On Seeing Potential in Uncertainty

Part of Till’s argument involves countering the negative, knee-jerk reaction that people have against contingency and uncertainty. These forces can be seen as chaotic external enemies of design against which we need to set up barriers. But instead, Till makes a case for their transformative potential.

Where order and certainty close things down into fixed ways of doing things, contingency and uncertainty open up liberating possibilities for action. In this light contingency is more than just fate it is truly an opportunity. (p.55)

Till goes out of his way to show how this philosophy differs from the “modern” determinist approach “in which decisions are made according to the higher authority of ‘objective’ reason and truth. The ‘modern’ individual is absolved from taking responsibility for the ultimate effect of these decisions because they are seen as part of a system that transcends the particular.” (p.60) And yet, the philosophy Till outlines is not a purely relativist approach in which all choices and opinions are equal and “one might resort to chance as the means of making choice.” (p.59)

Instead, the approach that Till recommends is one of situated choices and shared consequences.

For two reasons, the making of choice in the contingent world is both far from relativist and far from being absolutely determined. First, because we engage with those choices with a degree of intent and vision; there is an end in sight and a hope driving that end. Where in the modern project the end is overseen by values of truth and reason, and thus to a large extent predetermined, in the contingent world the exact end is uncertain and the choices made along the way are exposed to other forces, and in particular the hopes and intents of others. Contingency thus demands that we share our destinies; it does not overpower the intents that people bring to the table, it just shapes them and obliges them to be less dogmatic. Dealing with contingency thus calls for one to have vision but, at the same time, to be modest and light-footed enough to allow that vision to be adjusted to the circumstances. The second reason that the making of choice is neither relativist nor determinist is because we enter into those choices as sentient, knowing, and situated people, not as innocents abroad in the detached knowledge of others. We bring to those choices a concrete background, which informs—but does not absolutely determine—the way that we deal with them. (p.59)

This all gets rather intellectual, but I find myself thinking about such things when I consider how I would like to engage the world through my design work. Till’s framing of contingency is appealing to me because it neither puts the power of design solely with the designer and outside the reach of common people, nor does it place the work of design at the mercy of popular demand or other external forces of the world. Instead, Till sets up a grounded idea of design as an interaction between designer and world, highlighting the power and potential of design choices, but also the shared responsibility in making those choices.

In the face of uncertainty, the individual is thrown back to their irreducible ethical core and is asked to make choices; not certain choices or perfect choices, but the best possible choices in the name of others. (p.186)