Imagine you are driving along a highway. Your car starts to spin out of control, or just as bad, you witness another car a few yards ahead suddenly lose control. In that split second, what would you do? Panic and freeze? Swerve to avoid a crash and pray that the side airbags release? Opening with a similar situation, In the Bubble makes the point that smart design can make all the difference when it comes to split-second decisions.
The status quo dictates bigger, better, and faster, according to John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception, a design futures network based in Amsterdam and Bangalore. He feels that humans are increasingly left out of the design equation, and fears that design will become so complex that it creates a science-fiction-like world where machines and products control humans. To avoid this, designers should exercise their social and ethical responsibility to the world, though too often that is not the case, he writes. Within the push for the latest, greatest technology, the author believes that what is missing in most designs is the answer to two basic questions: "Where do we want to be?" and "How do we get there?"
Some of the examples in In the Bubble are quite impressive, and get us to imagine solutions in a different way. In the chapter "Lightness," Thackara reviews BodyMedia, a wearable data-monitoring system that tracks a person's sleep patterns, food intake, and exercise. A BodyMedia wearer can follow this data online to see if he or she is progressing toward a healthier lifestyle. In another example, Thackara describes how a number of aircraft designers are studying the differences in movement between birds and airplanes in order to design airplanes that could mimic the effortless motion of birds.
With chapters entitled "Lightness," "Speed," "Literacy," and "Locality," Thackara's book prompts us to be aware of design and how it affects everyday life. "We are all designers now," he writes. "If we can design our way into difficulty, we can design our way out."Sara Grant