Screens are not a good place to think
Six years after we were first forced to work from home and we designers moved all our previously very physical activities into the digital world, I still can’t do synthesis on miro. The very thought of it—all that data and an electronic whiteboard of pretend sticky notes—makes me feel ill.
This isn’t a blog post about synthesis (I’ve already done one of them here) so I won’t go into the specifics. But as I said in that article, the value of synthesis is not in the sorting of data, but in how the process gets your brain making the connections you need to make sense of everything.
My brain works differently when I’m sitting in front of a screen. So the usual synthesis activities don’t work when I’m looking at miro, because my brain isn’t making connections in the same way. I suspect this is partly scale (so much harder to zoom in and out on a screen), partly because it’s more solitary (so much of the goodness used to come from standing in front of a wall of sticky notes with a colleague), and partly simply the physicality of sitting.
It might also be something about physically writing rather than typing; a new study shows that writing by hand leads to more widespread brain connectivity than typing.
Given how increasingly prevalent screens are in our lives, this has much broader implications than just for one designerly process. Everything in our lives is altered by the amount of time we spend in front of screens. Our neural pathways, our health, our relationships, our communication skills… And mostly the impact is negative.
As a human-centred designer, I find this terrifying. You can’t design for humans if you don’t engage with humans, but it’s getting harder and harder to do. Most new technologies seem designed to help us avoid each other—the first time I had someone send a chatbot along to take notes at a meeting they couldn’t be bothered to attend, I nearly threw in the towel.
I’m seeing it among clients too; a reluctance to pick up the phone, to go into the office, to engage. Thanks in part to covid and new ways of working, we have a generation of people who haven’t had to do things WITH other people, and only feel safe at their desk and in front of their screen.
The good news is, my skillset is going to become more and more valued. The bad news is, we’re losing the ability to engage at a human level.
SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
Get out from behind the screen!
I’m not suggesting we have to go back to doing things manually—I doubt I’m ever going to experience a physical synthesis wall again—but you can still bring physicality into whatever it is you’re doing. Talk to someone about it, pick up a pen and try drawing what you’re thinking rather than typing it, write some prompts on pieces of paper and leave them scattered around. You’re a designer, think of some ways!
There’s a latin phrase I love—Solvitur Ambulado, which literally means to solve by walking. I’ll invariably come back from walking the dog with a solution to the plotting challenge in my novel, or clarity on next steps in a project, or even just a decision on what to have for dinner. When life is getting you down or you don’t know what to do next, get out and go for a walk.
(Side note: I recently invested in a walking-desk setup, only to discover that my brain works differently again when I’m walking but still in front of the screen. I haven’t yet figured out what to do about that.)
If all else fails, my dad has a theory that there’s no problem too big or small that can’t be solved by staring into a campfire long enough. If nothing else that gets you out from behind the screen, so I’m all in favour.
