In the Bubble
John Thackara • 2005
In Short
A design writer provides suggestions and design examples for a sustainable, systems-oriented, people-focused future.
In Depth
Who's the author?
John Thackara is a writer, educator, and speaker whose focus is design for a sustainable future. He is a co-founder of Doors of Perception, a company that organizes events, projects, and conferences among designers, social innovators, and others to imagine alternative futures.
What's the intention?
The book outlines several principles for designing a sustainable future. Overall, it pushes us to recognize the sensitive interconnectedness of everything we design, throwing focus on the design of services and systems, not things. Thackara advocates for design that understands the value of people and culture, when he sees too many only consider technology and industry.
Who's it for?
The messages of the book will have most relevance for designers and planners, those who are already in roles of making products and systems in the world. But the way Thackara sprinkles in relatable, personal anecdotes to impart concepts gives a sense that the book is also addressed to a broader public. Following the themes of the book, Thackara wants to empower all of us to realize how the design of the future is a participatory act.
So what?
This is one of those books which energizes you by raising a lot of questions about how and why we design. In particular, I like Thackara’s approach to design for sustainability. He shows that sustainable design is not just technical matter, but requires a rethinking of our values, framing, and approaches. And rather than portraying it simply as an obligation for designers, he promotes sustainable principles as something that elevates and innovates design for our future.
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On Macroscopes and the Complex Interconnectedness of Things
Systems Design • Facilitation
Small design actions can have unintended consequences on the systems of the world, so we need new tools to visualize these systems and new skills to facilitate collective action upon them.
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On Lightness
Systems Design • Service Design • Sustainability
Imagine every product as having a “weight” of environmental impact, arising from its production, transport, use, and disposal. The principle of “lightness” says a sustainable approach needs to addresses all these relationships, not just the “end-of-pipe” product.
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On What People Can Do and Technology Can't
Technology • Service Design • Human-centeredness • Participatory Design
Technological development is not autonomous, nor inevitable. A focus on human judgement and collective action should inform our design actions as a society, so that we are actively deciding how technology should change the world, rather that just assuming that it does.
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On the Value of Tempo
Technology
Healthier experiences with technology put the pace of fast or slow under our control, rather than assuming that faster is better.
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On the Value of Locality
Place • Technology • Embodiment • Situatedness
Technology design should focus less on how to move things more efficiently and more on how to make the right local connections that would have gone unrecognized otherwise.
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On the Value of Diversity
Technology • Seams
For more resilient and innovative experiences, design should strive for diverse interactions, work in between diverse communities, and recombine diverse models.
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On Social Fiction
Pattern • Everyday
Meaningful, sustainable interaction design should be rooted in aspects of everyday life, pursuing a kind of participatory social fiction, rather than a spectacular science fiction.