All Problems are Design Problems

Waah! Waah!  Waah! This is probably just me getting older and more crotchety.  Crotchety – what the hell does that mean? What happens in old peoples crotches – or does it refer to crocheting????

adj.

1825, from crotchet "whim or fancy" + -y (2). But the sense evolution is obscure.

Crotchety?  Oh yeah, design. Well I guess it’s a good enough departure point. I always thought it meant grouchy but it also means fussy and eccentric. Fussy – yup.  Eccentric – now that I have one leg an inch or so shorter than the other I am definitely eccentric.  I walk in circles, head slightly tilted to the west. My legs work like one of them old locomotive cranks and I wobble and bobble along if unassisted by my cane. My structure is Tower-of-Pisa-like, every step produces a click and a pop in my neck so simply walking is now a percussive experience. Makes me cranky, crotchety. And so my newfound structural eccentricity makes me fussier and more crotchety.

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But my current infirmity really has rent open my sensitivity to what offends the body and what doesn’t.  My main focus is, of course, related to ambulatory matters but since (almost) everything in my present life is informed by my eccentricity I am rediscovering ‘environment’ – or at least I am being given the opportunity to examine the world from a shifted perspective.  So a city like Buenos Aires, which has a cornucopia of design issues, is ripe for my assessment and critique and inspires this tract.

Design Problems. I wanted to invite discussion re: a more considered cultural shift to attending to human factors – i.e. how humans navigate and engage with the man-made. I suppose at the root of it all I am pleading for an awakening.  I desire a world where things aren’t lumpy and cranky and discordant and pain-producing. And I want a world where human structural aberrations (mine for instance – but also addressing issues for all the senses, infirmities, diminishing capacities and intellectual deficiencies etc.) are thoughtfully managed and compensated for.  Certainly that’s where my ideas regarding smarter, customizable canes and cheaply produced prosthetics are emerging from.  But, at every turn, every moment of every day I am confronted with lousy design. We need more people attacking and resolving these problems – at least so we don’t continue to iterate lousiness.  I want to live in a smarter world.  Hah!

Here’s a simple design problem for instance – sidewalks.  In Canada it’s a shameful cliché that two weeks after a new stretch of concrete sidewalk is laid down that a utility company or other jackhammers the crap out of portions of it, refills it with asphalt that heaves and crumbles, leaving it looking like a satanic  tetris game – ultimately to be patched with concrete that will shift and subside or rise tectonically to create a frickin obstacle course.  What about a modular approach to sidewalk construction? In fact they have tiled sidewalks in BA.  Unfortunately the tiles are not maintained to any standard.  They appear to be the responsibility of the property owner whose edifice they front which means that they are well or poorly maintained or entirely fucked over.  They rise, drop or shift subtly in height to confound people such as I.  So standards would be important –  and frost is a huge consideration in Canada whereas it is not in this part of Argentina.  But a modular sidewalk would, hypothetically, provide a more consistent, more replaceable, manipulable surface – they could even be designed to be rougher on slopes and smoother on flats. In Tokyo there are little rows of flat pimples on yellow tiles that are inserted like marquetry along the perfect, graphite grey, gum-free asphalt sidewalks.  I couldn’t figure out what they were for until I recognized that they were integrated with the crosswalks and even in malls where they led to washroom facilities and emergency stations that had motion-activated automatic recorded information.  They were ‘trail-braille’ for visually impaired.  Now that is a country that pays a lot of attention to design.  Should I reprise my ‘Ode to a Bidet’?  Not now, but man the Japanese think a lot about functions!  All kinds of functions.  Recently Sophie read a report to me that Japanese women would prefer to order fresh meat from a machine because it is uncomfortable talking to a human about meat.  Talk about sensitive!  Let’s go ROBOTS! “Piece of rump roast please”, or ‘PRESS A4’.

I often used to be inspired to conceive of simple ways of improving things. I remember visiting my beloved Auntie Gen in the seniors home just before she passed.  I was horrified by how almost everything in that place was poorly designed for an infirm person.  Not only the physical design of the place but proportions, colours, surfaces, textures, acoustics  – doorknobs, doors, taps, faucets, showers, tubs, handrails, lighting, clothing – it goes on.  How was it possible that nobody was paying attention to those things?  What would it take to improve them? I recognize that there is much more attention being paid these days to many of those issues. But nowadays I am constantly, literally, overwhelmed by the ‘problems; that need to be addressed. Once one has been whelmed, one is very sensitive to being under and over the whelm.  It’s nautical.

I have great hope for open-source culture and for 3D printing – particularly for prototyping.  I believe those two aspects of modern technology alone will provide huge gains in the way we engage with the man-made.  Lower cost and greater efficacy will be driven rapidly by sharing and testing new ideas instantaneously. BTW – in addition to cheap 3D printers we need good, cheap, high resolution 3D scanners. Secretly I am also pretty excited about robots – because they will reduce a huge amount of human suffering. It might be impolitic to be pro-robot because they will certainly put a LOT of humans out of semi-skilled and menial work.  I’m totally for robots keeping our subway platforms and passageways clean. I love Evan’s little roomba – kluge on a scrub brush and some gum-dissolving GM bacteria and let ‘er rip! And, if you robots are already listening and watching – hey! I’m all about recognizing the rights of robots.  I’m ready to negotiate. Iamnotarobot.

Our Colleges and Universities are not, in my opinion, accepting the mantle of responsibility in DESIGNING  good courseware that will provide knowledge and skills to Canadian students for exploiting the new and emerging technologies.  Integrated study in human factors (ergonomics), product design and 3D modelling should be curriculum in every post-secondary institution.  Design in general is embarrassingly poorly taught in Canada.  We should be a country of great designers – we have that wonderful Nordic gene stuff – from the Danes and Finns – Poles, Germans and French all have emigrated in droves to our shores – their native design is remarkable in so many ways.  First nations people came up with some pretty wonderful design.  The tipi and igloo are amazingly beautiful and appropriate expressions of materials and environmental dictates.  Their decorative traditions are pretty amazing too. Where are our fantastic design heroes given this endowment? We don’t celebrate and revere great designers like the French, Spanish, Japanese do.  Take a designer to lunch today.

There is a plethora of design problems that want to be addressed.  I’ve no doubt that there are at least two plethorae. Look around you. If you have designer DNA – and every human does though many don’t express it – you can probably conceive of how many objects and devices in your immediate environment could be made to be more accessible, simpler to operate, more ‘tuned’ to your needs; smarter, more supportive.  Almost everything is possible these days with the possible exception of time-travel and getting a good piece of cheese at a moment’s notice.  I hesitate to kvetch about being unable to get a reasonably good bottle of Malbec in Ontario because I am (farily) confident that our enlightened Premier will soon license corner stores.  Rise up!  Vote for a politician who will put more energy into better design practices and more accessible wine.  Because All Problems are Design Problems. 

In fact we could start by designing a better political system in Canada.  Let’s overhaul the Senate – make it elected or perhaps consensual. Let’s insist on lots more oversight and real teeth in Government.  Let’s outlaw omnibus bullshit and allow maximum two terms as Prime Minister. Ooops.  No more politics.

Amendment of public facilities and wayfinding (signage both explicit and implicit) should be crowdsourced.  Together we could all improve and smooth most aspects of living if we could contribute, like water smoothing stone, to making iterative adjustments in the design of all things. Do you know that they are experimenting with slime moulds – using them to design maximum efficiency in integrated circuit and highway design?  The moulds choose the path of least resistance but can also be ‘programmed’ to observe topography and geography – even geopolitical borders. Crowdsourcing could be like that. Check it out.

One last thought.  Think of one thing that bugs you and DESIGN a better form of it (in words or as a drawing).  Send it to me.  We’ll start a list.  There is a company I am working with (3D printer manufacturer) that is interested in helping to develop products that promote a better designed living experience.  If there is merit in it perhaps I can get the idea in front of a student designer at OCADU or Seneca, where I have contacts.

Note: All ideas will be open-source therefore free to any and all interested parties so no one will profit monetarily, only through betterment of living and social amelioration.

Back to Buenos in my next rant!