Some thoughts on ’23

I’ve got a few articles on the go right now, all of which have validity in their own right and deserve my attention, but I thought I’d follow up last year’s ‘thoughts on’ article by cataloguing my observations from the year just passed.

As I write this I’m minded on the annual Schott’s Almanac I seemed to acquire every Christmas for a number of years, which all ended up unceremoniously in the downstairs loo for occasional pensive reading (until phones usurped reading anything at all). This isn’t that, nor is it anything like as well researched or crafted.

This is just the cursory ramblings of a Dad reflecting back on a year all too quickly disappearing behind him.

As before some of this is industry related, and some of it is personal. There’s no logic to any of it…it’s just what I’ve been thinking about or dealing with. Period.

1. AI is the new Pinterest.

So this time last year I mentioned the rise of AI as a ‘tool’. A year ago we were all getting our knickers in a flap about how it was going to eradicate the entire creative industry and nothing we ever saw or read would ever be true.

Whilst some of this has an element of truth – shit designers will invariably be outsourced to AI because that’s evolution Bob, and much of what we see and read (because it’s on the magic portals of the everlasting neck hunch, known as our smartphones) is still undoubtedly crafted by bots and misanthropes – it appears AI has nestled into the same sofa cushion crack as Pinterest did about 5-7 years ago. It’s become the thing designers do to ‘get inspiration’.

In truth, I’ve used AI in my projects over the last year or so, but what I thought might be a magical way to generate countless new ideas, soon became a metaphorical fist fight between my sentence crafting abilities and an AI ‘engine’ that seemed to be a bit too similar to an over eager carpet salesman on one of those excursions you take as a tourist on holiday, keen to show me every possible permutation or to interpret my protesting hand signal as permission to keep going.

Much like 3D printing before it, great output appears to link heavily with knowledge, skills and tactical use. I’ve realised that it can potentially save me heaps of time in some areas, but it similarly sink wasted hours if I’m not careful. You soon realise that what might appear novel and opportune to a creative mind, feels superfluous and frivolous to someone buying design as a service. I’ve discovered that from direct experience.

I actually look forward to seeing how AI tools will develop and embed themselves in our ‘workflows’ (I hate that word…) and if it can eradicate the laborious time intensive tasks we often have to endure as creative individuals then brilliant. I’ll still be using it and eagerly trying out the new releases as they pop out of the proverbial AI nursery, but for the same reasons I never bought a 3D printer but used experts who did, I’ll keep an open mind to the benefits and how it can make my service more profitable and creative.

2. Everyone seems ‘super’ excited…

The design industry seems to have gone through what I can only describe as a ‘correction’ last year. Ultimately down to a lack of client work across the disciplines, this has led to a whole raft of people either deciding to leave their current roles or their current roles deciding for them.

The reality of losing your job is harsh, but that’s not my observation.

It just makes me giggle at the levels of insincerity we are seeing in new job announcements. Everyone seems to be ‘super happy’ all the time. “I’m super excited to announce…”, “I’m joining a group of super heroes…”, “I’m super hyped about my new role…”

Maybe it’s my gruff, reserved, ‘resting-bitch-faced’ Britishness oozing out, but I immediately recoil when anyone uses the superlative ‘super’ in front of anything. The use of it immediately renders the subsequent verb or noun flat and useless and – in my strange little mind – smacks of vast overcompensation to the extent that the underlying meaning may well be entirely the opposite.

It always feels like it’s been written to be read by the people that sacked them, and about as sincere as Donald Trump’s congratulations to his rival Republican candidates when they drop out of the nomination race.

Maybe it’s just me.

3. Design Thinking is/is not dead.

There was a flurry of activity just after the summer last year about the so-called ‘death of design thinking’, primarily linked to some significant downscaling by the firm who first coined the phrase – IDEO.

My initial reaction was to internalise a little whoop and happy dance as I’ve always lamented the term ‘design thinking’. It promoted a sense of alchemy and strict equation-led calculation to the creative process, with few practitioners actually knowing the first thing about what they were promoting. Like the word ‘innovation’, there was a presumption that by saying it, you became it and thus all your creative woes drifted away as long as you followed the ‘yellow brick, design thinking road’.

And like many buzzwords and trademarked processes, people made more of it than it needed. In reality, it’s just someone attempting to describe the design process in a way that they can draw with some lines on a flipchart. Essentially, you have a problem. Widen your net and research as much as you can about said problem. Then make some hypotheses from the mass of research. Pick something (and by ‘something’ I mean weeks of hard graft, ideation and reflection). Try and prototype it or get close to something that you can evaluate. Then evaluate it and see how good/rubbish it is. If necessary, do the process again until you are happy that you have a solution.

Bear in mind that each of those so called ‘tiny’ stages can take weeks or months, can involve teams of people and each can be represented by whole discipline or industry, but some would have you believe that you can do all of this in a 4 hour ‘brainstorming’ workshop in a grey, melamine desked conference room in Slough with instant coffee and a flipchart with scratchy pens. Oh…and don’t forget the array of neon coloured Post-It notes. And Sharpies if you are lucky.

Which brings me to my point. If you think ‘design thinking’ is a thing, it is dead. And thank f**king God. It’s the equivalent of telling a lawyer that we can ditch due process, discovery and diligence and run a 4 hour workshop session called ‘The Whole Truth’ where at the end we will have 3 different outcomes, and all you have to do is pick one and test it on the judge.

Anyone who sees it as the death of design needs new spectacles. It’s just the death of an overused, over-peddled, under-valued phrase that snake oil shysters shouted at naïve helpless creatures to sell workshops and use up their bulk buy purchases of Post-it notes. Possibly.

4. Empty nesting.

Something big happened last year. Something that I knew was happening and have known would happen for the last 18 years.My eldest daughter went to Uni. It wasn’t a forgone conclusion but it was a pretty safe bet. We had the predictable conversations about gap years when A-Level revision got a bit tiresome, but she eventually settled on a degree in the UK and has ended up studying Geography at Loughborough. 2 hours. That’s all it takes to drive there. How hard can it be?

I had a bit of an internal wobble about a week beforehand, but managed to hold it together. The day came and went and it was OK. I went into ‘massively overcompensating organisational Dad mode’ when it came to packing, transport and unloading (and obviously anything to do with setting up electronic kit!). The wife and I had a little cry on the way home but all things told, it felt fine. Lily got stuck into Uni and it’s been a blast….alcohol poisoning notwithstanding.

But I’ve not really coped well with it to be brutally honest. We are a family of four and pretty tight knit. We’ve always spent quite a bit of time together and the kids haven’t been the kind to avoid our company (at least not overtly!). So when 25% of the unit removes itself – for good and solid reasons – it changes things. It’s not just a 4 piece puzzle with a corner missing. It’s a 1000 piece puzzle with 250 pieces missing, and missing pieces all over the puzzle. Dinnertime, movie choices, supermarket shopping, school runs, playlists, sports fixtures, dramas, arguments…every single bit of what made us tick as a unit is somehow functioning less effectively and a little more clattery.

Her sister – much as she took her time to admit it – hates not having her around. Someone to bitch about us to. Someone to shout at when she steals clothes. Someone to play MarioKart with….properly. Someone to steer the parental spotlight away from her when she needs to just disappear form conversation for a bit. Someone to make her laugh. All of that and more.

I went to boarding school when I was 11 (albeit only for a year as my folks lived abroad) so I looked at it from a personal point of view. I’ll be fine when my daughter goes to Uni because I’ve done the trauma already. This will be plain sailing. But I overlooked the other side of the puzzle. I had been the 20% (2 siblings in my case) not the 80% that required rearranging. It makes a lot more sense now.

I know this will not be new news to plenty of people who have gone before me and have adapted in their own way to family ‘geographical spread’. There will be plenty more after me and all will no doubt experience a version of their own puzzle. I’m not saying this to be overly sentimental. It’s just an observation that something I thought I’d be OK with has hit me like Halley’s comet in the knackers. Hard and irreversible.

Which makes me ever more determined to ensure that Phase 3* of my life will be purposeful and meaningful (in its own way) but will ensure that I’m not going to be the person that just sits around waiting for my children to come and visit me. F**k that. I’m going to do things and involve them….should they so choose to join in.

*Phase 1 is education and early career (growth and independence if you will). Phase 2 is parenthood (enough said). Phase 3 is certainly not bloody retirement.

5. University accommodation sh*tshow.

Following on from the last, I just want to make a point about how utterly bonkers the University accommodation application process is. For something that has been on repeat for decades and that can be iteratively improved over time, it dumbfounds me how chaotic and unfair it is.

And technology appears to have made things worse. Not better. I won’t go into the details here. It’s just abysmal. Period.

6. A jigsaw puzzle approach to life.

I know I’ve just used a jigsaw puzzle analogy, but I’m going to use it again because I like it and this is my article!

I’m very aware that much of what I’ve written about in this article is somewhat negative and depressing. When I look broadly at the last year, it does feel overwhelmingly ok, so I’m not sure why I’ve focussed on so many negative angles. Who knows.

When I consider the design industry as a whole, my ‘swingometer’ tips towards the red zone, but when I consider my circumstances, it definitely tips the other way into the green, and much of this is my metaphorical jigsaw puzzle.

For the purposes of illustration, consider all the different responsibilities and things expected of you as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. For much of my professional life (and most of it prior to my recalibration blip) the jigsaw puzzle piece in the centre, and the largest of all has been work. I can shout and scream about how much I value my kids and my role as a father or husband (and have written about it a great deal in the past) but the reality is that for the majority of my ‘career’, my work has defined the shape of the life around it. Whether employed, self employed or business owner, the puzzle relied on the ‘work’ piece to fit front and centre. If there was work to be done, half terms were compromised. It’s not unique…it’s just how it is.

My recent exploits have found me taking a very different approach to this puzzle. Whereas previously I would put the other pieces around the central work piece, I now put different puzzle pieces in the centre and work around that instead, depending on the day, the week or the month. Deliberately. This isn’t about jiggling things about to make room for a doctor’s appointment or a school play or even deciding on a part time job to give yourself time to do other things – that still puts work first. This is about prioritising one thing over others and the other things re-ordering themselves accordingly.

If I need to focus on my daughters on a certain day, I will do so and work will adapt accordingly. If I need to look after my Dad, everything else shifts. If I need to take a day to run errands, see friends or catch up with someone who needs a coffee, sobeit. The result means I don’t really have a working week or even working hours. And I’m no less productive or able to deliver.  It’s not really even about flexibility in the sense that small business owners will describe, as I’ve been there and done that bit too. This is more about taking control of what needs doing right now and letting the secondary stuff flow around it.

I’m not a ‘stay at home Dad’ but I am. I’m not a ‘house husband’ but I am. I’m not a ‘carer’ but I am. I’m not ‘self employed’ but I am. I’m certainly a business owner but I don’t let the business own me. I appreciate it sounds a bit fluffy and yogic. It’s not meant to. It’s simply my attempt to let the right things take priority in my life when it is needed….particularly at a time when things are changing so quickly and my differing roles have to adapt accordingly.

It’s a brilliant thing when you let it happen.

7. Design isn’t as central as we like to think.

I have a lot to say on this topic so may leave it for a specific standalone article, but my overriding feeling is that design has broadly over promised and underdelivered…as a whole. Much of this is down to the proliferation of verbose but somewhat vacuous ‘design leaders’ across our industry. Some of it is down to new generational expectations of design. Some of it is a sense that design has moved away from the sense of holism, and tends to now be considered more as a veneer. Some of it is the huge over complication of the process and over intellectualisation of something fundamentally equally emotionally raw and pragmatically logical.

Or it could be none of it. More to follow when I’ve worked out how to write it all down. As a passionate advocate of design BTW.

8. Bloke loneliness.

I am aware that loneliness affects everyone, but in this instance I wanted to talk about bloke loneliness, as we – as a stumbling mass – are broadly a bit shit at admitting stuff and asking for company or help.

Now loneliness shouldn’t be confused with being alone. I like being alone. I am happy in my own head, my own space and my own company, always have been, but I’ve noticed a greater feeling of loneliness in the last year. Undoubtedly prompted by my eldest moving to University (no rocket scientist required here thank you), but nevertheless an unwelcome swathe of feelings that are quite tricky to deal with.

Now my circumstances are specific, but I’ve spoken to quite a few people over the last year who have either set up their own freelance business or ‘enjoy’ the freedoms of being their own boss, and these feelings are shared. And moreso than anytime in the past. I have no conclusive reasoning for why now versus then, but it could be a gradual settling of the ‘remote working’ razzamatazz, a growing frustration with video calls versus a decent F2F, in-person chitchat, a dawning realisation that some level of commute (or at least a semi-regular change of scene) is healthy for the mind and body or maybe it’s a seething hatred of your domestic broadband provider…possibly!

I don’t mean to joke about it. Loneliness is a real and present issue in our society and not an easy one to solve. People may appear to have the ideal work life balance but the reality is that they are drowning in their own problems…silently.

I know there are lots of well meaning charities and causes out there looking to support issues like these and male suicide has some depressingly horrid statistics, but a catchy slogan or a groovy t-shirt will do nothing unless people stay in touch and invite people to meet and talk. Don’t just do that thing of saying “just checking to see if you are ok?” via WhatsApp as that will just either go unanswered or you’ll get a “fine thanks…you?” in return. Meet. Chat. Laugh. Pick up the bill.

Not as a gesture of generosity. But as a means to get them to arrange the next chat where they can “get the next one”.

9. The death of CES?

I know this isn’t technically 2023 as I’m commenting on the recent CES in early ’24, but for the sake of an annual summary, it kinda works.

I’ve been following CES for years. I’ve had the privilege of creating countless product prototypes, models and new product ideas that have had their launch and preview at numerous CES events over the years. Panicked Christmas holidays attempting to get stuff completed in time for that early January flight. Meetings in frosty car parks to hand over fragile prototypes with strict instructions and cautious over packaging. It’s been fun and exhilarating.

But I can’t help but feel that CES has had it’s day. Where it used to feel like a place where new exciting things were born and trends emerged, so it now feels like a slightly tired meeting place for predictable announcements that have already been made, and a strange manifestation of those Clive James TV spots (sorry…showing my age here) where he shared bonkers Japanese game show antics or wacky inventions. Ridiculous oddities. Irrelevant inventions. Niche sensationalism.

Maybe it’s my age and an ever growing sense of cynicism? Maybe not.

10. Zoe – eventually

I listened to the podcast with Tim Spector. I ordered the Zoe test kit ages ago. I was ill when it eventually arrived so I threw the muffins into the freezer so I could delay the start. I kept getting ill. I forgot about it all. I’m not ill now. I need to start. I’m fascinated by my gut health as the more I listen and read around the subject, the more I’m convinced it’s critical to our wellbeing, overall health and longevity. I plan to start soon. I’ll update you when I do.

Another beast. That’s what happens when you leave it too long between articles. Too much to say.

Sorry it’s all a bit deep. It’s not meant to be. I guess it’s a decent reflection of what my brain has been thinking about recently. As a father and as a design professional.

I hope 2024 has started well for as many of you as possible. Here’s to a year of political turmoil and global upheaval, but I wish you all well, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.