Platforms as Tables, Tables as Platforms

There’s an elation and euphoria to having someone who’s mind you respect chipping away at a topic you’re infatuated with yourself. It’s like you have the best research partner, and they’re smarter than you. The veritable Batman to your Robin.

I’m going to send you elsewhere, but I want you to come back. Liz Danzico has been writing and speaking and thinking about improvisation and it’s relationship to the creative act and design. Look at her slide deck for a recent talk (be sure to read her comments), read notes on the talk, and consider how improvising turns inhibitions down and creativity up.

These topics fit nicely with an essay I wrote a few months ago about something I call a pseudo-structure. The basic summary of the essay is that imposing limitations on yourself or making a structure for the creative process produces a framework for improvisation. Having that framework lets you get to work. I became obsessed with that phrase, “Framework for Improvisation.” Probably near muttering it in my sleep.

As I go back and read that essay in conjunction with the mental gymnastics Liz has been doing, I realize the ideas are congruent, and dovetail nicely with a lot of the thinking I’ve been doing about the value of design, process and platforms.

The whole basis for the first thought of the pseudo-structure was learning about how Miles Davis directed the recording of his album Kind of Blue.

It all started with Jazz. I’m not a huge jazz fan, but there are a few albums I hold close to my heart and consistently recommend to friends looking to expose themselves to new things. (Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, Maiden Voyage.) I hear those opening chords of twinkly piano in So What and I liven up a bit. (If you didn’t play the song at the beginning of the post, you really should now.) Seminal isn’t a word I toss around often, but there it is. Jazz started creeping into my life slowly. I became infatuated with Jim Flora and his classic jazz covers for Columbia. I love documentaries, so the Ken Burns documentary made sense as the next logical thing to consume.

Then it all clicked. I think I watched all 30-some hours of the documentary in 5 or 6 days. Suddenly, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald trumped Paul Rand and Josef Muller Brockmann. Learning about the history of the music and listening to musicians talk about jazz music, I heard things that made design make a bit more sense. Jazz is about improvising. It’s about having the musicians and audience meet the music halfway. Jazz is a platform and a cultural vessel. And it’s incredibly difficult to summarize in words without seeming hyperbolic. It’s value is soft, but we some how perceive it to have value.

Design seems to be the same way. It’s about improvising (we can’t boil it down a hard set of rules to follow). It’s about having the designer and an audience meet the message halfway. Design is a platform and a cultural vessel. And it’s incredibly difficult to summarize in words without seeming hyperbolic. And it has a soft value that is difficult to discern. (Although, I’d suggest we’ve done a pretty poor job as an industry communicating design’s value to the outside world in a way that they can understand. At least jazz music is now widely accepted to be inherently pleasurable and has the qualities of a siren song. Proving the value of design is a bit of a harder task because dollars are involved.)

You know what I love about jazz and improvisation? It’s all process. One-hundred percent. The essence of it is the process, every time is different, and to truly partake in it, you have to visit a place to see it in progress. Every jazz club or improv comedy theater is a temple to the process of production. It’s a factory, and the art is the assembly, not the product. Jazz is more verb than noun. And in a world riddled with a feeling of inertia, I want to find a verb and hold on to it for dear life.

Both design and jazz seem to be a platform. They’re symbolic of a mode of thinking that value certain beliefs, which influence certain methods, which yield certain results. Often times we call what design represents “design thinking,” but, to me, it just comes across as snooty. How can one profession own a way of thinking? Especially if they have decided that thinking that way is so important? That name seems to build a fence around a way of thought, and it seems counter-productive if you want it to spread. If you want design thinking to be a platform, you liberate it. I wish I could suggest another name. Something more accepting of other’s contributions; a name that could be an equivalent of “Yes, and…”

Platforms are a funny thing. Maybe it’s my disposition, or the influence of when we live, but I see everything important as a platform now. They are rules to operate by that you yourself can influence. It’s not a destination, it’s an environment; less a sandcastle, and more a sandbox. Design is a platform. Jazz is a platform. App Stores and APIs are platforms. Religion is a platform. So is democracy.

A lot of people have noted that the tools have been democratized and everyone can have and use them. If we’ve all a shovel and a pail, those sandboxes get to be pretty important. I envy special situations like the Cabaret Voltaire where an immense amount of creativity congregated around a cafe table. But, I look around and realize that all of those sorts of culture-changing individuals are congregating around sandboxes and platforms. Just because things have been decentralized doesn’t mean big things aren’t happening. Sometimes, I need to remind myself that.

So, cheers to the platform and the discussion that happens around it. I’m honored to be at the table with you, even if it is just a metaphor.