A conversation with Jim Scott, Director of Design Innovation at RE/SPEC
“Design is an artifact, it’s a thing, I believe it’s also a process. I find that there’s not a strong tie to people expressing and trying to describe the essence of the problem. To ask that question, ‘What is the essence of the problem we’re trying to solve here?’ There’s something deeper there and I think that’s somewhat been lost.” -Jim Scott
In this episode of Control the Room, Jim Scott and I examine the multi-layered career of design. We discuss the benefits of implementing the macro & micro exercise, along with the complex elements the public sector faces surrounding design. He then challenges the lack of diversity the design industry faces and the opportunity designers should embrace to create a career built-in diversity across all industries. Listen in to hear Jim reveal his innovative journey to design as he continues his pursuit to lead with adventure and diversity in all aspects of his design endeavors.
Show Highlights
[1:41] Jim’s Journey in Design Innovation
[9:12] The Macro/Micro Perspective
[17:28] Design Work in the Public Sector
[30:04] The Challenging Aspects of Design
[43:10] Jim’s Final Expressions
Links | Resources
About the Guest
Jim Scott is the Director of Design Innovation at RE/SPEC, a global leader with a specialty in geoscience and integrated design technologies for many leading industry sectors. Jim considers himself a passionate technology leader with over 15 years of experience managing business and technology efforts for teams, large and small. As an accomplished professional with an aptitude for translating high-level business, Jim’s main objectives strive to produce completed development goals. While collaborating and coaching diverse engineering teams with aggressive deadlines, Jim thrives to inspire his teams through the pursuit of seeking an adventurous career in design. Jim’s passion has always remained rooted in technologies that excite, inspire, and become indistinguishable from magic. In 2019, he was one of the few esteemed recipients of the RESPEC Collaboration Award, an award that recognizes performance across all boundaries to work collaboratively.
About Voltage Control
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Full Transcript
Douglas:
Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control and others are loose. To control the room, means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.
Douglas:
Thanks for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our weekly Control the Room facilitation lab. It’s a free event to meet fellow facilitators and explore new techniques, so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast, in real-time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. If you’d like to learn more about my new book, Magical Meetings, you can download the Magical Meetings Quick Start Guide, your free PDF reference with some of the most important pieces of advice from the book. Download a copy today at voltagecontrol.com/magical-meetings-quick-guide.
Douglas:
Today I’m with Jim Scott. Jim is the Director of Design Innovation at Respect, where he specializes in innovating mission-critical solutions that enhance client success. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed multiple collaborations with Jim, bringing design sprint methods in the public sector organizations with natural resource-oriented missions. Welcome to the show, Jim.
Jim Scott:
Hey, Douglas. Great to be with you.
Douglas:
So Jim, let’s get started, just hearing a little bit about how you found your way to being a Design Innovation Director at Respec.. How did you start off your career that landed you in this really interesting role to support innovation through a design lens?
Jim Scott:
Well, the origin, I guess goes way back. I’m one of those lucky people I would say, that had an idea about what I wanted to do with my, I guess I’d call it business life, at a very young age, so basically high school. And the opportunity came about because I’ve had the ability to go spend a lot of time in nature and outdoors and farms and all, and I always was exposed to the wonder of the environment. And so when I began to explore what I might do to apply my interest in that topic, I actually came across articles in the Washington Post by the Dean of the School of Professional Design at the University of Georgia who talked about landscape architecture as a profession.
Jim Scott:
And I realized, you could actually get a job thinking and learning about the environment in a creative way, and that there was a pathway to a profession that was laid out for that. So I applied to a couple of schools but that message from that Dean just rang very deeply with me. So I said, “I’m just going to go there and go to that program.” So that’s how I got oriented to design as a concept, but it really wasn’t until I arrived there, that I was fortunately exposed to a diversity of thought and practice by landscape architects, architects, engineers, artists, other types of people. So I was fortunate that I was given an appreciation for design as a very broad area for creativity, solving problems, understanding the environment and how to work with people.
Douglas:
That’s really fascinating, this notion of learning to appreciate diversity and how it can be just a fountain of merging ideas. And while the process can often serve us, if we don’t have that foundation of diversity of thought, we can often be stifled or miss the bigger picture. So that’s really interesting that some of the early formative days for you, made that real crystal clear.
Jim Scott:
Well, one thing I will say is, I was lucky because my parents brought me up with as minimal exposure to what prejudice would be, as possible. I was a very privileged young man growing up in Northern Virginia, pretty privileged geography. But I had a very, I would call it, a progressive household that I was brought up in, where life was a spectrum of opportunities and choices and realities, both good and bad. And the people that I would encounter through that environment were very, very positive. So, I owe all that to my parents.
Douglas:
So coming back to the schooling and the lessons you learned in design, were there any memories that you have that were pivotal as far as understanding some of the underpinnings, I guess maybe, philosophies or the maybe structural or process elements that really make design work?
Jim Scott:
Yeah, there’s a few things. So one was just the structure of the classes, was very unusual, very much a critique-oriented studio environment, where it was small classes. People were given a design problem. There was some introduction by the professor or whatever the topic was, but then you had to go create your own thing and then you presented it to the group and you had to get up and present why it was achieving, whatever the problem statement was. And you had to provide a basis and a logic for it and you had to defend it. And it was quite a liberating approach because I can recall instances where things I put up on the wall were very crude and not refined, in terms of their execution, but I had thought about them a lot.
Jim Scott:
And I was appreciative of professors that would, in those cases, say, “You’ve been able to address the problem well.” And as well as other people who are a lot more talented than I was, who had beautiful designs on the wall, but there was an appreciation for the thinking that went behind the reasoning of what I came up with. So that was liberating at that point. And then there was a lot of specific exercises that were very enlightening. A lot of practices, in today, you learn… I had a professor named Mike Wall who introduced what he called, the why chain wall. So everything was why. So we went through that whole exercise, that really caused everyone to think more deeply about pursuit of those answers. So that was all good.
Jim Scott:
But even, I had a professor who was a painter who went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Design there. And we go out on these field trips and do studies, one of the exercises was called macro to micro. So we’d go out into a field and sketch a landscape and we would go halfway to the subject of that landscape and sketch it again and then we’d go further and further. So each time we did a sketch, we had more detail of what was going on.
Jim Scott:
So that whole experience taught us the concept of scale and the concept of how at the deepest levels of details, down to actually putting your face, staring into the ground and looking at pine needles in a pine forest that textures the colors, all of the things that made up that sketch that you were doing, could be tied back to the macro scale of when you saw that from a distance. So that whole macro to micro thinking, I thought useful, as I’ve been able to approach things as a professional.
Douglas:
It reminds me of the importance of observation and how often our thoughts, our ambitions, our goals, our tasks, our to-do’s get in the way of taking a moment to observe. And I was reminded of this over the weekend actually. I had a friend over who is an artist and there’s a bug on the outside of my door, my door is a glass door and there was katydid, any of you Texans will know what a katydid is, anyone else can Google it. And it was hanging out on the exterior glass, but you can kind of see its underbelly, so we had a really interesting little view of this crazy insect.
Douglas:
And my artist friend was checking it out and he said, “Check out his feet.” And I looked really close at his feet and the feet of a katydid is quite impressive. It looks like a fractal and I never noticed this before. Just an artist, someone who’s used to really dissecting things and capturing the essence of what things are, he went straight into, “Let me examine this thing.” So I loved your story about the macro to micro because these observations matter and especially in a design sprint, and other workshops, we’re sharing analogous inspiration. Well, if you’re not observing things, then you can’t make that move. You’re not going to have examples in your back pocket to pull out, because if you haven’t been observing, then there’s nothing to remember to share.
Jim Scott:
Yeah. That’s very true. And I find that today, even in reviewing the kinds of design sprint processes or design projects that I get involved in. And that’s something I always think about and try to pursue, which is, whether it’s user experience or the user interface that someone has prototyped or built, does it really reflect the details behind the thinking, even the practices of the components that built that thing from the ground up, from that sort of the atomic level? Are those things expressed there, as they should be, to be holistically expressed at the top level?
Douglas:
Yeah. It almost comes back to the fractal and feet, right?
Jim Scott:
Yeah.
Douglas:
So the micro and the macro need to resemble each other. Definitely, at least there needs to be a thread of connecting them.
Jim Scott:
Absolutely. Well, you brought up another term, another area that I was exposed to in school, which is the essence. And that’s another thing that I find somewhat intermittent, in terms of just regular discussion these days, around design. And in design, as I have experienced it recently, it’s an artifact, it’s a thing, I believe it’s also a process. Of course, there’s many different definitions. But I find that there’s not a strong tie to people expressing and trying to describe the essence of the problem. There’s a way, of course, to prototype almost anything and produce a product. But to ask that question, “What is the essence of the problem we’re trying to solve here?” That’s even beyond just what the user needs, there’s something deeper there and I think that’s somewhat been lost.
Douglas:
I agree. And I think you can even take this notion of essence and apply it almost to anything. Right? Because we could say, what is the essence of this prototype we’re building? And we can’t articulate that unless we understand what questions we’re trying to answer. Because otherwise, it might become amorphous and it might go down some strange paths that are unnecessary.
Jim Scott:
Well, and I think if you achieve it to a higher degree, it doesn’t need an explanation. It just, it is and you don’t need to talk about it. It’s intuitive, it taps into some, even I would call the mystical ideas around the human dimension of things. So, that’s always something, it’s probably impossible to achieve, but it’s always worth going after.
Douglas:
I think that’s spot on. I want to come back to something that you mentioned a little bit earlier around how your professors appreciated the thought, the real, I would say, fundamental design. And I think this is something that people struggle with a lot, whether we’re asking them to sketch during a design sprint, or we’re asking them to be… I’ve heard so many people tell me, “Oh, I’m not creative, or I can never be that creative.” And it is a muscle that requires some practice also, we have to give people permission and the courage to do it because a lot of people are free to do that stuff because it’s been beaten out of them since elementary school.
Douglas:
And I think that’s one of the reasons why they dub design, they put the thinking behind design, to come up with the term design thinking, to really point out that it’s not just about drawing pretty pictures and moving the pixels around. That we really have to put deep thought in this stuff and come up with concepts and solutions that really address the issue at hand, in a meaningful way. And I think that’s a really important distinction and that’s why some people pushed back on design thinking, because it’s like, “Well, design is about thinking.” So I’d love to hear you elaborate on that a little more, just because you mentioned the professors appreciating that, this notion of going deeper and it wasn’t just about how well it was executed? Are your circles perfectly circled and are they shaded beautifully and all this?
Jim Scott:
Well, some of that I think ties to the design process as I was taught it, and it reflects the modern approach, I think to a degree, where there’s a question or a problem that needs to be solved and there is a commitment to try to understand that. And then there’s a data collection activity trying to understand the phenomenon that you’re dealing with. And then the first thing that we would do is come up with a conceptual design. So that begins to peel back into the underlying essence of things, what those fundamental relationships are, how do they interact? What are those critical kinds of connections that are more important than others that really influence whatever is you’re trying to do?
Jim Scott:
And then you go into a design development phase, but it’s early on. There are signals early on, whether or not you’re close to embracing and understanding the problem you’re trying to solve or the thing you’re trying to create and that can be done. That’s why I really love the prototype outcome from the classic design sprint or from the five-day design sprint because you should be able to achieve the essence of that in five days. And sure, it’s not a final product, but that to me, is the signal that, of course, the validation process helps provide clues to, but there should be something profound that comes through that process, that is achievable in those five days.
Jim Scott:
So that’s why design isn’t necessarily this long, complicated journey ultimately, to have it executed in its most beautiful fashion, that it’s going to deserve that time and effort thought that goes into it. But you should be able to capture that essence pretty early on. So the idea that in a design critique, someone could basically do a napkin sketch and they should be able to have that withstand the kind of scrutiny and challenge that someone from another point of view might have, to try to validate the original thinking around that.
Jim Scott:
So, I think that provides, it’s kind of liberating that way, to give people that sense of, you can come up with this idea and you don’t have to be credentialed or have a bunch of experience, but if you have a desire to understand the needs of the problem and how to address them, that’s why it’s very democratizing I think, in this process. And that’s what I’ve loved about the work that we’ve done together because we’ve gone into organizations that people clearly expressed that they’re a chemist or a watershed model and they’ve never even thought about being a designer. But in fact, they really are, if you really tap into what they’re trying to do. So, I think that’s been part of the fun of this stuff is to share the practice and the thought process is, and how transportable they really are into different domains.
Douglas:
Yeah. It’s pretty amazing to see the folks that are highly trained in some field that you would not necessarily be associate with design, they’re mathematicians, hydrologists, creating very complicated models, they’re renowned in their field. And then they had the courage to come and say, “What we did in that week was provocative. It got me thinking differently. I’m going to come attend a training.” So we’ve had folks, we’ve had PhDs come and attend training so that they could take the stuff back to their teams. And even in small, little shifts in the way they work, and I think that’s pretty profound. And it speaks to something we were talking about in the pre-show chat around public sector in general, and how they’re starved for design, I think was your word. I often say underserved, they don’t necessarily get all the attention.
Douglas:
And I think to me, it’s fascinating because on some levels it’s more difficult because the gaps are wider. So, there’s a larger gap to bridge, but when you do, it’s so rewarding. And when it clicks, people are really appreciative because you’ve kind of presented a whole new way of working and a whole new way of thinking and opened up doors they never would have imagined. So anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts or even stories around some of this public sector work and how the work that you’re doing at Respect, or even some of the stuff we’ve done together, create shifts for some of these public sector folks.
Jim Scott:
Yeah. So I’ve found that it’s always useful, people find it useful sometimes to distinguish between the public sector and private sector. I’ve had the privilege of working in the public sector for a number of years to complement my private sector work. So maybe I’m just tuned into that idea, that there’s more similarities than there are differences. But the challenges and the commitment that people in the public sector have to provide service and to make a difference, they’re culturally ready to embrace creative ways to make places and people and systems better. So I’d say, that by and large is true. And so there is a ripeness, in terms of how ready they are, I think, to open up, but there’s always risk.
Jim Scott:
Whether it’s institutional risk or bureaucratic risk or whatever it might be, there’s a little bit of hesitancy there. And so that’s where it has been extremely rewarding to show up, give somebody a contained experience, that there’s a cost on it, it’s this amount of dollars, it’s this amount of time, this is what you should expect as the outcome. So it takes away that fear of the unknown, which when you think about all the work that gets done, particularly in the transformational technology era that we’re in, at least that’s how it’s generally categorized. There’s risk everywhere.
Jim Scott:
So that’s what I think has been shared with these client experiences is, they want to be operating differently. There’s an expectation, it taps into their consumers, social media world. They can bank online, but they can’t fill out a form online? So there’s a certain amount of desire to bring what they experience in these other domains and why not make that a part of how public service can be delivered. And I think that’s the really cool thing about today’s digital technologies, is those inertias and barriers to making that come true, are diminishing. It’s now possible to show up with this practice and actually go and take these digital assets and turn them into a solution that is achievable for a budget that’s going to be reasonable. It’s going to fit into the same paradigm that it would need to.
Jim Scott:
So that’s the big level, I think, as far as people are ready for it, and there’s that challenge to, how do we deliver better services? And so it’s a creative process. So I think we’ve been able to deliver that experience for them. And there was one experience that you and I were involved in, dealing with the executive director of a natural resource agency in the Midwest. And there was some skepticism around what we were doing. And I would call it a well-valued proposition, but it was out of the norm for them. That’s the hard part. Right? How do you get people to actually commit public dollars, the public trust, to doing something differently that has a need for generating a tangible outcome, that’s going to deliver that value?
Jim Scott:
So at the end of that whole experience, the executive director comes up to me, pulls me aside and says, “I knew this was going to work, but I didn’t realize how you were going to be able to get my five different groups through their organizational reinforcements operate differently. And now you have broken down all of their methods and cultural barriers. And you got them to work together, so easily, so effortlessly, to come up with this composite solution. Because now they understand what each other party needs and why they need it. So now there’s this shared empathy.”
Jim Scott:
So this is beyond just breaking down silos. It’s really creating another level of empathy across organizations, so that people who aren’t normally conditioned to understand those people down the hall or over in the other building. Now, they’re forced into coming to grips with that in a very positive way and go, “Wow, if this makes my job better, can it make their job better?” And then it creates that dual reinforcement, which it’ll be interesting to go back in time and see how much of that has lasted, which is an open question in many of these experiences. We get a lot of positive around the outcome of these design sprints and what we implement, the big test is, what’s it going to be like 5 years, 10 years from now? How much of that can persist through the organization, through time? That’s a big challenge.
Douglas:
Yeah. There’s a lot of inertia and things tend to regress to the mean, if you will. I think the organizations that are most successful are the ones that want to invest in the long haul. And honestly, it’s generally tied to leadership’s ability to realize that these ways of working aren’t the risky proposition, that the risk is another phenomenon that’s coming at them because the more and more complex things get, right?
Jim Scott:
Yeah.
Douglas:
Then the risk just keeps coming at us. And these approaches are de-risking mechanisms. The leaders that are starting to realize that and embrace that, are the ones that are starting to not only work in this way, but also bringing in coaching, bring in extra touchpoints where they can stay sharp. Because at the end of the day, it’s one thing when you have an outside facilitator come in and run something like this and light the light bulbs off and get everyone really aligned, but then model alignment creeps in, collaborative dysfunction creeps in and when people are faced with scenarios that are a little bit different, they’re like, “Well, how do I address this? How does this model fit into this situation?”
Douglas:
And that’s where having a coach or someone to guide you, CISCO, not public sector, but a great example of this. They created something they called the Change Lab because they’re wanting to change the way they work. And so Change Lab is a weekly, little community practice around these new techniques and they get together and coach each other, it’s a peer-led function. And they brought us in periodically to be guests in Change Lab to help and mentor and coach, just so that the focus stays there. So I think to your point, it’s sort of like a garden. If we go on and work on the garden, we can get it in great shape. If we leave it for a couple of years, it’s not going to necessarily be the results we might be looking for. So it does require some tending and some forethought on how to do that.
Jim Scott:
I think that really ties into the… I need to embrace that more and try to help people understand that this is beyond just a one-time experience that creates and delivers this prototype and all the other things that come downstream of that. But I think you hit it well, when you talked about, it’s a leadership responsibility and finding those leaders who can embrace this and make it part of the organizational long-term. And that can even flow into services that tend to be, we tend to go into projects that have a very specific need and we solve that problem. And I think what we’re talking about here, is organizations need to create an opportunity for these renewal kinds of investments made around the thinking, the practice, the cultural validation of this approach, as it would need to change over time, anyway.
Jim Scott:
So I don’t know how that gets institutionally accepted or adopted. Getting back to the public sectors, there’s all kinds of training, budgets that agencies maintain for individual certifications and things. And I think that’s where, this is an area that any organization probably should consider or think about, “How can we look at collaborative investments that are going to reinforce and strengthen this mission that we’re now on, to help build and bring this value?” Because there are all kinds of parameters to now consider. If we can demonstrate that it does de-risk our work, it takes away uncertainty, it creates all these other things. Those need to be almost performance indicators that say, “This is why we do this.” And give leadership a very clear story to say, “This is why we make these investments because they’re doing the following things.”
Jim Scott:
So ultimately, it needs to go into procurements, an easy button for people to say, “We need more of this stuff. This is what we need. This formula, these combinations, and this is the annual checkup.” Or whatever that long-term strategy is. But I think there is an opportunity to go beyond these design sprints, as experiments, as validations, and to the degree that they provide that value and demonstrate it. Then how you had that conversation about making it a part of a longer-term strategy for an organization, regardless of the detailed projects you do, is a good thing to pursue.
Douglas:
100% and it comes back to your point around, these groups often require interdisciplinary cross-organization collaboration and that’s quite a bit different than cross-functional. In a company where we’re talking about bringing a cross-functional team together, there might be some inertia on those teams around how their team leader or their department head has given them direction and guidance, and what their incentives and focus are, and that has to be shifted. But when you’re talking about different governmental or NGO, or local, federal organizations that have different regulations, different budgetary concerns, they’re trying to protect their situation and they’re coming into this collaboration thinking, “Well, how much can I really give?” Right?
Douglas:
So, they’re sizing up everything through this lens of, “What’s going to be the impact to us?” And so I think the structure design processes, where we do explore the art of the possible, and what’s the conceptual design before we worry too much about things like impact and who’s going to pay for this, et cetera. It really gets past that collaborative dysfunction, where everyone’s sizing each other up and thinking about, “Well, how’s this going to impact me?” And it’s more about, “How can we best serve the community or best serve the outcomes we’re seeking and then we can figure out how to make it work later.” And so anyway, I think that everything you’re mentioning makes a lot of sense and it underpins the need for this kind of work in the public sector, especially anything that might be cross-sector or cross-organization.
Jim Scott:
Well, that’s the real challenge. I mean, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but presenting the opportunities around the design projects that I’ve done, I won’t call it easy, but that’s just scratching the surface. The reason we do these things is for a higher purpose, I think, and for a desire to see everything become better. And we have to begin to find maybe more efficient ways and more effective ways to instill these values, these principles and have them tested and validated back to us, as to whether they’re going to take hold or not? And then if they erode or get changed or knocked off course, how do we adapt to keep them on track and provide that long-term value? So that’s the area that I like to think about because it’s hard and there’s nothing clear, there’s no silver bullet there, that’s for sure.
Douglas:
Absolutely. And speaking about no silver bullet, I think these processes themselves are just a mechanism for us to communicate some concepts and come together and get past some collaborative dysfunction and get to some forward momentum on a way of working together, a way of thinking about challenges and certainly should be scrutinized themselves from time to time. And in our pre-show chat, you were mentioning that you’ve noticed a little bit more scrutiny, or maybe a sense of challenge around design thinking, design sprints, design, as a discipline, where folks are pointing out that there are some considerations we need to make.
Jim Scott:
Yeah, I think that’s part of maybe the cycle of maturity of these practices in this modern context and the challenges that they face. Because when you take this kind of magic, if you will, and you put it into real-world situations… There’s a few articles I’ve seen recently about how there’s been challenges and issues around economic disparity, racial disparities, the lack of diversity being expressed as a part of the practice and the people driving this stuff. And all those critiques are super valid, in terms of expressing the challenges of our time in the use of design as a process. So, I’m one of these optimists from that standpoint, I think it’s an eternal thing, but we have to always tune and challenge ourselves to make sure that our work is in tune with the times.
Jim Scott:
And some of those effects might be fleeting, but some of those things, we need to be aware that they’re more lasting and we have to invest in those. So, I don’t know how we make that work as a part of the overall practice, but there’s always a knife-edge there. People can sell design as the shiny thing that people just need to have for all of its perceived virtues, but there are challenges to actually having it fulfill and express that essence of that solution. That I think ultimately, test whether it’s going to work or not, in whatever setting that it’s in.
Douglas:
It makes me think of a couple of things. One is, these startups that they just want to hire the UX designer and they’re going to sprinkle some design pixie dust, and everything’s going to be awesome. If we don’t make it part of strategy and we don’t invest in it and we don’t change the fabric of the way that we think, and the way we work, it’s not going to have an impact. And so it’s almost like tokenism, right? Maybe the impacts are not as severe, but it’s the same as like, “Oh, let’s just throw some design at that.” Versus really making design part of the DNA of the company.
Douglas:
And I think that’s really similar to this other issue, which is, if we are going to really invest in design strategy and bring forth solutions for diverse community and support everyone that might use this product or the service, we need to make sure we’re informed. And ideally, part of the design team, are going to be representative of the people that are going to use it. And I got a great story from a conference that I attended called, Culture Rati, a plug for Culture Rati, great, great conference. Anyone that’s interested in diversity, equity inclusion or anything, HR and culture-related, how we can design better experiences for our employees. Great, great conference.
Douglas:
But I was at a panel with the Head of Diversity from Target, and the Head of Diversity from Twitter, and they were both staying at a hotel here in Austin called South Congress Hotel. And they were pointing out how the shower was racially insensitive and it was very hilarious because they are very funny people. And just the idea that this inanimate object could be racially insensitive, but it’s not the object’s fault. It’s the person that designed it, which hearkens us back to the design of everyday things. Right? So, her point was, clearly there were no African-American people on the design team or they weren’t consulted, certainly, because this thing was not very friendly to the people who can’t get their hair wet frequently.
Douglas:
And so a really funny, an unfortunate story, but it really gets back to this card deck that I wanted to bring up when you mentioned this in our pre-show chat. I just had Leslie Anne Noel on the show recently, she’s got this awesome card deck called the designer’s critical alphabet. And there’s two cards in here that I think are really applicable here. One is the critical race theory. And the suggestion on this card is, “What if you had someone from a different race or background design or redesign this product or service, how would it be different?” So ideally we’re including them, but at the very least, we need to step back and use that as a heuristic.
Douglas:
What would be different if they designed it? And if we are drawing blanks, if we think it would not be different at all, then we probably need to do more our research because it means we don’t know. And in fact, we should probably be doing more research and including people regardless. And then assimilation is the pattern or trend of the majority basically engulfing the minority. So the cultures of the minority tend to fade in support of adopting the cultures of the majority. And I think that is something designers should fight against, to make sure we preserve the beauty of the minorities. And so I don’t necessarily think it’s the process, the scaffolding, but how it gets used. And I think the scaffolding is really an easy thing to attack. Right?
Douglas:
But as you know, if someone’s walking around with a hammer trying to hammer screws, it’s the person that’s wielding the hammer, it’s not the hammer’s fault. So I think that it’s really important that we step back and look at how we’re using these tools and not attack the tools and we might need to adopt the tools, as well. So anyway, I just wanted to share that because I had a lovely conversation with her about a month ago and would love to hear your thoughts on that, Jim? Because I know you’ve spent years in the design industry, have worked with a lot of different people, across a lot of different sectors and problems. How has this surfaced for you? And do you have any advice for listeners, around how we approach that?
Jim Scott:
Well, with that as a topic, I think I’m actually fascinated by that deck. I want to check that out and learn some more about that. Because what that reminds me of is going back to my education, I had an opportunity to be in a workshop with Christopher Alexander’s firm. And so you may know, Chris Alexander wrote, A Pattern Language, among other things, and there’s actually a great YouTube video of him speaking to the Object-oriented Programming Association or a group in San Francisco in 1996. So I’ve been a pattern person, in terms of, they made a huge impact on me and the idea of these patterns and when they try to express the essence of something, they’re universally transferrable and applicable to a degree, they need to be adapted to course, for local conditions.
Jim Scott:
But this whole idea that there’s higher levels of understanding that are portable and transportable, I think it seems as though there would be architectural patterns, there are social and cultural patterns. And I think that’s where maybe this concept of developing this vocabulary, this shared understanding of tuning into the times that we’re in and having modes of communication and methods that we apply that will give people hopefully, an ability to sense those things, and to be, “How do I not be insensitive? How do I be sensitive to the needs of the group I’m working with or whatever it is they’re requiring?”
Jim Scott:
So I think that’s one thing that occurs to me. I think we need more structures like that, that are shared very easily and communicated universally across the design professions. So whether that’s these decks of insights and issues that we need to be attuned to, but then how do we take that and form them into things that then, can become applied as an integrated whole, in dealing with whatever problem is we’re trying to solve? And I guess the other thing that makes me think about is, there’s oftentimes, and this is getting back to my landscape architecture education. We often felt maybe, a sort of professional ego, but this idea that we had to learn about the whole landscape and the functions of the entire landscape. And we had to put them all together and see what that meant as far as the relationships across those systems.
Jim Scott:
And then that would inform us how we would be best advised to consider changes to that landscape and it was always contracted. And this is from my architectural professors. They always contrasted that with their profession saying, “We just worried about this box. We’re just going to design this box.” So I wonder how much of that idea of design, that is disconnected from the environment, can perpetuate itself so you end up with a shower head like that, that is disconnected from the broader public. It might look cool. It might’ve shown up as some five-star rating of some hotel and everybody thought that rain shower was the coolest thing.
Jim Scott:
Well, yeah, who wrote that thing? Those become social dynamics that become popular and then fads if you will, and then people making choices, will pick them, maybe not based upon the problem they’re trying to solve or the people they’re trying to serve, but for other reasons that are disconnected. So I think we need some more of these patterns to help keep that connection and give people pause to think about, “What is it I’m really doing here and who am I really trying to serve?”
Douglas:
Wow. That seems like a really interesting field of study or at least a blog post, this notion, this difference between designing for the ecosystem and then design in the box. And it’s interesting, in the world of software, we think about abstraction boundaries and we create these abstraction boundaries so we can think about the box that we’re in. And the abstraction boundary creates, I would say, interface points. Right? There’s signatures, it’s almost like if you think about antibodies or other kind of chemistry, metaphor’s, where it’s like, “Oh, this molecule can connect to this molecule because the key matches the receptor.” Or whatever.
Douglas:
And so in software, we create similar abstraction boundaries where, I know if I build this thing, it’ll connect to this other thing, so I know the context that I’m in. So as long as I adhere to those rules, I can make this thing work, however I want it to work. But I think if we take that thinking to something more dynamic, more complex, like the human condition or just the world, where we’re in an ecosystem, I don’t think it’s quite so simple. I don’t think we have those abstraction boundaries that are really cut and dry with these very well-defined signatures that we can connect into. And I think that understanding the context you’re in and adapting your practices accordingly is really critical. So I love that, you’ve got my gears turning there, Jim.
Jim Scott:
Well, yeah, these are the things, they’re going to be perpetual pursuits, right? We’re never going to have the day when we solved this problem or this challenge because every day is different. People are different, in terms of their dynamics, their challenges. I mean, just consider what we’ve been through in the pandemic. What kinds of influences has that had on so many things? And that’s a double challenge because, or maybe it’s less of a challenge, because we’ve all been through it, to a different degree. Some unimaginable, in terms of the pain and agony that they’ve been caused, but others?
Jim Scott:
I wonder about what are the potential good things that have come out of this challenging experience that everyone’s been through and has that created some shared understanding and make people more open to others, even though we’ve been in all this isolation for multiple months? I’ve found that to be true. I think I’ve increased my potential for empathy and true willingness to open up to what other people are really going through, just trying to imagine it and whether or not I can relate to it. And I think that has a definite impact on everything that we’re doing from a day-to-day basis now. So yeah, the more that these processes can inform and be tuned to the realities that we’re all in and build structures and practices and processes that give people a way to connect and share a deeper understanding, we’ve got to grab those things and try to preserve them.
Douglas:
Awesome. Well, I think that brings us to a very natural stopping point. So I want to invite you Jim, to leave our listeners with a final thought, anything you’d like them to keep in mind as they reflect on this episode?
Jim Scott:
Well, I guess as someone who’s been doing this a long time, and actually, this is one of my other lessons from school. The sense of you, for those people that may be just getting their degree. I don’t know what the general consensus is out of design schools these days are, to advise young people going into the profession. But I was told before I graduated that number one, I had actually taken an oath of poverty and didn’t realize it, but my professional commitment was going to lead me through a long period of learning. And it wasn’t going to be until I reached, I would call it, past middle age, I’ll put it that way, that all of it was going to come together and whether it has or not, I don’t know. But there is something to be said about pursuing a career and your life journey and do it with as much adventure and diversity as you can, if you’re a designer, because it’s only going to add to your ability to grow that capacity into the future.
Jim Scott:
So, I was given that guidance early on and it has proven true to me. So I think that’s what’s interesting to be able to, for what all the work that you do and all the range of people you work with, from students, to new people, new design, to advanced professionals. I mean, this is a lifelong commitment, that’s what’s very fulfilling about it and there’s challenges too, along the way. But what I’ve found is so rewarding, is all the cycles of my career that I’ve gone through, this is the one thing that I’ve been able to maintain, as a way to keep my orientation about where my professional endeavors and my personal creative goals are. So that’s one of the positives about it. It can be frustrating, but whatever entry point anyone’s had into considering design, consider it as a lifelong practice.
Douglas:
Jim, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show today, I really enjoyed the chat and looking forward to talking to you soon.
Jim Scott:
Douglas, thanks so much. Appreciate the opportunity. Talk to you soon.
Douglas:
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don’t forget to subscribe, to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.
