Resonance

what we see

Transformative perspective for designing a better fit between our humanity and technology through resonant experiences and systems of relations.

01. Mute world:

The world we are living in

We live in an increasingly mute world, a culture of the lowered gaze, and our openness, curiosity, and resonance are numbed.

Technology continues to take the world apart into isolated fragments, separating tasks from their social context and making these fragments ready for us to “control”. 

But regrettably, our collective and individual well-being is not improving at the same pace, and it possibly is at all times low if we look at life fulfillment and the rise of loneliness, depression, and anxiety. 

The primary mode of vibrant human experience is not about exerting mechanical control over things but resonating with them, making them respond to us, and responding to them in our ongoing pursuit of harmony. 

Technology offers many new ways to amplify resonance and its benefits. Still, without awareness of resonance as a foundational attribute of positive experience we - as designers - are missing opportunities to support our innate disposition to be open for resonant relations. 

02. Resonance

A mode of being in the world

Resonance is about being present and open to relations with the world around you; A kind of balance and harmony with which you positively relate to the world amid the anxiety or flat monotony you may find around you.

Resonance is not an echo but a responsive relationship: Resonance is a primary mode of our relationship with the world responsible for a positive, affective human experience which is among the central goals of experience design. 

We need resonant relations with people and the world to revive our humanity and this needs to include our relation to technology.

Our capacity for emotional understanding and empathy rests on the fact that perceptions not only can be exchanged between people but also with the world around us. 

Weather, landscapes, music, and material objects or technology are all capable in this way of becoming “active mirrors” or “resonant surfaces” for our capacity to “read” the world.

The resonance perspective sees people, products, and technology as instruments participating in composing, conducting, and performing in our quest for vibrant harmony in the world. 

But resonance is also a completely overlooked by conventionalized experience design procedures, that try to reduce human experience into a string of productivity tasks to be efficiently completed. 

03. Confusion:

Human experience is lost in Alphabet soup of X

Experience design is confused.

Confusing instrumentality (the “what” and “how” of interaction) with need fulfillment (the “why”) will have a profound effect on reducing the range of experience to task completion.

Focus on instrumental goals /“do-goals”/, optimizing task flows, solving pain points, and efficiency are building blocks of interaction design but left alone produce a mute world, missing the opportunity to inspire moments of meaning and direct engagement with human goals behind the tasks and actions…

Experience is more than a chain of instrumental tasks. Instead, it emerges from the interplay of many different systems 

/perception, action, motivation, emotion, and cognition/ by engaging us with the universal human goals, needs, and values, informing product or system functional attributes through behaviors, perceptions, and feelings in dialogue with the world around us.

“Be-goals” on top of instrumental goals, are the underlying reasons for what we do, the “why” of interaction - “being close to others,” “feel competent,” “being stimulated,” “belonging” … “Be-goals” give experience meaning, emotional color and motivate our behaviors.

Experience emerges through resonance. 

Experience is an interaction that resonates immediately, inviting moments of being present - unfolding as a resonant dialogue we are having with the world around us through mutual response - moments of emotional awareness.

For universal human goals and values to manifest in experience, there needs to be a degree of resonance designed and intentionally built into an experience system, especially when mediated by technology, that tend to either mute or induce compulsion and anxiety - often at the same time.

04. Designing for Resonance

An antidote to mute task chains 

Resonance, is “not productive” and often absent or out-optimized from our daily interactions, especially mediated by technology.

Design needs to make space for resonance.

Resonance can be a source of affective design energy, an antidote to colorless optimization systems, helping us put this world back together in equitable and resilient ways.

Innovation today is not just about technology, but about new forms of our relationship with technology and each other_

We need more meaningful experiences, that add to what life could be, because nobody wants to live on autopilot life_