Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Last semester I taught a subject at UTS called User Experience Design. When I looked at the material that had been taught previously I was underwhelmed. It seemed to focus on a strict design process. A prescription.
I don’t approach design this way. Whenever someone asks me to describe my “design process” I usually say things like: “I don’t have one”, or “it’s complicated”.
I may not have a concrete design process, but I have certain principles or techniques that I do use. One of these is attention.
At the beginning of the semester I told my UX class that one of the best skills they could develop, if they wanted to be serious about UX, was attention. That is, to be attentive to things. To people. To your surroundings. To the world. Watch how people use things. Listen. Notice.
Go somewhere and just sit and watch. Don’t try to intervene or make judgements, just watch. Take notes if you would like. Watch how people wait for the train. How do they go through the ticket turnstiles? Think about how they are feeling. What happens when the machine doesn’t work properly? How do people react?
I wanted them to think about more than buttons and search boxes and what goes where in an app design. I wanted them to think about what their design enabled, how it made people feel. (I think there may have been a few disappointed students who had joined the class to learn Figma).
By the end of semester though, the students were on a roll. They were given a brief by a disability organisation and every student responded with design proposals that were deeply thought through, despite some of them coming from non-design disciplines. I was very proud of the work they produced.
Many scholars and writers have pointed out that attention, attentiveness, whatever you want to call it, is critical for the provision of good care. “What is definitive about care,” says Joan Tronto, “seems to be the perspective of taking the other’s needs as the starting point for what must be done.”
Sounds simple enough. But now do you know what those needs are? How do you keep track of them when they change? How do you decide how to respond and then, what to do?
Good care then, requires attention.
Tronto again:
“But perception of needs can be wrong. Even if the perception of a need is correct, how the care-givers choose to meet the need can cause new problems. A person with mobility limitations may prefer to feed herself, even though it would be quicker for the volunteer who has stopped by the with the hot meal to feed her. Whose assessment of the more pressing need – the need for the volunteer to get to the next client, or the meal recipient’s need to preserve her dignity – is more compelling?”
Design, particularly design research, has much to learn from care thinkers – I’ll call them – like Tronto. Design also has a lot to learn from those who practice care. The relationship between carer and the person being cared for – the continual push-pull – while not identical to that of designer-designed for, is interesting to consider when we think about how we design, what we design and why.
So much thinking – and designing – to be done in this space. I’m looking forward to it.
Books for designers interested in care:
- Labours of Love Madeleine Bunting
- Who Cares? Emily Kenway
- Moral Boundaries Joan Tronto
- Being Mortal Atul Gawunde
Georgina Hibberd 
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