We live in a world where experiences are becoming increasingly synthetic: chatting instead of talking, making music in software like Ableton instead of in a band, using Apple Vision goggles instead of actually looking at the world around… These developments are not inherently bad, but they follow a trend of making the user ignore what is already out there; a beautiful, rich world, worthy of exploration and attention.

Technology has a tendency to hide through abstraction layers: Chatting hides the inconvenience of having to approach somebody in real life, music creation software hides the difficulty of having to actually learn to play a musical instrument, Apple Vision hides the inconveniences related to tangible input and output devices in a physical world. Technology for convenience. 

But, it also hides things that should not be hidden: Chatting hides emotions of the person you are talking to because you can’t see their face, Ableton hides the richness of conventional musical instruments, Apple Vision hides the mess in your world thus the fact that you may not have been taking care of your surroundings and yourself. 

I believe that if we designers do not recognise this tendency that plays onto the things we put into the world, we will ultimately lose track of what makes us human and neglect our heritage as living beings in this world.

My vision as a designer is that we should design with this force in mind: To design for clarification instead of abstraction. Design that shows and utilises the richness of the world around us, instead of replacing it with synthetic experience. We should not design screens for windows that always portray sunny weather outside, but we should design bigger windows that show our outside world with more detail, clarity and honesty.