Stuck?
Can’t quite figure out the complexities of the 21st Century?
Well…
Have you tried trying harder? Didn’t work, did it? Never will. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
So…
Stop digging. Seriously. It’s a waste of time and energy.
Now, connect, relate and reframe what it is you were doing and everything might just work out fine. But it won’t work out fine all by itself. So get on it!
Getting better at whatever it is you’ve been doing for years is not the answer. That will only make you more efficient in being unsuccessful. Tinkering with the form of what you do is useless. It’s what you do that matters and it’s time to start doing different things. Different things. It sounds scary, and it is, to be honest, a leap of faith, but it can be a leap of faith into something you do believe in, so don’t be afraid. It’s also fun, and, in the end, very rewarding.
Forget ‘how’, it’s ‘why’ that matters. Why do you do whatever it is that you do? And are there other ways, more networked ways of doing that? What kind of difference do you want to make? Who else is trying the same thing? How can you collaborate? Those are questions that will give you a new perspective on who you are and what you contribute to the networked world around you.
We call it reframing: learning to think about yourself and about the world from new perspectives and then you can figure out what those new perspectives mean in practice. In your practice. Which will probably be a new practice, but at least you will understand what needs to be done.
It’s all about a sense of purpose, and we want to try to help you find it. Once you open up to the idea, it will be very inspiring. Promise!
Welcome to the world of lifeworlds. It’s where we live, where we do what it is that we do. Our lifeworld is where we are, what we do there, and how we think and feel about it. It is where we actually feel alive if all is well, and where we feel miserable when things don’t work out.
We are always somewhere, doing something, thinking actual thoughts, feeling actual feelings. The world never ceases to surprise us, and at the same time, who we are, what we know and what we believe in, plays a crucial role in how we interpret that world in the first place.
Yes, more often than not, lifeworlds are messy places, where what seemed to make sense when we were planning, actually doesn’t, and where we find ourselves doing things we never anticipated.
We believe that it is absolutely vital to understand people’s lifeworlds when designing or transforming systems. This requires deep and subtle analysis, and emotional empathy at the same time. To know and to feel what someone experiences when they are involved in an activity makes it easier to design something that relates to that activity.
We have been working in different fields of design for businesses and for the public sector, but with a shared interest in human meaning and in the way design can make our lives more meaningful. Our ideas and insights about reframing and design come from our practices in design and in teaching. We also think a lot about what we do and we want to share some of that thinking with you here.
Your mind is your most powerful instrument. It is a knife that can cut through noise to reveal beauty and meaning, and it’s never too sharp.
Think sharper. It’s fun and it works.
It is also the primary focus here: to help you think—about meaning, about people, about value and values, about issues you or your organisation wants to deal with, and how to use all that thinking to develop new ideas for interventions and designs that will make a difference.
Good artists and designers do not—we repeat: DO NOT—brainstorm. They think, and feel. About what their challenges are about. That’s the ‘why’ focus. There are many resources that can help you implement change (there’s even a discipline called ‘change management’ that is all about that), but it all starts with how you think about what you’re doing and what you should do. Framing. It even comes before creative imagination, because it formulates the question that your imagination can answer. And it turns out that thinking about values, meaning, and how people experience their lives, is a good way to start.
Here, we want to offer insights, methods, techniques, examples and inspiring people, to help you think. Enjoy!