Reading Response: Design to restore humanity.

From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Principle 3.7, which states

and the narrative “omni-biographical audiovisual composition” Converge by Jieun Oh and Ge Wang.

(If you haven’t seen (or remember) this piece, I recommend spending some time with pages 144 – 156 in Artful Design to understand how Oh and Wang transformed a crowd-sourced photo collection into emotional narrative.)

I compare Principle 3.7 to Mark Weiser’s 1991 publication in the Scientific American on how “the most profound technologies are those that disappear.” That is, design should be such that the user finds the technology a natural extension of themselves in both functionality and form—how the user interacts with the technology.

While similar in their ethos, Principle 3.7 shifts the conversation towards why the technology should disappear: to give way to experiences and substance.

Converge is a perfect example of how technology can disappear to give way to a more profound, substantive experience. At its core function, Converge is an animated crowd-sourced collection of everyday photos. However, the viewers see beyond the functionality to make sense of the composition: the dark void where the photos live, their planet-like orbits that form a galaxy of photos, and the shattering and reconstruction of photos that illuminate life’s transience. The audience realizes that the photos are symbolic of everyday passing moments that are ultimately forgotten, but define us and our humanity. This is the human condition so elegantly conveyed by Oh and Wang’s swirling collection of swirling photographs, shattered and broken.

Figure 1. In some way, Converge is a collage of everyday photos!

To express such a deep and universal experience using no words at all indicates the profound human design behind Converge.

This ability for technology to beautifully convey human experiences connects to a personal revelation I had regarding video games.

For the longest time, I struggled to play role-playing games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft for more than a few weeks at a time. Don’t get me wrong—the games are fantastic and I love them—but eventually, I always came to the realization that I spent a disproportionate amount of time and effort inside the games compared to the outside, real world! Why should I play Stardew Valley, befriend and marry NPCs when alternatively, I could hang out with my friends and find new relationships that will last me a lifetime?

Figure 2. Marriage in Stardew Valley!

Thinking more broadly, I wondered why we play open-world games. Why should I build a whole new fantasy world where I can do an infinite amount of things—build giant monuments, meet and marry NPCs, watch a community of people grow and prosper—when I could do just the same in real life? I always felt frustrated playing single-player Minecraft and Stardew Valley because of this nagging thought that asked “why am I not spending this amount of time and effort in my own real life?”

Recently, upon further introspection, I realized that perhaps, this nagging thought is exactly the intention of these games.

The real world is so complicated, with so many distractions and goals and sociopolitical issues that there’s hardly any time to think about anything. But games can create virtual environments where we have fewer distractions and decisions to worry about.

In these simplified worlds, we can begin to think about bigger things. These experiences in the simpler virtual world can teach us real lessons that we take into the real world.

Games can make us dream, just like film, paintings, music, or books. Design can clarify human values and concepts that have been hidden away by the rush of daily life. Even more importantly, well-designed games and art restore the agency (that capitalism took away from us) to step back and appreciate innately human experiences. Serenity. Peace. Companionship. The aesthetics of a simple life. They make us realize that we don’t need much to feel happy.