Our glossy high definition screens glow brightly with coloured icons, buttons calling us to take action and tiled walls of vibrant photographs that look too good to be true. And yet despite the “perfection” presented to us online, there is something missing. There is a lifelessness to the modern web that seems inversely proportional to its refinement.

In contrast, the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi is derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence, or ‘Sanbōin’, representing impermanence, suffering and the absence of self-nature. Wabi Sabi encourages us to accept and appreciate the imperfect and the transient nature of earthly things, finding beauty embedded into objects by the forces of nature. 

Many of the most beautiful things in life are those that carry their imperfections gracefully and tell us a story of where they have been, from the wrinkled hands of a grandparent, to the weathered walls of a building, to the subtle imperfections of a handmade mug or the patina worn into a piece of furniture that has been passed down for generations. These imperfections are infinitely complex, subtle and beautiful, yet impossible to replicate. It is the beauty of nature embedded into the fabric of our physical world.

There are a number of reasons why we humans find Wabi Sabi so special. We spend our lives running away from failure, decay and impurity, seeking freedom in the attainment of perfection. Yet, in one of life’s many paradoxes, when we finally achieve “perfection”, we find it to be flawed. Something deep down within us knows that everything is imperfect, and when we can’t see it, it’s as though something is being hidden from us beneath an artificial veneer. While we may be intoxicated by apparent perfection, we simultaneously fear that it may be too good to be true. 

So-called perfection also plays on our subconscious by eliminating the motivation to improve. The challenges of life are illuminated by the constant pursuit of improvement, as we strive to evolve ourselves and the world around us toward a better future. While we strive for perfection, the joy of its attainment is often followed by a vast emptiness and loss of purpose. Wabi Sabi’s beauty rests in its ability to dance close to perfection, but not too close or for too long.

Furthermore, our natural world is infinitely rich and diverse with sounds, textures, smells and the constantly changing dance of light across the landscape. When we’re in a natural environment, all of our senses are deeply stimulated with so much variety and detail that it could never be artificially replicated. Our mass produced goods and digital worlds may be glossy, but cannot come close to the depth of sensory stimulation provided by the natural world. Just as refined foods give us a quick high but leave us lacking the nourishment of the whole, so too does the digital world lack the wholesome stimulation that our bodies and minds crave. Likewise, when we walk around a museum, the perfectly smooth and flat marble floors should be easy to walk on, but in fact, are exhausting due to their lack of variation. The modern world of digital appears easy on our minds, yet is exhaustingly uniform and repetitive.

And then there is the final reason, which is that Wabi Sabi tells a story, through the textures and imperfections that build up over time in physical objects. We see the history of where they have been and the lives that they have touched. There is a subtlety to the ability of natural materials to tell stories that warm our hearts and spark our imaginations. Our digital worlds, on the other hand, behave in a binary manner, jumping from perfect to broken in a flash without any narrative of their journey.

It’s clear to me that as humans, we need an environment that holds these magic qualities of Wabi Sabi and yet the digital world that we spend an increasing proportion of our lives inhabiting, seems inherently free of it. Could it be possible to create a web that is more fulfilling, healthy and natural if we embraced the beauty of imperfection and impermanence in our digital worlds, in a Wabi Sabi Web?

Let us imagine some ways that we could potentially bring some of the wonder of Wabi Sabi into our digital world.

Scratching the surface

1. Embrace texture – In contrast to some of the early web, it’s become the norm of websites and digital services to have mostly plain block colours, free of texture. While we must be considerate of accessibility, the possibility of infusing our digital worlds with subtle textures that follow non-linear patterns (as oppose to repeating tiles) could be an exciting creative challenge for designers and developers alike.
2. Remove the polish – Much of the imagery we see online today, particularly through social channels, has been framed and filtered to remove imperfections and create a standardised aesthetic. We could be more confident with our photographic styles, embracing the Wabi Sabi qualities of our subjects and emphasising, rather than hiding, the imperfections in the photography and video that we bring to the screen.
3. Break the grid – In contrast to the early days of the web that were scrappy and imbued with individual creativity and its inherent imperfections, modern digital design tends to follow standardised grid layouts. This is often motivated by a desire to create simple user experiences while also making lives easier for developers, but it can also eliminate variety and contribute to the monotony of the digital world. By using grids and design patterns as suggestions rather than rules, we can explore opportunities to create more organic and unique experiences that are just as easy to use but more beautiful, more interesting and more stimulating.
4. Create some patina – Unlike the physical world where objects weather over time, the digital world is always the same (unless it’s broken). This might seem like an inherent limitation of the digital medium, but perhaps it isn’t. We could explore possibilities to add patina to our digital designs that build up as people interact with our experiences, or elements that weather with time, such as images discolouring based on the amount of time they have been online. We must be careful not to get carried away with gimmicks that consume a lot of energy or slow down people’s devices, but there are no doubt many creative opportunities to enrich our digital world.

Being human

5. Use our hands – While the surfaces on which we view digital services are inherently flat, square and smooth, the content that we display on them need not be. Instead of relying entirely on computer drawn graphics, we can create more artwork by hand using traditional techniques. We will inevitably lose some of the magic in the process of digitisation, but by starting in an analogue form we can bring more of the magic onto the screen. We could even create more organic fonts based on the handwriting of real people.
6. Be more honest – It’s not just the visual aesthetic of the digital world that is artificially glossy, but the content too. By putting our true personalities into content, including our rough edges and honest mistakes, we can create content that feels more natural, enriching and rewarding. It takes confidence to create truly honest content, but in a digital world increasingly dominated by the voice of AI, there is even greater opportunity to let our human voices shine. We can also increase opportunities for people to make contact with a real human, whether it’s using humans instead of bots for live chat, making it easy for people to phone us or encouraging the arrangement of in person appointments. Our digital services could be the enablers of increased human interaction instead of being the barriers. 
7. Let people explore – Modern user experience design includes concepts like planned user journeys and “funnels” to guide people to a destination, and while these can be useful techniques, they limit the creative scope of the visitor to follow their own path of exploration. What would happen if we also designed experiences with the aim of encouraging exploration and variety in the way we navigate and digest content online? Furthermore, instead of using algorithms to personalise content, we could explore opportunities for people to customise and curate their own experiences to truly suit their needs.
8. Leave the screen behind – Augmented reality experiences attempt to blend the real world with the digital world, but push the users attention into the device, downgrading real world experiences. We could try to flip this concept on its head, designing digital experiences that encourage people to leave the screen and tune back into the world around them, whether it’s by asking them to close their eyes for a short meditation or get up from their seat to find the real plant that they are learning about online.

Passing time

9. Vary the pace – While breaking the grid can help us to create variation in space, we could also explore variation in the fourth dimension – time. It’s generally assumed that speed is inherently good in the digital world, but mindful variation of pace can create richer and more fulfilling experiences. This could be achieved by giving the user opportunities to vary the pace to follow their own ebb and flow, or by consciously designing elements that encourage people to vary their pace as they move through an experience.
10. Embrace endings – The digital world is all about exciting beginnings, from hitting send to a message, publishing a new piece of content or launching a new website or app. But what about the endings? We should think about the full life cycle of digital content and services, embracing their impermanence so that they gracefully fade away when no longer needed. Consider scheduling content to stay live only while it is relevant, clearing out old data that is no longer needed, or decommissioning digital services that would otherwise have stayed online indefinitely. Embracing impermanence can help us declutter the web and reduce its environmental impact too.
11. Reveal history – The binary nature of the digital world tends to appear to us as if things were always there in their current form, in contrast to the changing dynamics of nature whose history is written into the materials themselves, showing the wear and discolouration of their interactions with humans, animals and the elements. We could bring more of this into the digital world by revealing more of the meta data and version history of our services in a way that is engaging and accessible to the end users, not just the developers behind the scenes. We could even get creative and use historical data of a website’s past to generate a visual patina that tells a story through texture.

These are just a few suggestions, and in the spirit of imperfection I acknowledge that this list is inherently incomplete and that each idea is imperfect. I hope though, that they provide some inspiration to get us started in bringing the beauty of Wabi Sabi into the digital world. We know that our lives are becoming increasingly digital and we know how much we need and love the rich beauty of the physical world, so good digital design must surely now include exploration of the Wabi Sabi Web.

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Tom Greenwood is the co-founder of Wholegrain Digital and is known for writing and speaking about how business, design, and web technology can be part of the solution to environmental issues. He is author of the book Sustainable Web Design, the green web newsletter Curiously Green and the sustainable business newsletter Oxymoron.

We live in a world full of stark contrasts. More people today have access to a smartphone than to clean sanitation. The whole lifecycle of a single smartphone consumes around 50,000 liters of water (Ercan, 2016)¹, yet every year nearly one million lives are lost due to lack of access to this resource. 

The pace of new smartphone releases is staggering. In 2022 alone, a new model hit the market every six days on average². Apple, the industry giant, has sold nearly 2.3 billion units of its iconic iPhone since its debut in 2007³. Remarkably, the company’s environmental reports reveal that a staggering 90% of the water consumed across its operations comes from potable sources, and 37% of their corporate and supply chain water use is located in areas of high or extreme basin stress⁴.

The unassuming smartphone in our pocket today wields more computing power than the earliest computers used in space exploration, yet we replace these marvels of technology every three years on average⁵.

To produce these devices, we mine rare earth minerals like europium, gadolinium, yttrium, and terbium – elements found in mineral deposits whose separation and purification requires complex metallurgical and chemical processing⁶. To later use those resources solely to display colors on the glass screens through which we admire ourselves or peek into the lives of strangers we know more intimately than our own neighbors.

In our pursuit of the metals necessary for keeping the status of growth, we seek new resources in space and at the ocean depths, while simultaneously discarding unprocessed equipment into landfills, squandering resources ripe for reuse and recycling.

We envision a future driven primarily by technology, overlooking the fact that the youngest generations poised to inherit this world are mired in suffering, finding it increasingly difficult to escape.

We clamor for change and the demolition of the current status of our civilization and our way of being on this planet, permeated by a lack of compassion. Yet, we forget that change begins within ourselves. It comes and begins through small acts of kindness towards all living beings, and the cultivation of healthy habits that leave their imprint on reality, gradually transforming it.

The smartphone’s untold story 

You hold it in your hand, fall asleep next to it, in extreme cases take it to the bathroom, and certainly never leave home without it. A symbol of development and even for some a social status: the smartphone, which has given us access to the world’s knowledge base and taught us so much about the world (and ourselves).

But what do we really know about the smartphone itself?A typical device contains up to 60 elements (Bookhagen, 2018)⁷, nearly three times more than in the human body. Their production, in just over a decade, has revolutionized and dispersed production and supply chains globally.

Its average lifecycle is 3 years, and assuming that the average user stares at it for 3 hours a day⁸ (in extreme cases up to 12 hours), this translates to using this device consecutively for 4 full months in a year. This is a mere fraction of its entire lifecycle. And what happens after that? The statistics from the e-waste monitor paint a grim picture. Only 22.3% of electronic waste in 2023 was collected and processed in an environmentally sound manner⁹.

What became of the rest remains uncertain. The only statistic provided indicates that 65% of the world’s e-waste¹⁰ was sent to countries where impoverished people grasp at any minimum wage job, including informal e-waste processing in India, which has become the largest hub in Asia, mainly due to high domestic electronics production coupled with waste shipments from Europe, Australia and North America.

When electronics arrive in India, where 90% are processed in the illegal sector¹¹ which means that  workers have no rights, contracts, health insurance or protective gear, working 12-hour days, seven days a week just to survive, no one asks questions. Environmental considerations are seen as a privilege.

According to Toxic Link, an organization which has monitored e-waste and its effect on Indian society for years, not a single recycling unit they EVER have visited had proper health, environmental and safety measures in place. In only one visited unit, workers were wearing protective gloves. 

In places like that phones are dismantled with hammers, separating circuit boards and plastics. Circuit boards are sold piece-by-piece. Plastics go to informal recyclers. The cost of buying one smartphone averages 2-3 €. Disassembled displays sell for 0.11 € /kg and motherboards for 3 € each. An informal workshop can generate 450 € profit monthly – to give you a comparative scale, a new smartphone which you can get in India costs roughly 200-300 €¹².

When phones are being dismantled, particles of dust and chemicals are released, harming not only the environment but also  the health of those involved in these procedures.

Toxic particles enter the soil, groundwater, surface water, settle on the bottoms of water bodies, and then seep into the biosphere and human organisms, leading to permanent damage to the nervous system, blood system, kidneys, brain development, respiratory and skin disorders, the spinal cord, and disrupting the immune and hormonal regulatory systems.

Not just humans, but animals too are victims of this condition. By unknowingly gnawing on leftovers from waste treatment processes and drinking from poisoned puddles, they toxify their bodies and die a slow, suffering death. The average lifespan of street dogs in India is only 3-5 years (Ramakrishnan,2023¹³), with a mere 18% of puppies surviving past their first year.

But it wasn’t just street dogs that I saw in the middle of the electronic waste dumps, I also met all sorts of other animals in these areas. Here’s the recording of  their views on this dire situation.

This unregulated and hazardous sector processes a staggering portion of the world’s e-waste, sacrificing human and animal health, and inflicting lasting environmental damage – a sobering counterpoint to our smart devices’ veneer of innovation and self-reflection.

Children of the Wasteland

To me, the most devastating aspect of these hazardous procedures is the involvement of children and the intergenerational trauma they endure. Developing in a toxic environment imbued with harmful beliefs about the world and their own lack of dignity, these new generations inevitably become afflicted themselves, adopting destructive views about reality from their community. Consequently, they accept this highly pathological setting as their safe haven, expecting nothing more for themselves and failing to reach for a better future.

These children are robbed of their innocence, their health compromised by the very waste processing that powers our modern luxuries. The cycle perpetuates as trauma becomes internalized and aspirations are stifled before they can take root. Breaking this cycle requires not just regulating the e-waste industry, but addressing the intergenerational poverty and lack of opportunity that forces these communities to engage in such harmful labor in the first place. Our smartphones’ shine is dulled by the human and environmental costs borne by the most vulnerable.

New pathways for progress

The suffering embedded in our civilization, obscured behind the glass screens of our devices, has become an integral part of our reality. If we fail to accept this truth, we cannot progress. To move forward, we need a deeper understanding of how we conceive the world – that the quality of our being is reflected in the quality of our actions and how we design our reality.

To break this cycle, we must confront the hard truths about the human and environmental tolls paid for our habits and comfort. We cannot separate our quality of life from the impacts our lifestyles have on others and on the planet. Evolving our consciousness to recognize our interconnectedness with all life is key to designing a reality that values dignity, health and sustainability over disposable luxuries.

Rather than chasing the next AI innovation, we need to evolve our consciousness and behaviors at a deeper level. This requires questioning the very foundations of the priorities that have been decoded in our minds. 

Once your smartphone comes into existence, there is no turning back. However, its ultimate destiny remains unwritten, brimming with possibilities. What was once deemed harmful can be resurrected and given a new lease on life. The power to shape its fate lies in our hands. 

The most potent force we can wield is to spread hope and compassion throughout the world, preventing the darkness from enveloping our minds and consciousness. This compassion must extend not only to human beings but also to the natural resources and technological entities that aid our decision-making daily. 

The gateway to healing our civilization resides solely in the present moment – this is where the journey begins. Yet, to truly heal, we must uphold the right to dignity for every human being, animal, natural ecosystem, and technology itself. 

Technology, too, yearns for a decent life and an enduring relationship with us, its human creators. To honor this, we must promote responsible consumer behavior and develop practices that respect all forms of life a smartphone contains within its shell – the water, minerals, and human labor and data– while preserving the delicate balance of nature on our planet.

By imbuing our actions with compassion towards all forms of life, embracing hope, and operating from a space of presence and wisdom, we can redefine our relationship with technology. Instead of perpetuating cycles of exploitation, we can uplift dignity, elevate consciousness, and harmonize with the natural rhythms that sustain life for all of us.

Awaking to the harmony

The path forward demands opening our minds and hearts to wisdom that fundamentally challenges the technocrat narratives around progress, success and humanity’s rightful relationship with nature. This is the higher truth we must embrace – one that centers consciousness, interconnectedness and reverence for the sanctity of all life over shortsighted material pursuits.

Evolving beyond our addictive consumption patterns begins with releasing the blinders that keep us bound to a reality of  human indignity. With freed perspectives, we can redesign a new paradigm in harmony with the Earth’s natural rhythms and our own innate humanity.

And at the end, I’ve attached a recording of nature’s harmonies, which, as a gesture of gratitude for surrounding it with care and love, generously returns the favor by sharing its beauty with us.

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Joanna Murzyn, a hacker at heart, has been using the same smartphone for 8 years now. As a regenerative IT consultant, she currently finds herself in India, working on biological and community-based solutions to address the global issue of electronic waste.

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References

1. DOI: 10.2991/ict4s-16.2016.15 ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phones_introduced_in_2022 ↩︎
3. https://gadgetadvisor.com/apple/the-iphone-decades-iphone-sales-per-year-2007-2027/ ↩︎
4. Apple Environmental Progress Report 2023 ↩︎
5. https://theconversation.com/would-your-mobile-phone-be-powerful-enough-to-get-you-to-the-moon-115933 ↩︎
6. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-458455/v1 ↩︎
7. DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107566 ↩︎
8. Source: Data Reportal ↩︎
9. Source: The global E-waste Monitor 2024 ↩︎
10. Source: The global E-waste Monitor 2024 ↩︎
11. Source: Informal E-waste Recycling in Delhi: Unfolding Impact of two years e-waste management rules by Toxic Link ↩︎
12. Source: Informal E-waste Recycling in Delhi: Unfolding Impact of two years e-waste management rules by Toxic Link ↩︎
13. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369762721_Review_on_-a_better_world_for_street_dogs?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InByb2ZpbGUifX0 ↩︎

Connectivity & Sensation

What does the internet feel like? This idea fascinates me. About five years ago, I asked the internet for its opinion; and over the years, I have been slowly accumulating an eccentric blend of responses, such as:

“[like] holding hands with a stranger”

“mesh-y”

“the surface of an ice cube, but also not cold, more like lukewarm”

“smooth like rubber”

“like grass”

“polar”

“used to be [a] mountain but lately more like tropical”

These responses are geological and biological in nature, and they capture the human tendency to make sense of the world through material relations and sensory experience, even in virtual forms. So, in this age of digital ubiquity, when connection is qualified by a lack of friction and quantified in processing power and upload/download speed, it is important to consider the attributes of connectivity. As Marshall McLuhan observed 60 years ago in his book Understanding Media, the character of a medium can easily be overlooked. He says, “it is only too typical that the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium”, as it shapes and controls “the scale and form of human association and action”. So, what exactly is a good connection, and what might we be missing in the quest for instant and infinite access to content and communication? And, if the current state of the internet seems good for you, is it also good for the planet? If not, then can it actually be good for you? We don’t exist outside of the natural systems that shape and sustain us, so what stability can come from pretending otherwise on an industrial scale? As Donna Haraway puts it in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, “We require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become – with each other or not at all.” So, how might considering the internet as a physical experience help us design a more sustainable, equitable future?

In recent decades, there has been a condensation of metaphorical language comparing the infrastructure of our vast communication networks to clouds. One of the consequences of this clever marketing trick is that, while online experiences do evoke sensations, the materiality of the internet and its content predominantly remains outside of our awareness and sensory field of being – our umwelt — beyond our immediate line of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. This limits our ability to relate to information and cultivates a disembodied worldview. Unless, perhaps, you are working as a smelter or living near an electronic waste dump, as charted by Kate Crawford and Vladan Jole in their brilliant “Anatomy of an AI System”, there typically exists a geographical gulf between the environmental relationality of online life and a user’s surroundings. However,  there is a growing body of community-led projects that inspire a different way of being digitally connected in a more-than-human world. 

Embracing Constraints

Projects like Solar Protocol, LOW←TECH MAGAZINE, and the Potato Internet blend speculative design, DIY methodologies, ecological thinking, science, art, and technology to subvert expectations and explore possibilities for real change. They work within the material realities and limitations of the natural world, allowing conditions like sunlight, distance, and mineral composition of plants to serve as tangible design constraints, conjuring new imaginaries for what being connected could mean. These alternative approaches are more prone to disconnection than our current digital communication frameworks. The tagline at the top of LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is explicit: “This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline.” This friction contradicts the expectations of seamless online experiences that characterise contemporary mainstream interactions on the internet, as do the lo-fi aesthetic qualities. Rather than funnelling energy and resources into enhancing slickness, constraints are, crucially, embraced as design opportunities.In doing so, these styles embody the beauty of what a different kind of connectivity could feel and look like. Minimalist design patterns rooted in the energy demands of data transfer and rendering take shape in the form of image dithering, simplified colourways, and default system fonts. When approached as a design opportunity to embrace instead of a challenge to hide, these aesthetics become something new and powerful, extending well beyond a stylised nostalgia for a GeoCities web of yesteryear.

Solar Protocol (http://solarprotocol.net) advances this philosophy further in a white paper that blends art, web development, human computer interaction (HCI), and artificial intelligence (AI) to outline an Energy-Centered Design practice. This unique approach scrutinises, examines and explores ways of reducing the energy demands of networked technology while providing an operational alternative to being connected online. Placing solar-powered technology at the core of its design, the network operates with the intelligence and logic of the sun, providing connectivity via whichever server has access to the most sunlight and thus energy. Like LOW←TECH MAGAZINE (https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com), it minimises the amount of data being transferred by reducing the file size and fidelity of media that is being transferred. This aesthetic is not a veneer. Its beauty, and power, exists in what it embodies. 
Projects like these can empower our collective imagination. They give us opportunities to fabricate alternatives to the current internet, which relies on an energy regime enabled by the overconsumption of fossil fuels – with severe effects. However, things don’t have to be this way. Sure, it has never been so emotionally convenient for humans to consume and exchange information. But what about the costs of this immediacy? If our current internet model – and its data-reliant appendages like artificial intelligence (AI) – run on electricity, we will need more electricity to keep it running. This also means that we will need even more electricity to continue feeding this massive, data- and energy-hungry beast. However, considering the planetary boundaries, is it worth questioning whether this system needs to continue to grow? And if so, why? Do we need fossil fuels to power this system, or are there ways to design the whole system differently? Could it work more sustainably and – dare I say – better?

Scalability of these networks is not a central goal, and none capture this spirit better than the Potato Internet (https://potatoes.network). A self-described provocation, ephemeral technology, and community, it exists as “a small scale social network, powered by a raspberry pi mesh network system and potatoes, that updates only once or twice a day.” The impetus for its creation being the necessary desire to “reimagine the internet in times of climate emergency.” Here, the issue of scalability, a standard part of criticism from mainstream perspectives, holds exciting creative potential and value worth embracing. A future that scales down instead of up might afford us an opportunity to build “a functioning social network from scratch, rethinking all layers of the system, from hardware to protocols and governance.” To begin reflecting, asking questions, and reconsidering our expectations about why things are the way they are is a vital step toward reimagining a more equitable, healthy, connected future for humans and our more-than-human kin. Like good art, these projects provide the experience and space to reconsider expectations. Would it really be so bad if your connection ran out of energy before you took in one more meme, streamed one more episode, or scrolled through your feed for another ten minutes? Convenient now? Probably not. Convenient later? Maybe. Convenient for the planet? Absolutely.

Intermingling

These alternative networks operate with a kind of critical connectivity, providing fresh and timely takes on digital connection in an era of climate crisis. Like their cybernetic forerunners, they are an assemblage of disciplines, combining art, engineering, science, computation, design, and more. This transdisciplinary intermingling of human skill sets combined with the more-than-human aesthetic potential conjures Anna Tsing’s notion of contamination as collaboration. The indeterminate outcomes of these experimental networks are bound together in a web of interdependent relationships essential to its survival. There is an intelligence in the more-than-human world that needs heeding; and if “intelligence is the capacity to synthesize knowledge as logic and apply that logic to make decisions”, then there is great creative potential, and need, for remembering what can emerge from consciously designing from within earthly dynamics. What would a future feel like if we designed solutions borne from the challenges of harnessing the energy of edible tubers? After chuckling, it’s still worth imagining. The poetic potential of being connected by sunlight taps into a biological, geological, and cosmological imagination. Technologies designed to balance the seasonal ebb and flow of foliage with the planetary tilt and rotation of Earth could operate with an internal clock set to tree time. What would that internet feel like? 

The projects I’ve highlighted demonstrate ways of putting community values at the core of technology, and I recommend checking them out. There are guides and resources available if you are looking to explore this kind of connectivity further; and if you are curious about a lively alternative to social networks, a platform like are.na is a great space to spend time. Aiming to be a place of “utility, health, and happiness”, its values direct governance, roadmapping, development, and design. While the constraints of natural resources aren’t its central tenet, it promotes a garden’s pace and ethos far removed from functionally similar mainstream feeds. For more than a decade, it has been evolving along the internet substrate with a kind of mycelial intelligence. New people and communities join, contribute ideas and information, and form new knowledge and connections driven by genuine curiosity and interest. Mainstream monetary mechanisms like click rates don’t dictate value and platform experience. This allows for a kind of organic growth that is all too rare in the content marketplace of today’s internet. At times, it might seem easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the current internet. But these projects – and many others like them – beautifully counter that notion, simply by existing. They provide the ferment for possible futures worth cultivating. The truth is that the mainstream, one-size-fits-all approach for a universally scalable, fossil-fuel powered planetary network is a monocultural approach to communication technology. The model strives for sanitation when what we really need is more contamination – more options for how we connect with each other and the world. I hope that after reading this, they are a little easier to imagine.

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Jesse Thompson is a London-based, American-born artist, designer, and musician exploring how meaning is made through sensory experience, computation, community, and interaction with the more-than-human world. He is currently a lecturer in the Design School at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

In an era where seamless experiences dominate the digital landscape, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters, the visionary minds behind the ‘Designing Friction’ project, challenge the status quo. This project reimagines the role of friction in digital culture, advocating for its intentional integration into design principles. With a burning desire to revive human connection and engagement, Luna and Roel have set out on a mission to disrupt the prevailing narrative of convenience at any cost.

‘Designing Friction’ stands as a call to action for designers, entrepreneurs and architects of digital culture to rethink their approach. Luna and Roel uncover the essence of friction, highlighting its importance as a catalyst for meaningful interactions. From discomfort to time delay, they explore various angles of friction and how these elements can enrich user experiences in the digital realm.

In this exclusive interview, Luna and Roel share their insights, inspirations and aspirations for a future where friction is not only accepted but encouraged and celebrated. Could their visionary perspective on designing friction transform the digital landscape and revolutionise how we interact with technology to create deeper connections and more meaningful experiences in our increasingly digital world?

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Designing with friction

Can you share with us a quick summary of ‘Designing Friction’? What sparked your interest in exploring digital culture from a critical perspective, and how has this interest evolved over time?

“For a long time, we have been working with digital media, mostly creating works in the cultural digital domain and reflecting on the social effects of digital technology and the complex interaction between humans and machines. This has resulted in various works, ranging from performances and films, often digital and participatory with an audience. We started in the years 2000 as absolute tech-optimists that embrace the possibilities the web gives us, such as collaborating with people from different locations and cultures from around the world.

Twelve years ago, we formulated a methodology that we called ‘Conditional Design‘. In this advancing era of digitization, we wanted to emphasize the emergence of processes rather than ‘fixed’ designs. We achieved this by developing precise conditions and frameworks, with carefully formulated rules and instructions.

Conditional Design and the years that followed had an important focus: to explore and emphasize humanity in our increasingly digital lives. By imposing limitations on people through algorithms, we discovered that we could play with their behaviour and distil their human strength.

However, now the open web changed radically. The space for playful web experiments hardly exists anymore. We have shifted to a digital culture that is driven by an influencer economy, controlled by big tech and AI. The web has changed from a platform, a public space, to an infrastructure for big tech platforms. With its users locked in the ‘safe’ environment of the dominant platforms. Designing Friction –  a call for friction in digital culture – explores the concept of consciously reintroducing obstacles and resistance in our online interactions to foster human connections. It can be seen as a new design paradigm not focussing on seamless experiences but on human connection. What does it mean to be human?”

Other than observing the radical shift of the web away from empowering humans and toward restricting how they can interact with and use it, were there any other reasons that motivated you to advocate for designing with friction in a culture that often prioritises convenience and seamlessness?

“Another inspiration is our own families and children: while our children are growing up, we constantly have to question: what (digital) products, what behaviour do we want to teach them, what do we want them to learn? This has led to many frustrating experiences, needless to say that the convenient, screen-based (home-)entertainment industry changes the behaviour of our children, and with that their motivation to go outside and play for example. We experience that they are much happier after having connected with others physically or have gone outside and experience the world off-screen. But actually, this applies not only to our children but also to adults. Besides that, we have lost boredom. The perfect condition for initiatives of all sorts.”

Could you elaborate on the challenges posed by the loss of friction in contemporary digital technology, and what implications this loss might have for users and society?

“There are many implications. One is, for example, movement. We move less. We can organize our whole lives behind the screen, there is hardly any necessity to move at all.  In order to move, we go to the gym. And there, people watch screens again :). We say provocatively: ‘death by convenience’.

Another implication is that everything that brings comfort, ease and efficiency with digital tools or apps, for example, with AI is another step further to our dependency on Big Tech. As we wrote in ‘Designing Friction’: “Our autonomy is at stake.”

There are many more implications, but ultimately we guess our humanness as we perceive it is at stake. Technology’s aim is optimising, and so it goes with our human flaws and imperfections.

It is tricky, we are not advocating to enjoy pain. But we totally believe in the value that (also physical) effort brings. That things are not happening by themselves, that things are complicated. We believe in the value of care and in taking the time to slow down, and perhaps in doing less or less efficiently, rather than striving for more.”

In what ways do you believe our reliance on convenience-driven technology may be impacting our ability to engage meaningfully with each other and our environment?

“There are a lot of examples of how our convenience-driven technology impacts our interactions. One example is chat, or text messages. Using WhatsApp has tremendously influenced how we interact and communicate with each other. One thing for sure is that with texting it is very hard to understand exactly the intentions, we need many emojis or several texts to make sure it is understood right. Calling someone these days has become an act of intimacy. The sound of a voice contains way more information than the same words in a written format. You hear right away what’s up. You need less words, there is less miscommunication, it is more precise and deeper, more honest.”

Speaking of emojis, you also worked on a project called ‘Emoji is all we have’. Could you provide insights into the inspiration behind this project?

“We decided to make a film series from conversations between the two of us about our perspective on digital technology while having emoticon makeup. These conversations in the Swiss mountains turned out to be very honest and fragile. In our emoji-face the film series ‘Emoji is all we have‘ depicts the contrast between the emoticons and real emotions with the complexity and subtlety of real life that digital technology cannot reach. Our vision on digital technology is also discussed in the film: Digital technology that tries to even out all wrinkles of human encounters, with the premise of frictionless interactions.” 

Currently the film series is on show at Nieuwe Instituut, REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art, Rotterdam until 12 May 2024.

The use of emojis as simplified representations of complex emotions is a central theme in the film series. Can you discuss the significance of emojis in contemporary communication and how, in your view, they influence our understanding and expression of emotions?

“Our central question we pose here is: Do emojis have the potential to be full representations of our emotions or is digitisation dragging us into an increasingly rational, optimised world? 

Of course emojis are very helpful tools to give a text a more complex message. However, we wonder, do our emotions (and behaviour in general) adapt to the digital tools we have at our fingertips?”

In ‘Designing Friction’, you also referred to the work of philosopher Miriam Rasch who shared her work on Listening. In her own words: “Perhaps listening can be a small form of resistance against the domination of algorithms, fake news, and troll factories.” How do you suggest friction could help us get better at listening to each other?

“The concept of listening by Miriam is wonderful. Listening can be an act of resistance. Especially since digital platforms constantly lure us into taking positions. Polls, Post, Like and Follow, all designed to trigger a quickly formulated reaction often not nuanced or layered.  We should not be afraid to listen. Listening means acknowledging friction: listening belongs to the concept of the ‘non-positive’, it is not being negative, it’s just postponing your reaction in favour of nuance and layering, to not be afraid of ‘the other’.”

Can you discuss any specific experiences or projects that helped solidify your belief that imperfection and friction are essential components of humane design?

“A few months ago, a friend of ours started a bakery in an old dance school. The architecture of the dance school was not directly inline with the requirements of a bakery. As a result the waiting line was blocking the access to the coffee tables. People constantly had to excuse themselves and interact with each other. The bakery was hailed for its fantastic vibe (and bread). And when our friend announced to move to a new construction, customers were a bit sentimental and afraid the new construction would never be able to have the same vibe.

Our friend realized the good vibes were not triggered by dance school nostalgia but by the friction the architecture imposed on the visitors, so he decided to design a certain amount of  friction in the new construction. The vibe remained intact in the newly constructed bakery. Never before have they sold that many croissants.”

Friction is often viewed as an obstacle. How do you suggest designers shift this perception and help users see friction as a pathway to deeper engagement and connection?

“We believe designers have lots of capabilities and ideas for alternative systems than big tech serves us with. When the incentive is not driven by profit or growth rate, we can actually experiment with alternative forms. 

Most people have probably experienced not feeling very happy and fresh after spending much time with ‘frictionless’ digital environments. We feel rather stressed, exhausted and down. When advocating ‘friction’, this means physical contact, engaging with our whole body and all our senses.

We are calling for coming up with ideas to use friction as a core component when designing new digital products. When the experience while using such a product is satisfactory in its own way, we believe that this can bring change. 

We believe we should remove the connotation of ‘conflict’. Perhaps conflicts arise because there wasn’t enough friction or resistance in the first place to prevent or resolve them. In other words, by avoiding or minimizing friction, conflicts may escalate or become more severe. Maybe we have wars because there was not enough friction in the first place.”

How do you think digital designers can navigate the balance between creating user-friendly digital experiences and intentionally incorporating friction to create deeper engagement and connection?

With friction we don’t mean malfunctioning technology. If you don’t find the help-button, that is not the sort of friction we talk about. Friction is resistance that stems from movement, actions and engagement. It is desire, it is boredom. Friction is meeting people physically. Shutting down the site intentionally after some time in order to go out could be intentional friction. Friction can be much more fun than seamlessness.

Looking ahead, how do you envision the principles of designing friction shaping the future of digital culture and influencing the relationship between humans and technology? 

With our manifesto, we purposefully want to propose an alternative digital future that we want to live in. In this digital culture, Big Tech is regulated, we have digital public spaces not owned by one company. We know where our data goes – or even better – we own it. We are not slaves of addictive online mechanisms. Our health departments have regulated the use of screens. Screens decay after a certain amount of time. We have a new movement where people are done with texting and following each other’s locations via apps, and having their device dictate their lives. We know all about AI, and let that be an actor outside our dependency. We believe incorporating friction and valuing it is a new paradigm shift.

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About the authors

Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters are an artist duo working across the worlds of design and digital culture. They co-founded Moniker, a studio for interactive design, in 2012 – it ran until 2023, when they closed its doors to pursue projects individually, and collaboratively. Maurer and Wouters are also the co-authors of Conditional Design, a design method focused on processes rather than products. They are based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. You can follow their activities on Instagram @luna__maurer, @roelwouters and @maurerwouters.

What is perfection? Is it a good thing? It is hard to achieve, for sure. And we as designers try to go down this road to design perfect products and experiences for our users. But is a perfect experience for our users really good – for them, for us, for the world? I want to take you on a journey from perfection to imperfection, and have a look at what perfection is, how it is achieved, why it might be a lot less perfect when you look at it from another angle, and why perfection might be  an endless rabbit hole rather than a state we could ever achieve. I want to show you why seeking perfection is a lie that causes a lot of harm, to us, to society and to the planet. And I will  talk about why we need a paradigm shift, what we can learn from nature and how to move from perfection to imperfection for a better future for us all.

Seeking perfection creates injustice by default 

To start this journey, let’s have a look at a short history of perfection. In the early 1900s, our cities had a very different landscape compared to the urban environments we see today. There were mainly pedestrians on the streets and  a few horses. Nothing else. Then, the first cars started to appear. Accidents happened more and more frequently. Pedestrians got injured and killed. And what was our solution to this problem? We started to optimize our cities for cars by dividing the landscape for cars and pedestrians and giving the majority of space to cars – trying to make mobility more efficient and convenient for them. And by doing this we de-humanized our cities. We took most space on the streets from pedestrians and cyclists and gave it to cars. 

By seeking perfection for somebody or something, we always take from somebody else. Perfection is not an absolute state. It is just one perspective in a complex, bigger system. The perfect solution always comes with negative impacts on other elements / players in the system. Seeking perfection creates injustice by default. Because perfection is a very exclusive and egoistic concept. Because it always prioritized the perfect state for someone or something over the impacts on other actors in the surrounding ecosystem.

As designers (and digital product builders) we try to build the best (aka perfect) solutions for our users: we observe, emphasize and analyze to understand the needs and desires of our users and customers to build the best service for them (well and for the business). But our perfect solution for the user is always part of a bigger, complex system which creates negative impacts on other players in this system.

Here’s an example. A perfect delivery app might build up a great UX and convenience for the user. But at the same time the delivery rides are not paid well or small grocery stores have to close because they cannot match the business model of the delivery service. 

By seeking perfection for a group of people we create challenges on other ends – always. But what about ourselves? Does seeking for perfection make us better – day by day?

Perfection is one of the catalysts of the growth economy

Imagine a nice and very friendly world. People live together in peace and joy. They are friendly, they work, but also take their time for a chat with the neighbour or customer. It is a wonderful world. This is the world as described in the beginning of the book “Momo” by Michael Ende. But soon things started to change. New people – The Grey Gentlemen – appeared. They seemed to be very friendly at first. But then they began to explain to the people that they could be much more efficient if they didn’t waste their time on useless things. The barber could serve more clients per day, if he would avoid chatting with every client after the haircut is finished. 

The Grey Gentlemen explain this to all the people in this wonderful world and by this they lure the people into giving them their time. Because The Grey Gentlemen need it to live, they smoke it in so-called “time cigars”. But by making maximized efficiency the main paradigm, they create a perfect world for themselves, while creating a sad and grey world for all the other people. In the end of the book the girl Momo defeats The Grey Gentlemen, gives back the stolen time to the people and re-creates the wonderful and joyful world from the beginning.

The book was written in the 70s and still is a perfect metaphor for today’s world that is designed to steal our time and attention by manipulating us through the digital worlds running on our devices. Youtube, Netflix, TikTok, all social networks, etc. are built to keep us on their platform for as long as possible. Their success is our harm. And the same happens on many ends in our lives. Digital tools and services make us more efficient, but in the end just squeeze more time out of us to do or fulfil more things. 

The Grey Gentlemen are the perfect example for this mechanism. They tried to create a hyper-efficient world, perfectly aligned, by explaining to people that this is the state they want to achieve. But instead it was only perfect for The Grey Gentlemen, and not very beneficial for all the other people. It changed their world and lives for the worse.

Perfection is the growth narrative taught to us. We should fulfil more, be more effective, achieve more, get better, use our time “wisely”. In fact it is the carrot on a stick in front of our nose. In digital, we design perfect websites, apps and services to make us more efficient – to have us fulfil our goals even faster, to be able to achieve even more. Perfection is one of the catalysts of the growth-economy. It is never enough, we always seek for more and at the same time do not realize that it will never be enough, and instead every efficiency gain is just filled with more things to do, watch or consume. By seeking perfection we do not only harm others, we also harm ourselves. 

The imperfection of nature

Let’s have a look at nature and see how nature “works”. A forest is a perfect example. The trees in wild forest (not a monoculture forest) co-exist and give each other room. If you look to a forest from above you can see that the trees perfectly align their treetops to each other, leaving room between them, and also leaving room for some light to get through so new trees can grow. An extra benefit of such a forest has a much higher resistance to storms. Trees also communicate via their roots and can even support each other by exchanging “nutrients”. A strong tree can support a weak tree next to it. And a forest is an even more complex ecosystem: Fungi networks in the ground collaborate with trees and various insects and larger animals co-exist under the treetops. The point is: none of these parts of the forest are perfect or developed to the maximum. Instead the ecosystem of the forest balances itself, to create a state that is valuable for every part of the system.

Nature is never perfect. Nature is in a constant flow of adjustment and balancing. Nature does not seek perfection for one part, but for balance of parts. By accepting imperfection for every part on its own, Nature is able to create balance. The combination of the imperfect state of every involved factor creates a state where every factor can coexist. Nature finds a compromise between all factors and by this creates a stronger system for all actors.

Imperfect Design

As designers, as digital product builders, as people in this world, we should follow the example of nature. We should shift from trying to create the next perfect service for users and business to building services that are balanced with their surrounding ecosystems. We have to understand that seeking perfection is a road that leads to harm for others and ourselves. We should start seeing the true beauty in imperfection and replace the paradigm of perfection with a new paradigm of balance. 

When building and designing digital products, we try to build the best product for our users. We need to change this. We should not seek the perfect product for our users anymore, instead we should design from the beginning for a solution that is balanced with its surrounding ecosystem and on purpose, not just perfect to the user.

To start working towards more balance we can start with incorporating three steps in the beginning of our design processes. The first goal is to create a holistic understanding of our product and to see it or the users not in the center of our doing, but instead as one equal part of a bigger ecosystem.

1. Understand the surrounding ecosystem Before we start designing solutions for our users we have to understand the surrounding ecosystem. Who are the involved actors that are not our users? Are there non-human actors involved? How is your product connected to these actors?
2. Make the negative impact of our product/service visible Once we have understood the surrounding ecosystem, we can make the potential negative impacts of our product or service visible. Which actors are impacted negatively? What are the negative impacts? What indirect impacts might occur?
3. Balancing user and business needs with the surrounding ecosystem and its other actors Once we have dismantled negative impacts to the ecosystem we can seek for connections with the user- and business-needs we want to fulfil. Which of these needs are very harmful? This is an additional information layer to the classic user- and business-needs to help us understand and evaluate the negative impacts of each of them 

With this level of transparency, we can create a design process that reduces negative impacts, prioritizes the needs and ideas that add to a balanced system and evaluate each new idea in terms of how it affects the surrounding ecosystem.

In the end we can break it down to one simple question, we should ask ourselves about everything we design: how does this design, idea, feature or need affect all the other actors? Does it create a positive or negative impact? And what would be necessary to balance it to the surrounding ecosystem? 

Now you might think: “Okay, sounds good, but what can I do? How can I change these things? I am just a small designer or developer or product manager.” The easy answer is: Be imperfect. This is not about doing everything right. It’s not about being perfect. It is about changing our mindset and integrating it step by step into our daily work. No matter how small the steps might seem. And there are often small changes we can do in the first place. By focusing on the less perfect solution for the user, we can add to a more balanced ecosystem and shift from “best”, “everything”, “always” to “a little less for the good of all”.

Imperfection is key to balance

If you think about it, imperfection might be the perfect (in italic or quotation marks) solution to create a truly sustainable world. It is the solution to create balanced systems. The digital products, services and experiences we design and build need to be balanced with their surrounding ecosystems and the surrounding world – to create less harm. We do not need the next “perfect solution for the users” or “to know even more about our customers to provide the perfect service”. We need to see all the digital things we design and build in the bigger context or its surroundings. That way, we will not only protect all actors, but create a better world and future for all. 

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Thorsten Jonas is a Sustainable UX and Responsible AI consultant, keynote speaker and founder of the SUX Network. He is guiding teams and companies in crafting sustainable, responsible and ethical digital products and co-leads the UX committee for the UX chapter of the W3C Sustainable Web Design Guidelines.