Transmission #14: Design failures, drawing without seeing, large biomass and Quincy Jones.

Design, ideas and other flotsam

Jul 05, 2021

Hello. Welcome.

This is Transmissions by me, Martin Brown. Father. Husband. Design Lead at Craig Walker and lecturer at RMIT. Marty to most.

This is an ongoing fortnightly newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.

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Design

On Design Thinking

Maggie Gram, NplusOne

IDEO is having a bit of a tough time of it right now. As with many influential Silicon Valley brands that gained prominence through the 00’s, people are discovering that what sounded like a good idea at one company, at a small scale, may not actually be a functional way to orient all of society. Facebook’s early missive to ‘move fast and break things,’ went from a peppy motivational one-liner in 2007 to a wanton dereliction of responsibility in 2016, when the thing that it threatened to break was democracy itself.

This thoughtful piece from Maggie Gram traces the history of how design thinking grew from a perhaps naively optimistic idea about new ways to solve old problems into to a worldwide phenomenon, an ur-panacea hastily applied to any challenge no matter the size, complexity or embedded structural intransigence. Through the story of an ill-fated IDEO-led project in Gainesville, Florida, Gram shows us that – to no real surprise – there are limitations to the approach, and that sometimes, there are failures. There are failures of hubris, of approach, of execution, failures of leadership, and failures of myopia and inclusion.

But it reminds me of another aphorism often heard around IDEO, ‘fail fast to succeed sooner’, and I really hope that we’re learning from these failures, that we’re challenging our assumptions with constructive critique (as opposed to opportunistic pile-ons), and that we continue to believe, with perhaps naive optimism, that our most difficult challenges can actually be solved.

Disclaimer: I worked as a designer at IDEO in London and Tokyo from 2010-2017. I’m far from a neutral observer.

The art of Aphantasia: how ‘mind blind’ artists create without being able to visualise

Matthew MacKisack, The Conversation

Fascinating exploration of how some artists are able to produce incredibly refined works without first visualising the work in their head. It turns out that they are just really good critics of their own work, making endless adjustments once something is down on the paper. Reminds me of George Orwell’s story that his writing developed from the incessant narrative of his inner-monologue, and makes me wonder if there are writers who can somehow write without this inner voice? Musicians who can’t hear music in their heads?

Love Hultén makes beautiful, beautiful machines.

Ideas

Ocean Twilight Zone - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Ninety-five per cent of world's fish hide in mesopelagic zone

Phys-Org

An international team of marine biologists has found mesopelagic fish in the earth's oceans constitute 10 to 30 times more biomass than previously thought.

File this one under: ‘Extremely positive news that despite our worst attempts the planet is more resilient than we thought.’

In Conversation: Quincy Jones

David Marchese, Vulture, 2018

A classic from the archives. The genius music producer Quincy Jones tees off in style. Example:

What were your first impressions of the Beatles?
That they were the worst musicians in the world. They were no-playing motherfuckers. Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it. I remember once we were in the studio with George Martin, and Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, “Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.” So he did, and we called Ronnie Verrell, a jazz drummer. Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says, “George, can you play it back for me one more time?” So George did, and Ringo says, “That didn’t sound so bad.” And I said, “Yeah, motherfucker because it ain’t you.” Great guy, though.

The whole thing is like this. Lol.

Quotes

"Using state authority to govern society on one hand, and reproducing and extending scientific knowledge on the other, means working with two very distinct kinds of logic. Conflating them brings political corruption to science, confusion, and indecision to state action, and dishonesty and loss of trust to state justification. The inconsistency on the message of masks from experts and governments did great damage to the credibility of the public policy response to the crisis, precisely because it was billed as a matter of scientific truth, rather than state tactical decision."

– The Chaos of Science in Power, Nicolas Villareal, Palladium Magazine

"Baked products, for example, are judged by their quality of “go away.” Proper proportions of sugar and fat result in good “good go-away”—which means that the mouthful of food can be swallowed without leaving the inside of the mouth coated with fat particles. The help of sugar in achieving good goaway is vital."

– Meals Without Grace, Sidney W. Mintz, Boston Review