IN TH design/new media/business John Thackara, described as a “design “Design with a conscience: that’s the take-home message of this important, provocative book. John In the Bubble guru, critic and business provocateur” by Thackara, long a major force in design, now takes on an even more important challenge: making the IN THE BUBBLE Designing in a Complex World Fast Company, is the Director of Doors world safe for future inhabitants. We need, he says, to design from the edge, to learn from the world, John Thackara of Perception, a design futures network and to stop designing for, but instead design with. If everyone heeded his prescriptions, the world would E based in Amsterdam and Bangalore. He indeed be a better place. Required reading — required behavior.” We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but is the author of Design after Modernism, Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of Emotional Design we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff Lost in Space: A Traveler’s Tale, Winners! for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John BUB How Successful Companies Innovate by “Thackara’s deeply informed book presents a breathtaking new map of the design landscape. With not DESIGNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing in a Design, and other books. a whisper of evangelistic zeal, In the Bubble offers an engaging narrative as well as design principles Complex World. that speak to sustainability, joy, and quality of life in increasingly complex times.” These are tough questions for the pushers of technology Brenda Laurel, author of Utopian Entrepreneur, chair of the Graduate Media Design Program at Art to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so Center College of Design it would be no small matter if “tech” ceased to be an end-in- BLE “‘To do things differently, we need to perceive things differently,’ itself in our daily lives. John Thackara writes. I agree! In the Bubble is the first strong, “Whatever you are designing, you will want to keep this book next to you. When you are wondering what to Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss thoroughly documented statement on the importance of the design, you will want to pick it up and browse through it again, to remind you of all the new possibilities the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to local and the embedded in our fluid, hyper-connected world. A for design. When you worry if your design is good enough, you will want to check through the passages ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communi- fundamental contribution to a new design culture.” that you have marked, to be sure that you have provided for all the complexities that count. When you cations, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected Ezio Manzini, Milan Polytechnic, author of The Material of Invention have an ‘Aha!’ and are confident that your design is great, you will want to check that you have matched appliances that we’re unleashing upon the world. We need to and Sustainable Everyday the attributes of ‘Flow.’ When you have an idle moment, you will want to read through the notes, which ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who are a good book about design in themselves.” will look after it, and how? “The future is created at the intersection of business, technology, Bill Moggridge, Cofounder, IDEO In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and design, and culture. In the Bubble is an insightful and delightful more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is explanation of this nexus and of how each force affects the others. “If there is one pervasive criticism of global capitalism that cuts across all ideologies, it is this: goods have taking place now — not in a remote science-fiction future; Designers often miss a great deal in their educations about the become more important and are treated better than people. We are producing higher quality computers it’s not about, as he puts it, “the schlock of the new” but real people who will use and inhabit their work. Thackara astutely than children. John Thackara’s brilliant book about quotidian design describes design innovation driven about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are illuminates a lot of what designers don’t know they’re missing.” by social fiction instead of science fiction. This is design focused on what Fernand Braudel called ‘everyday regaining respect for what people can do that technology #789583 03/01/05 Nathan Shedroff, author of Experience Design 1 life’: the demands and pleasures of caring for others, raising children, meaningful work, and journeying. can’t. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people These inspired and innovative technologies return people to the heart of the world and help them create carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services “One of Thackara’s powerful concepts is that of the macroscope: a fulfilling life.” involve technology— ranging from body implants to wide- instead of a microscope, which allows us to see tiny things, we Paul Hawken, Natural Capital Institute, author of The Ecology of Commerce THA bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in need instruments to see distributed, long-term phenomena that a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not pass unnoticed amidst the nonstop distractions of a modern go-go “We all envy John Thackara’s digestive system. He is able to take in the most disparate events, locations, things. And new principles — above all, lightness — inform the culture. In the Bubble is just such a macroscope, a deeply reflective trends, and apparent minutiae and deliver back a synthesis of the way the world moves for the use of way these services are designed and used. At the heart of meditation on the underlying changes in the structure of globalized designers and of those who use design as a powerful life-forming tool. And to help us swallow what In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world CKARA society, and a revelation about what designers can do to make might otherwise be too abstract a meal, he serves it to us with parables that make the book not only an examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design that shifting structure more robust and sustainable.” enriching but also a fun read.” decisions without impeding social and technical innovation. J. C. Herz, author of Joystick Nation Paola Antonelli, Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art JOHN THACKARA The MIT Press 0-262-20157-7 Massachusetts Institute of Technology “I eagerly devoured every last page of John Thackara’s lofty, captivating book.” Book design by Sharon Deacon Warne Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 ,!7IA2G2-cabfhf!:t;K;k;K;k Cover design by Erin Hasley http://mitpress.mit.edu —Bruce Sterling, author of The Hacker Crackdown and Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years In the Bubble In the Bubble Designing in a Complex World John Thackara The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thackara, John. In the bubble : designing in a complex world / John Thackara. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-20157-7 (alk. paper) 1. Engineering design. 2. Design, Industrial. I. Title. TA174.T52 2005 620 0.0042—dc22 2004062531 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Lightness 9 2 Speed 29 3 Mobility 51 4 Locality 73 5 Situation 97 6 Conviviality 113 7 Learning 135 8 Literacy 161 9 Smartness 185 10 Flow 211 Notes 227 What to Read Next 283 Bibliography 287 Index 297 Acknowledgments They say that it takes a village to raise a child. The same goes for this book; it’s the result of encounters and shared experiences over several years that gave rise to the questions, first raised at Doors of Perception conferences, that are now addressed here. The most insightful of these questions are not mine: They come from the late Peter Dormer, John Chris Jones, Derrick de Kerckhove, Jouke Kleerebezem, Ezio Manzini, Caroline Nevejan, Jogi Panghaal, Chee Pearlman, Aditya Dev Sood, and Marco Susani. A number of the examples in the book are based on encounters in Japan and East Asia enabled by Tadanori Nagasawa and Kayoko Ota. Kayoko also intro- duced me to my first Amsterdammer, Willem Velthoven, who, in turn, helped organize the first Doors of Perception conferences. I owe a lot to Harry Swaak, who hired me to run the Netherlands Design Institute in 1993; it was there that many of the perplexities in this book crystallized, and where Doors of Perception was born. Our journey since then has been much enlivened by the presence of fellow explorers: Janet Abrams, Conny Bakker, Ole Bouman, Rob van Kranenburg, Bert Mulder, Michiel Schwarz, and Gert Staal.