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The Power and Pull of Nostalgia

My first diary post this week focused on visual trends in the future. For the second, it's worth pointing out that the visuals of the past also have strong pull and influence. Trends are cyclical. Nostalgia and a yearning for the past hold great power.

My instant cameras don't take the best photos, and I can't do much with them other than admire them occasionally. There is no posting, retouching, or reprinting. Although I own many cameras, I love the little prints this Instax delivers. They're fun. There is something special about watching the empty space slowly transform into a picture. It's as much about the joy of the experience as it is the end result.

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Trends in Design & Tech: Electric and Future-facing

The new Jaguar redesign is funky and has been quite the conversation piece. The website says, "We're here to delete the ordinary. To go bold. To copy nothing."

I find this statement a bit ironic because their logo change follows the trend of oversimplification that we've seen for a while now.

What I find most interesting about Jaguar's decision is their firm stake in the ground. While most other car companies are slowly transitioning into an electric lineup, Jaguar has committed to going entirely electric by 2025. They aim to reach an entirely new audience and demographic. I'm very interested to see how it plays out.

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Responsibility Practitioners - Corrections without Judgement

I started working for a strategy firm in September, and although it feels like the busiest I've ever been, it's also the first time in a while that I feel supported and appreciated as an employee. My boss knows I need flexibility in my schedule as a parent and a disabled person who has frequent appointments. She trusts my instincts and gives me agency with clients and projects.

I have the utmost respect for her diverse client base. She works for huge companies and supports smaller, meaningful organizations because she believes in the work.

This week's big takeaway was her stance on "corrections without judgment." In our company culture, being corrected is embraced. It is framed as a learning opportunity. Knowing it's okay to make mistakes means our team has space to be creative and take risks. This allows us to grow as individuals and professionals, and it shows in the work. We are motivated to excel because we believe in the work and have true leadership and support.

I aspire to be this kind of design leader: kind and empathetic but fiercely powerful and effective.

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Responsibility Practitioner: Wild Bird Research Group

Wild Bird Research Group is my Capstone Client. I am constantly impressed by the care and dedication of each person within the organization. They prioritize their work's ecological and environmental impact and lead with empathy.

The Adopt An Owl program is an excellent example of an innovative design solution. Researchers and volunteers are already banding owls during migration season. This program allows people to 'adopt' an owl and receive a photo, a certificate with its band number, and additional measurements and information. It requires minimal extra work for the internal team, makes the audience feel involved, and has a positive financial impact.

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Problematic Stake in the Ground

5 Below: Making it cheaper rarely makes it better

5 Below placed a Stake in the Ground promising to sell items to customers for $5 or less. Their idea was to target preteens and teens with some spending money. Unfortunately, many of the products they sell are cheap, break easily, and don't last. This leads to customer frustration and excessive waste.

They have also had to adjust their prices. They now sell items over $5. Not only did they have a problematic stake in the ground, but they also chose one that they couldn't realistically commit to long-term.

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Problematic Stake in the Ground

Amazon Prime: Quick Delivery is not always a good thing

Amazon has put a stake in the ground in getting products to their customers as quickly as possible. Guaranteeing speedy delivery for the sake of convenience has a plethora of negative consequences.

This Buzzfeed article from 2019 details "how Amazon’s gigantic, decentralized, next-day delivery network brought chaos, exploitation, and danger to communities across America."

This is food for thought as we approach the holiday season and the subsequent marketing that encourages us to shop. Shop small, shop local.

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Lush is a great example of a company successfully putting a stake in the ground. They make cosmetics by hand with fresh, organic ingredients. They also deliver a fun shopping experience and consistently offer exciting collaborations. My son and I enjoyed shopping the Beetlejuice collection, and the bath bombs did not disappoint!

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A Stake in the Ground: Women Deserve Autonomy

It may sound obvious, but this is a stake in the ground that not everyone agrees with. We live in a country where a woman's right to choose what happens to her body has shrunk drastically. We live in a world where female genital mutilation is still very much a reality. My company started working with a new non-profit organization called This Is What Happens When Women Read. The organization's creation is a direct result of the founder's personal experience of finding new meaning in life through the wisdom she found in literature. The mission and goals of the organization are intertwined with her personal story and her leadership in bringing the vision to life.

I agree wholeheartedly with the stake in the ground. Women deserve education, independence, and autonomy.

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A Parameter Worth Challenging - Individualism

Writing my Parameter Analysis for my Design Leadership Project made me think intensely about how American culture prioritizes individualism. Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner identified seven dimensions of culture, one of which is individualism versus communitarianism.

Despite being raised in the US, I come from a large multicultural family who values care and support. I thrive in a community. As a parent, I owe my success (and my sanity) to the village of people who help with my kids. Much of my research this week pointed to how isolated and overwhelmed parents feel. This clearly proves that the US should push back on this cultural parameter. According to the Census Bureau, there were 63.1 million parents with kids under 18 in 2020. When you include other caregivers, that number is even higher. That's a huge number of people who deserve community support.

Here's a TIME article on the subject worth reading: We Have Put Individualism Ahead of the Common Good for Too Long

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Cultural Parameters

Understanding cultural parameters is paramount to building relationships in life. I remember learning about "peach vs. coconut" cultures and having a totally new frame of reference for my interactions with others. My parents come from two vastly different cultures: My mom is an Irish Philly native, and my dad is from CDMX. I grew up with a frame of reference for both cultures, which has served me well when navigating all kinds of situations.

Meyer's 8 scales to evaluate cultures are invaluable for understanding our own parameters and where others stand in comparison.

Communicating

Evaluating

Persuading

Leading

Deciding

Trusting

Disagreeing

Scheduling

Personally, I need high-context communication and direct feedback, and I work best with linear timeframes.

Whether cultural parameters should be honored depends heavily on the context of the situation. What cultures do each party identify with? What are their goals? Can they find common ground? The most important part is understanding that there are always cultural parameters and taking the time to evaluate them and understand how they impact a situation or relationship. It's part of holistic thinking and human-centered design.

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Physical Disability as a Parameter

I wanted to share a personal anecdote for this prompt as I celebrated a personal milestone yesterday. In October of 2018, I was hit by a car while riding my motorcycle. Yesterday, 10/21 marked 6 years since my accident. I had several intense orthopedic surgeries, spent about 2 weeks in the ICU, spent another chunk of time in the recovery ward, and then went to an in-patient rehab facility before finding my way back home (but still in a hospital bed). I am quite familiar with physical constraints and all the design (and life) challenges they bring.

The entire experience allowed me to discover my own resilience and strength. It also allowed me to build deep empathy for disabled folks and people who deal with chronic pain. I was a wheelchair user for a few months after the accident, and I was shocked at how inaccessible our world is.

My physical parameters include the need for rest, stretching, and movement throughout my workday, but it doesn't decrease my productivity. In fact, it helps. Taking care of myself makes for better, more creative work.

When I experience pain, I consider it a daily reminder to put my physical and mental health first, and I encourage others to do the same when they can. While I am not 'thankful' for the physical trauma I had to endure, I can say that it made me a better person and a more considerate and holistic designer.

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A Beautiful Constraint

The idea of Leveraging or Alleviating Parameters immediately reminded me of the book by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden, A Beautiful Constraint, and prompted me to pick it up and refresh on the practical process it lays out for turning constraints into stimuli for better solutions.

I especially love steps 3 and 4 here. Asking propelling questions to drive success, and reframing our mindset to CAN-IF thinking are extremely powerful tools to turn constraints into possibilities.

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The power of a photo

I was talking to someone the other day about photography and its power as a medium. It can be a way to get people to stop and think about something they would otherwise never consider. This could be images of human rights atrocities happening across the globe, or it could be something as simple as a strangely beautiful pepper.

This photograph is one of Edward Weston's most famous. What I love most about the series is that he photographed the peppers simply because he found them interesting. And he kept photographing them because every time, he discovered something new in the process.

I want to bring this sense of curiosity and joy into any practice. I appreciate this as a reminder that if we explore, and lean into things we find interesting and beautiful, the results can have a truly lasting impact. Even if we're only pondering a photo of a pepper.

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I am an avid reader and a total book nerd. It takes an immense amount of design leadership to bring a book into the world. From the writing and editing to the cover design, the printing, the copy layout and the production, the whole process requires care and consideration. Then after a book is published, an entire book tour needs to be planned!

I am lucky enough to have a few author friends who have given me a peek into their world and who always give me fabulous book recommendations. I also try to find indie bookshops whenever I travel and ask them for local author recommendations.

This is a collection of some of the books I've read so far this year.

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Today I spent time canvassing and door knocking with the PA Dems for the upcoming election. They’ve integrated lists of registered voters onto an app called MiniVan making it super easy to see information and enter data and notes about each interaction. Today, canvassers were targeting undecided Democratic and Independent voters. I thought it was an interesting strategy to focus on a specific group of people.

The technology was in place, but the communication to the volunteers was confusing and disorganized.

I thought this was a great example of an instance where more tech doesn’t indicate success. As a volunteer, I wanted a clear set of instructions, and more (and better) information about how to approach the task. Being handed a list, some campaign materials, and an app connection wasn’t enough for me.

I also didn’t come away from today feeling like I had any meaningful exchanges with undecided voters. Today was an example of an interesting design tool, that wasn’t being utilized with proper design leadership.

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Design Tools

I am a huge fan of calendar tools both digital and analog. On the left, you can see notepads (made by Baron Fig) that lay out the week. I usually fill them in on Sunday for the week (or two) ahead.

Although I am an avid Google Calendar user, physically writing down the big events and tasks in a given week really helps me see how it's all going to come together. I use the notepads to plan out my homework in the evenings, and make sure I'm spreading things out. Using these design tools together keeps me organized and reduces stress. I can easily visualize how everything is going to get done!

As a designer and a design leader, being able to stay on schedule and collaborate with team members (internal and external) using calendar tools is invaluable.

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"This made me realize how badly I need to leave my job..."

One of my ethnographic interviewees is a public defender in Baltimore. He's also a husband, a father, a Black man, an ex-Marine, a video-game nerd and a sports enthusiast. Of all the conversations I had this week, this one went the deepest and covered the most topics. He regularly gets only 3-4 hours of sleep a night, because it feels necessary given the demands of his job and his home-life.

Many of his clients are facing incarceration, and their freedom is truly in his hands. He told me a heartbreaking story about a 19-year-old who was arrested just days before his high school graduation for carrying a weapon. He was only carrying because his younger brother was recently shot & killed, and this young man still currently fears for his life. He's already been in jail for 112 as he awaits trial. It's my friend's job to make sure this young kid doesn't end up with a 5 year sentence. Of course his sleep is impacted.

This friend spoke about how unsustainable his job is because of the ways it negatively impacts his life and his ability to be the best husband and father he can be.

We talked about the need for rest, the negative impacts of 'grind-culture' and America's obsession with productivity. We talked about how much better things could be if social safety nets worked better, and properly supported people all around.