DesignShift: From Answers to Questions
Instead of seeing design as a tool to reach a destination (to find an answer), could it be an invitation for movement and exploration?
How many times have you been in a conversation that’s started with a question, and ended with: “Huh, I don’t know the answer. Let me Google that (or ask ChatGPT).” We grab our phones. Find AN answer. And feeling like we’ve gotten what we needed, it’s the end of the discussion. Next topic. Moving on. The internet has given us so much when it comes to access to information. Answers to nearly every question we could ever imagine are at our fingertips.
However, lately I’ve started to realize that the thing we need is not answers, but rather opportunities to be with the questions.
DesignShift: From Answers to Questions
Instead of seeing design as a tool to reach a destination (to find an answer), could it be an invitation for movement and exploration?
How can we ask questions that are less about narrowing down to a fixed spot, and more about expanding beyond our wildest imaginations and our deepest roots?
How can we embrace questions that encourage imagination, curiosity, and criticality?
This year, I invite you and myself to embrace questions separate from answers. Resist the urge to Google or ask ChatGPT. When you come across questions or statements that are confusing or triggering, sit with them. Feel them move through your body like waves of curiosity. Talk to someone else about them. Share the tensions you feel.
In the On Being Episode Living the Questions, Krista Tippett shares an exercise that helps us embrace questions. I want to share it with you:
“Formulate a question that is rolling around in your life or in that boundary between what is personal and what is public or civilizational. Write it down, hone it, and make a commitment to it. Commit to having it over your shoulder, in your ear, as you move through your life. See what it invites you to see and to move towards and to move away from. I would start by writing this down and giving it a month, or giving it a year.”
