This collection of twelve steps is a work in progress look at process. It was presented at FITC and more recently Spread The Word’s April Design is A Superpower workshop.

1. Take note of your impact
Look at your daily actions and consider your impact is a good metal exercise. More often than not, what we do as a job has more of an impact than any of the plastic bags or bottles we recycle. Both the personal and the societal issues we face stem from our routines, so be aware of those.

2. Consider what to preserve and what to change.

All to often we see the future as better because of change. The truth is that humans have been doing fairly well for quite some time. We have institutions, principles, traditions, and ideas that are grounded on our predecessors. It’s important to identify what we want to change, in light of the truth that it’s not all bad.

3. Draw the line, what won’t you do?

Everyone has a point at which they’ll say no. Think about how far you could be pushed until you’d snap. It’s important to realize that we already have a threshold, and the unfortunate situation is when that threshold is slowly chipping away. Your grandparents probably would say that a polluted river is too far. Your parents would say no access to public pools is too far. What will you put up with?

4. Set priorities, what matters most?

Most conflicts don’t stem from a disagreement on values, but rather a conflict of implementation. What is the most important change that needs to happen? What is the most sacred value we must uphold? Do we want cleaner water or more education? Should we spend our time retrofitting houses, or parks?

5. Share the worst deed you did for an evil client.

For us it was having a client who wanted to look green. We were to put a green plastic leaf on their product. When we asked if the product was actually any more sustainable than competitors the answer was an obvious, though cleverly implied, no. Our big mistake was not completely reprimanding this action.

6. Tell somebody you’re about to make a change in you professional work.

In order for growth, someone else needs to know what you’re trying to do. When you tell others, not only do you encourage them and set an example, but you hold yourself accountable. Cognitive dissonance tells us, when you talk the talk, you end up walking the walk.

7. Implement a system to help you.

Our brains are faulty, and our memories are getting worse. Figure out a way to remind yourself on a constant basis why your are doing what you are doing. Have a weekly meet-up to discuss progress with your friends. Change your client brief to include sustainability. Collect the disposable cups you use for coffee.

8. Make an ideal client list. Don’t let it sit there, contact them.

What do you have to lose in attempting to work with who you respect? If anything they will be flattered, and know you exist. Make a list of 100 people you want to work with and then just call them. Imagine that your work could be exactly in line with your beliefs. Isn’t that worth a couple of days?

9. Join Something

Personal progress is best shared. Especially when that progress is also beneficial to a great group of people. Join something, and talk to people. There are so many people thinking the same thing as you, and it is a wonderful feeling to be around them, providing those thoughts are good.

10. Meet-ups and Serendipity

In Hong Kong they have five keys to success, luck is at the top. Put yourself in a position to be lucky, and as we all know, no one gets lucky on their own at home.

11. Do. Then Talk. them Do More.

As we share we grow, as we grow we share. The cycle of growth works through us, but only as long as we tell each other. Make sure you use the words you have to speak about what you truly care about. After all, ask and ye shall receive, and no one really wants gossip.

12. Try these, then try something else.

We really haven’t figured this out, and no one ever will. We only get closer to the truth in different ways. We’d love to hear from you about your pursuits, challenges, and insights. In the age of connection let’s have a global conversation.

It has been a bit of a problem defining what we do here, and not for lack of answers. It seems each time someone pops the question “So what do you do?” the response begs only more questions.

Partly this is due to our insistence on remaining generalists and exploring new avenues of intervention. Partly this is due to the prevalent industry mindset of looking at people’s expertise rather than their inclinations.

I have spoken with engineers, industrial designers, literary critics, teachers, lawyers, writers, and photographers. Despite the differing professions there seems to be a similar divide within these industries. That divide is one of integrated thinking versus intense specialization. Graphic Designers come in many shapes and colours, but certainly there are those who wish to see the biggest picture possible, and those who lean more deeply to the smallest point kernable.

This divide between experts and generalists has me scratching my head, wondering which one I am, and to what extent. If there is anything I have learned, it is that nothing is black or white.

With that said, objectives must be. To move in a direction is to see clear opportunity. So which way am I moving. The answer is clear; toward integrated generalized thinking.

Speaking with an industrial designer, has opened up some possibilities. She told me about the Finnish approach which is a bit different. They have a term called world design.

A solution from an industrial design might be an AIDs truck which educates by moving around, a solution from a graphic designer might be a billboard campaign which educates on a mass media scale.

I can appreciate the diplomacy in seeing each type of execution as a good one, but we must account for appropriateness. In most cases mass media is not the solution, but rather an accompaniment to a better idea, a new way of interacting. This is not to say that graphic designers cannot inform that better way. It is to say that in order to find appropriate solutions we must look outside of the tools we are experts in, and understand the landscape of possibilities.

This idea of design as inventory of possibility is much more attractive than designer as skilled artist. It sees the designers role as a visionary who works with many parties to execute an idea which spans many disciplines; the world of work so to speak. Further more, the world in world designer can be expanded from the idea of the world as earth, to the worlds separate and overlapping.

The world of taxis in Toronto is very different from the world of textile designers. Different but integrated. To see these worlds, allow them to facilitate each other, appreciate the difference, and make new ones when appropriate, is the role of the world designer. To design for the world we share, to appreciate the worlds we do not, and to envision new possible worlds we might face in the future.

Recent conversations have been surfacing the idea of content and containers. It seems the more activities I become involved in, the more I wiggly my way in to a good fit with the world of work. Dave Pollard, or Alan Smith, or someone like that smarter than me, said that you should seek to do what you want, what you’re best at, and what is needed. The more I wiggly, the more I realize that Design is neither what I do best, nor what I want to do, and only part of what is needed. This is where the discussion of content and containers begins. The lines between skin and guts.

Designers in many senses create containers. My role as an interaction design is to facilitate interactions within an experience which amplify, enact, or visualize a persons intent. A [great guy] in the Toronto design community has a big focus on actioning people’s intent. Behance has a good deal of literature on the action method. Though a noble and necessary step, aiding in collaborative action is only half of the coin. This collaborative container needs something else: Content.

Traditionally in the design world content has been an asset. Copy, much like images, or colour palettes, fills the blue bounding boxes of our spreads. Recently a movement to see designer as author, partly a response to the cold removed ideals of Swiss modernism, has emerged. Though a designer can bring a valuable visual narrative, such a professional still seems to lack the precision of text, and literature’s ability to deal with the abstract complexity which is our socioenvrioculturonomic reality.

Words still work, diagrams help, and visualization spurs insight. Words can move, images confront, and film is stunning. Surely the visual and textual exist on a spectrum rather than in separate silos of copywriters and designers. Taking on this new world of melded thought, a visual culture as McLuhan might put it, has its growing pains. Perhaps instead of a designer trying to write a story, a better position might be a journalist trying to visually explain. A simple shift of starting points, a beginning in writing rather than sketches, might bring to light a new understanding, a more concrete abstraction. Creating the content before the container might be just what is needed to clarify.

One example of such an approach is the first book in the Shift series, published by the OCAD Student Press.

Students in their last year of schooling at OCAD got together on a summer’s day much like any other, but had an insight. It seemed that each time they tried to fulfill a vision, that vision was distorted and muddled by the very processes of application. Whether it was poor direction by a mentor, distraction with detail, or even the harsh realities of trial and error; those original visions seemed to get lost in the lab. But they had an insight. What if our ideas, our virgin ideas, could be saved before the wrecking ball of education. What if we wrote our thoughts before we lost them to the distractions of application.

Quite successfully they did so. Through a great deal of leg work, some generous contributions, and a good deal of interesting virgin ideas. They had assembled a real printed book, selling out at real live book stores. The important lesson to take from this is that the most lasting part of that process was before the application. The most fertile ideas hang from baselines, words as ripe as cherries in Port Colborne. Writing was in this case the first spark, and the most lasting trace of these student’s fires of passion.

In response to a recent call for answers I have written a little manifesto-like piece about web design, and networks in general. Hope you like.

Question: In your opinion, what voice will matter to the world of web design in the near future?

The world of web design is quickly becoming an intertwined shadow of the greater world at large. As information spaces grow, and the speed at which events are reflected by their digital counterparts, what matters will be listening.

Increasingly we can heard voices, which are neither loud nor powerful, amplified through channels of successive actors. We see streams of information flowing from authors, through readers as authors once again. In essence, the voice that matters is the one arising from many. This voice of web design, interaction design, or more generally the shepherding of experiences through mass interaction, is playful, unpredictable, and currently undervalued. And so, should we seek to have a voice that matters, we must first listen to the many.

We must listen and see interactions to realize, that these seemingly distinct pursuits of information architecture, system design, and technical implementation, are no longer separated cases of applied business logic. With this realization comes the perspective of place, not a social network, not an application, and certainly not a page.

Our “social networks” have blinded our vision, or rather muffled our voices. What would various information flows back and forth between disparate bodies be, other than a network. Would would a network of people communicating be, other than social. How could there exist anything more than one network of society, of universal interactions of simultaneous feedback and response? Which follows, what voice could speak distinct as the one which matters? And what language must we learn to understand?

Our “applications” have restrained our action. Application “to” is the missing word, and purpose is the guiding prompt. The nature of application is its appliance “to” something. This something, in the context of human pursuit, is a meaningful purpose. Know that the voices which speak softly and resonate loudest are ones of the strongest resolve, and the fullest purpose. It is to these voices we can apply our skills and effort.

Our “pages” have engulfed us. To maintain a tainted metaphor still in training, to clone our thoughts and repeat the same thing. Redundancy of pages leave our collectively learned lessons detached, our only fall back, an engine of similar words. Resonance’s absence is a symptom of off-time chants. Should we all seek to carry the voice that matters we must do so with synchronicity.

Collectively spoken will be the voice which matters. Indistinguishable chants will rise an fall, together, absent of ego, with a purpose, in a place, as a web. It is not the voice which is the subject of influence, but rather the language which allows many voices to form the one. Through a new language, a non-redundancy exchange of reinforced ideas, our voices will sign in rhythm and time.