Wilson Miner – When We Build
Reflection
Wilson Miner is a digital designer in San Francisco, currently working as a product designer for Apple, and has previously worked for companies such as Facebook, Stripe, and The California Sunday Magazine. Today I watched his talk called “When We Build” and here is my reflection of it.
Wilson Miner starts off by talking about his past, the home he grew up in, surrounded by different gadgets, that both he and his dad valued greatly. He then goes on by saying that these items are also totems, symbols of ourselves that we fill up with stories, shaping them to reflect us and our hopes for the future.
Which was a great introduction to what he began talking about, how we humans have shaped the world around new technology as it comes. How much value we have put into these gadgets and how it let them change us. A great example he brought up was the lightbulb, which isn’t much when we think about it, but it changed the world and the environment. The lightbulb changed how we behaved. It was the same with cars if we look at the time before cars versus how the world looks today, where roads exist everywhere, built for us to use with our car.
“We shape our tools and our tools shape us”
– Marshall McLuhan
This made me understand how we shape ourselves around technology that makes life easier for us, it’s similar to how we shaped ourselves for the screen in the first place, as well as the internet. Back before the internet, we would do things differently, if we wanted knowledge we would watch documentaries on the television at specific times, on specific television channels, or go to the library to read. But now we can simply pick up our phone and search for whatever our heart desires. A lot of systems today are shaped around the internet and our computers, whereas there are services that require a computer, and if not you use your phone. Screens might be the first and the last thing you see before you wake up and go to bed, it might be what you see when you’re out spending time with friends, if not are at work or relaxing. Screens today, are what cars were back then, we shape our future and environment around it. This made me realize the responsibility we have as designers, the responsibility to shape our future generations, and what they will grow up seeing because we’re the builders and designers of the future because we’re the ones that decide what goes onto those screens.
But since the future is now, we have to take a lot of consideration into action, such as this screen environment that we currently have, which is vastly different from the other ones. Cars needed roads, and those were physical things that took time to build, while the screen environment, on the other hand, has apps and websites, that takes less and you don’t have to move an inch from where you’re standing to go onto a different place on the screen. As Wilson says, it is a faster phase of change and we’re constantly creating these new environments as well as more quickly, giving us less time to learn them.
“If the environment is always changing, we need to be always learning, and to do that we need to let go of what we know.”
– Wilson Miner
When I chose to study Interaction Design this is one thing that I knew of, is that as a designer you always have to learn to move forward, it’s something that is constantly developing into something different and will look different in the next 5 years due to the constant development.
Having a fresh mind in any sort of environment gives more room for ideas and creativity, and having to learn will give more room to creativity as well since you don’t know what rules to stick by.
Taking inspiration from what Marshall McLuhan said regarding artists always being a jump ahead, Wilson mentioned the American artist Robert Irwin and his works, as well as how we designers can reflect on his works in our future projects, which was a very interesting take.
It taught me that we creators might not always have full control over the situation at hand, but that “The smallest changes can be transforming.” and that it takes time and patience to find the right ones.
I would lie if I said that this talk by Wilson Miner wasn’t inspiring because it was incredibly much so. The way he spoke about interactive design beyond the screens, in a way for more people to understand the importance was really refreshing and eye-opening. It made me even more inspired than previously and also made me realize how important we are as future designers and the responsibility we have to create a better future. This talk taught me a lot and made me understand why our society is built the way it is, for us to rely on certain things because we build ourselves around it.
Thank you.