Tripnotes: Spatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture

Tricia Wang, Co-founder of Sudden Compass, began her talk with the instruction to locate three different colored sticky notes and a sharpie marker. Write down “1st space: Home, 2nd Space: Work, and 3rd Space: Community & Creative” on different sticky notes. Then draw activities that you do in each space. Finally, tear them all up and smash them together.
sticky notes

This exercise represents what we are all experiencing – the melding of Home, Work, and Community as we stay at home during the global COVID-19 pandemic. These spaces are normally separate, each with unique ethics, norms, and rules. For example: home clothing vs work clothing.

Spatial Collapse

This phenomenon is called Spatial Collapse. It refers to the disruption of our mental models on how we navigate physical and virtual spaces. It is especially true as we experience social distancing in conjunction with a battle against racism–all while trying to maintain our daily lives.

Pace Layering

As diagrammed below, Pace Layering refers to dimensions of society that change across different timelines. Items change at a slower pace as they descend from the top layer (fashion and commerce change quickly while culture and nature are slowest). This is evident during our present pandemic as we observe how quickly fashion has changed–masks are embraced in everyday outfits–and commerce, where businesses are rapidly creating new offerings.

Emergent culture

History has shown that Spatial Collapse is often the catalyst for emergent culture.

1400 AD | Linear Perspective –> Seeing

Linear perspective refers to a singularity in point of view. While it gave rise to new forms of art with a fixed point of view perspective. It also gave birth to a myth that we can only see reality from a single perspective.AND that this single perspective is the objective truth. This resulted in the degradation of other perspectives seen as inferior and also became a tool for colonization.

1600 – 1800 AD | Enclosure + Industrialization–> Time

By the 17th century, the distribution of common land resulted in a sharp rise in urban populations.

A new culture emerged around measurement with the advent of the Industrial Revolution

Time–and accounting for time–became an emergent culture. Factory bosses had control over workers’ time, while the wealthy enjoyed the emergence of leisure time. This led to uprisings.
The three spaces discussed in the initial exercise became the representation of Home, Work, and Creative.

1950 -1970 | Urban Blight –> Culture

The 1950s-1970s saw Blacks moving from rural to urban areas, while whites moved to suburbs. Combined with Jim Crow laws, Blacks spent more time outside their homes. The streets became their 3rd space – an outlet for Community and Creativity. They repurposed sidewalks with graffiti art and created an emergent culture different from what city planners and architects originally had in mind.

COVID-19 Pandemic –> ???

Now the question becomes what emergent culture will form from COVID-19?

Signals

We might not have a crystal ball to predict the future, but there are four signals we can follow to create better experiences.

1. Thick data

Combine big data and analytics with thick data (Tricia’s term for qualitative data) to activate insights and build incredible experiences.

2. Embrace identity elasticity:

Segments and personas are great. However, remember to treat them as representations, not reality, or else one might miss new product or service opportunities (as singular linear perspective distorted perceptions in the past).

3. Think hyperlocal

Before the pandemic, many of our lives were hyperglobal through travel. With many countries and cities locked down, new local-specific forms of businesses and interactions have emerged.

In the example below, Grandchamps restaurant cares for the mental health of its workers by partnering with the community to provide walking companions at night to deter being stopped by police.

Even once the world opens back up, it can be powerful to prove local needs and solutions before scaling.

4. Ask questions

In the spirit of late civil rights champion Rep. John Lewis, remember to ask why and speak up.

Embrace the unknown. Do it together.

We might not know what the future holds. Yet we are all designers. Individuals making decisions with intentionality and thoughtfulness. Together we can face the future.