Design + Coffee = Happy Geek-Out

What follows are photos of our new coffee maker, the manual and deliming device (a simple coiled metal wire), and a box of filters. The art for the manual and filter box is some of the best product graphic design I've seen, and the coffee maker itself is so simple and effective it's been in use in diners and now homes for 50 years. This is largely why I am a designer. How I feel right now is how I want to make other people feel: communicated with in as clear a language as a handshake, by someone who cares enough to shake your hand with intention and humanity.

Estimation

Joy and Graduate Design Research

          What I talk about when I talk about this research is joy. What joy is, is times of feeling intimately connected to the world around you and the people in it. I know the solemn, intentional joy of being alone and feeling that connection with clouds and sunlight and plants and pavement, being part of all of that. But what this experience has been so full of is the distracted, unselfconscious joy of feeling connected with other people. What has happened is, I have made friends. These people who don't have houses or apartments, who I used to feel estranged from, even afraid of - I think of them when the weather is bad, and I visit to see if I can help. I dream about some of them at night. They have winked into being in the constellations of people in my life. I’ve experienced devastation with them, watching them stare around, lost, at the waste of the meager structure they had to their days. I’ve seen their ability to be human even in that situation, to be so angry and scared yet to be able to step back and say, “I don’t hold it against them; they’re just doing their job.” I don’t care who else they are, or what else they are, or whether they could find work if they tried harder, or whether they could get housing if they’d just go to a case worker. I suspend judgment during my time with them, the same way I do for other friends. I don’t listen because I have to; I want to listen. Laughing at a story they tell me, or shaking my head in disgust at the injustice they are facing, or watching the creases at the corners of their eyes as they smile, reflecting my smile. The gradual process of being accepted as someone they can talk to, someone they can trust, has thrilled me more and more and more deeply in each instance of contact. I want to be part of their meetings, their informal gatherings. I am hurt if I think I have hurt them. I don’t romanticize our relationship or think that I mean the world to them, but I do not take for granted the glory of their recognition. Taking the time to cultivate a relationship so that when you see someone, you smile at each other and greet each other happily, is the most joyous thing we can do with our time. It is not the most productive thing; productivity is also part of this but belongs to another realm. It is not the most economical thing or the most helpful thing (though some may argue that it is). But connecting and being joyful in the bond is the most important thing for a healthy human being to have, of this I am sure. What they have given me over the course of these months of work is not something I can talk about academically. I hope for them. I trust them. They have changed me so. The feeling I have now approaching a campsite is as night is to day with the feeling I had approaching the first time. Hesitation is now confidence. Fear is now excitement. Uncertainty is now command. I know what to say, how to look them in the face and not be so aware of our relative positions in life. If I drive up in my car and they sit on a railroad tie with all their belongings in a backpack beside them, it doesn’t matter because our relative positions are pretend, formed by stories we tell about the value of money and of objects. We are adjacent and joined by the only position that is real between two humans: two simultaneously beating hearts, a whole history of experiences that we begin sharing the moment our brains look out through our eyes, meeting. I read once that you know everything you need to know about a person the first moment you look into their eyes, if you are paying attention. It’s true, because all you need to know about them is that they are a person and all they need to know about you is that you are one. We know exactly how to acknowledge the light, the soul, whatever you would like to call it, that shines back at us. We pretend not to know in our fear and doubt. Once we have practiced and learned to let the fear and doubt go, all that is left is the joyfulness of transfer, of empathy. I can see your emotions in your eyes. I care about the state of your mind. Once that is in place, everything else falls easily into a natural rhythm and formation. Then if your friend says, “Can I have $1.50?” and you say, “Yes,” and hand them two dollars because you don’t have coins and they say, “Make it three,” and you say, “No,” and they say, “Okay,” neither of you have lost anything in the exchange. You have both been honest about what you need and what you are willing. It is as simple as meeting at a coffee shop with an old friend. You might both offer to pay. One of you might offer first and insist. One of you might find yourself short and ask for a favor. We take these small moments in stride because we trust ourselves and we trust our friends. You can understand and use the trust you have in people who don’t have a house in the same ways. You are unafraid to say things like, “You need to leave me alone now,” or “I have to leave.” You are unafraid to admit that you have no cash, and you are unafraid to admit that you do but you need it for something later. You are unafraid to say, “I can’t help you with that,” or “I think I know someone who could help you out.” You’re unafraid to hug them or cry or apologize or turn away or do any of the other things people do with one another, because you have become unafraid of your own vulnerability around them – which is really what we’re all afraid of. The precariousness of our own position. That their homelessness will negate the legitimacy of our own standing. It doesn’t have to. You can have your own life and love it and not give it all away. They understand. They really do. And that is magic.

The best thing we can do for each other is cry together

On Monday, midmorning, in a cold wind, I visited the camping grounds under I40 as I frequently do, to say hello to the people living there. This day I was investigating who was camping and whether they had a need for firewood. A friend had offered some extra she had from a felled tree in her backyard. I approached a group of five who stood and sat around a green metal barrel with a fire in it. I hadn't met any of them, so we introduced ourselves with smiles. After confirming they yes, please, definitely needed firewood, the man closest to me offered some labor and then volunteered some personal information about his recent experience. He was speaking of extremely difficult things - loss of a loved one, violence, prison - but he spoke with an uplifted chin and the unmistakable air of a person with hope and a plan. As he talked and I listened, the cold wind blowing into my face began to make my eyes water. I felt one tear then another trickle from the corners of my eyes, and, embarrassed, I tried to wipe them away without his notice - but after a few more moments his eyes began to water too. Amazement bloomed in my chest as more tears flowed down my face and then two spilled from his eyes. Neither of us acknowledged it with our words, but as he talked, we stared into each other's faces and cried with stillness and silence. Then my tears were no longer from cold but with a concentration of raw empathy, the kind of thing we don't have to force or be taught. We see each other's real-ness and acknowledge it in each other. Nobody said, "I'm sorry." Nobody said, "I feel pain." But there was pain, and there was sorrow, and there was the knowing that all of that was going to be fine. We smiled at each other with the saline drying on our cheeks. I said goodbye and walked to my car, new.

A Thoughtlet [or a tiny thought]

The other day I saw a train going the opposite direction trains usually go on this particular track. Disoriented, my first thought was, "Why is the train going backward?"
It's like that. When I see something happening in a way it doesn't "normally," meaning in my familiar experience, I probably tend to assume it's wrong or backward. But things go different ways. People know where they're going. They just have a different aim in mind than I can see.