Tsunami-surfing At the Edge of Tomorrow
Of course, like many others, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what lessons, if any, we can take from the pandemic and its effect on the way we live and work. In looking at any particular event and what it might mean for the future, it’s often useful to think in terms of primary, secondary, and tertiary implications. And while this sort of exercise is always difficult, particularly as we move further away from the present, and a world that we kinda-sorta understand, in this instance it’s particularly so. I’ve come up with a metaphor that I think captures the complexity of the task in front of us, and particularly clarifies the sort of skills and approaches we’ll need to do good design in the future.
Imagine a perfectly still pond, and from somewhere, a single drop of water falls into the pond. What happens? There is the spot where the water hits the pond, and then moving out and away from that spot are a series of concentric circles. Almost everything about them appears to be predictable. We can measure length, amplitude, surface tension—all that stuff most of us vaguely remember from school. The problem comes with rocks, tree trunks, ducks, maybe even an early morning swimmer out to get her two miles in before heading back to the home office. Each of these can disrupt, reshape, redirect, or cancel-out the legacy of that one drop of water.
That is basically what we have in the world most of the time when it comes to doing deep trend research, business planning, and strategic development. That’s not what we have now. What we have now is a rock and tree stump strewn eddy—a favorite of a flock of waterpolo-playing ducks—at the side of a fast-moving river. In a hailstorm.
We’ve known for a while what makes up this hailstorm of our nightmares—climate change, spiraling levels of economic inequality, social instability, and resource poverty to name a few of the biggies. Now we have to come to terms with an additional ball of stinging ice: a virus that may or may not be controllable, that regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of truthiness, is manifestly changing our personal and collective lives. And, not in a good way.
We’re moving into a world whose shape is utterly unpredictable, where ripples are likely to be indistinguishable from waves and waves from tsunamis, and froth is everywhere. Where we will be called on to respond quickly and will strive to anticipate—even if just—where things might be going. This isn’t, of course, all that different from how many of us have always done our work at the edge of tomorrow. What is, is the strength of the storm—the combined energies of its components.
Business as usual, design as usual are death sentences. So is a return to normal. We’ve not had normal or usual for a long time, even if we’ve been successfully fooling ourselves and our clients into thinking we have. To weather the present and thrive in the future is going to require a sort of resiliency and imagination that will tax the smartest of us, and destroy the stupidest.
The opportunity, of course, is tremendous. At PARE, we’re relying on the diversity of approaches and perspectives available in our team, a think deep design slow process that seeks quintessentially human-oriented results, and an unwavering, unblinking commitment to see what’s right in front of us. What are you doing?
—Peter
