Understanding Human Experience
Mental Models for Values, Perceptions, and Behaviours
The conversation about design is evolving as the scope of design expands from physical artifacts to living systems. Increasingly, we are exploring ideas about organizational transformation and social change. In other words, we are expanding the scope of design from the physical to the metaphysical: to the social, the economic, and the political. These are issues of connection, capacity, and power.
Reinterpreting the Role of the Designer
Matthew Manos has been creating communities to explore design as a means of multiplying the impact of non-profit organizations through new models of innovation, collaboration, and generosity.
Service Design and Biophilia
Others are imagining the basis for a new aesthetic of design.
This last aspect, on closer examination, has surprisingly revolutionary consequences for what should be the content of design in general, and the mission of service design in particular. If what we have said is true, it is difficult for design not to enter the fragile and sometimes unfathomable territory of the “action-patterns” of human existence. However, for the reasons set out above, design is not omnipotent and “service design” even less so. It must instead be “responsible” — that is, responsive — towards everyone and everything, young and old, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, those blessed or spurned by life: it must do this without embracing invention for invention’s sake in pursuit of self-sufficiency and innovation, but must rather marry the knowledge of “responding” to what is beautiful and ugly here and in the world. This type of design is in fact an “active philosophy” dedicated to making space for life. Why should not design — service design — be a love for life? And why should not life, in all its incredible variety, be the key giving us access to design?
This principle of biophilia — the love of life — thus offers us the basis for a new aesthetic of service design.
Design as a Catalyst for Change
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
The Design Challenge
The challenge, then, becomes more about how to understand the values, perceptions, and behaviours of the individuals who make up an organization or a society. Through brain research and cognitive science, we are coming to understand that we are not actually rational creatures. Rather we react and behave emotionally and invent rationalizations to justify our instinctive and impulsive actions.
Values, perceptions, narratives, and social identities are far more compelling than data, facts, information, and rational thought in the way that we understand our environment and make decisions as social creatures.
Social Change
Telling a Better Story
Social change begins by first understanding the way we think about the story that we are a part of.
For example, if the Earth is not flat and the Earth revolves around the Sun, such knowledge fundamentally changes our perceptions of the world and our relationship to the cosmos.
Social change begins with better stories. If we are better able to comprehend our environment and to understand our context in both our physical and social reality, the stories that we tell ourselves change, because our perceptions are filtered through a different lens. Transforming our interpretations leads to better responses to stimuli, according to cognitive behavioural psychology.
The primitive limbic systems in our brains are designed to trigger the fight or flight response as a matter of survival in a world of physical threats. Senses are attuned to dangers in the environment and events perceived as threats will automatically trigger a physical and biological response of increased heart rate, a release of adrenalin, and a heightened state of awareness, along with emotions of anxiety, fear, and panic.
When this intellectual, emotional, and physical state of anxiety is prolonged, we call this stress. People who live in this constant state of fear and scarcity will tend to engage in behaviours that are focused on survival and self-preservation. This interpretation of constant threat leads to isolation and aggression, as members of a group engage in a competition for scarce resources and demonstrations of strength and dominance to control the group, protect resources, and destroy enemies. However, such isolation and aggression has a tendency to undermine the survival of the group.
Creativity, communication, and collaboration are actually the strengths that have contributed to the survival of the human species.
Mapping the Human Experience
The Human Genome Project for Social Design
Understanding materials was the first step in the education of a modern artist, designer, and architect. The pedagogical approach of the Bauhaus become the progenitor of the curricula of the design and architecture academies of the modern world.
Basic Form Study at the Bauhaus
Hannes Meyer conceived of the architecture curriculum at the Bauhaus in the form of a body with a head, a torso, arms, and legs, representing an approach that combined science (brain/intellect) with art (heart/intuition).
The Human Genome Project
As scientific and medical knowledge and capabilities improved over the past century, we endeavoured to better understand the chemical and biological data and patterns stored in our DNA through the Human Genome Project.
However, the scientific approach tends to divide and dissect to better understand the parts and inner workings of each system, since each area demands specialized training, knowledge, and understanding because of the complexity involved. Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of this separation of specialized disciplines leads to a lack of holistic understanding.
Such specialization is also the tendency among the disciplines of user experience design (UX). To better understand how to design for humans, it makes sense to develop a mental model of awareness, motivations, and social relationships that are the foundation of human experience.
Experience and Reality
I begin my exploration of human experience with a curious feature of reality. There is an interesting, rather mysterious connection that I have observed between experience and reality. That is, we can conceive of ideas beyond what we sense in the physical environment that are ideals or concepts that can never exist in reality. The ideas are beyond the physical, or metaphysical.
The other curious characteristic of these ideas is that they occur in groups of three, both in the physical and the metaphysical. Humans have a curious affinity for the rule of thirds, not just in the aesthetics of art, but in all of life.
On the other hand, there seems to be a relationship between the ideals that we can conceive of and the imperfect realities within which we exist. In that sense, it is possible to conjecture that the physical is a metaphor for the metaphysical, or vice versa.
Processes
- Beginning
- Middle
- End
Ideas
- Thesis
- Antithesis
- Synthesis
Philosophy
- Epistemology
- Ontology
- Axiology
Rhetoric
- Ethos
- Pathos
- Logos
Science
- Hypothesis
- Experiment
- Results
Atoms
- Proton
- Neutron
- Electron
Phases
- Solid
- Liquid
- Gas
Additive Color
- Red
- Green
- Blue
Subtractive Color
- Cyan
- Magenta
- Yellow
Mental Models
A mental model is what a person believes about experience and reality.
In user experience design, a mental model is what the user believes about the system at hand.
Mental models are in flux exactly because they’re embedded in a brain rather than fixed in an external medium. Additional experience with the system can obviously change the model, but users might also update their mental models based on stimuli from elsewhere, such as talking to other users or even applying lessons from other systems.
Reality
According to Einstein’s work in physics, we understand that the complexity of time and space can be reduced to a simple equation: E = mc². The equation describes the mathematical relationship between energy, mass, and time.
- Time
- Energy
- Mass
Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing. Under the right conditions, energy can become mass, and vice versa.
Time
We perceive time as a linear progression of events. We remember the past, we experience the present, and we anticipate the future.
- Past
- Present
- Future
Space
We perceive space in three dimensions. The art of the Renaissance became a revolution in the visual representation of reality based on the principles of perspective drawing by simulating the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional plane through various methods, similar to projecting light onto a flat surface as with a film projector.
- Length
- Width
- Height
Perception, Cognition, Emotion + Action
In his talk, Design for Engagement, Jesse James Garrett presents a mental model of human experience consisting of perception (senses), cognition (mind), emotion (heart), and action (body).
If we consider a separation between the internal and external experience of being human, we can conceive of the differences between the intellectual, the emotional, and the physical as internal experience.
Person (Internal)
Personhood is described by ancient texts as being a combination of different parts.
- Mind
- Heart
- Body
Experience
These may also correspond to the spiritual concepts of consciousness, spirituality, and reality.
- Consciousness
- Spirituality
- Reality
Psychology
If we think about these three division in terms of cognitive psychology, we might consider awareness, motivation, and connection or belonging.
- Awareness
- Motivation
- Connection
Agency
In philosophy, we discuss epistomology, ontology, and axiology.
- Knowing
- Being
- Doing
Ideals
We live in the mundane, but we aspire to the transcendent. We can draw these ideas from the ancient Greek philosophers who framed their discussions about the purpose of life. This summary is derived from Marty Neumeier’s Innovation Workshop.
- To know truth.
- To make beauty.
- To do good.
Spiritual Transcendence
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians includes a description of the nature of love.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
- Faith
- Hope
- Love
Senses (External)
Our senses represent the organs that are able to translate external environmental and physical forces, phenomena, and interactions into sensory data that can be processed and interpreted by the brain.
Contrary to popular belief, we have at least six physical senses, rather than the traditionally held concept of five senses. The vestibular system located inside the inner ear is often mistakenly omitted:
- Taste
- Touch
- See
- Hear
- Smell
- Balance
Resilience and Symbiosis
How, then, can we begin to map the human experience? How we can design mental habits, social systems, and physical environments for resilience and symbiosis with the living processes and ecology that are the foundation of our biological support systems?
To better understand our materials as experience designers, we need more holistic mental models of the human experience, as a way to understand what we are designing for.
Unintended Consequences
The design profession is currently facing a reckoning, similar to the revolutions in our understanding of class, race, gender, and religion. The 1700-year-old project of cultural imperialism that originated with the Roman Emperor Constantine and the integration of church and state finds its realization in the social, political, and economic institutions that have created monolithic monopolies of global power.
The unintended consequences of the tools that we have designed to shape our environment are the weaponizing of those tools as the means for controlling and manipulating populations, protecting access to scarce resources, and eliminating threats to religious, national, and corporate prosperity and security.
Metaphysical Design
Shaping our Social, Economic, and Political Environments
Lacking a science that helps us to conceive of a person holistically, it may be possible to draw from the observations of the generations of people who have come before us. They formulated conceptions and philosophies of the world that attempt to communicate the complex, interconnected relationships of human beings to their physical and metaphysical environments. There are things that humans experience that are distinctly tangible, but others that we cannot measure, test, or account for through physical means. Should we simply ignore this data, that which is beyond physical or empirical measurement, or is there something to be gleaned from the musings, conjectures, observations, histories, and literature preserved in ancient sacred texts?
Crafting An Arts Education
The Vocabulary, Syntax, and Grammar of Human Experience
As an artist, designer, and educator, I have been exploring some new directions for my career by going back to school in a multi-generational, multi-disciplinary arts environment where I can think about my own values, identity, and skills in the context of a creative, collaborative community of artists, musicians, dancers, and educators.
This exploration was also a way to build on some of the relationships that started with a book design project in 2014 to document the creative community in the Metro Vancouver area, called WeMakeStuff Volume 02.
Bez Arts Hub
A culture for building community. A community for creating culture.
The Bez Arts Hub, located in Langley just outside Vancouver, BC is an arts venue and home to a dance studio, an arts education program and a performance and music publishing company. Featuring adjustable lighting, a sprung dance floor, sound system, and movable chairs and risers, this black box theatre offers a unique space for events and creative projects.
The centre curates a range of arts events and also offers space rentals and event services.
A Service Design Project
- Role: Experience Design Research, Service Design
- Project Duration: A work in progress
- Primary Stakeholder: Bez Arts Hub
Challenge
Bez Arts Hub is home to multiple enterprises, but it has found success working with students who join their four-year mentorship program of whole-person development for music, dance, and film. Finding people who are willing to commit to a four-year program is the challenge.
Solution
A platform for managing the activities of an arts centre that supports the education and well-being of artists and provides spaces and venues for the development, practice, and performance of music, dance, theatre, and film.
Results
Through immersion research as a participant in classes in music, art, and culture, as well as vision and strategy meetings with the owners, instructors, and advisors, the experience evolved into an opportunity to explore service design as an approach to organizational transformation.
Why solve this problem?
The arts are being undervalued by our communities, and because of a lack of interest and patronage, artists are not encouraged to cultivate skills and pursue careers in creativity.
There is a gap in local opportunities for professional mentorship in the arts that also includes a focus on whole-person development in the context of the caring and supportive relationships of a collaborative creative community.
Design Workshop
In a research workshop designed to explore our understanding of the human experience, we focused on concepts related to cognitive behavioural psychology, philosophy, spirituality, user experience design, and social physics.
How might we better understand our materials in order to design for the human experience?
Beginning with an open card sort, participants organized ideas into patterns to represent the interconnected nature of human experience.
The organization of ideas inspired sketches of the connections between concepts as it relates to the personal and professional development of an artist.
By observing and listening to people as they worked through the card sort and sketching exercises, it was possible to develop a new way of conceiving of the experience of the artist by creating a mental model of a whole person.
Why do I dance? Oh, Wow. I dance because I feel like I have to.
Contemporary dance. Very typically it has been very simply explained as being outward expression of an inward emotion, concept or idea.
What happens very often when people are watching contemporary dance is they’re trying to find the meaning in it. People can add their connection to it, their own personal experience, so that actually everybody gets something slightly different from it. The idea is not to just express my message but to get everybody’s message included in it, so that the audience experience is not just a passive thing. It actually becomes an active thing.
Very few of the other art forms engage us body, soul, spirit. Dance is one of the few that engages every part of who we are. If you say that a picture is worth a thousand words, well, we’ve got a moving picture. We’ve got thousands of words. Dance is actually giving us a whole plethora of artistic expression in a single form.
A lot of what happens in a person can often be suppressed, repressed. All of those silenced emotions the body ends up then housing those emotions. They don’t disappear, but they stay in us, in our bodies, until it’s the right time to begin to express them. The physical actually gives voice to things that they never had words for. The body becomes the words where they didn’t have words.
We as Christians have become disembodied, so that there’s actually not a physical form that we add to our worship or our faith. One of the forums where dance is least appreciated is in the church. It’s an unhealthy thing for Christians to cease adding their voice into the creative voice. Our voices need to be heard in there as well. If we keep not valuing our artists, our voice will keep disappearing.
If you talk to a dancer, there’s this sense they can’t not dance. Ultimately they have to be obedient to whatever God has put them here on Earth for. If God keeps asking them to dance, they actually have no choice, and the rest of us need to help them to find ways that they can keep doing that.
Become patrons of the art. Support artists. Find ways to make sure that our artists continue to have a means by which they can continue to pursue their art. Value your artists.
Why do I dance? I dance because I have to.
Spirituality and Metaphysics
Drawing Inspiration from Ancient Sacred Texts
This is how I “read the story of history, the story of who we are as humans, and the story of the scriptures, and what it means to be a person of spirit, of soul, of heart, and of faith in this world.”
Over the past week, I have created some mental models of the human experience. To me, it has been a way for me to use my education in communication and design to understand how humans have conceived of God and how the divine is trying to communicate to humanity about his design through stories and through his creation.
The process started long ago, as a child raised in an evangelical Christian home, where my father and mother ran a Christian bookstore. I was steeped in the culture, and became very familiar with the Bible. When I had studied graphic design and discovered the Bauhaus, I made the connection with the German word, bau, meaning “to build.”
I connected my own Chinese surname, Bau, meaning “abalone,” to a calling to build a community centred around the arts, faith, and culture.
I also found connections throughout the scriptures. These ideas became a central theme of my work.
One New Humanity
I noted how the last recorded words of Jesus of Nazareth with his disciples before he was taken to be crucified were a prayer for unity.
“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
— John 17:6–26
Paul reiterated similar ideas about unity and oneness in his letter to the Ephesians.
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
— Ephesians 2:11–22
The Embodiment and Incarnation of Love
The theme of building always appeared to be connected to the ideas of growth and love, as if the mixed metaphors of building and bodies was an intentional feature of the prose, with almost foresight into the more recent discoveries that our bodies are composed of living cells that combine to form a single biological species, defined by the DNA signature common to each cell.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
— Ephesians 4:15–16
Love Builds
The theme of building is a theme that stretches back to the beginnings of the nation, as the design of the tabernacle became the pattern for the temple that would be built in Jerusalem.
As Solomon was securing the materials and labour to build the temple, he sent the following message:
“But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?”
— 2 Chronicles 2:6
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
— Psalm 127:1
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
— John 2:18–21
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
— Matthew 16:18
“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
“ ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?’”
— Acts 7:48–50
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved — even though only as one escaping through the flames. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
— 1 Corinthians 3:10–17
But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.
— 1 Corinthians 8:1
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
— Hebrews 11:10
The Third Day
These stories seem to be obsessive about repeating the theme of the third day. Inevitably, the repetition of this phrase takes the reader back to the first instance in the story of creation in the book of Genesis.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the third day.
— Genesis 1:9–13
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.
— Genesis 22:4
We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as he commands us.
— Exodus 8:27
On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord.
— 2 Kings 20:5
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.
— Hosea 6:2
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
— Hebrews 10:24–25
The Builder
Paul talks about how we are the body of Christ, growing into maturity and growing up into the head who is Christ, so I was trying to create a mental model of a mature human being. According to the tradition of Christianity, Jesus is the model, the exact representation of the invisible God. That is the first circle with faith, hope, and love as the core values. This is the model for a builder. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
The Destroyer
The second circle is the vision some people have of the world, where the central value is the self and the mindset of fear that ultimately leads to hatred of others who are different because of the perceived threat that they represent to the survival of the group. This is the model for a destroyer. Empires, nation states, and corporations are built on this model of survival, competition, and domination.
The Creator
But we are made in the image of God. The third circle represents a mental model of the Creator. When I think about what it means to be made in God’s image, I have come to understand that our mind, heart, and body are a reflection of the trinitarian nature of God as Father, Spirit, and Son.
In Hebrews, Abraham is described as looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
I was curious about why the NIV capitalized “the Day.”
The theme of Hebrews is the day of rest, the seventh day.
If I am wondering about the meaning or significance of a word in the Bible, I will find the first instances of the word in the text. Of course, the days are very significant in Genesis 1. But Jesus keeps telling people that the only sign that he will give is the sign of Jonah, who was three days and three nights in the belly of a fish. Jesus also said, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days.” Abraham also made a three-day journey to sacrifice his son, but God provided a sacrifice. Moses told Pharoah that they would take a three-day journey into the desert.
The Times of Israel
- Israel would be a light to the nations.
- They crossed from death to life through the waters of the Red Sea.
- They crossed the waters of the Jordan to reach the promised land.
The Times of the Gentiles
- The followers of Jesus would be the light of the world.
- They crossed from death to life through the waters of baptism.
- They were commissioned by Jesus to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
This follows the same pattern in Genesis 1.
- Day 1: Light
- Day 2: Water
- Day 3: Land: vegetative life
- Day 4: Light
- Day 5: Water
- Day 6: Land: human life
It seems that God has been planning from the very beginning that he would use a design process to build his body with living stones, with human beings, with us. His design was to use the light of justice to inspire us through faith, to offer us the water of life as a gesture of kindness to empower us through hope, and to provide the good things of the earth to help build us in love. Light, water, and land are the symbols that he has used throughout the scriptures to reinforce the symbolism that we understand through our family relationships.
- A father is a provider who imparts an identity and moral principles to his children.
- A mother is a comforter who breaths for her unborn child, groans in the pains of childbirth, is a compassionate presence, and speaks encouragement to her children.
- A son acts as a brother to his siblings and a friend to his neighbours, fulfilling the father’s plans and the mother’s promises by restoring and building a home for his family.
In Genesis, God told us a story that included all the elements that he would use as symbols of what was to come.
Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.
Notice that the text doesn’t say Sun or Moon. They were referred to as lights. The physical is a metaphor for the metaphysical. Just like the parables were not meant to be taken literally. Everything was symbolic. The days were always meant to be signs to help us understand the times that we are living in.
So, at the core of the story is the idea of love. The Earth is how God has incarnated his love in the universe as the seed of the woman, the promise of a new life that is being gestated as a living system. The now and the not yet is in the process of being born, and we are in the third trimester, the third day, if you will. The Day of birth is imminent.
The builders collective is the creative, collaborative community on the Earth who are involved in the work of building and of love.
The challenge is that there are people who believe a different narrative that centres around the self and fear and hate. This leads to strategies for success and competition in an environment of survival, scarcity, and domination. The strategy is to accumulate intelligence, property, and power by focusing on surveillance, security, and aggression in order to control, protect, and destroy.
Builders Collective
As a builders collective, our work is to restore the garden, pruning to allow for good fruit to grow. The role of the editor is to focus the narrative and tell a better story. We have allowed technology and media to overwhelm our senses. We look in a mirror and immediately forget what we look like. We instead begin to reflect everything that we see around us. As editors, we advocate for an identity, a point of view, and a movement in the direction of learning the attitudes and habits necessary for personal and social transformation, to develop people of integrity, compassion, and generosity. The builders collective is a vision to build leaders to design a resilient society (BLDRS).
The Evolution of a Designer
As a designer and educator, I sense an opportunity to change the way we understand our story, and it seems that this is an important time to centre our public discourse on crafting a new narrative and exploring the adjacent possible: how imagination can inspire faith, and how design can empower a more hopeful story about building a community of love.
Design for Resilience
Art Might Save Us
An Embodied World: Divine Incarnation
Theology is a Place and a Story
“Our masks are falling. We know we can’t live in them anymore. They’re destroying us. But we haven’t yet figured out what it means to live together, without those masks. And that’s where the quest, the daring, the exploration — that’s where the bigness of love as the ultimate truth about the world and our lives has to be present. I believe that we can’t do it on our own if we don’t have that guiding force.”
