Decontextualisation of Goods & Services
A discussion of how to make products that are full of life
There is a strange tension for many of us between the abundance and the lifelessness of the economic world we inhabit. There is undoubtedly some kind of tradeoff being made. However, this tradeoff is neither absolute nor uni-directional. I personally don’t have any clean answers but I think that if we pay close attention we may be able to find abundant forms of life in new economic models.
Economic development has, over the last few hundred years, taken a mechanistic turn. Creating a new good or service is treated as a system with inputs and outputs with the aim of maximising certain key performance indicators (KPIs). One of the results of this approach has been a steady decontextualisation of the things that we interact with.
As I write this I am sitting at my kitchen table - the Jokkmokk. As an object it is a prime example of a context-agnostic good. A wood grain table with 4 chairs, it offers a supported wide, flat surface for holding objects and sitting to eat or work. My first Jokkmokk took pride of place in a small studio apartment that I and my partner rented in Queens1. This is our second, currently located in the dining room of a house on the West side of Toronto. My partner's parents in North York own the same table and it has been the centre of their kitchen for almost a decade.
All of these Jokkmokks had a similar life: designed in Sweden, fabricated across 5 megafactories in various European countries then, in this case, shipped to Canada. This mirrors the experience of most of the objects in our homes. Some even make it a point of pride "Designed in California, Assembled in China". They are the product of a supply chain that in the final analysis cannot feasibly take the end users context into account except in the most abstract way.
When Carina Bengs the designer of the Jokkmokk contemplated the aim for this piece I expect it was to have a design open to adorning both houses and apartments; for use as kitchen nook or primary dining table, and something available for all people in all walks of life.
This kind of manufacture misses the unique context that each piece of creation has. My circumstances in a Canadian city; the specific breadth and width of this room; along with the particular use that the table will serve for me, my partner, and our guests played no direct role in the decisions taken to create it.
This kind of decontextualisation can leave our environment feeling - in the language of Christopher Alexander - 'dead'. Without the careful sensitivity to local conditions that is found in uniquely crafted objects it is almost certain that this table will prevent the natural forces of the space from fully expressing themselves. I may love to spread out when doing work, leaving books, papers, pens and coffee cups sprawled in every direction. By choosing dimensions that maximises the number of spaces the table can fit into the Jokkmokk inhibits this part of my nature preventing the full expression of my character.
This experience is equally true of services. When your only source for a loan was the local money lender the nature of the contract and the relationship that underpinned it was possible to harmonise with the participants in very concrete ways. If you read or watch The Merchant of Venice you can see the intricacies that went into every 'pound of flesh'. Now your bank will offer you a rate, based on some algorithmic credit score, often created without a single personal interaction and if you ever fail to pay an unaffiliated debt collection agency, itself impersonal to the bank, will come to collect the funds.
However, at the same time, looked at from another angle, it seems that the quality of goods and services is improving.
The Jokkmokk, while not perfect, does serve the needs of its owners very well. I have sat at my Jokkmokk on countless evenings with a beer or wine enjoying loving conversations, and I've spent even more countless days working on some problem or writing words like I'm doing now. It really is made of wood, and it is well finished. It's an aesthetic piece to look at and interact with. Plus - as much as one could quibble over the specifics and 'whole system costs' - for me and my loved ones it was cheap and easy. The whole setup cost just over $150 and an hour for assembly. My partner has built furniture on the side and to create this arrangement even with all the tools already purchased would cost nearly the same amount in $s along with at least an entire week of work. In the final analysis I, and my extended family, have owned three of these table sets, they have served us well, and I would recommend it to others.
In the case of the money lender there are similar experiences. We've had a half a century of mechanised solutions to credit that extended loans to a greater proportion of the population but often at great harm to their lives. More recently there have been competitors start to crop up in most markets that, even if they don't bring human touch points into the process, seem to really care about the experience of the person taking out the loan. They use clear, simple language to communicate and create terms that allow more people to be better in control of their own finances2. In addition they use the data from these customers to improve the likelihood that loans will only be given to people likely to have the financial means to repay them and as a result keep more people from falling into terrible cycles of debt.
A part of this improvement comes from attempts to bring the end user more into the process of creation. This usually occurs under the guise of something like 'user-centric' design. When creating goods and services companies and organisations will interview users before, during & after and they go through the process with a degree of thoughtfulness and care around how people will interact with their products that previous eras lacked3. The possibility of true sensitivity to context remains impossible, but ensuring that the people involved in the system are allowed to flourish is a worthy goal.
Modern industrial design and mechanistic economies harm 'life'. It's not possible to create something in an abstract, non-local way that fits every context snugly. However, these same economies can, through their fully developed systems, create outcomes that fully 'organic' economies are unable to reach. Moreover the harm that they do to life does not appear to be absolute. At the very least with careful work we can improve the outcomes.
New York is a difficult city. If you find the dirt and the noise all just a little too much but you have your reasons to be there and want to be close to the action then you should check out Long Island City.
You can see this when you compare things like traditional credit card companies and new upstarts like Upgrade Card
It's unclear if this is driven by market forces - e.g. there's much more competition now so to survive companies need a level of customer-centricity - or by social changes - e.g. people only want to work for companies where they believe they are making people's lives better as a result. Either way it's a welcome development.