I was spending too much time looking at AI apps and got hit with an ad. It said: “When there are no screens, what will we design?”.
It's 2021, and we are just getting out of the pandemic. I'm at LA Blue Origin offices, reviewing design resumes. They're all horrible and I'm being too kind to candidates, assigning most a take-home exercise to help them prove me wrong. They all come back with some form of a linear progression chart — a bunch of rectangles, signifying states of a computer screen — and arrows, stitched together — and a “thank-you-for-your-consideration” note.
Did you know mockup means .png to thousands of remote workers on Upwork?
Designing beyond the rectangle is a much needed topic of conversation for a generation of “screen designers” who came out of pandemic-era bootcamps. A generation of professional designers not knowing what to do with themselves, now that the most cutting-edge interface is voice, chat and an IRL-interaction.
“Wood or code, design is a function of goals meeting means.”
Paola Antonelli is MoMA's curator of the last three decades. Her team designs the visitor experience. One of the few times she could've cared about screens was during the pandemic, when MoMA exhibits were online-only experiences.
If you're leading a design team, especially if your peers grew up with screens, don't put this conversation off for too long. The earlier you blow your gen-Z colleagues' minds and shift their paradigm — the better.
Go abstract: when screens recede, what remains is perception. When there are no screens to design, we will continue designing products, services and experiences, reducing the hardships and emotional costs associated with utilization.