Let's Get Physical

First, allow me to state the obvious.

The digital world is here, and it is here to stay. It will continue to grow and permeate every nook and cranny of our millennia-long analog life. It will force us to reframe our comfort zones, and challenge us with new ways of viewing our world. With that said, I must admit that I am one of those people who is totally fine with technology’s role in this new life. I love the inherent “magic” technology delivers as it instantly converts the invisible ones and zeros into photographs of our loved ones half a world away, or into songs that bring back nostalgic memories. I also love the near obsessive-compulsive organizational abilities technology provides, as it attempts to help us manage our insanely empirical schedules and enable us to poetically update our Facebook status, at any time from almost anywhere.

However. Dramatic pause.

Despite popular belief, we are still, thankfully, human beings—and the delectably beautiful part of being is experiencing life multi-dimensionally. It is this very multidimensionality that gives us the proverbial feeling of being connected with the universe as a whole, the feeling of being a part of a larger system—the feeling of purpose and meaning. As an example, as satisfying it is to listen to our favorite band over and over on our iPods, nothing can replace the experience of seeing a band play live. The live performance allows us to witness, in subconscious awe, several individuals performing seemingly different things while literally creating harmony out of chaos. The experience is near spiritual: the contortions the drummer has to make to hit the right beat, the rapid otherworldly-speed of the guitar player’s fingers plucking the strings, the effortless voice of the lead singer as he or she celestially replicates the song we have heard on repeat so many times before.
The performance is multidimensional because we are there with others, sharing the same experience, breathing the same air, bobbing our heads to the beat of the music, and in some cases singing along in unison. As the music transports us through our individual and personal memories and daydreams, turning eons into nanoseconds, we absorb the energy of the sound and of the environment that encapsulates everything into one multifaceted, multidimensional experience.

So what does any of this have to do with design?

If design wants to change the world as much as it struts around claiming it will, design will have to start becoming more multidimensional and more immersive in the palpable life. As technology enables us to do things better and faster, it is also unintentionally divorcing the designer further and further from the multidimensional world he or she is designing for. What used to be a trip to New York or to a local manufacturer is now only a Google Image Search away. As invaluable, liberating and efficient that can be for inspiration and reference--the systematic problems that face our societies, inside and outside the typical design realms, cannot and will not be solved by designers sitting in cushy offices, clicking away in front of the sterile glow of their computers. Nor will these problems be solved by cookie-cutter research assignments that deliver pretty charts and synthesized analysis.

Designers, as naturally empathic creatures, can only solve these problems by experiencing things firsthand and becoming totally immersed in our physical world. From a gallery opening to a visit to a local shelter, and everything in between, any designer worth his or her salt should continuously and ravenously scavenge the planet, collecting, learning and sharing from their experiences. Seeing images of the polluted basin of the Los Angeles river is one thing, actually helping clean it up, while enduring the putrid smells of the rotting wood, used clothing, rancid decomposing food and human excrement is quite another. Only through such immersive, multidimensional moments can epiphany strike and a realization of “a better way” be revealed. This is the power of design and what a skilled and passionate designer can deliver. By leveraging our intuition, empathy and ability to turn our own ones and zeroes into real-world meaningful solutions we deliver our own magic that, too, can and will change the world in which we live—for the better.