Designing with Mindfulness: The SonicRim Story
Introduction
On April 1st it will be 25 years since we founded SonicRim. Today, I find myself reflecting on SonicRim’s journey over the past 25 years. It’s been an incredible ride, from our modest beginnings to the global impact we’ve had in the world of design. Through the years, we strived to uphold values of mindfulness and empathy, believing in the importance of resonance and co-creation. As we mark this milestone anniversary, I’m humbled by the opportunities and the lessons we’ve learned. In the ever-changing landscape, we remained grounded and true to our principles, even amidst technological advancements like Generative AI. SonicRim’s legacy is not about individual achievements, but the collective effort to create meaningful and impactful design solutions that serve humanity.
Getting Started
SonicRim was founded by a team of four researchers from the international design firm Fitch Inc. In this article, I present my musings on the legacy of SonicRim and the impact it has had along the way.
Whether our clients were global corporations, museums, startups, or skunkworks pursuing breakthrough ideas or disruptive technologies, we assisted them in making business and design decisions by studying people, cultures, and change. Before starting SonicRim, the four founders — Dr. Liz Sanders, Marty Gage, Kevin Schmidt, and I — deliberated for several weeks about the philosophy, mindsets, methods, and tools that would define our practice. We drafted a Post-Design Manifesto to articulate our belief in participatory design and co-creation.
Our conversations then moved to identify a suitable name for the company. Liz shared with us the idea of resonance outlined in the book ‘Resonant Corporations: Achieving Growth in Business’ by Marc Van der Erve. The idea of resonance seemed a powerful representation of what we would offer to our clients. The concept of resonance is articulated by the well-known Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University, Philip Kotler, in his introduction to the book. Kotler writes:
“In this ground-breaking book by Marc Van der Erve, a new approach is presented, which mobilizes the hidden knowledge and energy found both inside and outside the organization… an approach which focuses on the search for characteristics (of people, situations, customers, products, competencies, partners, and attitudes) that reinforce one another. Characteristics that resonate. It is only through exploring this “resonance” and harnessing the power of “natural economics” and the “natural wisdom” of the individuals within the organization that lasting growth can be achieved.”
Keeping in mind the concept of resonance and drawing from Guy Kawasaki’s proposition that “change manifests itself on the edges,” we came up with the metaphor of a “Resonant Edge” to represent our practice. After considering various phrases and words to represent the idea of the resonant edge, we agreed upon the name SonicRim. We envisioned a new language of communication where we would invite clients to the resonant edge to feel the vibrations of change in the lives and imagination of their customers.
A leading visual communication designer, Dr. Peter Chan, designed the identity of SonicRim based on the concept of the resonant edge. To associate a meaningful sensory experience with SonicRim identity, Peter designed a symbol representing resonance which was engraved on a small rock. He believed that holding a SonicRim rock in hand would create lasting memories.
During SonicRim’s launch party at The Drake in Chicago, we placed about a hundred rocks in the room which were eventually taken by the attendees. In the following five years, many more of these rocks were gifted to friends, clients, and our peers in the design industry. Even to this day our friends and clients remember the SonicRim rock when we meet.
Our first office was in an abandoned warehouse, The Budd Dairy building, which opened operations on Dec 7th, 1916. We transformed it into a creative space to house SonicRim. On the suggestion of our friend Kelly Mooney, the color scheme was chosen for the wall to give the space the feel of a classroom (as opposed to a design office). Many students of Liz, from the Ohio State University joined us as interns. SonicRim became a meeting place for conversations and a laboratory for experimenting with ideas and tools of participatory design. Our clients travelled to SonicRim from all over the world to explore the resonant edge.
Envisioning Futures | Co-Creating Memories
During the past 25 years, disruptive technologies and business models have radically changed how people think, learn, build relationships, and form communities. As new technologies were invented, new questions about their impact on individuals, communities, and society surfaced in public discourse. Future-focused technology companies began to hire social scientists to guide the research process for developing technology-enabled solutions for psychological, social, and cultural impact.
Clients often acknowledged that experiencing fieldwork and synthesis of insights made them more mindful in application of disruptive technologies. They also understood that mindfulness in design takes time and money and involves immersion in the real world to study people, culture, and change.
As global corporations embraced the idea of developing glocal solutions (solutions that cater to global and local requirements), SonicRim gained a reputation for its expertise in conducting ethnographic research and participatory design activities at a global scale. We organized several ethnographic research studies to understand “the realities and imagination” of people in emerging markets. Our clients needed guidance to gain sensitivity to the values, beliefs, behaviors, habits, and aspirations of communities around the world.
The value of engaging with SonicRim became evident to clients when they worked closely with us at every stage of the project. Sometimes we were hired to facilitate dialogues between different stakeholders in their value chain and to facilitate the shaping of collective imagination across different teams who typically chose to operate within their silos. The SonicRim team was brought in to challenge preconceived beliefs and to cultivate a shared understanding of the opportunities for purpose-driven innovation.
Discovering Social Imagination: A Paradigm Shift in Design Thinking
A recent global project revealed to us a new space for design, when a leading automotive company approached SonicRim with a request to investigate the values, lifestyle, attitudes, and perceptions of 18–22 year old target customers and inform the future design strategy for one of their legacy brands. It was observed that though this brand of vehicle had not missed a single model year since 1964, the year of its launching, the recent. declining sales numbers necessitated an in depth investigation. The team responsible for revitalizing the legacy product approached us to write a proposal for a co-creation project. The client team was interested in tapping into the ground realities as well as the imagination of this younger generation and producing outcomes that would inform strategic business decisions, product design, brand characteristics, as well as the narratives surrounding the experience of owning and driving the vehicle. We conceptualized an iterative approach with multiple methods such as dialogue with various stakeholders in the value chain, ethnographic observations, scrapbooking, shadowing, and participatory design sessions with groups of youth.
At the end of each day in the field, we did collaborative synthesis of our observations with the core team from the client company. At the end of fieldwork in each selected country, we conducted a synthesis workshop with 40 key decision-makers in the company. This process allowed us to achieve two objectives: 1. The core team was able to witness and experience the shared values, lifestyle, attitudes, and perceptions of the youth in each market, and 2. By engaging in constant dialogue with a larger group of decision-makers in the client team, we were able to help them question some of their core beliefs about their product, brand, and customers, and open their minds to resonate with the collective imagination of their target customers.
The outcome of the project was a design strategy, developed through extensive dialogues. A dialogue based approach helped the company leadership depart from established design attributes and gave them the confidence to introduce a radically altered product to suit the future generations.Throughout the project, we began to notice that the conversations in the field and in workshops at the end of each round of fieldwork was creating shared awareness within the client team, cutting across the silos they worked in. They were also opening their minds to the realities and imaginations of their target customers.
The experience of working on this project and gradually creating resonance between the imaginations of the company and its target customers revealed to us a new space for co-creation: I call it social imagination.In sociology, sociological imagination is defined as the framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context. Adding social imagination to the vocabulary of SonicRim has provided us with new ways to engage with our clients and have a deeper and more meaningful impact on the people they want to serve. The client acknowledged that this project served as a proof of concept for co-creation and resonance.
Gradual Erosion of Mindfulness
During the past eight years, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence has changed the nature of projects. We were approached by several clients to identify methods for understanding human cognition of complex systems, digital content strategies, autonomous driving/rides, the future of electric car ecosystems, personalization, and customization of information, and several projects related to remote services (e.g., remote primary care/customer service, etc.). The advent of AI, has brought significant shifts in the industry mindset towards design and innovation.
Fierce competition to gain market share in generative AI today leads the tech industry to speed up the design process, reduce investment in the fuzzy front end development of insights and foresights. The involvement of social scientists in the design process is also not at the same level. The phrase ‘move fast and break things,’ first introduced by Mark Zuckerberg, has become the guiding principle of the tech industry today. I fear that this short-sighted approach to product development may lead to the application of AI without much foresight and humane considerations. The tech industry is moving fast, but my concern is that the damage caused may be beyond repair.
This is where I see an opportunity to redefine SonicRim to serve another new space: designing with mindfulness.
Collective contemplation in the post-pandemic world
Not since the breakout of the bubonic plague in the 1300s has humanity experienced such large-scale suffering as during the Covid-19 pandemic. I call this period of suffering an era of collective contemplation. For each of us, it produced different outcomes. For example, some people decided to quit their corporate jobs. Some decided to work only for the companies that allowed working remotely. And the majority of people went back to their pre-covid routines. During this period, I discovered poetry. For the past several years, my friends have been advising me to write a book about co-creation by drawing upon insights I have gained from my work experience in SonicRim. Before I could even consider writing a book, a serendipitous encounter with a feather flying in the wind brought me an epiphany in the middle of the night in the form of a poem. I continued musing about my life experiences and have in the past three years published three books of poems. Poems have revealed to me a new way of tapping into my memories, reacting to the world around me, and contemplating about life in a manner which years of ethnographic research did not. I started observing, sensing, and understanding my surroundings and the changes that were happening with an open mind.
Through this process, I am observing that the post-pandemic contemplation has opened a window of opportunity for humanity: The opportunity to continue healing from hustling. For SonicRim, it was a period of reflection as well.
SonicRim in a Contemplative Mode
I learned that the Pandemic has had a lasting impact on people. While some people are more conscious of it, others are too busy fighting their daily battles and have less time to pay attention to it. I see an opportunity for those of us who see themselves as catalysts of change to co-imagine a future based on caring and sharing.
I decided that 2022 was going to be a year of transition into a contemplative mode for SonicRim. Working from home during Covid had given each of us mental space to start thinking about our purpose and priorities. I decided to press pause on SonicRim operations and set the team free to start their own journeys.
I decided to practice what we had done all these years for our clients: explore the realities and imaginations of people in the real world with open-minded curiosity.
During the last 18 months, I traveled extensively in the US and in India, participating in conversations with people driven by purpose and curiosity. I also participated in several online dialogues on varied topics such as mindfulness, design, co-imagination, poetry, and education.I had the opportunity to visit several individuals, NGOs, schools, and colleges that are working on social issues in cities, small towns, and villages of India.
Teaching a UX Design and Human-Computer Interaction class at the Integrated Innovation Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on mindfulness and co-creation helped me experiment with my ideas about the importance of mindfulness in product development.
An experiment in understanding the role of social imagination.
During this period, I initiated an ambitious social experiment to explore my understanding of social imagination to inspire change by conducting an oral history project called “The Legacy of India’s Imagination.” I decided to record dialogues with individuals who have influenced change in Indian society through imaginative initiatives.
Each dialogue covered the evolution of their imagination and the impact they have had on the communities they served. My curiosity stemmed from a belief that India’s progress is driven by a long trail of ideas and actions. Over the past eight months, I have completed 54 dialogues available to watch on YouTube. The participants in this project belong to a wide range of fields such as arts, architecture, film making, acting, social work, activism, education, journalism, industry, public policy, etc.
Being Human in the era of Generative AI
During my sabbatical, I have been pursuing my curiosity for the potential impact of Generative AI on the experience of “Being Human.” Long conversations with ChatGPT have helped me to understand its capabilities and limitations. Community events have also facilitated in identifying how Generative AI is shaping social imagination and the reactions it is evoking. I have come heard multiple perspectives about Generative AI — the enthusiasm as well as skepticism, the creative energy it has unleashed as well as the fears it is triggering. Based on my current understanding of Generative AI, I do not believe it will be sentient. Like any other technology, the extent of its use or misuse will depend on the consciousness and conscience of the humans who create it and use it. It can add immense power to human capacity to access, synthesize, and use information. It can enhance creativity and help with problem-solving. The biggest challenge I foresee in the adoption of Generative AI is the ability of the tech sector to co-opt everyday people in the design of a collaborative and constructive relationship between Humans and AI. A dire need for resonance between the creators and users of Generative AI is clear to me.
Path to the Future
A new way of design that can harness human and technological potential without compromising what it means to be human is the need of the day. I hope that the emergence of the future is not left to a “‘move fast and break things’ mindset. A new practice of design will assume responsibility for facilitating dialogue, shaping social imagination, and guiding a deliberate and mindful approach to serving society through co-creation.
I also see an opportunity to develop Mindful Design learning modules to be introduced in schools, colleges and even in workplaces. Such an approach will help cultivate the necessary competencies, methods and tools for Mindful Design. Positive response from students to my class at the Integrated Innovation Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on mindfulness and co-creation gives me the confidence that Mindfulness skills are critical for the Product Managers, and policymakers of tomorrow.
A philosophical reflection
To conclude my long article I would like to quote Ivan Illich from his book Tools for Conviviality. He says,
“People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others.”
Tools are meant to serve people, empower people and to expand their imagination and creativity. In thinking about tools, Illich was contemplating an ideal society and a framework for living with meaning and virtue. In coining the term conviviality, Illich was influenced by the concept of Eutrapelia first introduced by Aristotle, which refers to the importance of relaxation, humor, and leisure in human life. Eutrapelia is related to playfulness and good-natured fun, the simple joy that enlivens company and warms the heart. It’s also referred to as the virtue of playfulness in moderation.
I propose that while economists focus on profits and prosperity, lawyers on justice, social scientists on social capital, and technologists on disruptive innovations, designers can focus on cultivating conviviality and Eutrapelia.
Finally, an invitation to the resonant edge
If this article resonates with your own questions and concerns about mindfulness, I would like to invite you to a conversation. Let us discuss how we can collaborate to envision a more convivial future.
