones and sharpens the design solution. Knowing the benefits of your research methodologies, understanding the value of data, bowing to the creative muse, and then being able to hack away, prioritize, clarify and refine.

It’s the quest to explore, juxtapose, assess and make meaning that leads to that most important moment where we move from thinking to designing, and it’s the beauty and nuance of triangulated knowledge that brings us there.