What isn't designed? Can design's ubiquity harm its educational and storytelling potential? What might a space dedicated to design look like? How might it be experienced?
To begin unpacking some of these questions, we're joined by Tanner Woodford, the founder of the Design Museum Chicago, whose mission is to share stories of the community and drive engagement through the power of design (in its many forms).
In addition to the idea of a "design museum," we discuss the importance of community-led design, what a democratized design practice might entail, and the implications for brands who do not consider design in its strategic and tactical planning processes.
To become a member of the Design Museum or contribute to its mission, click here.
What isn't designed? Can design's ubiquity harm its educational and storytelling potential? What might a space dedicated to design look like? How might it be experienced?
To begin unpacking some of these questions, we're joined by Tanner Woodford, the founder of the Design Museum Chicago, whose mission is to share stories of the community and drive engagement through the power of design (in its many forms).
In addition to the idea of a "design museum," we discuss the importance of community-led design, what a democratized design practice might entail, and the implications for brands who do not consider design in its strategic and tactical planning processes.
To become a member of the Design Museum or contribute to its mission, click here.
Tanner Woodford:
The big question about design I've always heard is, is there anywhere in the world you can go where you're not somehow connected to design or you're not surrounded by something that's designed? And I don't think there is. I think anywhere you go in the world, you're touching design in some way. Everything is designed and design is so invisible, as well, that people don't think about the glass being designed. It falls out of the sky and it's a product that you use. It's not a designed product. And really, every single thing in our lives has been thought about as solving a problem.
Karen:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The People Nerds Podcast, expanding your human centered practice with unexpected sources of wisdom. My name's Karen and I'm joined today by my colleague and friend, Ben. Say, hi.
Ben:
What's going on, Karen?
Karen:
Not much. Well, actually a lot because we have a really exciting topic today. We are going to be talking all about design, which is something that probably a lot of us listening will have some exposure to in one way or another.
Ben:
That's right. There are many through lines in the People Nerds community, human-centeredness, insights, collection, storytelling. We touch on a lot of these in today's episode, but one of the other through lines is this idea of design. And you'll hear throughout our conversation with today's guest, that we dance around a definition of it. But the thing that I think is worth mentioning here is that whether you are a designer in an organization, you're a practitioner of design, or you use design to make a product experience or service better, or you work alongside designers, design is something that is just a through line in so many People Nerds' work practices and the things that they think about. So I think today's pod will be really exciting for folks because it impacts their work in so many different ways.
Karen:
That's right. But like you said, there is a central question here of what even is design. I know myself, as a researcher coming in from academics, I was first introduced to the world of design through working at dscout and have been learning ever since. But still am expanding my definition and I found out, through today's conversation, may still even now be a little bit narrow. So questions like what is design? And how do you communicate that to folks who are not already in the fold Designers? And how do you integrate design in with community and in with centering humans, which I think is something we all care about? These are all questions that we are going to talk about with our guest today, Tanner Woodford.
Ben:
That's right. Tanner Woodford is the founder and executive director of the Design Museum in Chicago, whose mission is to bring design to a more relatable human level. And again, that's just something, I think, that resonates so much with the People Nerds' audience. We try to communicate human centricity, experience design, user interfaces. We try to make products and services more relatable to the users, the people who make them possible. So Tanner is just a perfect person to have on the pod. He has spent a ton of time thinking about design and its role and its impact for communities. You'll hear him talk a lot about his community based approach to design in and around Chicago. He talks about his time in the classroom teaching and think about design as an education practice. And certainly for companies, having spent some time in industry working as an interaction designer. So Karen, was there anything that stood out to you or something that you want to highlight for our listeners before we jump in?
Karen:
Yeah, I think things to watch. I mean, like Ben said, it's hard for this not to be relevant to folks, just because so many of us are designers or are working directly alongside designers. Today, we covered a lot of really interesting stuff, including how to involve community and support community through design practice, how to communicate ideas to large audiences, as well as democratization was a big thing that we talked about. How do you increase the aperture of people involved in your practice, which I think is relevant, whether it's design or whether it's something like research. Both relevant in their human and user centeredness, how do we get more people involved? So without further ado here is our conversation with Tanner Woodford.
Ben:
So welcome to Tanner Woodford. So excited to have you.
Tanner Woodford:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It's great to talk to you.
Ben:
There's so much that we want to cover. You are a curator, a designer, you've worked in industry as someone thinking about interfaces, designs and the sorts of experiences that folks interact with. But as of late, you have been working on and with the Design Museum Chicago. I'm wondering if we could start there with why a design museum? How did you go about forming the Design Museum and what is its goal?
Tanner Woodford:
Sure. And I'll say that it evolves and changes every single day. There was really never a moment that I sat down and thought I'm going to start a design museum, or I'm going to work with people to get a design museum off the ground. It's been a very slow evolution. And I also want to be clear that I'm the founder, but I'm a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to the number of people that have been involved and pulling this off over the last 10 years and making it successful and seeing us through our failures and all of that. So it started about 10 years ago, the idea may be a little bit longer than that, in Phoenix, Arizona. I got my undergraduate degree at Arizona State University. And if you trace it back to its earliest steps, it started as a magazine and the magazine, the whole intent was just to talk to our heroes.
Tanner Woodford:
So we wrote a long list of questions, there were three of us that were involved, and sent it to folks all across the world. There were 28 questions. And got responses back, realized we didn't know how to publish a magazine, didn't know how to fundraise around it. Weren't that excited by the format. So we put all of our answers online for free, founded a conference, and there are more people involved at that point. It was picking up steam just to gloss over some of the early days a little bit. And the conference was a huge success. It's still going on. I have not been involved in years, but I'm really proud of the work that's coming out of Arizona, on Phoenix Design Week more broadly. And after a couple of years of doing the conference, we attracted a bigger conference via AIGA.
Tanner Woodford:
And that year, we wanted to do some popup programming surrounding the conference. And one of those things was the Phoenix Design Museum. So I was one of a few people that was involved in the founding of the Phoenix Design Museum. We had one exhibition that was in a great old warehouse close by, nearby the conference. And after sort of having a successful run at it, I ended up coming back to Chicago. I was born and raised downstate Illinois, and didn't want to go back downstate, wanted to be in a big city. So applied for a bunch of jobs in Chicago. Ended up getting a job at Morningstar as an interaction designer. Was there for just under four years and throughout that time on nights and weekends, I was working on founding what was at the time called the Chicago Design Museum.
Tanner Woodford:
And the first real initiative, this is really where I think I step in as founder, prior to that, I was involved in things very closely, but this is where it went in a new direction and swept my life away, at that point. We had a popup exhibition out in Humboldt Park that was really exciting. There were six of us working on it at the time. Most of us did work at Morningstar, so it was internal, where we talked about it at lunch and went to get drinks after work and talked about it and that sort of thing. We had four or five exhibitions as part of the first popup museum. We were out in Humboldt Park, Debbie Millman, Ed Fella, and homage to Alexander Rodchenko, a hundred years of IBM's history, and then Fresh Produced, which was an exhibition we curated about hand painted signage.
Tanner Woodford:
We had a store. We had a lot of the sort of traditional museum functions, but in a microscopic scale. And it was a massive amount of work. I mean, really, we took three months to work through. I mean, even if you think just about the store, you need point of sale system, you need products, you need inventory, you need contracts. And then taking that across five exhibitions and marketing and partnerships and fundraising. And we did all of that in about three months and it was scrappy and cool and fantastic. 3,000 people came over the course of a month to see it. 1500 AT the opening party. 1500 throughout the month. And at that point, we sort of knew that Chicago could support this.
Ben:
I'm struck by not only that there is a museum... Well, it's called the Design Museum, not the Museum of Design. And also, I'm struck by your commitment to design in the community. So can you talk about the relationship of Chicago, the community, to what most people think of a museum, a single structure or building? Can you talk about that relationship? What function does the museum as a space serve and how does your organization think about the wider community as a space for engagement and interaction with design?
Tanner Woodford:
That's a great question. And frankly, we are so different from a lot of other museums in that we are so deeply embedded in the community and that feels like a nice contrast. We don't need to reinvent the Art Institute or the Museum of Contemporary Art because they're already here and they're already world class. So we think about... The question we asked a lot in the early days is how is a museum most successful in today's society? And what sorts of things does a museum need to support in today's society? Chicago is such an interesting place for a design museum and frankly, it's criminal that we didn't have one before we opened the Design Museum of Chicago, because it's such a design city. I mean, architecture is one thing, but then we have such a great legacy of advertising and innovation and Marshall Fields and logos and the Institute of Design.
Tanner Woodford:
There's so many stories that have come out of Chicago in the past couple of centuries that are truly design stories. And there have been other design museums in the past that have sort of come and gone here in Chicago, but this was really a different undertaking. There are a couple of ways of founding a museum, one of which is to start with boards and funds. And the other is to start on the ground and start building and that's how we started. We didn't start with an endowment and a building and all of that. We really have started small and scrappy and found our way. As we've done that, we've found that the heart of Chicago is in all of our diverse communities and diverse neighborhoods. And we've really tried to tell stories in places where that content happens.
Tanner Woodford:
So instead of doing a house music show down in the Loop, we did our first house music show on the facade of the Silver Room in Hyde Park, where we took the facade over. Had names of people that had made an impact, DJ's, designers, all sorts of folks, warehouse, all sorts of different venues and tried to just elevate those stories in a place where that history was born to encourage folks to learn from their predecessors and be inspired to also change the world. We try very hard to take our programming to the places where the history has happened, as opposed to centralizing things. That said, we do have a gallery downtown as well. We're directly across from the Cultural Center. We do three shows a year here, and then a lot of programming outside of this space.
Karen:
Wondering about what your primary goal is with this museum, although again, museum in sort of this non-traditional way in that there is a physical space in all of these other community led efforts. But if you were to say you had some mission, what do you want people to walk away from your experiences, understanding that they didn't understand before?
Tanner Woodford:
Yeah, that's a tough question because our mission has changed so much over the years. We do have a very small and scrappy and nimble organization and I really like it that way. I want to keep it that way as long as we can. And the mission has always been sort of similar. At the moment, it's to educate, inspire and foster innovation through design. And we sort of achieve that mission on a myriad of ways. But at the end of the day, I think we are really about storytelling and trying to make connections to folks, whether it's contemporary or historic, and trying to support the community in any way that we can. Some ways are a bit more abstract, like exhibitions. Sometimes those can be a bit hard to understand how they support a community though I think there's usually a path in and some ways are very direct.
Tanner Woodford:
We started hosting a gift drive for the unhoused last year and got thousands of donations of goods, which were then distributed through DPS and Chicago Police and the few other folks, as well. We got heavily involved in a vaccination campaign over the last two years where we were hiring artists from communities with low vaccination rates and having them make artwork to encourage their friends, fans, and followers to get vaccinated, and then posting that artwork on their social media. And then from there, we were taking it and putting it on billboards and at music festivals and that sort of thing, as well. So we're able to, with a nimble mission, we're able to really go where we're called and to make a big impact once we get there.
Karen:
I was just thinking about how I'm really struck by this idea of the breadth of design. I'm the design newbie here. I'm coming from very much an academic research background and have started to interact with designers for the first time in my career, moving into the industry. And so when I think historically, I always thought of design as a very, a somewhat narrow topic that's been broadening as I've met product designers and industrial designers and folks in the industry. But I'm really struck from talking to you about how I think even more expansive you can get with that definition of design away from just, "Oh, it's graphic design," or, "Oh, it's just the form, how this form and the object evolves." It's much more expansive and embedded maybe might be the word that I would use, than that.
Tanner Woodford:
Absolutely, yeah. It's embedded in every part of life, whether you want it to be or not. It's not always helpful either. I do want to acknowledge that. One way that I think about the breadth of design is through the grid. So if you think about just a simple grid, you can think about how that's used in architecture to hold up a building, from sort of how the steel beams are arranged to hold utilities and walls and that sort of thing. And then think about a grid in a newspaper layout and you have the same sort of function, but the point of the grid in the newspaper layout is to make the content more legible, to hold up the paragraphs, to give your eyes structure, so you know how to read the page.
Tanner Woodford:
And a grid is sort of a foundational technique that's used across all facets of design. I think there are other foundational ideas, like shape and line and color and texture and typography and that sort of thing. But really, I'm a big proponent of Massimo Vignelli's idea that if you can design one thing, you can design everything. I don't think that means you're proficient in everything, but I think you can draw from the same background to work across fields.
Karen:
I'm also really curious about what you said, just in passing, about design not always being helpful. I think that as somebody, we working here at dscout are huge proponents of user driven design and user centered design. And I was wondering if you could say a little bit about what you think helpful versus non-helpful designer or where you think the space of talking to people who are going to be using the design really sits for you in your world?
Tanner Woodford:
Well, it's a tricky question. I think it's important to remember that weapons are designed and oars are designed and benches are designed so that homeless people, sorry, unhoused people, can't sleep on them. And design is used often in ways that are bad for society. And I think that's one thing, to design something that's intentionally bad. I think it's another thing to design something that's accidentally bad, something that's overdesigned where you are, to your point, you're not involving the user or humans in the process, and you're making assumptions about what you think will be good for them. And then when they encounter the solution, it puts up roadblocks.
Tanner Woodford:
I think another thing to think about is accessibility, where often things are designed to look great, to read well, and then you realize, oh, I can't fit a wheelchair through there or the text is too small, so if I've got low vision, I can't pick up the details or that sort of thing. So I think there's the idea of design as purely form that will often forget about the function and forget about the end user and that's problematic in its own way. So I think at the end of the day, design is about solving problems and is about, I think, designers are for the most part concerned with making solutions that make life better. That can be easily forgotten in the spirit of designing something that's cool.
Ben:
Tanner, do you have strategies or tactics that you share or lessons that you impart to your students when you're consulting or when you're out in the community of folks who are thinking about products and services and design comes up? A lot of our audience, a lot of our listeners, are folks who believe in accessible, inclusive, non-othering design, but for whom their organization might have different priorities, not saying that the org isn't interested in and focused on those things, but they're juggling lots of things. Is there something that you might share? You've talked about the critical import of having design that does not other, and that considers the full range of humans and users. Is there anything else you might share that you share with your students or that you share with clients when they're thinking about accessible, open design?
Tanner Woodford:
I think it's just really important to keep the human in the process. And I don't think that you need to overdo it. I forget the exact sort of UX figure, but if you talk to five people, it's the same thing as talking to 50 people. There's a real figure there that maybe we can add in a post or something.
Karen:
Yeah. No, I can confirm. For interviews, five is the generally accepted threshold for a given segment that generally you reach saturation at that point. And afterwards, you're going to start seeing diminishing returns.
Tanner Woodford:
That's right. That was Bill Mockridge, right, that came up with that? Or maybe I'm mistaken there. He was a-
Karen:
Oh, put me on the spot.
Tanner Woodford:
Sorry.
Karen:
I'm actually not totally sure.
Tanner Woodford:
The old UX textbook I read 15 years ago that I've completely forgotten, except for maybe that one tidbit that stuck with me for some reason, but you don't have to overdo it. You don't have to interview a hundred people. It's sort of like when you... At least when I write an email that I think might come off as being aggressive, I'll show it to a few people and get their feedback and sleep on it and then send it the next day and it's the same thing with design. I think you should do it even if you don't think it's going to come off as an aggressive thing. But I think the main message here is just keeping the human involved in the process and ensuring that you're really working toward humans centered problems.
Ben:
And was there something that you found useful during your time at Morningstar? Doubtless, having a design team that org says, yes, we think design, at least in the way that we've framed it or hired for it, is useful. Was there something that you found resonant with stakeholders that you had there? Again, I'm thinking about a lot of our listeners or folks who work with product folks or work with engineers or work with marketing and sales folks, for whom again, the design just might not be as top of mind. Is there a way that you found to get design insights or advocating for design to really stick?
Tanner Woodford:
Absolutely. I can't tell you how many lessons I learned at Morningstar. It was foundational, for me as a designer. I've still got a million friends that work there and it's such a great company. I think there's such a core sort of design mission within the company that has evolved from the CEO all the way down to current sort of interns and staff. But I really learned a lot about sort of high standards. I think they have a very sort of high set of design standards. If you take a tour of their Chicago office or any office across the world, that becomes immediately apparent. And from the sort of product side, one of the things that I really loved about working there is that all of our audience was in the building. We were working actively with traders.
Tanner Woodford:
So if we had questions, we'd go up to their desk and show them something we were working on and get immediate feedback and then bake that back into the process. So it was a very sort of easy audience for us to approach. It wasn't like we were going out and finding people. We did interviews outside of the company often, as well. I was there at a really interesting time in the company where they were making a big shift from graphic design to UX, clearly still doing a lot of graphic design. But in terms of trying to redesign their core product line, it was an all hands on deck moment. So we weren't working with UX products. We were working with end design, print products to do UX wire frames and mockups and that sort of thing, because those things were accessible to the designers that were already on staff.
Tanner Woodford:
And then we were training up on wire frames and best practices and that sort of thing, which was a real lesson for me and the idea that the product that you're using to design doesn't always make for the best outcome. Really, it's about talking to users, putting ideas on paper. As Philip Burton used to say, who works at Morningstar, "Tape it down and move on." Put something on the wall, tape it down, move on, talk about it, learn from it, and then get to the next idea.
Karen:
We are going to take a quick break here for a moment, but we will be back after our Scout Sound Off to hear more about Tanner's approach to design and to storytelling.
Ben:
Welcome to Scout Sound Off where we use dscout Express, a quick turn qualitative research tool, to deliver thoughts and opinions straight from our participants about the topic of the day.
Karen:
That's right. And today's topic is, as you might guess, design and what the general public thinks design is and what it means to design something well. So we recently launched a survey via dscout Express to explore what makes for good design, whether it's in a product, service or experience. And let me tell you, in less than three hours, we had 150 full responses from a gen pop sample of folks. And what we found is that Scouts actually have a very good and strong idea of what they think a good design is. And one of the top ideas that came to their mind was the idea of intuitiveness and empathy. That great design understands where users are coming to a product from, no matter what their walk in life, and guides them to how to be successful with that product or service. So without further ado, here is our highlight reel of Scouts sounding off about good design, which we cut directly from the dscout platform. Take it away Scouts.
Speaker 4:
When I think about design and what it means for a product to be designed well, I think about the marriage between form and function.
Speaker 5:
There is multiple things that go into something being designed well. One is the aesthetics. How does it look? Does it really engage the eye or give clues as to what that design is trying to accomplish in some way?
Speaker 6:
If it's able to do what I want it to do really easily, I don't have to repeat myself. I'm delighted by the process. It's fast and easy.
Speaker 7:
Simplicity is really important that you don't have to be experienced in the background of whatever it is. Someone who would just instinctively know just by looking at it.
Speaker 8:
No matter what the situation is, where you are, what you're doing, what you need, it has to have a flow.
Speaker 9:
There's no question why school goes here or this certain design here. It makes sense with the concept and what they're trying to get through.
Speaker 7:
It's accessible, easy for everyone to use and all ages, all backgrounds, that it just works across the board. So, yeah, that's, I guess, my idea of what a good design would be.
Ben:
Thank you Scouts. If you want to read more about what we learned, check out our full write up on the People Nerds blog. And if you'd like to conduct quick turn qualitative research for things like pulse checks, concept testing, or micro interviews, you can check out dscout.com for more information. Thanks again to our Scouts for sounding off. Now let's get back to Tanner.
Ben:
And we're back with Tanner Woodford. Karen, before the break, you were alluding to the popularity of the rise of democratization. And I'm wondering if you could kick us off with a question for Tanner about design and democratization?
Karen:
Oh my gosh, yeah. This is something that we would absolutely love to hear your take on, Tanner, because lots of our listeners will know that democratization of research is really top of mind for a lot of organizations and researchers right now. How do I get people who are not trained in research, who are not traditionally researchers, to care about and participate in the research process and bringing users into the product development cycle? And one thing that I hear that's sort of a cool similarity between us is that you also seem in the business of democratization to an extent of trying to expand people's understanding of design and in some ways, perhaps, bring the community in to participate in some way in learning about design.
Tanner Woodford:
Yeah, really great question. Very timely as well. I think that these days, everybody is a designer, just like everybody's a photographer. We all have a camera in our pockets that's better than any camera we would've had throughout the rest of our lives and it's just going to keep getting smaller and better. And design programs are also very readily accessible. Adobe has been the industry standard for years, but these days there's all kinds of competitors popping up that are free or cheap or easy to start getting into the field of design. I think people are becoming designers without even realizing it. And I think what separates the person who's interested in design from a professional designer is an intent rather, maybe intense is actually a good word as well, but an intent of solving problems, of communicating clearly, of creating sort of accessibility and of going through more of the foundational approach to design.
Tanner Woodford:
And I think that with the sort of proliferation of tools being available, that sort of makes more folks into designers, I think it provides an opportunity for those folks to be trained and to be self-taught and to sort of come up into the field in a way that is more productive. And I hesitate to use that word productive because I don't think that you have to be trained to be productive. But we're also on the other end of that, working on an exhibition with a Terra Foundation for Art Design Chicago 2024 called Chicago Types. And that exhibition started with the intent of telling a more inclusive typographic history because the typographic history of Chicago is pretty colonized. And it's turned into really thinking about how we work with people that might not have a language for typography and design.
Tanner Woodford:
And how do we work with people to bring things out of their family archives, where their ancestors might have been involved in either vernacular design or, for lack of better contrast, intentional design. Again, I'm struggling with language here, because I know vernacular is not necessarily the opposite of intentional. But yeah, I think with that exhibition, it's really creating a platform for people to tell new stories that haven't been told in the context of a museum before, to tell more inclusive and shared history and story. And we're relying on people who might not be designers or know about design to highlight those stories and then will work with a research fellow and a curator. [Amira Gazi 00:29:03] has been helping us with that, who will then put it in the proper context and frame it up appropriately. It's a big question and the way that the world's turning, I think that everything is going to be much more democratized as time goes on, so we've got to embrace it.
Karen:
There is a sense of, should we embrace it though, right? This tension between yes, we want everybody involved. Bring everyone into the fold. Everyone can be a researcher or already is a researcher, should be a researcher. And then this other side of things that are like, now, hold on, wait a second. I am a trained professional. These people are not trained professionals. Can I relinquish this control to have a wider resource of knowledge? And that's not necessarily my point of view, but it's definitely something that I have heard, at least in the form of mild concern. Perhaps, oh, but what if this goes wrong? Oh, but what will happen if... I'm curious if you see that in the design world and if so, how you respond to that.
Tanner Woodford:
Absolutely. And I should clarify that I don't speak for all designers and just like, I know you don't speak for all researchers, but I do feel that I notice that in the field. And to me, a big part of my job is empowering as many people as possible. Not that I think every person that walks through our gallery is going to become a designer nor do I think they should. And I'm sort of used to working in these contexts where if I end up walking into an elementary school about our CPS exhibition, I'm working with some kids or some students to generate some work, they might decide to be accountants and that's great. I think whatever direction they end up pursuing is great, but my job is to show them the light, show them what design is and what our tools are and to sort of encourage them to know that these careers are out there and that these are possibilities for their future.
Tanner Woodford:
I think that there's always sort of a protective quality. Once you've accumulated knowledge, you want to separate yourselves from those that haven't been brought up yet. And I think that might be oversimplifying it, but I think that idea doesn't really resonate with me. I want to try to bring up as many people as I can and give as many opportunities as I can throughout the run of my career. So I'm constantly in the position of trying to educate people about the fields, that they can feel empowered to learn more on their own and accumulate knowledge and contribute to society.
Ben:
Do you feel better about design now than you did when you started the museum? Do you feel that design... Karen and I often hear from UX researchers that they're desperately seeking, I'm using air quotes here, place at the table. Do you feel that design is at that table? Is design designing that table? What's your view of the authority, the expertise, the credibility that design has, not just in our wider community, but in the industry, for businesses trying to create products, services, and experiences?
Tanner Woodford:
I think it really depends on the context because I've been in companies where design is not at the table and I've been in companies where design is at the head of the table. And I think that there's a lot of gray area between those two situations. Overall, I think I have a much different view of design than I did 10 years ago. Coming into the museum, I was coming in as a young graphic designer and was very excited about typography and form and color and that sort of thing. And as time has evolved and moved on, I've started to look much more broadly at the field and started to think about design as more of a foundational practice. Companies I know with a designer at the seat of the table are stronger. I think the companies that have somebody at the table that's really driving design, do tend to make decisions that are best for their users and that ends up bringing in more users. Ends up solving problems and really allowing the company to grow in scale.
Tanner Woodford:
The companies I know that have come in to any situation with a predefined idea of the product they're going to build, they don't test it and they push it out the door, tend to fail and flop. And sometimes it can be one company that's really sensitive to design and they'll have a project that they have an idea for and they'll push it through and force a square peg into a round hole and the product ends up failing and they try something else and sometimes that thing is successful. So I really think that it's a very sort of wide spectrum of how businesses and governments and different bodies function and it's not very consistent. So it's hard to say, if more designers have a seat at the table than they did 10 years ago, I'm not sure if I have a good sense of that, but I do think that's the road to success.
Ben:
Tanner, I'm hoping we could close with the exhibit that the Design Museum has upcoming. Could you tell us a bit about it?
Tanner Woodford:
Yeah. I couldn't be more excited about this exhibition. I think every exhibition we do quickly becomes my favorite and this one is no different. So it's called The Correct Time and it's based on an exhibition that was curated by Barbara Koenen in 1989 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a graduate student. She's an artist and is currently the proprietor at Chicago Creative Reuse Exchange, which could be a whole other podcast. And in 1989, Barb collected roughly 720 clocks, one for every minute of the day out of a 12 hour period. And the idea was she set all of them to a unique time, so when you walk into the gallery, the correct time is present somewhere. So as these things happen, she curated this exhibition and put it in a storage locker and it sat there since 1989.
Tanner Woodford:
So it's been there for 30 years now. And we were talking with Barb about this idea and about how time now is so interesting, because everything is so squishy. The last two years feel like they've passed in two months, sometimes. Sometimes, it feels like it's been a decade. But time is really confusing at the moment. So we wanted to provide a space for people to sit. And reflect and using that collection of clocks as a foundation, we're starting to build the rest of the exhibition around that and trying to find other stories that we can tell based on that. So for example, Barb had also collected letters from all of the original donors of the broken clocks, so we're displaying the letters that tell the stories of where the clocks came from. We're working with a research candidate, a PhD candidate, from the University of Chicago named [Themal 00:35:50], who is talking about the history of time and timekeeping, specifically as it relates to Chicago.
Tanner Woodford:
So they're putting together a historic perspective. We are working with 24 designers, half from Chicago and half from around the world, to design clocks that we'll cut out of vinyl and put on the wall. Dscout is doing a clock, which I'm super excited to see. And the rest of the other 23 clocks really are from all across the world. The building that we're in used to be a bank in the seventies and for this exhibition, we have opened the vault that's right in the middle of the gallery. That's a whole story in and of itself.
Ben:
Cool.
Tanner Woodford:
And we're turning that into a little media room, which I'm very excited about.
Ben:
Amazing.
Tanner Woodford:
So we'll have a video of a Google Earth clock with buildings that look like numbers that's constantly rotating to show the current time, an interactive component. There's a designer named Art Paul who lived in Chicago for his entire life, who was a founding creative director of Playboy magazine. He drew the bunny and he has written some beautiful writings on time, so we're pulling those out of his archive and putting those on the wall as well. And just really looking broadly at the idea of time and creating a space where you can come and reflect.
Ben:
That's our conversation for this episode. Thanks again, to Tanner. To learn more about the Design Museum of Chicago and their current exhibits in work, visit designchicago.org.
Karen:
Yes. And if you want to hear more from us and the People Nerds Podcast, please subscribe to be notified of our latest episodes and leave a review on the show. If you like it, we'd love to know what you think. You can also check out our full library of human-centered resources, including how-tos, breakdowns and ideas pieces, all at peoplenerds.com.
Ben:
You can also find us across any social media with the handle People Nerds or dscout. Tune in next time for more interesting conversations and food for thought from outside the boundaries of UX. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time, nerds.