The purpose of ethics is the preservation of a particular ethos, and its essence is making and keeping promises.
The purpose of morality is the valuing of existence, and its essence is transcendence (that is, the intuition that our experience shows us the surface of something that extends beyond experience).
To every perspective there belongs practical and factual intricacies which serve to reinforce the perspective by demanding full and exclusive participation in reality in its own terms, which induces what I will call, perspectival amnesia through occupation and displacement.
Full participation in any one perspective makes all other perspectives unintelligible. In fact, it conceals the phenomenon of perspective itself (pluralism), and reduces pluralism to mere diversity of opinion on fact, feeling, custom, temperament, moral character, etc.
Full participation in one perspective creates ideal conditions for naive realism, which is the environment most practical people need to feel safe and sane. Wherever you find compulsively busy people, compelled to play hard (or intoxicate themselves) the second they’re finished working hard, you are witnessing the mechanics of self-preservation.
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A perspective that develops into an ethos fully-equipped with an ethic, a language, a history and a catalog of categories, facts, techniques and well-worn paths of inquiry creates a pocket of stable naive realism. This is my cynical definition of a brand, and it is the goal of my work: to create nice habitable delusions for people who crave shelter from chaos, anxiety, perplexity and mystery. A deep brand is actually a philosophy pregnant with ethical, practical and factual possibilities, capable of creating fulfilling (fully-filling) social relationships between people and things.
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For all these reasons, I resist getting bogged down in the development of details. My job is to go in precisely the opposite direction from preservation and refinement. For the sake of creating concrete plurality, I try to navigate out of pockets of naive realism that belong to whole industries, in order to discover and stake out new pockets of naive realism that belong to smaller organization who which to differentiate themselves. But discovering and staking out is not the same as settling and establishing. Once a new vision has taken root, it is time for the next project.
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“Abraham”
The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.
He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That went with him but when he rested changed.
His mind was full of names
Learned from strange peoples speaking alien tongues,
And all that was theirs one day he would inherit.
He died content and full of years, though still
The Promise had not come, and left his bones,
Far from his father’s house, in alien Canaan.
– Edwin Muir
I would love to have a metal 3D print of a hyperdodecahedron, but I’ll probably order one in plastic first. The reason I want it: it is a symbol, which, like the Mandelbrot Set, has been given to us by technology, both in its physical form and its precise meaning. Until recently it has been intuited darkly — that is, in magical terms.
It would be incredibly cool if the plastic had properties that allowed the to be hyperverted to permit each of its 120 cells to be outermost.
If you get mixed up in philosophy or religion, you’re essentially signing up for a perpetual crash course in what it feels like to be a Dunning-Kruger case. Tolerating it requires humility bordering on hubris.
Reading Julius Evola, the articulate epitome of a certain species of radical conservative, this passage from Beyond Good and Evil came to mind:
These words are so totally antipodal to my ears and habits that when I discovered them my immediate anger wrote beside them “the height of religious nonsense!” — until my subsequent anger actually began to like them, these words with their upside-down-truth! It is so pleasant, so distinguishing, to possess one’s own antipodes!
The funny thing is that I really do like Evola. I like him because, unlike so many of his type, he is very bold, unequivocal and clear, and that allows me to view in a glance all 360° of his cloudless horizon, as well as the moral kernel at the center that makes him turn about in such a hot little orbit.
The passage that inspired this post belongs in my wiki.
The passage below from the Gay Science is a declaration of concrete pluralism, and it encapsulates precisely what I care about in designing brand experiences: the discovery of a unique worldview ideally suited to the flourishing of a group (brand strategy), and its interpretation into a concrete participatory lifeworld (experience strategy) equipped with unique ways of conceiving, perceiving, feeling, acting and making — two thirds of which ought to be tacit tradition, animated by an intuited rightness (experience design).
Get on the ships! — how every individual is affected by an overall philosophical justification of his way of living and thinking — he experiences it as a sun that shines especially for him and bestows warmth, blessings, and fertility on him, it makes him independent of praise and blame, self-sufficient, rich, liberal with happiness and good will; incessantly it fashions evil into good, leads all energies to bloom and ripen, and does not permit the petty weeds of grief and chagrin to come up at all. In the end then one exclaims: Oh how I wish that many such new suns were yet to be created! Those who are evil or unhappy and the exceptional human being — all these should also have their philosophy, their good right, their sunshine! What is needful is not pity for them! — we must learn to abandon this arrogant fancy, however long humanity has hitherto spent learning and practicing it — what these people need is not confession, conjuring of souls, and forgiveness of sins! What is needful is a new justice! And a new watchword! And new philosophers! The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have the right to exist! There is yet another world to be discovered — and more than one! Embark, philosophers!
Simply coming up with declarations of who an organization essentially is, what it is essentially like, and outfitting it with a nice stylized look-n’-feel-n’-voice-n’-tone is no longer enough. For a brand to have teeth, the scope of the brand experience design must extend fully into the design of an organization’s offerings — their services and their products — and into the design of the business model itself. Brand is actualized when the “subjective” values of an organization first manifest as a different way of seeing, feeling and acting… then consequently as a different way of looking, sounding and serving… and lastly — very lastly — the way the organization talks about itself and stylizes itself.
We’ve been doing it backwards.
Subject: Conflicts
Date: Thursday 10/12/06 7:54:00 AM
A conflict divides the world into four halves.
An ideal “what” is realized; an ideal “how” is actualized; an ideal “why” is manifested. A brand is an organization’s simultaneous realization, actualization and manifestation of its own ideal.
Introduction
Ontology
Epistemology
Ethics
Thought scraps
From Being and Time:
Every science is constituted primarily by thematizing. That which is familiar pre-scientifically in Dasein as disclosed Being-in-the-world, gets projected upon the Being which is specific to it. With this projection, the realm of entities is bounded off. The ways of access to them get ‘managed’ methodologically, and the conceptual structure for interpreting them is outlined.
…the Objectivity of a science is regulated primarily in terms of whether that science can confront us with the entity which belongs to it as its theme, and can bring it, uncovered in the primordiality of its Being, to our understanding.
To understand a subject is to understand objects as the subject understands them, according to that subject’s thematization, which means accessing the subject’s entities by that subject’s methods, and understanding according to that subject’s conceptual structure. This holds true equally for an academic subject as it does for an entity possessing subjectivity.
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“Theme”, “thesis” and the root -thesis are etymologically descended from the Greek word tithenai “to set or place.” Synthesis means “place together”.
The root -ject comes from the Greek work jacere “throw.” A project is “thrown ahead”. An object is “thrown in the way of”. A subject is “thrown under”.
Method is made up of meta- “above” and -hod “way”. (I like thinking of method as a meta-way.)
Concept is made up of con- “together” and –capere “take”. (Consider the contrasting meanings of concept and synthesis.)
According to Online Etymology Dictionary the etymology of “interpret” is inter- “between” and some other root of unknown origin. Maybe interpreting is a generic mediating of any two separated entities.
Speaking of “mediating” — “mediate”, “medium” and “media” all come from medius “middle”.
“Regulate” comes from regula “rule” – to “control by rules”. Something that is regular is behaves according to rules.
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When we understand a subject, we throw something under a situation upon which the entities thrown before us can stand and be placed together in such a way that we can take it together as a whole.
We do not say: “He really knows about what he is talking about.”
We say “He really knows what he is talking about.” And when we say this, we are making a tacit distinction between knowing and knowing about.
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If a person has been in a situation, wrestled with the concrete realities of that situation, particularly those that have resisted conceptualization and explicit language, and then subsequently reflected upon these realities and found ways to conceptualize this experience, this person knows what he is talking about.
And even if such a person is unable to conceptualize or articulate fully what he has experienced, he will be able to identify people who do or do not know what they’re talking about.
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Until a student of some topic has been in a situation and wrestled with the concrete realities of that situation and attempted to apply his acquired knowledge to act within the situation, he does not know to what degree he knows what he is talking about.
My own experience has shown me again and again that preparatory study of any area I am preparing to research in the field is merely preparatory, and that this knowledge will inevitably undergo deep and unpredictable developments. Only when I return from the field do I really know what I am talking about. This has happened to me again and again — I know what I am talking about.
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Were it not for the interpretive gap – that deep gulf between theory and practice that dogs the inexperienced – we would have no need to say “He knows what he is talking about.” The ability to talk about some topic would establish the fact that what needs knowing is known.
Maybe some people who say “he knows what he is talking about” are making a different distinction: that this person is relating facts that he really has learned by studying credible sources, as opposed to “making up what he is talking about.” But then we should ask: what makes a source credible? And we should also ask whether we would still say this masterful student knows what he is talking about if he is unable to apply this knowledge practically. He would be promptly re-classified as merely “book smart” or “academic”.
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There’s a huge difference between studying a subject prior to having experienced the realities it attempts to conceptualize and studying it after one has experienced them.
Reading is far more rewarding when you know you are reading an author who really knows what he’s talking about. It is not a matter of trusting the author and feeling confident that the author is both honest and well-informed. It is a matter of experiencing the truth of what is being said. This is true of all subjects, especially philosophy.
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People who know what they are talking about in one subject gain a certain kind of meta-knowledge about experience and expertise. Or, to put it more succinctly, they acquire bullshit detectors.
I am starting work on a book called A Designer’s Philosophy.
The book will outline a comprehensive philosophy suitable for a designer. To some extent it will include a philosophy of design, but that will not be its primary focus. One of the central, deliberately accepted assumptions of the work is the principle of pluralism, which is why it is “a” philosophy for one particular way of approaching life. This book will offer a set of conceptual tools to help a certain kind of person self-orient, understand, articulate and act in the world in a cohesive, consistent and meaningful way: a sort of user-interface for the environing, pregnant chaos we know as reality.
It will be based very heavily on American Pragmatism, phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics (fused in the tradition of Richard J. Bernstein), synthesized with several like-minded but diversely-focused parallel practical traditions including current UX practice, Soft Systems, Design Thinking and Actor-Network theory. I will also steal freely from late Wittgenstein, various Existentialists, philosophers/historians/scholars of science and even some not-very-reputable theologians.
But this will not be a scholarly book. I will do my best to include no quotations or footnotes, or anything that complicates the dead-simple but elusive concepts this book exists to convey. It will be a comprehensive, organic vision and whatever introduces a seam or calls attention to a grafting scar, such as a nod to the discoverer of this idea or that, will be cut, smoothed and disguised to the best of my ability.
In other words, this book will be a great theft. I will acknowledge the thinkers to whom I owe an intellectual debt in one little easily-skipped blurb introducing a bibliography. Essentially, I am going to steal a great number of insights and make them my own, then provide a list of the households I hit as a cursory acknowledgement of indebtedness. But in fact, it will be an act of thieves’ honor: “I’ve hit these homes and made off with all the loot I could carry in my own arms. I think I grabbed the best stuff, but it might be profitable to hit it again.”
My goal is to make this book as visual, as simple and as compact as possible. If I can distill it into a pamphlet of 16 pages of diagrams that will be perfect, because that makes letterpress a viable option.
The philosophy will divide into three parts (not including introduction and conclusion):
The book will be 100% free of techniques, case studies, scientific corroboration and any other content that might give it the slightest chance of success. This book will be beautiful, and meant to be fetishized (and fetishized with the purest conscience, because the book will show why fetishes are necessary and valuable). My view is that while philosophy can be understood as a form of pre-science indispensable to scientific progress, it can also be understood as a form of art, and at its best is an inseparable synthesis of prescience and art, a beautiful and inspiring surveying and mapping of a field of possibility upon which methodical disciplines can travel, settle and flourish.
Because it is unlikely to sell and because I want complete control over its physical form, I’m anticipating self-publishing it in a very small run.
The main difference between conceiving design as the design of an experience (as opposed to the design of an artifact) is that with experience design the design problem is conceived phenomenologically.
What is aimed for is not an object of some particular characteristic, but rather a specific relationship between a person and an object.
It is becoming clearer by the day that this phenomenological approach to design problems is also a powerfully productive way to approach branding.
Instead of thinking primarily of the object of the experience design being one artifact such as a CPAP mask or a web site, the “object” of the experience becomes the organization who provides the artifact and services, all of which together are experienced by a person as the brand.
Taking an experience design approach does not eliminate or even diminish the problems traditionally associated with the craft of design or engineering. It simply places them in a new, larger context. The designed offerings (whether products or services) still must have very specific characteristics to integrate with and reinforce the overarching brand experience, and designers will work to imbue their designs with these characteristic. And, as always, engineering is of central importance in actualizing the designs in concrete form so they function as intended. But the engineering is done within the context of creating some entity with designed characteristics, and the design in turn is done within the context of a brand experience of some specific quality. The problems nest.
Three developments on the horizon that interest me:
The expression “make a living” seems to me to signify more than just earning money to live. “Making a living” can be seen as a creative project of designing a productive, sustainable social existence.
Putting entrepreneurship within the reach of all Americans — which means more than maximizing availability of investment funds, but also to remove artificial amplification of risk (I’m thinking specifically about healthcare), and also to educate citizens in a way that stimulates rather than suppresses the entrepreneurial drive (which means helping students connect their own talents with the existing or potential needs of the community, and perhaps prioritizing specialization over standardization) — is perhaps the highest (reasonable) goal of politics.
It is good to have amazing ideas, but better than that is to induce others to have have amazing ideas — and best of all is to collaborate in groups in such a way that amazing ideas happen.
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If the creative community were to internalize this ideal, the world would be a better place, partly due to the abundance of ideas, partly to the experience of ideation — but most of all because of the relationships that form in creative gatherings.
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In most dramatic examples of group ideation (which is the very opposite of “group think”), nobody can pinpoint where the ideas originated. Individualists are disturbed and cannot stop wondering: “Didn’t I have something to do with what just happened? I think I did, but I cannot say what…”
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We do not normally tolerate the kind of distress required to arrive at a real creative gathering. There’s a moat of anxiety encircling it, which each person must cross in order to participate.
Nobody does this voluntarily. There’s got to be high stakes, considerable pressure and no easy escape route.
Creative gathering requires specific conditions. These conditions are more likely to be found in your professional environment than anywhere else. Except maybe marriage.
In the course of my career I’ve found that some people value conceptual frameworks and know how to use them to direct both their thinking and their practice.
Others, however, have no use for conceptual frameworks, and value only momentary sparks of inspiration which arise in the moment and which are realized in a concrete idea for something which can be done — or they vanish in a tiny puff of ions. (If don’t mind being scorned by people with scientific scruples, you can call this a radically “right brained” culture.)
There are also many professionals who have limited use for conceptual frameworks and who do not experience the full infectious effects of inspiration, and who (consequently?) think primarily in terms of factual combinations (sometimes fastidiously glued together logically, or found embedded together in concrete chunks of experience), and who tend to work algorithmically according to explicit plans, composed of sequenced techniques. (This would be a radically “left brained” culture.)
Here’s the thing to remember: all of these cognitive styles ultimately converge on any successful endeavor. The question is one of sequence. Which lead and which follow? This will practically determine the way an organization works and the type of brand relationship it offers its employees and customers.
To be frankly partial, my belief is that the evolution of brand has moved it from a stage where “left-brained” organizations hire “right-brained” organizations to clothe their carefully constructed offerings in sparkling campaigns that change customer perceptions, to a stage where an organization itself is designed to holistically produce conceptual coherence between product, service, message and presentation, because its entire activity system is guided by a conceptual framework, which does not spell out all the details of how an organization runs, but rather provides generative insights which compel details to unfold in organic compatibility with its surroundings.
But obviously, I’m a conceptual framework guy, so decide for yourself.
According to Luc Boltanski, Adam Smith envisioned a market economy that was essentially empathic.
It is important to remember that the Wealth of Nations was written prior to the Industrial Revolution. Smith did not build his understanding of the market on the metaphor of machines or factories. He did not take self-interest to be some kind of natural and mindless force like pressurized steam, with one man driving a price as low as possible against another man driving it as high as possible, stabilizing as the forces equalize against one another. That mechanistic vision of the market was an industrial revision manufactured to the specifications of a mechanic’s imagination.
Adam’s market was a deeply pluralistic social network of human beings seeking mutually satisfactory deals with other people in a community of shared interest.
This makes experience design less a revolution than a reformation movement. Assuming we change anything long-term…