There have bee a number of takeaways for me from our Creativity project three of which I want to write about here.
Previous to this project the most creative I had been with images was to add an Instagram filter. For this project, I manipulated images to help me reflect and created composite images (again for the first time) to inspire me to write poetry. I created my first video in iMovie - a real challenge since I couldn't get out to take any of my own footage. I built my first Arduino - ok maybe not so hard since I have a BSc in Physics, but I did need to take a refresher course.
What was great about trying new things and experimenting was how it helped me to reflect and think about our designs in a different way.
Fabulating about smart city dystopia helped me to get my head around what is a very vague concept that means lots of different things to different people. It helped me to think about the history of the smart city idea and the warnings if we don't think about our intentions behind what we are designing. It made start a conversation about values with the team right at the start of the project.
Creating a video taught me so much about bees and helped me to understand them in a way that I would not have done just by reading about them. I felt like I had a stronger sense of empathy for bees as a result.
Taking photos in the City made me think about the physical environment and drove me to back to leafy Blackheath and made me want to explore it again through the lens of the smart city. It helped me to realise how much I value the natural environment, how important it was for me when choosing a place to put down roots and how nature and biodiversity needs to be the most important consideration when designing a smart city.
The Arduino building helped to think about the value and power of sensors. Building just one little sensor made me think about the impact they could have when multiplied my millions. It also helped to take away some of the fear I had about the technology which I think was misplaced. This was just one experience of many that made us as a group want to help designers to make better decisions. Technology itself is not 'bad', it's what humans choose to do with it.
Composite image making in particular helped me not to rein in my dystopian fears, but to understand it, compartmentalise it and use it in a positive way. I was also pleased it inspired me to write poetry.
When we received our feedback from Lara during the first crit, we realised how we far we had gone with our thinking, but essentially we got to the top of the hill and sat on the fence. We knew that we needed and wanted to think beyond humans, but then stopped there - without realising that we had stopped. It took the crit and Lara to gently tip us over the fence for us to say out loud that we genuinely wanted to try to design in a non-human-centric way and that maybe Biophilic design was not enough.
The process also made me think about just how invisible that boundary was to us collectively. When I think back to the moment of realisation for us in the basement of the Barbican Centre, it wasn't that I was afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone. It wasn't that I was afraid that somebody would think that being non-human-centric when designing for the smart city was a stupid idea and I was insecure about going down that route. I genuinely did not see that the barrier was in my mind - and probably in the mind of my team members too.
We had a similar experience in the second crit, where we took the feedback to mean that we needed to push ourselves harder to be non-human centric. This time I felt like we were trying to attack the barrier, but needed to hit it harder.
I think and certainly hope that this experience will help me to be more aware of invisible boundaries. Seeing them to begin with is the first step to overcoming them.
I work for startups. Most of these come in to being because they are challenging the status quo and think things can be done better, differently. Whatever these companies become after they become successful, during these early stages it is my job to design products and services and actually get them built and used out in the world. How would I do this differently with my new skills and broader horizons?
Thankfully, in my line of work I have the luxury of being able to say to the people who pay me that I don't have the answers straight away. I'm paid to figure things out. Immersion into a subject has been my strategy, but as part of a swotting up process. Now I think I would explore more creatively. I would take photos, create images or videos. I would build Arduinos or anything else that comes to mind that would help. I would sketch crazy ideas and reflect on them. I would critique and reflect, over and over and over again.
I think the project has given me further confidence to tap into new ideas. Emotional design, non-human centered design, ambiguity in design. I think most people in business would hate all of these things! But I don't have any fear, as I can see clearly in my mind how it helped our team to come up with a design for the smart city that I feel truly proud of.