January 21, 2021

Wondering

Enquiring

(Labeling)

“From a mindful perspective, however, uncertainty creates the freedom to discover meaning.”

Ellen Langer

Our market society foregrounds the value of the individual’s right to choose, yet can reduce the identity of individuals to that of consumer-choosers, such as patients or health consumers, in a health marketplace - exercising their “right to choose” from a limited menu of options. Contrast this “logic of choice” (Mol) with the “logic of care” which describes a broader range of human considerations that also deserve our attention when considering delivery of human-centered, designed services such a healthcare. Annemarie Mol, Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the University of Amsterdam, has written an important book called The Logic of Care, a meditation on consumer and citizen choice that challenges conventional ideas about consumer sovereignty. In the logic of care model the individual is not reducible to a consumer, a citizen, or a patient. The individual occupies multiple identities simultaneously (daughter, activist, friend, consumer) and performs those identities often simultaneously and ongoingly throughout any given day.

The Logic of Care describes the value of “patient choice” in today’s healthcare system and then proposes an alternate value - that of “patient care”. The author uses diabetes as her focus in order to highlight the limits of what she calls the logic of choice. A diagnosis of diabetes calls not for a cure but rather for ongoing care and concern daily and indefinitely. Mol reminds us that choice is only as meaningful as the range of options. The Logic of Care also highlights the limitations of labels and diagnoses, including the meta-labels of sickness and health. Diagnoses, cures and solutions are increasingly inadequate rubrics for considering health status. Mol has written elsewhere (The Body Multiple) about the body as a multiplicity - a process of becoming that inherently resists labeling and classification. In fact, classification of states of disease and illness may actually inhibit breakthrough insights.

Mediocre designed products, systems and services suffer from a similar lack of categorical curiosity and wonderment. Like medical teams, design teams are trained to know and to perform within normative professional standards and typologies. Yet, our professional preparation acts like a filter on the world, determining what is salient and not salient. In the practice of design these professional filters serve us well in the delivery of consistency. Yet product and service categories, in valuing consistency, also narrow our options to routines and typologies. When we set out to manage diabetes, we step out of dialogue with diabetes and stop wondering about diabetes. When we set out to design a chair, we stop wondering about other possibilities for bodily repose.

In applied sciences such as medicine, law and architecture, norms that once looked solid are shifting. Metrics for professional practice that rely on pre-existing formulas as guides to what is “healthy” or “diseased” — remain trapped inside a demi-realty. (Bhaskar) In contrast to the practice of inquiry, the concept of a “cure” or a “solution” can be seen as naive and partial (or demi-real). Product design for example, is a blended space that always entails attention to the product platform as a system of procurement, manufacturing, distribution, and post consumer impact. Industrial design does solve clearly defined problems in the form of solutions, yet the practice of industrial design, like medicine, also suffers the malady of “solving” the wrong problem. This is often related to over reliance on pre-existing categories and types that carries assumptions of the past into present time.

Design frames and propositions define and blur typologies. Working between and outside of typologies, a designer relates directly to and participates with phenomena spontaneously rather than relating to individuals and entities in terms of given categories or types. Breakthrough innovation involves wondering about existing typologies and daring tests of fit or lack of fit within existing categories. Curiosity about existing categories and agility in the ways that we define patients and other “users” creates a potentiated space where insights can occur. Following on the breakthroughs of the civil rights movement and waves of the feminist movement, we have recently seen dramatic expansions of the dignity of life with the legal extension of human rights to great apes, and growing public acceptance of the spectrum of ways of being transgender.

It is just such a process of wondering that inspires Kempe Scanlan, designer and founder of KEMPE. Initially inspired by new technologies for prosthetics that have allowed previously unimaginable physical performance, Scanlan conducted extensive research on body augmentation as part of his MDes thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His research created space to wonder about the categories “disability” and “capability”, and revealed disability - ability as a polarity dynamic shared by all human beings, calling into question the conventional design engineering typology of the prosthetic as a “fix” or compensation for a presumed lack.

Scanlan got curious about the experience of being “disabled” and the ways we try to overcome our disabilities and shortcomings - real or perceived. Broadening his frame of reference to body augmentation allowed Scanlan to take the perspective of a wider variety of beneficiaries. What stood out in his initial research was the POV of the at-risk transgender community and their expressed need for qualitatively better and safer designed offerings. Analysis of the current trans product landscape revealed a lack of understanding and empathy with the transgender experience. In a product marketplace dominated by hypersexual, unsafe, and poorly designed commoditized goods, Scanlan identified an opportunity in the design of performance wear to empower one - physically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially - through a transition from one gender to another or anywhere in between. Research, development and iterative testing of prototypes eventually led to the development of his thesis project TRANS / FORM and later to the launch of his platform KEMPE.

Attending the Trans Health Conference in 2014 allowed Scanlan to seek the perspectives of a wider cross-section of the trans community. By inclusively reflecting the spectrum of transgender identities designed artifacts can lend respect and legitimacy to individual choices. Designed object systems and services can mitigate social stigma by means of scenarios that honor identity and difference. Scanlan’s design inquiry became, “what is the evolution of human form and ability?” The focus is on user configured interchangeable pieces based on a schema of the body as a set of capabilities. KEMPE is strategically focused not on trans, or cis gender per se, but rather on “all inclusive product line”(Scanlan) - a brand positioning that pushes the typology envelope by designing for fluid dynamisms of use - going beyond outdated notions of universal or ideal users — to seek inspiration from diverse, unorthodox lifestyle patterns, and to address those discovered human needs via new materials and technologies.

How would you assess your current capacity to mindfully wonder about reality? Can you engage in faithful inquiry with the various unknowns that invariably present themselves in every design project? I wish to stress that conscious designing is always negotiating between professional norms and unrecognizable novelty. If our design inquiry is limited to what we already know and expect then we will satisfy only the commoditized market - working inside of typology and bound to reproduce the past. Design inquiry is expanded to include what is fuzzy, ambiguous, and difficult to name we will find ourselves in that space of creativity and innovation. Conscious designing focuses not so much on the what of our decision making but rather from where our decisions arise. Being and thinking outside of typology is a practice to cultivate to make your designing more intentional and impactful. The practice of curiosity steps out of familiar mental models, making space for surprise.

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