Stay-Home Journal 01: Physical/Digital, Survival/Thriving
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The Physical and the Digital
The pandemic, has got me thinking about the link between the physical and the digital, and how that’s being changed.
An illness is one of the most physical things there is, in that it threatens our very existence. Encountering such a threat, we are evolved to respond with immediate severity — physically (fevers, coughing) as well as mentally (panic-buying, anxiety).
And in the face of such reactions, a lot of what makes the digital world different fades into insignificance.
Think about this: we used to spend hours watching celebrities sing in a casual context. But now, we freaking hate, hate, hate it.
But this brutal sucker punch from the physical isn’t going to unravel us from the digital aspect of our lives. Quite the opposite — being, or becoming, digital has become all but mandatory in a time of lock-downs. In this, the Covid pandemic is merely an accelerator; we were all moving in this direction with more or less resistance, but now resistance is futile.
As a UX designer, this makes for an interesting period of time, for a couple reasons.
- Use is going to skyrocket. That in itself could provide rich insights for the services being used, in experience terms.
- Forced exploration is taking place. New users — people who normally wouldn’t be telecommuting, or buying groceries online — now have no choice but to become new users of existing products. What sorts of needs and behaviour patterns will they bring with them?
- Stress. A large portion of this increased adoption is being compelled, or is semi-voluntary. This creates users who are quicker to grumble, more sensitive to usability quirks, and bring their own behavioural baggage.
Survive and Prosper
I’m fresh off a call with a new acquaintance (funny how you make them these days) with whom I’m discussing a possible partnership. And just in case we were in doubt, things are pretty grim.
“As you know, Wilson, all startups right now — they should be thinking of growth, yes, but they are now all in survival mode.” (I get it. Me too, friend.)
Another effect of the Covid sucker punch, then — time dilation.
For startup founders, I suppose, it’s not just that staying at home makes time go slower. It’s that, as our chances of making it to a point in the future diminish, that point — and, by extension, the path to and around and after it — seem farther off and less relevant. And as a crisis gets more intense, I feel it too — something almost like paralysis.
All I can tell myself is that lovely Persian phrase (which I originally thought was from the Bible): in niz bogzarad. This, too, shall pass.
And what will happen as it passes? Perhaps I am too hopeful in thinking that it will be those businesses and organisations that are sensitive to their users, that are more human-centred in their ways of working and communicating and serving customers, that will come out with the wind in their sails.
There are signs of this, even for the semi-almighty tech giants. Facebook, battered and defensive for years, suddenly learned the meaning of social responsibility and has received plenty of praise for it. Sure, they’re being praised for doing what they should’ve and could’ve done for years, but a win is a win, right?
In a time of crisis, we both desire empathy so much more, and yet are so much more willing to withdraw that empathy. The latter instinct is what we call survival mode; but it is through the first that humans, as social beings, thrive.
The same — I think — will be true of businesses, startups or otherwise. Those who extend empathy to their people — through products designed to fit human needs, and services that keep in mind what people need and look out for — will hopefully find the wind in their sails at the end of this.
But for now, let’s just try to survive.
Wilson is co-founder and content guy at Reassemble, and in these dark days, he would love to talk to you about user-centred design. Sign up here.
