A call for a more pessimistic mindset in design, business & society
The definition of design as a problem-solving-oriented activity is outdated, says DecolonisingDesign’s founder, Danah Abdulla.
In her enlightening talk at TriennaleDesign Museum in Milan last month, she introduces an idea of design that nurtures negativity as an antidote to collective depoliticisation. With collective depoliticisation I mean a kind of more generic mass-denial (which touches far more than our political participation), more or less conscious, which has hindered for long the public awareness of the cost of progress.
It looks like this topic is starting to spike the design debate. This can be down to more than one reason.
The public concern over rumbling on environmental and political issues has never been more acute than it is now. Meanwhile, the idea of relentless progress, which has been a hallmark of western scientific and cultural mindset for ages, seems to start failing us.
Pessimism is not a new concept in the design debate. Hatching plans for the roll out of any new product does include considering the worst possible scenario. UX Collective nicely puts in a recent article
As I said before in this post, the debate definitely applies to, but it’s not (nor it should be)-confined to digital design and tech firms.
👉 I would argue that pessimism stands a chance to be the core concept of an imaginable next cultural (and social and political and economic) shift.
BBC author and tech journalist Jeoff White used to joke on “neg ferrets” in the tech world: referring to a kind of people seemingly voted to unmercifully question the potential of anything and to hinder everybody’s enthusiasm whenever a breakthrough occurs. “There should be a neg ferret in every company”, muses White.(*).
The point is that “design today is geared towards convenience”. But while convenience is good on one hand, it can also have a dark side, which oftentimes, made oblivious by our own enthusiasm, we take out of our frame.
Brewing into the business philosophy of most Silicon Valley tech titans’, a bright, optimistic view of technologic advancements has influenced us globally for a decade. We have been grown “spoiled” by the immediacy and convenience that technologic advancements and new sophisticated digital tools grant us.
Perhaps the trickiest challenge that designers have to face today is their own change of mindset. To refrain from just building perfect solutions to given problems, but to think more than ever to related possibilities, and to the possibilities of these possibilities.
It’s hard time that systemic thinking and the ability to spot the bigger picture truly serves society, by making people be able to see the other side of any perceived great disruption. Which is not defending pessimism per se, but as a mean to hone a better sense of reality.
So to our (designers’) relentless chase and euphoric celebration of disruption -(disruption for the sake of disruption), maybe we’d better counter with a quote of John Templeton, one of the greatest all-time investors: “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.”
📚References
- World Economic Forum — Sept 2018, Why pessimism is under-rated
- The Hive podcast: Fake news and the dark web, interview with Geoff White
- The Politics of Design, Triennale Design Museum, April 2018
- Decolonisingdesign.com
- Alain De Botton, On pessimism.
