How does anticipatory design accentuate curiosity and wonder?

“They deliberately exceeded the limitations of the instrument [piano] with the assumption that if the instrument could not produce the sound desired, its design rather than the music would have to change.”

                                                                                     —Edward Tenner, 2004

“All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves.”

                                                                                    —Aristotle, 336 to 323 BC

    Curiosity spans the history of humanity from strapping leather to one’s feet in order to find out what’s over the next hill to building robots to explore the surface of Mars. The desire for knowledge is closely related to the passion for wonder in the sense that we invent because we hope to extend our range of experience and knowledge. The emotional excitement that accompanies the possibly of knowing something new, experiencing something rare, and seeing beauty in strangeness inspires us to challenge our threshold for complexity. Though it is a blurry division, we feel glorious enlightenment on one side, and fear of the other. An inventor maintains a state of being at this threshold in order to thrive on the anticipation of surprise.

    In hopes of glorious enlightenment, an inventive state of being rests somewhere between a child innocently learning and a monk patiently creating. Like a child, an inventor marvels at strange, rare, and subtle qualities that suggest the potential for new knowledge. Like a monk, he/she patiently experiments with unusual relationships without expecting, and therefore not fearing the failure of, a particular outcome. As Galileo invented new telescopes to see further and clearer views of space, he didn’t know he would discover the sun as the center of the universe. An inventor, therefore, is motivated by the possibility of new experiences and new knowledge.  

    As inventors, anticipators focus on the subtlety of transient interactions. The more interpretations they create, the more they trust that many simultaneous understandings are possible. By experiencing, sharing, and seeking more experiences, anticipators grow confident in their ability to improvise. Every moment, awake or asleep, is a learning experience in the sense that flexible and open interactions invite an anticipator to revel in uncertainty and surprise. By thinking in visualized possibilities, anticipators extend the relevancy of knowledge into the future.

    Our means to extend beyond ourselves is proliferating at an exponential rate. Motivated by curiosity, we have tools to access the rich interconnections among that which we can and cannot directly experience. Though technological inventions (yes!) have enhanced our ability to do things and therefore conceive of more things to do, the ability to think things has somehow become an afterthought. Anticipatory design, therefore, is a way of thinking about the design of interaction to extend an anticipator’s literacy of contextual information. In turn, it supports timely invention when curiosity and wonder arise. In this sense, possible knowledge is limited (only) by the anticipator’s imagination.

    Anticipatory design refocuses attention on the inventive state of being that drives curiosity. From this very perspective, I can propose anticipatory design and discuss it as an interaction with a pollen molecule and also as the expanse of a lifetime. My desire to invent flourishes when I am moving, touching, and interacting with dynamic information. Though the emotional significance of invention is of personal value, invention is also to share knowledge with others and let the invention grow beyond initial creation.  

    I anticipate a future in which design research focuses on the articulation of human interactions among complex systems. In this respect, anticipatory design provides extensions of thought to make complexity manageable and understandable. Framed as learning systems, “we will have to develop an exquisite and entirely unprecedented sensibility to contexts we’ve hitherto safely been able to ignore (Greenfield, 2006).” The complexity of formal, technological, historical, social, environmental, biological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual systems may (only) be understood when intertwined with direct experience.  

    The explorations included in this document anticipate new ways of inventing knowledge based on a host of intersecting and diverging currents within culture. As digital systems mimic natural systems, I anticipate a growing curiosity regarding multiple ways to encode time. I anticipate curiosity in context-specific information as the physical world becomes a digital cabinet of curiosities. Furthermore, I anticipate the rituals associated with curiosity to encourage personal growth and self-knowledge through gesture and movement.

    The experience of such possibilities extends our ability to think things, and may also instigate a curiosity in extending emotional, psychological, and spiritual abilities. Anticipatory design is an invitation to invent many possible futures. The designs we make, the narratives we tell, and the beliefs we embody extend our collective knowledge through curiosity, wonder, subtlety, ambiguity, and chance. Like the evolved symmetry between the ocean floor and the flounder fish, we design our environments and, therefore, design each other. We are that flexible and vulnerable. Yet, it brings us great strength and satisfaction to experience, to learn, to unlearn, then to learn again.

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For the sake of curiosity and wonder, may the anticipation of surprise continue to drive spontaneous invention.