Hello, this is Lee, Shawn Wong, producer of aiga as podcasts.
Thank you for listening to our shows and following along with
us on our design Journeys. We are going to be taking the
next couple of months off. Now that we've wrapped our
season. But in the meantime, we're going
to drop some surprises and bonuses into our feed.
The first one is a feed swap with another design related
show. The Futures archive is a podcast
from design Observer, that looks at the history of Human centered
design with a critical eye on its future.
You can find it on a podcast or wherever you get your podcast in
this episode, mostly Moreau and co-hosts lonely, oh discussed
the automatic door and how we can design thresholds of all
kinds to be inviting to all people with additional insights
from Lawrence, taldor s Williamson, Wendy Jew, and Dave
adkisson, you can learn more about the show and find a link
to a complete transcript, in our show notes, and As always, you
can email us at podcast@biobalancehealth.com or
if you have any suggestions for guests, show ideas or shows that
we should swap feeds with. All right, talk to you later.
Welcome to the Futures archive. A show about human Center design
with this season. Will take an object look for the
human at the center and keep asking questions.
I'm lemur. Oh and I'm lonely.
Oh, on each episode. We're going to start with an
object with power today, that object The automatic door, we'll
look at the history of that object from our perspective as
designers who've done, work in human centered design, not just
how it looks and feels but also the relationship between bad
objects and the people it was designed for and with other
humans to the features archive is brought to you by the design
team at automatic later on. We'll hear from amandeep.
Sure, Gil. A member of automatics Global
recruitment team, High slowly. Oh!
Hi Lee. How are you today?
I'm feeling pretty good and excited.
About, I don't know the next six months, whenever we get to the
mid-year part of the year, I'm kind of like, oh, I have a whole
new try again for six more months and I kind of love that
reset. Oh good.
Okay, so it's like, you get another shot at 2022.
Yeah. Well, I like that and we'll need
that optimism. Today, we're going to be
talking, this is our final conversation together in our
stream of conversations related to convenience.
And this conversation will be about the automatic door.
I'm wondering what comes to mind when you think of the automatic
door. I think of a few things.
I think of how much fun it is to push the button when you're a
kid. It's kind of like when a kid
gets in the elevator or in the automatic door, they see like
the Raikou. I can wave my hand.
I can step on this Paddock and push the button and like a grand
entrance becomes possible. So I think there's also
something like my adult theatrical playful style that
makes me feel like, it feels kind of Royal actually and not
just like a door, and you just did this like, Little arm
gesture. So it's like a sweep to the
side. Yeah, it's like two double doors
opening at the same time there's a slight wind behind.
You, your caftan or your hair is blowing and you walk into the
meeting which is or the grocery store which is often times where
I see automatic doors, but either way a little drama Lie.
A little drama aren't you so happy that I finally arrived so
I can buy some potato chips. Like you're welcome, I'm here
for Lacroix. You know it feels a bit like
that. What else do you think of?
I think about like accessibility Like just straight up being able
to like accessibility for folks, who are using wheelchairs but
also for people who are like carrying a child or a bunch of
large boxes, like it feels like a nice gesture.
It makes it easier for people who are doing things with their
hands and their arms. So, carrying a child into a
restaurant or willing yourself into a movie theater, or just
being tired, you know, feeling weekends.
Like, I had gender forming surgery in January and I
couldn't use my Armed had very limited Mobility, very limited
strength and so knowing I was going places that had automatic
doors may be excited to go out because I knew I could make it
there and get in without having to ask for help and sometimes
that feels nice to, you know, it doesn't feel like we're
pretending labor. Like they're I think with a lot
of the stuff we've talked about Lee, there's been like someone's
labor was there and then it was automated.
But like who are we replacing with an automatic door?
What like the union of door. Owners.
Yeah. Which I don't think is a thing.
No offense. If that's a thing somewhere and
I missed it, but I don't think it's a thing.
So it feels like one of those luxury accommodations and it
doesn't feel like we're we're messing something up Social
collect. What are the things that you
didn't say? But I think about what I think
of the automatic door is the future, the sort of sci-fi
Vision, like, sort of Star Trek. The whoosh door, which I think
was only came from one side and it moved over and going shoosh
and and open. So, there is a kind of that All
entrance, whether it's in a supermarket or onto the the
Holodeck or something like that, and that ability to like see the
future through science fiction as a way to anticipate today.
I mean that's also something I think of with the automatic
door. Yeah.
I mean I think that this idea of like futuring as an activity or
speculative design is something that has been like a permanent
fixture of like my inner curiosity, landscape.
Have you ever heard about the elevator to space?
Space, which is kind of what preceded, Elon Musk and virgin
doing what is actually an elevator to space.
Like yes, those ideas actually started for me and The Jetsons.
You know, I didn't watch as much Star Trek and Star Wars, but I
watched a hell of a lot of Jetsons and it's weird because I
think the Jetsons like took place in 2025 or something.
And I'm like, oh we're here, okay?
And there are some really great futuristic things that are here
now, but they're coexisting with like steam punk era stuff,
right? We have IDs, you know?
Doors and microwaves are kind of magical unto themselves, but we
also still have a lot of like, day-to-day regular stuff.
So yes, it's good to have both. Anything makes me appreciate one
of them a little bit more. The future is not hitting us all
at one time. No, that's probably for the
better. Yeah.
So we're going to now embark on our journey of hearing more
about the automatic door from our historians and designers who
help us make sense of it. And this is what we've heard so
far. We have been investigating What
one could call microarchitectures of everyday
life like different threshold devices, different apparatuses,
different machines, Lauren stalder, teaches history, and
theory of architecture at the, a Tejada in Zurich.
So it's sort of hard to build a history of something like doors
or even automated doors, like we're talking about who have
precedence that go back to basically ancient Greece, but
Lawrence work. Looks at the automatic doors
that you and I experience every day, which started entering the
public sphere in the mid-40s liked was extremely interesting
to see how a very traditional dimension of architecture which
is to create a limits can be rethought in the 20th century.
We look at model is as the open space, the Limitless, open
architecture, yet. If you begin to To investigate
my precisely the threshold. You see that this open space is
highly regulated. Indeed architecture has always
been discipline that sets and defines the way a society
organizes itself. So the way Laurent is describing
this as sort of that architecture, is both functional
right in the sense that it works.
But also it's a acts as a metaphor.
So the notion of door, the thing that separates us and we can go
in, or we can stay out it, divides both public and private,
he's really focused on designing those in-between spaces and
researching these sort of liminal in between spaces that
separate inside and out different behaviors from one
another, you know, light. Odors even different,
populations that threshold that connects things.
This is kind of a almost poetic way of thinking about space.
Yeah, it reminds me of the field of dramaturgy, if you go see a
play and there's three acts between those acts, there's this
moment where you have to transition the audience from
what happened, just then to what's about to happen.
You know, like this kind of like moment of in between space.
It also that idea of like dramaturgy is a way to connect a
set of experiences into a cohesive like narrative and
experience resonates with me a lot as a person who host events
you know like Community design and our studio and my own
temperament means I'm making lots of thresholds and lots of
moments of transition. So when people enter your house
like is there a basket of little sandals?
If you have a no-shoe household policy?
Like, is that a way of creating a threshold that's welcoming is
the welcome mat, a type of threshold like the Actual mat
itself because you're kind of like cleansing yourself before
you go into the space. And so I think that the way
Laurent talked about architecture, with that bit of
like lyricism and romance, and process is actually really
familiar to me as a person who works in community because you
want to make things easier for people to be together.
And even that is easier like Pleasant if not pleasant nice
and if not nice luxury and if not luxury at least just like
really sweet and tender, For me, when I think of the automatic
door, I like Zoom back to my childhood and I grew up in a
very small town. So there was no automatic doors
in my town not even at the grocery store.
There was no groceries doctor, no.
Oh, so we would have to drive like 15 or 20 miles to get to a
place that had a grocery store that would have an automatic
door. And I remember so that sort of
Royal Jester that you were for me.
That's a childhood playful. Almost like using the force kind
of thing where and I still do that.
Like and I I gather you still kind of might make a gesture to
get right. Yes.
Like a magician. Yes.
Yep. And I do think there was a bit
of you know for me transitioning from a small town to a big, a
big city thing that was happening as a child.
But anyway, they're installed our wrote an article called
Turning architecture, Inside Out revolving doors and other
threshold devices in the Journal of architecture history and
LaRon is in his article points out the different types of
places that we see this architecture being potentially,
We more welcoming so in there in our contemporary world we can
achieve this moment of going to these spaces and having them
really welcomed us thanks to the automatic door.
We're just sort of opens up automatically.
This is like we're all accustomed to this and the sort
of contemporary retail oriented space but if we think
historically about the past there were these really imposing
thick, heavy doors to like a courtroom or an institution of
building that were not welcoming at all.
They were the opposite of that. You probably have memories of
that or different experiences where the sort of imposing door,
that's meant to prevent you from Gaining access to all.
So this is really all of this is building to a really important
conversation about human centered design and this is
Laurent one more time to kind of take this home.
Isuzu's history of special devices.
One can follow the way Society defines, what the human body is.
It allows you in a real, a metaphoric way to describe life
and our relationship to society, you know who can ultimately
access or not access, the space is physically and metaphorically
determined by the door. We build whether they're
automatically opening or automatically locking the
thresholds that would create how thick or thin out, how
transparent or opaque this is all this is designed and it's
also like what locks and what doesn't lock.
I feel like it's also part of that question of threshold
spaces like so I also think that doorway is as we designed them
be they, automatic be they are very heavy, very hard.
Do they have a lock to they have a window?
In my last apartment, I got really into painting the door
jamb and just the door jamb. So I say the door jam.
It's like they're kind of like inside flat section of a doorway
and like most of the time that's not any colors just like white,
like the rest of the house, but I painted them like bright blue
and it gave everyone. This little bit of a tickle they
were like, what is that? Yes.
And like, that's also the possibility of doorways or
dramaturgy, or liminal spaces, is that they can be neutral.
They can be hard or Be delightful.
We've been talking about the sort of poetic and sort of
lyrical and metaphorical aspects of doors in the first part of
this conversation. But now we're going to really
talk about the history of accessible architecture and how
the door plays out in that world.
The first principle of Universal Design is Equitable design which
is to say that the design is useful to people with all
different abilities. And the example that they used
for a global design is that automatic door right in that, it
is usable for a variety of Of populations.
Best Williamson is an associate professor of art history, Theory
and criticism at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and
the author of accessible America, a history of disability
and design. The idea of the automatic door
is it works for many populations, right?
It certainly works for wheelchair users for whom, like
going up to the door and opening it as a whole choreographed and
difficult sort of spatial negotiation but it also works
for many other populations. Opening the door for someone
else, you know, for if you're carrying a bunch of stuff from
people who are using Walker students should we can think of
the way in, which the automatic door treats, you the same way
we're Godless of what your disability is.
So it really meets a lot of those kind of principles.
So they are at the beginning of the conversation.
When you are kind of invoking, some of the doors that came to
mind, right. You mention access, can you talk
a little bit about a little bit more about that?
Oh, totally. I mean, if we look at the work
of like, Leslie and Noel, Around pluralistic design or Universal
Design. There is this airing towards
what makes this a good experience for more people or
for the most people and whether we're talking about doorways, or
stairways any of the thing that gets you from the outside space
is the inside, the interior of something needs to be accessible
enough. That there's not a hesitation as
a barrier. So as someone who is who like
had a period of time, Being like physically, less able which
happens to all of us at some point in our lives, I was sad
that there are so many doors that I couldn't push open
without asking for help. You know.
I think about like even a card or of its automatic versus a
card or that requires like a really a pulling I didn't have
the physical strength to do that and always had to ask for help.
So can you imagine if only 10% of our public doors are
automatic? And the rest you have to push
but you're in a wheelchair or you're pushing a stroller.
Euler or you are like, without one limb, or you're exhausted or
your fat, all the things that can prevent Mobility or ease of
Mobility, can be addressed by things, like automatic doors,
like putting ramps next to stairs, we can design and go on
this experience is together, because sometimes we look at
these doors, it's like, well the front door is a push door, but
if you go around the side there's an automatic door.
Yeah. And like why are we Okay, making
side back. You know, embed doors of Shame
for people who are in a different position with their
Mobility or their way of relating with physical
situations. The features archive is brought
to you by the design team at automatic, which is building a
new web and a new workplace all around the world.
My name is Amanda Portugal. I am based in the UK about an
hour north of London, right? Near a town called Milton Keynes
and I look after technical recruiting for automatic.
So I lead a team called dot higher and we are responsible
for the global recruitment of Engineers product people.
And anything related to Tech at automatic amandeep.
Found a new way to lead lead. But automatic is different to
what of experience anywhere else.
It is a lot more fluid, a lot more open.
A lot more transparent. We're very open company and just
like, I guess the nature of Wordpress.
We are part of an open-source ecosystem.
So you know, we follow a lot of that when we're actually
working. Internally leadership is not
traditional leadership. In terms of where managers we
called leads for a reason. We lead our teams.
We don't manage our teams. I'm on deepest.
It to expanding automatics Global Perspective.
So what makes a good fit at automatic, the honest answer is
everyone is a good fit at automatic.
The key thing is it's somebody who under who believes and
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we are so diverse, we have over 1,900 people, I think it is now
in 1902 countries, speaking over 100 languages, you know there is
no one good fit for automatic designing a better web.
Join us at automatic.com design. Auto ma TT.
I c.com design. You just talked about this.
I don't know if he called it, the doorway of shame or
something, which is like around the back.
This is very much a part of this conversation and, you know, I
think really in architecture school at least when I was going
through, we did a really horrible job of thinking about
accessibility in the context of you.
Yes, it's true that in many cases form follows function and
if if so and we're mindful about what that really means then.
We should have been thinking about that a lot more, but quite
often form was the driver and form was Eating all
conversations. You would think that school as a
sort of unconstrained environment would allow much
more dialogue around the balance of these things.
But I think we really do struggle in the academic world
which probably translates to a struggle in the professional
World which is I think you said like 10% of doors are automatic
and that means the other 90% are less accessible.
Let's say or not as inviting. What's your take on that you
know there's a way in which this idea Idea of like human centered
design and kind of how it's different than kind of maybe
architecture school. When you went to architecture
school lie, where you weren't encouraged to think about who is
using the door, and so, right. And that way, human-centered
design is this kind of like really revolutionary idea of
like, oh, their user, like radical, right?
And as you know, my critique of hcd in favor of community
design, is that it should be radical not about the individual
human, but about the community, you're trying.
Unveiled. And I think that in community
based design, it is much more likely that someone says, like,
are there, is there anyone who can't take the stairs, let's
think about what they may want. And that could be the friend of
a friend of a friend, that was some, who's coming to a
situation. So, I think that there is this
like, there's an opportunity for a design to be Radical by
saying, maybe instead of starting with a product design
saying, is this for a man or a woman, an able-bodied person or
a, not able bodied person? So we can have some standards
that like just assume that we should make space for all of the
above as opposed to trying to respond to like the one
Community member, who knows we need this thing is really for
Community. The space should be physically.
Accessible. That's a baseline.
Yeah, the Baseline should be and that's why I think that
Universal Design is trying to do that.
It's trying to set up some bass lines of understandings for
people who do products and services Ein to actually just
like not make it look like the architect was a bit of a jerk
and Think about other people, let's hear some more from best
Williamson. The double-edged side of
Universal Design is does making something Universal suggest that
it's seven. How common sense are obvious.
We know that accessible design is not common sense.
They're not obvious because it's lacking and so much of the
world. So I think that pointing it out,
but I think also remembering the roots of Universal Design,
right? That they were developed by a
disabled architect that he often thought in terms of what's
enough. And then what's beyond enough
know what's really making a Space accessible and welcoming
will remind us that Universal Design does not mean kind of not
talking about disability and in fact, if anything it needs
talking about the Skokie more, but understanding it as part of
serve all communities, Again, echoing what you just said
suddenly a best is asking for something more than just
Universal Design. She's asking for like, what's
beyond enough. It's not about just putting that
shameful door in the back. It's about reconceptualizing
your entire approach. Yeah, completely that and like,
what a wonderful invitation and the invitation butts up against,
or chafes with why we make a lot of our design decisions, which
is actually, About managing legal risk.
Like when you look at the design of the majority of public spaces
and built environments, you're trying to keep things to code
and the code isn't like, well, this must be a welcoming space.
The code is, it must be like a functional space and I think
that that's actually like part of this really interesting
compelling and fasting. A moment we are in with design,
where what we're asking of design is for it to have like
morals and values and Not be like a political or cause
agnostic, but the ecosystem design is operating within with
like legal and governance and risk and like, fire restrictions
for, how tall a door has to be in the number of places of
egress and a limited budget. You can accidentally get to the
place where you're like well I mean I did it, it's it meets the
code. Yeah and what we're actually
asking for InDesign right now is like, what's beyond enough is?
Can I bring in a Meant to people to our Humanity to my value
system. And that's a, this is, this is a
massive paradigm shift that we are smack.
Dab in the middle of I think in the capital of D design world
and you're dealing with this a lot in your work day to day.
I mean this is your practice, right?
Yeah. And we see and we see in our
practice both with our advocacy clients.
This idea of like removing barriers my theoretical
standpoint. But we're also right now betting
on a couple of projects with architects.
We were approached by a really rad Architecture Firm as
designing. An art museum and they were like
you should help us and I was like I don't I'm an architect
and they're like yeah but you think about accessibility and
community and sustainability in this like these values that show
up in your practice as things you can do design around and
through and that is like a new thing for us that I'm very
excited about. So I think that part of what I
hope for in the design of physical spaces, if we're
talking about a mattock doors, is that we, we We think about
what it is, that should be standard in our spaces, that
would make it more likely that everyone could participate in
using it. And you just said the word
welcoming bested said the same word welcoming this notion of a
more experiential way of thinking about different aspects
of our of our lived experience. So it's we are transitioning
from the way that things are designed to the way that we
behave, when we're in them and the interactions that we have.
And And that kind of continue this conversation on the
automatic door and welcoming and accessibility when I'm designing
interactions, a lot of what I'm trying to do is set up enough of
the situation that I kind of listed the behaviors in the
responses, people around me are gonna have and then use that
knowledge to design objects that have behaviors.
Wendy Jew is an associate professor at the Jacobs technion
Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the technion, it's not
just computer technology that people have.
So, Social responses to they have social responses to
anything that behaves seemingly socially and anything that has
Intelligence or behavior, you know, even though the doors are
not human people, still feel like they have social responses
to them. They still also social
obligation. Wendy primarily studies how
people interact with Automation and she's actually conducted a
series of studies around the idea of approachability.
In terms of how people interpret it interactions that they had
with automatic doors. I was really drawn to the
automatic door because it's an everyday example that people are
aware of and used to of what I think is a coming wave of
automation. So the fact that people interact
with doors everyday and in fact, interact with them so often that
they're invisible to them and they don't even think about it
is exactly why I thought doors were a great thing to point out
as an example of what the future could be like and then one of
the really important things for me was to point out to people
the way that the interactions we have with doors, do break down
sometimes so the study that she had a researchers did set up
conditions in which the doors sort of appeared automated but
they were actually controlled by the researchers to either
respond or not respond to the participants as they Approached
and they got these really emotional results from people in
this interaction. They will see that the store
looks well-lit because there are still people inside and I'll
walk up to the door and the door won't open and some of the
things I've seen people do in that situation are so
interesting. Sometimes people on that at the
door, you know. So I think they don't think
about it as its own entity until it seems to have some agency
that is like refusing them and so then they are angry literally
at this like you know panel that's keeping them from going.
Where they want to go other people.
I've seen will go and walk at the door again, but louder,
they'll move in a more exaggerated fashion.
I love this because it shows that they understand there's a
communicative component to their emotion that they don't normally
have to think about and they obviously think that the door
not opening for them, is some sort of misunderstanding in.
They are clearer about their intentions and the door will
open for them. And I just think that logic and
of itself is also just Using and beautiful and something we need
to learn from. And you know what's interesting
is when the doors open for subjects, even if they hadn't
necessarily been planning to use that door, you know Wendy's team
discovered that people felt more compelled to like step back and
like go through the door. It's like oh I've been invited
to go through this door. I didn't want to go through the
door but since it opened I'm going to go through it.
People felt rude. Basically if they didn't enter
the doors that open. So like you know, the world is
becoming increasingly automated. We Don't think of it becoming
friendlier or more welcoming necessarily because of that.
But how does this play in our complex understanding of
convenience, as things are becoming more automated, they
are triggered by things. They're moving seemingly with
with willfulness but not necessarily.
Where's this going? You know I feel like our
relationship technology is always talked about is if it's
going to happen in the future but we are see already have a
lot of these Technologies. Now I was living in San
Francisco for a bit and I walked Ask what used to be a coffee
shop? I liked and instead it was a
robot making coffee for people. And I was like, Yay.
It's like okay or, you know, I think any things we talked about
are like the Roomba. I'm like, I don't like vacuuming
and like watching the Rumba, which my friend says we should
put googly eyes on. Does actually make me pretty
delighted. I was like go robot-man go.
Yes. So like we have emotional
relationships with technology already including the door.
And I think, like part of why at flock Studio, we run a program
called Community design for leaders, which is our intensive
that we offer every quarter is because designers want to be
thinking differently. And there's very few spaces for
people who are on the edge of design, whether or not you work
at Deloitte or doblin Orson young or a smaller shop.
There's a lot of designers who are like, can I make it nice?
Can I make it caring? Can I make it Equitable?
Or just There's not a lot of space in their practices to
figure out what needs to be different.
So I think the world that we want, where what we're designing
is designed for Delight for being like, kind of tickled for
a smile and the way that acknowledges the pre-existing
relationship we have or interaction, we have with these
objects. I think we can make the world,
quite lovely. Actually, and that the dystopian
world is when we end up with just like police dogs that are
made out of robot Parts, like we don't want that, we want.
Want the piece of it where it's like, you know, a little robot
that goes to the grocery store for.
You could be kind of nice. I don't focus on accessibility,
I'm interested in politics of disability and architecture and
cities in which accessibility might be a complementary goal,
but it's not the ultimate outcome.
The ultimate outcome is for buildings and cities in a
multiracial democracy like the United States to increasingly
represent ever greater Are and spensive kinds of Concepts about
what buildings and cities might be.
David Gibson is a professor of architecture and urban history.
At the Parsons School of Design. He's the author of the
architecture of disability buildings cities and Landscapes
Beyond access. Disability, always seems like a
problem that has to be addressed by Architects or urban planners.
And so, with our project, we wanted to create a world for
people who are both disabled and not disabled and show what
disabled people can offer that's beyond a simply it is about
accessing space but that can maybe You Mabel you to rethink
how you connect or interrelated with your neighbor's property.
How you move through a block, how these things can be
reimagined, through disabled people, but that provides
something much more than just access, but something very
pleasurable for everybody. I read.
This is about doing more doing way more that we have allowed
ourselves within our current constraints to happen today.
Yeah, you know I'm working right now with the new school and
Bloomsbury press on a book about the future of service design,
which again just for people who are listening that are new to
service design, it is like how do you design a service like
Medicare or Medicaid or a laundry mat, or a childcare
facility? I'll be things that provide a
service says My work in, that book is to lead a chapter called
queering design. And I feel like all of this
conversation between, what bass has been writing about with
David's talking about your own experiences, as an architect are
actually about how do we queer the process and the practice of
design. So that we are less caught up in
like individual identity to David's point and more caught up
in. Like, what does this mean in a
kind of more Global or Democratic idealism?
I feel Let me go metaphor one moment because you know, it's
something I like to do lie, you know, the word of a single
identity of like I'm a disabled person.
I need a different door, right is instead should actually be
about how do we organize ourselves around this shared
political or power identities, which sometimes have an overlap
with your identity. So like for David's point, it's
like, are we designing for people who have lots of social
power or people who have less social power?
So it's less about the specificity in the Entity and
more about how all of those people who are out like a
physical or political disadvantage and the design of
the building, their Collective opinion and needs is really
where we should design from. So that it doesn't become well,
this is good for disabled people, but bad for Trans
people. We should look at it as like
people who are marginalized or extracted from how do we give
something back to them? How do we actually look at
design architecture automatic doors?
As a way to be welcoming into places that are like, Nourishing
for us and fun and like, alive and integrate all of us in our
communities. Your description suggests like a
radical reorientation away from difference towards some level of
like where we where we actually are aligned, right?
It's not not looking for the separations.
It's looking for the things that actually bring us together is
looking for the shared power and it goes a lot into talking about
democracy and how like the end stage of every democracy is this
like kind of suctioning extraction of All of the
possibilities of power into the hands of the ruling class, so we
don't need to go into all that today.
But in the design world, what it would look like.
Is like a few people actually decide what the codes are for
urban buildings in Brooklyn. It's like five people making a
decision and what we would need in David's example of the world
is actually like a set of guidelines or or information and
insights that say you're designing for, for full
integration, not just inclusion. I want to go back to the
automatic door. Or and, you know you'd said this
earlier like the automatic door is it's automatically opening
and it's automatically closing and locking now.
So I want this to end a little bit more optimistic.
I've got optimism for this. I do, I have this like image of
the automatic door. It's like kind of like Wendy's
research waiting to open its just available to open it.
It's about right. And that's a conception of
automation that we don't think of as readily like usually
automation leads us to dystopian things but in some sense this Of
waiting to open and waiting to welcome is actually a kind of a
beautiful idea. Where else can that exist in our
lives in the future? This like waiting to welcome.
Yeah, I think it's like waiting to welcome is partly about like
they're being a delay on the other side of the interaction or
something. That's really aesthetically
inviting on the front end. Like I'm sitting right now in
front of my microwave and like if every time I push the
microwave button or like King, Within a foot of the microwave
and microwave was just like, I'd love to have a snack with you.
Yes. I honestly would find that kind
of fun at some point, I know maybe it's like too much but
part of me is a person who lives alone a lot of the time.
It's like I want to be seen and acknowledged and I want my
things kind of like little kids talking to their stuffed
animals. Like I do think that a Smart
Homes can offer us like a little bit of softness or a little bit
of reminding us of what it is that we wanted to accomplish.
Like if the door to the gym in my building, Actually open, but
no other door did, I'd be more likely to go to the gym.
So it's like, can we be strategic about the location of
automatic doors as a way to increase, like certain types of
Lifestyles and welcoming all of that technology shouldn't just
be about efficiency. It should be about giving more
Delight. Because if we're not designing
for Delight in times like these, we've missed one of the core
design constraints. Which that things are hard.
Let's make them easier and more. Light-filled we have the power
to do that as designers. Yeah, it's true.
Like the function of the automatic door as it acts as a
shopping mall, versus a hospital, very different kind of
invitation. It's a different kind of
invitation, but they should all be like, I think if we're
talking about welcoming, we're talking about care.
And I talked before with you about, like, designing for care.
So, can the door be a way of indicating care like that you
enter this threshold and it's like, we're happy to see you.
We're going to care for you here.
Whether you're a mall or a hospital or even a court
facility, right? Like I don't believe in the
carceral state, but if we're going to have it, can we make
things a little gentler for people to be like, hey, are hard
things happening in your life? Welcome to his face.
We're trying to solve for it with you, you know, is there a
way that again, our politic of kindness and of generosity can
be part of how we design, and I definitely think it can because
it is we just need to Fan those flames and bit, right?
And that's why we have this awesome podcast is to be like,
have y'all thought about this? Thing in design and giving
people these little like provocations that may change
their practice a lot. You know, one of the things that
we were talking about with the automatic door, was this notion
that it is sort of an invitation whether or not you double back
and actually go through this door that opened like it
happened in Wendy's research, I'm not sure but it's an
invitation to what's inside this sort of welcoming.
But then there are the doors that like, are not automatic and
they never will be. So like I remember walking down,
Fifth Avenue, and A lot of those sort of high-end retail, places
are, those are not automatic doors, they're big heavy doors
that usually locked and you had to push a doorbell, and then
someone has to let you in. I know this because I do love a
little luxury shop. Yes, gonna lie to you, right?
And but quite often they're not only locked, but there's
somebody behind them who's like, watching you.
As you approach to determine whether or not, they think
you're the person who should be shopping at Gucci, right?
So, like where there is automatic door, there is hope.
I think in many cases, right it's a signal is a signal of
like we're trying to make this public in some way or is at
least a signal like this isn't exclusive.
But I can't think of like Soho house or he's like members only
clubs they don't have automatic doors because they don't want
everyone automatically in and that's like a separate
conversation for a separate day, but the place is like you said
that, like there is an automatic door.
It does feel hopeful because it feels like an acknowledgement of
community by saying like yeah, we want to make it easier for
you to get in and out. We want to do it.
A job unlike retaining, the cost.
It takes to keep the building high and cold but it is about
like we have a shared space and experience here.
Let's like lean into that. So maybe maybe the opportunity
is to ask ourselves. Like if I'm designing something
that's automated what are the other ways that I want to show
like a welcoming? Not like not just access but
welcoming I'm glad that we can end with some hopefulness about
the future because I think so much of it is like we can be
Super negative about the future all the time, but like for what?
At a certain point it's good, it's good to see the hope and
things and imagine where that's going to play out.
So that kind of takes us, I think, to sort of our thought,
exercise for this week. And I'm wondering if you have
something in mind, that could be a way to reflect on the
automatic door and about convenience more.
Broadly, I think the idea that we can design for Hope is really
timely way, and I don't think I have like a list of like, what
does it mean to design for? A 12 bullet points in my TED
talk. But like, if giving a little bit
of space for Hope as a design constraint, which is like maybe
these things could be good, maybe this isn't going to be the
worst case scenario, like even putting that in your practice
next week. I might even say like my version
of that might be like, go on a scavenger hunt in your life, to
identify of type of design in your built.
Moment, that makes you feel hopeful.
Like, if we can start to see it in our own lives, it might be
easier to start designing for it.
I love that. I think that is the assignment
right there. I hope people can tell us about
that lie. I know where a podcast, but if
they want to put in some comments at the on Spotify page
or on the Apple page or send in comments to you or go to the
Instagram, I really am curious. Like if you're taking a
scavenger hunt for a hopeful, this in the built environment
design, what are you fighting Lee and I want to know exactly.
Slowly a, thank you so much. It's been wonderful
collaborating with you this season and I look forward to
many more collaborations in the future.
Yes. I refuse to say goodbye.
I'll just say see you later Lee. This has been awesome.
The Futures archive as a podcast from designed Observer to keep
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