The butcher block was central for family communication. This wooden slab in the kitchen was the primary transmission device, long before mobile phones and email. “Options for dinner: A) BBQ on the patio, 6 p.m. B) chicken in the kitchen, 6 p.m. C) Nina’s pizza, 8 p.m.,” a note would read, and the kids had to vote, long-form, on the note.
We knew nothing of communicating with busy people, but there was an attention to the detail of choice. For each note we wrote, we respected one another’s time. With a motley family of six people, and a similar number of cars, animals, and interests, the butcher block united us. We had no time to discuss otherwise.
Blocked communication
See also:
Busy people may want to rethink “busy” altogether
When you email busy people, you might believe the best option you can give them is to offer a wide set of options (“I’m available any time in fall 2010. Choose a day that works for you!”) You imagine you’re being generous. Accommodating. You’re not imposing on the busy person.
Yet what you’ve done, in one fell sentence, is impose more busy work on an already busy person. You’ve forced that person to take at least four steps:
- Open a calendar to check not a single date, but an entire spectrum of time.
- Draft an original set of sentences, rather than a brief “Great, the XX of Sept is confirmed,” or a simple “Yes.”
- Wait for additional emails in response to aforementioned new sentences, and respond accordingly.
- Repeat.
Proposals for people
While it may seem presumptuous, proposing — diplomatically — a specific date to a busy person is welcome. “How does 11 a.m. on Tuesday, September 17 work for you?” with proper lead time and an alternate. This specificity is wonderfully refreshing and leaves the door open for an alternate suggestion, or simply a single-word email response:
“Perfect.”
In our house, notes and scribbles were written on the same 3”x5” scraps of paper, physically limiting choice. Proposing what we mean and want gives people, busy or not, the opportunity to respond. If they need an alternate, they’ll ask.
Give people a proposal that allows for choice.
To create patterns is natural. In fact, not only as designers, but also as humans, we make sense of a wild environment by taking haphazard shapes and concepts and giving them form and meaning. We categorize them: poster, website, building, typography, interactive, stone, and so on. Creating categories, then, gives our experiences boundaries.
For designers in this era, however, seeing boundaries can be a disadvantage. At a time when websites are spilling off desktops onto sidewalks and computing in public spaces is dissolving into behavior, technology itself has shown boundary blindness. And humans are following suit. We carry our televisions in our pockets. We pay with our phones. And we read more than ever before on an unpredictable number of screens. It is possible to see beyond the small fences of the familiar, but first you must see no boundaries.
Yet even this is not enough. As you become comfortable in this open field — no matter the discipline — what is common is that you design for people. And an understanding of where design intersects with human behavior is critical to raising both the meaning and value of products and services. The studies of how people think (cognitive psychology), how people interact (interaction design), how people behave (behavioral economics), and the design of services for them (service design) can complement and enhance your understanding of your pursuit.
So, start by reimagining your design studio. It’s not just the place where you have a desk, a chair, and some tools — it is also the place beyond those walls. It is there, in your design studio at large, that you’ll find those who will inspire and instruct you that seeing no boundaries is one of the greatest lessons for a young designer. Going beyond yourself, then, can become a natural extension of your every day.
Sundays were for pancakes. Whether you were a participant or a recipient, you were in on it. If you wanted to eat breakfast in our house, as one tended to do, you participated in the weekly competition: pancakeoff. Pancakeoff was open to anyone, of any diligence, recipe, wherewithal, or ingredient. Only the competitive spirit remained consistent. The variability was in the method by which the item was prepared, and importantly, how much you were willing to gamble. This competition, after all, was about the latitude between conviction and risk.
Make the same pancake, the one you knew was a favorite — by its fluff, shape, density — and you had a rather fair shot at the breakfast honor. Yet vary what you knew — by blueberry, shape, flour — and you could risk the entire game. The pancake paradox.
Letting go of the familiar, doing these kinds of personal experiments, gives things a foundation; it marks the authenticity of our activities. If your patterns include only the familiar, the routine, the rote, the comfortable, you may be efficient, but will you discover?
New ingredients — the new addition of every item, product, person, routine — gets a rigorous evaluation before I add it (“Does this fit into…”). Being aware of any addition makes it part of the conversation and, importantly, there is now a conversation to be had.
What you include, and likewise, what you actively choose not to include is what becomes part of you. Being able to do so while being consistent with what you know to be true is the intersection between conviction and risk. And that won the crown every time.
At fourteen, Ray Cramer and I were at odds because he didn’t appreciate my sight-reading tendencies. I, one of his newer students, arrived at piano lessons each week, ready to play, posturing practice on pieces we’d already learned. And I, a pleasure-seeing student, sought approval, yet practice was not what I had done. What I truly excelled at, what I was unstoppable at, what we both knew, was I could sight-read. “You blaze through new pieces with no patience for those you know.” And some days the unspoken, “I have no patience for you.” It was clear Mr. Cramer and I didn’t see eye to eye.
For glider pilots, it’s essential to be able to recognize cumulus clouds because they tell them where warm air is rising, enabling pilots to fly longer and higher and farther. For sight-readers, it’s essential to recognize and connect key notes and make music between them, enabling us to play longer and faster and more meaningfully. Whether we’re reading clouds as a sign of where to fly or reading notes as a sign of what to play, it’s an exercise in the familiar being used unconsciously.
Mark up
Whether the written text — of cumulus clouds, of notes, of serifs, of CSS, of whatever your markup — gives us content, or whether we read significance into that content and make meaning, no matter. We use signs to assimilate words, freely interpreting and creating new meanings, new languages even, giving way to new content and interpretations.
You can get bogged down in details, knowing the average paperback has 50 characters to the line, 35 lines to the page and 250 pages of text. You can sort through a publication dedicated to the advancement of soaring, or learn the proper way to get into soaring. You can know the details. First, however, it’s essential to ascertain how to sight-read, connecting spaces in between.
Familiar sights
Use familiar knowledge unconsciously. Sight-read. Make your own pieces with the notes you know well and the rest of the piece, the story, the language, will fall into place. Often you’ll see that most won’t agree with your version. And that just means it’s working.
We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pregnant pauses connote uncomfortable silence; we veil silence with fillers. As professional communicators, we’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring out “um” and “ah.” This distaste for the pause — and the inverse, seeking an always-on state — is a battle we face at work, at school, and in industry at large.
I propose that we’re too impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if, as communicators and designers, we became more comfortable with the pause? Because it turns out we can add by leaving out. The pause has power.
The presence of pauses
The oldest recording of American umming comes from Thomas Edison, who in 1888 presented the perfected phonograph when he recorded and played back his voice. The transcript contains verbal pauses: “And then to, uh, Bombay,” and his sign-off, “Uh, goodbye, Edison.” The relay of this first conversation was, in fact, demonstrating what is natural — the pause. Why edit it out? The verbal filler even has historical power.
Stammers are not uncommon. The average English speaker makes as many as seven to 22 “ums” and “ahs” per day. Because we have a tendency to want to hold the floor as communicators, we’ll use a number of fillers — ”ums” and stammers — to avoid pauses in conversation. These sounds, in fact, deny an audience the chance to process what’s been said.
Pauses in the wild
Discourse is not the only space where the presence of pauses is powerful. In public space, pauses in the urban landscape can be important characters, contributing to new meaning. Walter Benjamin reminds us “architecture is experienced habitually in the state of distraction.” So when a structure that’s always been present on your daily walk suddenly becomes an empty lot, your definition of space and flow changes — there is a pause. And the surrounding environment takes a new form. Like a pause in discourse, a pause in the urban landscape lends meaning to its surroundings, creating opportunity for new value to emerge. Negative or non-spaces formed by the creation of others play an important role in creating passive by-products. There is presence in absence.
The value of pause need not be so intangible; its use in retail as an orientation and transition device can ground customers. In Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Paco Underhill demonstrated why “landing strips” — the transition zones inside of retail environments — were invaluable in getting customers to pause. Referring to customers entering retail environments, he noted:
These people are not truly in the store yet. You can see them, but it’ll be a few seconds more before they’re actually here. If you watch long enough, you’ll be able to predict where shoppers slow down to make the transition from being outside to being inside.
The transition zones were blind spots; knowing that, retailers could plan appropriately, allowing for a pause before the commerce experience began.
Pauses abound
Each of these instances adds meaning to the surrounding content, giving momentum to what comes afterward. Joshua Porter might refer to the stages before and after the pause as phases in a service usage lifecycle:
- Unaware: Most people are in this stage, completely unaware of your product.
- Interested: These people are interested in your product but are not yet users.
- First-time Use: These people are using your software for the first time, a crucial moment in their progression.
- Regular Use: These people are those who use your software regularly and perhaps pay for the privilege.
- Passionate Use: These people are the ultimate goal: passionate users who spread their passion and build a community around your software.
The hurdle between “unaware” and “interested” may be considered a pause, as it’s the designer’s goal at this stage to make people aware of a product or service (e.g., getting people over the sign-up stage in Web-based software).
Beyond practice
The value of the pause doesn’t stop with practice; it refers to the way we interact with our environment. Interactions, both public and private, can be enhanced by a bit of a pause:
- Intermission
- The drumroll
- The halftime show
- The landing strip
- The pause button
- The semicolon
- The window
- Interstitial ads
- Syncopated beats
- Hadrian’s Villa
- A moment of silence
If we start considering the pauses all around us, both designed and unplanned, we begin to see the patterns, in that they both increase meaning and enforce attention.
Add by leaving out
Designers seek to contribute through meaningful additions. Great contributions, it’s often thought, are meant to be seen and heard, rather than not. Yet what if designers were more comfortable with the presence of absence? It’s through pause that value is sometimes found. In a culture where we’re racing to fill each moment with content and connectivity, we might consider what we can leave behind.
And instead of racing forward, we pause for a moment.
“The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire and persistence,” says Milton Glaser, and never was this so evident as this past weekend.
In 24 hours
Three clients. Three teams. 24 hours. This was FullCodePress, a web competition that builds a site for a charity in 24 hours. And 24 consecutive hours it was. A team of us traveled together to New Zealand to have the privilege of working side-by-side with teams from Australia and New Zealand, each building a site for a nonprofit organization who would otherwise not be able to afford one on their own.
The six of us crafted, fairly quickly, an approach for working together beforehand. Even though some of us had worked together before, a 24-hour turnaround time changes patterns significantly. While a couple of phone calls, Basecamp, and an email list helped coordinate prior to the weekend, we had to remain entirely flexible in our approach once we arrived.
From thought to thing
There wasn’t time to wireframe, so our initial plan had been to go from thought to paper sketches to design. You can hear Jason and me talk about our approach a bit here. As it turned out, we were able to turn around some quick sketches — we all mapped out six sketches and wallpapered our room with them — then I translated the best ideas using OmniGraffle while Karen masterfully organized and crafted the content for the site (not to mention left time to write a 20-page user manual). From there, Jason — after refreshing their branding (see a brief video) — was responsible for working on translating the sketches and wireframes into the website design. Meanwhile, Dan and the fabulous John were working incredible feats while Jenn was keeping us on track.
Final hours
The site is straightforward to highlight the strength-based recovery model that is specific to their approach. The centerpoint is their activities, which range from programs at the house to larger events in the community to support at the workplace. My favorite part came in hour twenty-eight, after we’d been interviewed by the judges, after we’d been set free, and were free to return to our hotels. We were packing up our room, taking down the last of the items. The room was bare save a few things. Jason looked up and saw one final sketch on the wall, that of the homepage. It matched, almost line for line, the homepage of the live site.
On returning
I’m extraordinarily proud of the work we were able to do in a short period of time. The team, the clients William and Garbux, and the entire process will stay with me for quite a long time to come. I’d been to Webstock before, so I knew how brilliant Mike and Tash were at putting together an event, but I was doubly impressed this time with their efforts as well as the astounding volunteer team. There wasn’t a 15-minute segment that went by where there wasn’t a meaningful video, an interview, or a photo being posted. (Note that you’ll be hard-pressed to find one of me without either a) a flat white, b) a flag, or c) a pony. This was exactly accurate for the weekend.)
Each time I visit New Zealand, I’m awed by both the natural beauty of the place, but more than that, the remarkable beauty of the people. The beauty is contagious, and it shows in the work from all the teams. Thanks to all for letting us take part.
Once a week, Social Studies class would stray from textbooks. We wouldn’t read about national politics or international affairs or whatever else was of importance to sixth graders that week. Instead, it was Current Events Friday. We were instructed to inspect our local Times (there being only two in our small town) for a single news item we were to read aloud in class. There were no rules, of course; the significance of “news” was left up to us. Twenty-six student clippings later — tag sales, local basketball games, an occasional mayoral event, the current rollerskating champion — we were proud. These weren’t by any means the stories Ms. Lyons had in mind, but they were what mattered. They were our stories.
I assumed everyone had Currents Event Fridays just like I assumed everyone peg-legged their jeans and had friends who wrote fictional Duran Duran novels in blue-book notebooks. Sometimes that line between you and the rest of the world is blurry. But then you travel.
Travel for good.
Travel, as it happens, as exhausting, as far, and as many security gates or toll booths as it requires, gives us distance but also perspective. From recent research we even find that travel can make us more creative, perhaps smarter. I think that might be going a bit far. But still.
There are only a few rules I try to follow as a person. One is never to run (except every morning). The other is to accept every invitation, advice a friend gave me over 10 years ago. And I believe this. Accept every invitation to go without compromising, of course, your time to stay. Accept new ideas. Travel widely. Shallowly even. Travel within your own city. But travel.
“To travel,” it’s difficult to remember, isn’t always synonymous with “to leave.” But it’s in that word, no matter its currency, that we find new stories. And I still have a thing for Fridays.
It was two-toned taupe. The color of see-through. Of invisible. But this 1977 Honda hatchback — it with only 4 speeds, with only AM radio, with only manual windows and manual steering — was mine. And this car traveled. “Let me understand again: you’re going there and back in 30 minutes? Have you timed this?” My father’s “have you timed this?” was often-repeated shorthand for “You’re trying to do too much, but I won’t be the one to tell you.” He’d verbally tick off minutes per activity, and more importantly, account for the spaces in between. Five minutes here, 20 minutes there. Suddenly, my estimates were in a different ballpark. Not accounting for travel time, he would point out, made it impossible to achieve what I said I’d do. “If you add it all up, you can’t possibly do it in under two hours.” And just like that, every time, he was right.
“Music is the space between the notes. It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play.”
—Miles Davis
Even as I write, highly punctual people may be misunderstanding what they do. So focused are we to get from Point A to B, we forget to account for the spaces in between. Travel time, rest stops, project hand-offs, intermissions, training sessions, building foyers, sleep. These transition points — the things getting in the way of Point B — rarify them invisible. And with that, we may only be seeing part of what we really do.
The space between
In travel, this oversight renders us simply late. Perhaps harmless save some inconvenience. But if our half-seeing spills over to other areas, we may miss the miles of creeping transition points between the things. And projects go incorrectly scoped, budgets are exceeded, friends’ diligence is unrequited — there’s a general disinformation of tasks.
Focus on what happens between A and B. Consider the positive and the negative space. By paying mind to the in-betweens, we may be better representatives of what we actually do.
And yes, I’ve timed it.
No matter how hard we try, we’re guilty of it. Promises to meet friends, family, and colleagues for lunches, coffee and tea, dog walks, play dates, and dinners go unmet. “Let’s get together soon!” we agree each time there’s a chance encounter. But words fall empty as we realize, somewhat simulatenously, that the last several dozen parting words of similar sentiment went unfulfilled. So we pencil meetings in with a question mark.
Rescheduling appointments has suddenly become acceptable. Whether it’s because our calendars are digital or our schedules are triangulated moments at a time, juggling has become a cultural habit. And it’s uncomfortable, not to mention inconvenient.
The promise
“There are meetings which, when cancelled at the last minute, give one an ecstatic feeling of having cheated death for a little longer.” —Alain de Botton
A promise to meet is satisfying. It expresses a sentiment (i.e., I want to see you) without the true commitment of any obligation (i.e., I’ll go out of my way for you). Citydwellers in particular can fall into a rescheduling pattern easily as we only see one another on rare occasion, and the frenetic pace makes for easy excuses.
When meetings get cancelled, it feels like a bit like a snow day. We’ve won time back. But if getting together is our goal, why then, does it feel so satisfying to cancel?
A canceling culture
Canceling the first time is quite difficult. Yet once the first cancellation exists, an unspoken cancellation agreement is in place. It’s here that two people are in danger of falling into a pattern. Always scheduling plans with one another yet never following through, there is an understanding that one can cancel at the last minute. And this is okay.
If the cancel option is possible, why promise in the first place? Here are some basics to avoid empty promise patterns:
1. Change your closing line
How do you part? We tend to use “Let’s get together soon!” as a default parting line. It connotes a lot with a little. Change your closing line to something less committal, and you’ll be free of empty promises.
2. Say what you mean
What do you really mean? If you can’t follow up, then don’t promise a meeting. Get-together promises are empty unless you can make it in person. Mean what you say. It’s simpler.
3. Meet in person
Can you get together? Try it. Instead of canceling, get together. Just like postponing meetings because of deadlines, family, or your need to watch “Lost,” try seeing a person. Meet. You might just find you enjoy it.
4. Don’t cancel
Ever.
Next time you’re tempted to cancel, do the opposite. See what happens if you show up instead. You might just change culture.
There’s a whooshing sound around the studio. Today marks the last day of the first year of the inaugural class in SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design program. Seventeen students have learned, prototyped, researched, ridden, toasted, whiteboarded, presented, stretched, and designed their way through the first year of the new program. Final presentations are this evening that will culminate the year’s work.
We design for others. Whether we have one person in mind or many, we consider those other than ourselves — something larger than ourself — to make meaning. To do the things we do. This program was once mine, a construct, as I sat creating it, considering the curriculum, the faculty, the requisite parts. Yet over the course of a year, I’ve been honored to watch it become theirs.
The faculty members who stayed late into evenings and on weekends, teaching and learning with the graduate students. The guest lecturers who traveled from around the world to share their practice with a group of young designers. The loyal staff members who, in fact, make everything possible.
Most of all, the bright minds of 17 designers who, in fact, are the very ones who now own the program. This program belongs to them and has taken shape by their philosophies, their tremendous insights, and the social change they’ve affected both on the culture of the studio and the dynamic of world at large.
I’m honored to have been a witness to their masterful minds at work and even more proud to give the program over to them. Congratulations to all and happy summer.
