The Digital Context

Adrian Wiggins
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

At Pollen we call ourselves digital business designers.

That leads fairly quickly to the need of a definition of what we (at Pollen) mean by the term digital (business and design are easier, though not always simple).

This introspection has at times felt unnecessary. The digital aspect of our work is evident every day, right, in the products and services we build for our clients, and in the tools that we use to do that work.

However defining the word digital has helped us talk about our scope as designers, and in that sense it’s become a useful frame.

The digital context for us is this:

People, businesses and things connected over the internet for an exchange of value.

Within the connection (red rings above) there are

  • interfaces for brand experience and value exchange,
  • there is the newly arrived blockchain for contracts (which underpins better value exchange), and lastly
  • the transport layer of TCP/IP (which is the necessary component that sets the context as digital).

There are disintermediating and recursive connections as well — business-to-business, person-to-person and now too the onset of thing-to-thing.

Finally these connections and exchanges take place in the larger context of the public realm, the greater spheres of community, society, governance and even the planet of life-sustaining resources we inhabit. This public realm provides us with the basis of value and containing frame too within which externalities, cultural practices and norms — ethics even — and broader business, social and sustainability impacts can be considered or designed.

Get in touch

These are all things that we think about and work on at Pollen.

Get in touch if you’d like us to work on your digital business design problems.

Adrian Wiggins

Written by

Experience Design Director / Design Lead at @arupdigitalau & @ArupAustralasia // Here: opinions, gripes, grunts.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade