Making Better

Editor's Notes

1. I'm interested in better. And so are all of you, else you wouldn ’ t do what you do. "Better" is a question I try and live personally and professionally. Along the way I ’ ve come to wonder: how come my version of “ better ” is so different from the solutions or apps I design to make people ’ s live “ better ” ? Perhaps these contexts aren ’ t comparable. My experience likely nothing has to do with what a group of users might need, right? But users are people too. I want to see the diff between my human experience and the human-centered experiences I try to design.
2. We get to help make things that people use. Our criteria for success is often making people ’ s lives better. Maybe the business proposition itself is about making lives better. Maybe the business proposition is about making some bankers' lives better, but we still have a responsibility to engage people on their level of experience. Because if they don't feel it's making something better, no one will bother using it. The higher the level we work at, the greater the impact it has. More impact on a proposition level than on task level.
3. I ’ m also interested in making my day-to-day life better and exploring what it means to be a better human being. I ’ ve experimented with different approaches and experience varying levels of success failure. I ’ ve evolved a set of values that have definitely made my life better. Kind of like design outcome. Expect more impact the deeper you go rather than the wider you go.
4. The drive to constantly optimise comes from stunning technological breakthroughs. As these limits fall away, our human ones do as well. It ’ s pretty magical to be able to translate a conversation on the fly or orient yourself in a foreign landscape.That drive to transcend limits is what underlies our current cultural beliefs about technology. Tech-driven solution thrive on the assumptions that: Progress is inevitable Technology is always the best solution Everything is measurable
5. If "better" means more convenient services, increased efficiency and more data faster, then "good" must equal convenience, efficiency, measurability and speed. This ’ s a blurring between a set of approaches and set of values. I ’ ll tell you my experience of that.
6. I figured a better life was something I could have and it meant better habits. More fit less fat, more productive less waste. I read endless productivity blogs, I consulted with friends, I experimented. I tracked what I ate, logged how I used my time, scheduled around core commitments, made lists, made spreadsheets and downloaded more productivity apps. I'd exercise more, eat better, see who I wanted and get more done. But I'd never be satisfied. I could always do better, do more, use my time better. If I slipped up it would feel like a personal failure. And if I did well better was always still out of reach. I was more productive but less resilient. When something changed or I fell sick - basically when life happened - I felt pressure to get back on top of it all. I'd eventually lose touch with why I was doing it in the first place.
7. The problem? The means became the end. Being more productive could help make time for what I cared about, but it didn ’ t add more meaning to my life in itself. My values are not to be more productive. My values are better lived out if I use my time productively. Big difference.
8. There ’ s how things are and how we want things to be. It ’ s hard to be a better human when these never seem to be the same thing. It ’ s why we want to make things better. And that involves changing something. Usually changing how things are to how we ’ d like them to be. All the techniques I used were basically to change A to B in the belief it would make my life better. Sometimes you can change things to suit you. But when you can ’ t, what do you do?
9. When I was in touch with the underlying desire for making my life better, I realised it was quite simple: I wanted to live a meaningful life where I stayed in touch with a sense of purpose. As in all design processes, changing the frame of the problem opened up different solutions. I didn ’ t have to be attached to any one tool and it could change day to day. It could mean keeping a schedule one day or tossing it out another. And better happened when I used those tools in service of making this a two-way conversation. We ’ re obsessed with changing the world. It ’ s a chaotic place and that ’ s what our tools help us deal with. But sometimes it ’ s about changing the world, other times it ’ s about allowing the world to change you.
10. Better has come to mean more good. That is, more of what is desirable and virtuous. The root word from the old english bot actually has a different meaning: "remedy, relief, reparation." I like that way more. It feels closer to my experience - healing the rift between you and the world. Balancing listening and doing helps heal the rift between things as they are and things as I want them to be. That's how better emerged for me.
11. Similar process of changing frame of problem, addressing it, failing and succeeding, trying again. Practice basically. They're similar processes with different outcomes of 'better' - That's kind of the opposite of how I make things better in my work, which is about helping save time, not savour it, gratification not gratitude, planning not presence, control not compassion. It's an interesting tension for me.
12. But actually I prefer no to see them in opposition. Because then I set up the same problem of trying to leave A to get to B, when both are part of list and my circumstances. So it ’ s more about finding the relationship between these than pitting them against each other. One column is the how, the other the why.
13. So this is what I ’ ve learned. This is what ’ s made my human experience better.
14. Our personas are ‘ time-poor ’ and ‘ gadget hungry ’ , they want a more ‘ convenient experience ’ that also happens to feel ‘ tailored and personalised ’ . Is that really what they want? When we see human desires through the lens of technological solutions, we ’ ll only see problems we know how to design for. It may be those desires are perfectly appropriate to the context we ’ re designing for—a banking application should just be quicker, more accurate and offer more control. What would happen though if we were to shift the frame and design for a different set of desires? What if we were to design for the underlying desires, maybe one where money is in service to one ’ s values and way of living?
15. Value your own experience. We have to be both detached and empathetic in our work. But we can ’ t do “ human centered ” without caring about what human is - for us, as us. Helping someone access more information quicker doesn ’ t mean we “ fixed ” the problem of them feeling closer to someone. And if that ’ s not the problem we ’ re addressing, let ’ s not pretend it is - paying attention to your experience means you ’ ll know the difference. Tech-driven imperative are all about production - making and delivering. Design is equally about thinking and making and shouldn't be hijacked by the tech imperative. Can our thinking be open enough to encompass the idea that sometimes there shouldn't be a tech solution? Because if our thinking is big enough to accommodate that, it's big enough to find problems and offer us tools we can't even see now. Making things more convenient and efficient is great. It can also help make space for deeper commitments to better living. But it ’ s important not to confuse the tool and the problem, or the effect and the outcome. As long as we remember the difference there ’ s room to design many more experiences of “ better. ”