*seeking confined because of quarantine
More – Than – Human – Centered
What lies beyond “human centered” ? This made me think since as designers, designing for humans is the key aspect of our work; or at least this is what I was told.
I decided to take a stroll around my locality to gain certain sources of inspiration which can describe the notion of “more-than-human-centered”. Thoughts of existence, humanity, nature, galaxies, universe and artificial intelligence ruminated my brain as I walked through the street. But something far more fundamental caught my attention; a human group. A social group, collaborating, with a meaning and a motive exceeding the varied identities of the individuals in it. A social group acts as an organism in itself and perhaps lies at the foundation of what humans created, that was more-than-human. So instead of branching out, I decided to work with the roots.
One of the fundamental concepts that prevents this power in collaboration from drifting towards a rather destructive cause is an acceptance of diversity in ideologies. An uninterrupted flow of work through different mindsets. What prevents this diversity, is Ego.
Lets understand this concept though a simple brain teaser.
Take a strip of paper about 10cm x 1cm. Now this strip has a front and a back side. Your objective is to draw a straight line (length wise) on both the front and back side of the strip. Simple.
But there are 2 constraints:
- You cannot lift the pen while making the line on both sides
- You cannot cross the paper edge to reach the other side of the strip
You are allowed to fold or twist the strip but without damaging it.
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This particular form is called a “Möbius strip“. Whats special about this form is that it possesses only one side and only one edge (put simply, you don’t have to cross an edge to reach the other side). But instead of going into the specifics, I should explain why I took this example.
- Consider the 2 sides of the strip as 2 different ideologies
- The edge of the strip, which you aren’t allowed to cross, is the EGO
- The line you are supposed to draw on both sides, is the work flow towards a solution (the objective)
Drawing the line on one side of the strip was perhaps easy (working in ones own ideology).
The restriction to cross the edge makes the task increasingly frustrating (ego restricting an individual in diversifying their thought).
Instead of solving the edge problem, you morph the form is a way that the edge doesn’t even come into the task. The solution (möbius strip) is so elegant in solving the problem yet so astonishingly simple, that one possibly feels that they were tricked into solving the problem.
Conclusion:
Possibly, the fundamental way we can achieve solutions which are “more-than-human-centered” is if the center, instead of human, is humanity. A humanity-centered model also takes into consideration the ecosystem which the human is responsible for. I believe the first step in achieving that, is working together regardless of differences. But what about ego ? Perhaps its still not possible to completely eradicate entities like ego from a thinking mind. Perhaps its just one of the fundamental things that makes us who we are.
Perhaps just like in our puzzle, the most efficient and simple way for these varied ideologies to work together, without the interference of their egos, is to trick them in doing so.