The Connection Paradox: Finding Depth in a World of Surface Interactions

From the minute you are released from the warm cocoon of sleep and open your eyes, it begins—a slowly rising cacophony of sounds, sights and content that seeps into your every waking moment. Some of it, like the early morning social media scroll, is self-instigated. Some of it, like the ads between content and the billboards you pass, surrounds you like air, informing your every decision about how you highlight your identity, values, and economic ability. Most days you move through it, accepting the noise as part of the transaction of living in the modern world.

Global advertising is set to top $1 trillion in 2024 (WARC) and it is estimated we are exposed to up to 20,000 brands per day (The World Counts). For the promise of an improved life, these brands are all asking you to participate, recommend, and consume the latest products and ideas. In theory, we should feel more connected than ever before. But the array of choices, content, visuals and voices are slightly dizzying and can leave you feeling isolated and overwhelmed. And you’re not alone, the World Health Organization is increasingly recognizing isolation and loneliness as a public health problem across all groups estimating that 1 in 4 older people experience social isolation and between 5-15 percent of adolescents experience loneliness (World Health Organization).

What is truly dizzying is the scale of disconnection we feel amidst the blur of apps, advertising and experiences that are trying to get us to connect. Our response to what surrounds us can be an understandable feeling of powerlessness as we try to keep up with the pace of a world that is changing too fast. Words like "community" and "belonging" are used to bring us into "communities" for growth, built only for conversion into purchases.

I sense the feeling of powerlessness in conversations I have with my peers, my community, in the classrooms in which I teach and with the clients I work with, even though by most objective metrics we are living in one of the best times in human history (McCoy). On average, we are living longer, we are healthier, safer and globally richer. Yet, juxtaposed with the immediate reality of global turmoil, economic upheaval, climate anxiety, social injustice, health inequalities and more, you can start to understand why we are feeling disconnected at the deepest levels.

What is equally as true as the reality of the world we live in, is that we are longing for authentic connection. Human beings are built for it, we thrive and feel grounded at our core when we have incorporated meaningful connections into our lives. Without it, we suffer. Right now, we are suffering more than any other time because of a lack of it.

As people navigating spaces, we need a deliberate refocusing on what’s important in order to demand this importance of the media that surrounds us. Modern creativity and innovation depend on our technology being sensitive to human needs, our marketing being thoughtful and meaningful and our communities being purposeful. Without any of these principles behind our designs, the price we pay long term is an increased lack of attention and connection.

Social scientist Herbert Simon said, "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." I appreciate that this definition does not quantify only graphic designers or artists as people capable of design. It democratizes and empowers all of us to show up. As participants in this world, we can choose to design for deep connection. Additionally, we can design for the gap—a moment of pause between an existing and preferred situation which is also the moment of opportunity to create something different that takes us from one state to the other.

Design is concerned with how things could be and creating the right conditions for those things to be. This has been a focus of my career as a designer, educator, leader and co-founder of a consulting firm that helps nonprofit organizations navigate transition. Throughout my journey, I’ve learned a few principles that support this work.

Moving Past just the Aesthetics

This may seem strange coming from a designer but a focus solely on the way something looks can be a shortcut to the trendy, transient, and transactional, leading to the downfall of deep and meaningful thinking. Look around and you'll find we're surrounded by surface aesthetics that show up as technology products all looking eerily similar and all advertising appearing either minimalist or maximalist. When you create things that are thoughtful, thought through and attentive based on people's real desires and motivations; they will be beautiful too.

Embracing the Gap

The space between what is and what could be is a space full of possibility, creativity, innovation and opportunity. The author Margot Lee Shetterly talks about this space as "Interstitial Time": a place where one is open to possibility in an unusual way (Shetterly). You can certainly fill this space with what is already around in order to move quickly but the results will likely be predictable. When I worked with Johnson & Johnson on their first multi-tone Band-Aid, part of the reason that product became such a unique success was because we stayed in the gap long enough to gather feedback from our BIPOC audience across demographics. They talked about how not having an everyday product that fit them from a color perspective made them feel like they didn't matter. So, how the brand showed up in response to that vulnerability mattered. This insight drove everything about the design. The result was a distinctive look and feel for a brand that was not only showing up for its customers but celebrating them.

Flexible Frameworks

What we need in our time is not more formulas for success or systems that don't hold up to the rapid change we are experiencing. Rather we need flexible frameworks and ways of problem solving that allow us to keep a strong eye on where we'd like to be directionally. Whatever the larger goal may be—a thoughtful community, a value-driven company, intentional spaces—pay attention while you navigate a flexible process for getting there. As I was crafting the curriculum for my Innovations in Marketing course at NYU my goal was to create a framework that allowed for a solid marketing foundation, explored innovation principles in our changing time and made space for activities and discussions based on the interests and needs of my students. I've been teaching the same titled course every semester for many years and this way of thinking means that the course is always ready to meet the students where they are. We need systems that respond to what our time needs.

Better Language

From classrooms and client spaces to being out in the world, you'll hear language reflecting the things we focus our attention on. Our choice of language reflects the value we place on the spaces we're in and in turn, that value crafts those spaces. We need better, more expansive language that addresses the wholeness of our human experience. Intentional strategies to address how language meets business is where we’ll start to see kindness, belonging, empathy and curiosity in our spaces.

Designing for deeper connection matters because there is too much at stake for it not to. When we choose to disengage with the world because we are overwhelmed, we cede control and become passengers; disgruntled ones at that.  By choosing to focus on the meaningful, by demanding a refocusing of our attention and purposeful attention to the spaces where we spend our time and money, we choose to take control of that future. As is the nature of most thorny problems, the more you engage with them, the better you understand how to solve them.

This piece was originally published in Architecture Design Art (ADA) magazine.