The “Never Normal” Era Has Begun

We recently spoke with him about what the intersection between humans, physical environments, and the digital world looks like in the years ahead. He discusses the “never normal” era we’re entering, why lateral thinking is vital to navigating it, and where we should invest our time and energy to meet the change head-on.

In your new report, COVID-19: Product and spatial design in a pandemic, you describe this period and beyond as the “never normal”. Tell us about the thinking behind this concept and where it might lead us in the future.

The notion of the “never normal” is that we’re entering into an era where things are going to be constantly changing at a faster pace than we’ve seen before. From living through pandemics, to economic recessions, to tackling things like systemic inequality, to a crisis of confidence, we’re experiencing a series of events that have created a situation where we have to go back to the drawing blocks on a lot of the things that we take for granted.

What's interesting about the “never normal” is that it forces a fundamental reset in how we think about the “why,” “how” and “what” of business, alongside a deeper realization of the unintended social and societal impact your outputs may have. It means doubling down on your longer-term principles and ways of working that’ll carry you through this uncertainty, rather than to assume that the ways in which you're going to do them are future-proof. Instead, you have to think about the values you're trying to espouse: What are the timeless things that you can rely on, and then articulate the ways that you can address an ever decreasing horizon line, and a plan for constant evolution and change along the way with faster, smaller releases?

The “never normal” also forces you to look further afield for insights than we might have in the past. Lateral thinking and exploration becomes more important. Pulling stories, learnings and anecdotes from other industries become more important because you can't rely on the way that we've always done things being the way that we will continue to do them in the future within any given industry, but we can look at comparables and to history for insights on where things may go in the future.

When you look at the blurring of physical and digital design, what do you see?

One thing is the rise of the digital assist. It’s become a truism that software is the vast majority of the things we use, and more and more things are connected. That requires us to think about systems differently, and how digital, physical and service models might coexist. 

I was just in a meeting where we were talking though possible longer-term changes in the patient waiting room experience here in the United States, caused by COVID. As a “comparable” or possible future that exists today somewhere else, someone shared an image from Rwanda. In it, everyone is wearing masks, and there are industrial robots sitting in front of them, acting as guides and notifiers. The robots are playing the role of nurse practitioners in that moment, but replacing a tactical, efficiency-driven need, rather than a crucial interaction point where deeper human-to-human contact is required and desired. 

In this example, robots, or technology is doing the busy work that allows humans to do higher level tasks and be utilized more effectively in ways that create a better experience. Obviously, potential downsides are that done wrong, we're removing people from the workforce, or that we might inadvertently marginalize different populations if we don’t consider efficiencies that embrace diversity, and we’ll need to go back to core principles around inclusivity as we design the systems themselves.

How might we make certain physical interactions, such as payments, unnecessary?

It goes back to an activity where we deconstruct the experience itself, and then re-architect it using this new set of tools we have at our disposal and a better understanding of context. That deconstruction allows us to examine the payment moment then think about what parts we can distribute to before, during, and after the physical transaction. We can use all of the levers we have at our disposal, such as knowledge of location through our mobile devices, remote payments and touchless interfaces to minimize the physicality to whatever degree feels comfortable to the person navigating the experience, or to rewire the entire experience differently from start to finish. 

An added layer of complexity in the dematerialization of experiences space is around those we empower in these experiences and those we exclude. In our design of these kinds of experiences, we always need to be mindful of technology distribution, and who loses when others gain. In many cases, we need to keep a physical alternative to a move to digitization so we don’t exclude a large, underserved proportion of the population.  

What’s an outside-the-box solution you’ve seen in response to the pandemic? 

I love experience hacks, and I love ideas that are originating from the “real world” rather than the design project room. Everyone has the capacity to be a designer. There's a burrito place down the street from me here in San Francisco that has replaced their frequent buyer card with a branded pen. Every time you go in with the pen, you get a discount on your burrito, and you use the pen to sign the bill. By using your own pen you’re not sharing tools or potentially passing a virus to the next person or to the cashier. The pen being branded and lasting also serves as an advertising channel. In that, the pen has a symbolic, material value. It’s become a symbol of an experience. You can get a discount, but it's also a branding moment for the restaurant.

This is a real case where they’ve pulled apart this experience and reconstructed it in a way that works, but it's not a solution that I would expect to hear a designer come up with.

It speaks to a larger point though, which is we, as designers, have to be more open to what's being hacked, more aware of the world beyond our own domains and always on the look-out for insight and new ways of doing things. A lot of the best solutions right now are coming from the ground up, from people who have created ad hoc solutions as a result of a clear need. Our inquisitiveness is what will keep our discipline fresh.

In this “never normal” era, how and where should we invest our time and energy?

We’re big advocates of dipping a toe in the water first and testing fast. A lot of the things we're talking about in our report are enormous changes and can represent capital expenditures for organizations if not thought of holistically and with iteration in mind. We believe in hacking something together and go to a real-world test as fast as possible. Think about what you’re doing longitudinally and as a continuous evolution, rather as something you solve instantly or over a set period of weeks and then consider done. Nothing is final, and the notion of ‘we fixed it forever’, as we had to some degree in the past, has gone away.

The conversations we've been having with clients are as much about new processes, organizational models and ways of working that clients can onboard to change the way they think about problem solving, as it is the problems that they're solving, or the solutions that they may have. To create sustainable change, and survive in this era of the never normal we have to reexamine everything.

Cover image: Physical distancing. Image created by Samuel Rodriguez on Unsplash. Submitted for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives - help stop the spread of COVID-19.