London, Part 3 - Exploration

My budget had contracted substantially by the time I reached London. I spent a little bit of money (I could not pass by the opportunity to visit St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, or Westminster Abbey...plus I wanted to meet my goal of eating out at least once in each city I visited), but to my great satisfaction, and that of my wallet, London cultivates many free and fully-realized cultural opportunities.

London, Part 2 - Arrival and first impressions

I arrived at Paddington Station, London, at about quarter to five in the afternoon of a hot Friday in mid-July. The second I stepped down from my train an urgent task required my attention: find a Visitor kiosk and buy the Visitor Oyster Pass within fifteen minutes, before the kiosk closed. Adrenaline surged as I scanned a sea of bobbing heads, train schedule displays, colorful shopfronts and signs pointing to various platforms and tube lines, all sprawled about a terminal that seemed, at the moment, as large as a sports arena. I cinched my big pack tighter to my back, hiked the small pack closer to my front, wiped the sweat from my brow, and lumber-hustled toward the nearest visible station agent.

Immediately my body was grateful for the rest it had received in sleepy Bath (it would take my mind about a day to recognize that gift). My Bath host had lived in London when she was younger and expressed both appreciation for the abundant experiences it had given her youthful self, and relief that her older self no longer had to endure its frenzy. Those first moments I spent making my way to the Visitor booth in Paddington gave me a glimpse of what she meant, and my awe before London's largeness, busyness, and complexity only grew over the next five days.

London, Part 1 - Life Purpose, Perspective, and Departure

I returned from London more than six months ago (and I wrote the first draft of a blog about London one month ago). It took me quite a long time to revisit the week I spent in that incredible city and craft some thoughts about it. The question of why it took so long does not bring any surprises: I have not picked up the proverbial pen because my hands have been busy wringing out my morbid fear that this is my final visit-in-memoriam to Spain, Italy, Greece, and the UK.

Today, I am not there except in my imagination. I worry that once I've commemorated London and walked on (spoiler alert: I recount my time in London in my next blog post), all these experiential and emotional monuments that sprung up inside me as I journeyed, as I met people, places, and myself, will be cloaked from my view, the paths to them erased. I am afraid that the stiff-collared custodians of opportunity are stingy and punitive, that they are quietly shifting the boundary rope back to where it belongs, behind my back, with each step I take. The territory in which I can experience life (I worry) is shrinking. Social pressures, economics, physical wellness, and whatever other routines which have defined so much of my life so far are restoring their rule. When will I no longer even be able to remember or feel any evidence of last spring's adventure?

This is an old topic, I know. I carry on about the dramatic emotions that this trip conjured in me, or that I have conjured in myself as a way of understanding and remanifesting the trip (even while I was on it, perhaps, but especially now to defy everyday inertia and keep the larger, brighter me and the glimmer of Europe which it contains alive). In addition to worrying about myself I wonder constantly how common such feelings are - the hope and exhilaration, the despair and panic which follow, the slow, quiet surrender to normalcy. I wonder what conditions would enable us to adopt hope and persistence as skillfully as we learn to give in to the status quo.

Designed to Discourage

How many of us have encountered people, businesses, or systems that advertise some kind of good but only yield frustration? How often are we puzzled by the gap between a stated purpose, and what we actually experience?

We participate in many services and systems and many of them, to put it mildly, have flaws. Dating, job-seeking, grocery shopping, transportation, taking turns at a deli counter, deciding what to eat for dinner or wear to school. Queueing to get through a revolving door, competing for merchandise in auctions, donating to an institution or trying to succeed in a business venture.

Do we believe we can improve these experiences for ourselves, our customers and communities? Do we want to? If yes, how do we proceed? I believe a good place to start is to recognize gaps between promise and delivery, and that we have choices about these gaps.

What follows is my draft exploration of such issues. You will not find proof or scientific rigor here, and I do not promise profound revelations. If anything, I hope to advance the cause of stating the obvious, which we often seem quite bad at doing. Talking about realities that we experience, or sense, that we are aware of consciously but do not admit or only instinctively and therefore don’t know how to admit, can be healing and productive.

(Also, please note that I will discuss relatively mundane opportunities to effect change in free and civil circumstances. I do not presume to speak for, or offer advice to, those who need solutions to dire situations.)

Timeless in Bath, Part 2 - Stonehenge

One morning, during my time in Bath, I took a Scarper’s Bus Tour to Salisbury, or in other words to see Stonehenge. People seem to have mixed reactions to this site, ranging from awe to profound disappointment. I stand, mouth agape, among the awed.

Quick plug (I have no special loyalty to or arrangement with this company): The tour was timely, the bus was comfortable, uncrowded, and had huge windows allowing great views of the countryside. I found the driver friendly and knowledgeable, pointing out several fascinating features along the drive, including the Westbury White Horse - a chalk drawing sculpted into a hillside below an Iron Age fort. The price of the tour covered tickets (no standing in line - yay!) as well as an audio guide (this would have also incurred a fee). I found the tour well worth the price.

Ticket and audio guide in hand, I was set loose for a couple hours to wander and wonder. The territory of archaeological interest around Stonehenge is actually quite extensive. In fact, just from the parking lot to the visitor center and stones is 1.5 miles! Normally I would have relished that walk, but due to my timetable I was obliged to join a queue for a short, park-furnished ride that ferried me to the historic site itself. The wait for this ride was only perhaps 15 minutes, so it was not long after I debarked my tour bus that I stepped down, my stomach jumped, and my nerves tingled with the knowledge that I was about to pass through a looking glass into ancient history.

Do you want to deliver the value that your audience needs to receive?

“Discover the real problems.” - Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

Guiding principles of user research:
- You are not the user
- Keep an open mind
- University of Minnesota, User Research and Design course, Brent Hecht

Do you want to deliver the value that your audience needs to receive? ​It is a design thinking question, and I pose it to anyone (myself included) who wants to contribute to the world. “Delivering value” applies to many of our situations. You might want to manufacture a product, give a speech, provide a humanitarian service, or participate in a relationship. Your “audience” might be a user base, a room full of business associates, a stranger on the street or a life partner. In all cases, the basic concerns remain the same.

Originally I intended to preach about designing your deliverable to meet the goals and understanding of the people who use it. However, I am relatively new to the world of design and don’t have the experience or authority to start handing out road maps just yet. What I have is growing awareness of and excitement about the landscape of this discipline. Its insights have broadened my perspective and creative output, and so I can speak with enthusiasm about the topic given in the title, as a migrant to this land inviting others to join me.

Our starting point is not how to design, but why we should care about design. Our audience benefits - we benefit - if we embrace that our audience’s goals may be different than ours, and that delivering something of value to them takes a special attitude and special effort.

Timeless in Bath, part 1

My ride to Bath was uneventful and leisurely: a good indicator of how the next three days would proceed. Arrival at Bath Spa was likewise peaceful. The only notable features were the rain - by my count this was only the third time in almost 60 days that I had encountered rain - and the relatively cool temperature. I actually put on a raincoat when I exited the station!

Looking back now as I write this, I am staggered by the relative oven that southern Europe baked in this year, and concerned for my new friends and acquaintances and all their fellow citizens. On balance, I enjoyed the warmth and clear skies I encountered between May and July, in spite of sweltering days, soaked shirts and fatigued afternoon naps. Of course, I also recall that it was the heat that finally chased me north, where I could relish getting rained on in Bath. As I retreated in the face of 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), those I waved goodbye to persevered, with some measure of comfort (I hope), as by mid-August temperatures neared 48 C (almost 120 F). Heat, drought, fires, service breakdowns: it seems appropriate that Europeans named the heat wave Lucifer.

It is hard for me to conceive of. Even though the areas where I normally live are also encountering more extreme weather in recent years, we do not also contend (as many of the places I visited do) with seriously compromised economic health. Now, when I think about moving to Europe, I think not just of the ways in which it would be enriching or fun for me, but also how I might adjust to new, everyday environmental, economic, even sociopolitical norms. Furthermore, I wonder what I would contribute. My experience this summer was high on receipt and short on delivery. If I were to take part in a community, there would need to be more balance in that equation.

For now, though, back to Bath:

A slight drizzle was on as I exited the station.

Cardiff, Wye Valley Walk, Tintern Abbey

I departed Oxford for Cardiff in typical form: loading up my bags, then loading up my body with their weight, leaving a thank you note for my hosts, and finally walking through Oxford to the train station. Walking is such a pedestrian term for this ritual, though: my full-bodied exertion, not just of muscles but of senses, sweating, squinting, adjusting and cinching, becoming aware and shifting the weight of not just what I carried but everything I was taking in through my eyes, ears, nose, hands and feet.

I took mental snapshots of the tall, shoulder-to-shoulder dwellings, the River Cherwell (for this last, heavy-laden trip I opted for a shorter route through town and not my earlier circuit along the Thames, hence I crossed the Cherwell, which branches northwest out of the Thames and through “downtown” Oxford), boats and bridges. As I crossed into the University area, I swam through an already bubbling sea of perambulators and sightseers, and committed this to memory as well, along with the many colleges’ stately towers and facades.

From the station I took a short bus ride to Didcot. My seatmate was a pleasant, middle-aged woman who indulged my travel-animated tongue, listening and asking about my trip. I can’t recall a bit of this conversation, only that we both seemed to enjoy ourselves.

Arriving in Didcot Parkway, I had a short layover in its small terminal. I took in the chummy, relaxed feel of the place as I sat on a small bench between a glassed-in ticket booth and the turnstiles to the platform. Opposite me, a jovial ticket agent sat at a folding table, smiling at arriving and departing travelers and answering questions.

When it was time for me to get back underway I boarded my train and met my latest seatmate. This young, bearded Englishman left a more detailed picture in my memory than I have of my earlier bus ride. He was quite well-traveled, having lived in or visited numerous countries, including India, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore. His girlfriend was from Spain - another place he had lived. Singapore in particular impressed him, as he found it more open and accepting, more diverse, than most other places he had been. On one road, for instance, he remembered seeing churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious buildings all side-by-side.

We chatted about Brexit as well, a move with which he disagrees, which he nevertheless feels must be honored since it was a democratic decision, and the progress of which he will watch with interest. Shortly before he got off of the train we talked about life and work. His story is personal and yet familiar to me: his first love is teaching, but economic pressure has steered him into a high-earning corporate data job. I wished him well as he left and I rode on toward Wales, and now as I remember and write I wish him well again. I wish us all well in seeking a wholesome balance between accepting the reality we inherit and creating the reality we hope to inhabit.

A very warm afternoon greeted me at Cardiff Central Station. I found this to be a modestly bustling city - well-suited to my mood. My hosts lived near Cardiff Bay so once again (to my delight) I was in store for a long, hot walk.