Discomfort Zone
The challenge of challenging students over Zoom
Intro
We generally try to avoid discomfort in our everyday lives. And that makes a lot of sense. But embracing discomfort is a really important part of design education. Design has two main phases: a divergent and a convergent phase. In the first, students define the problem they’re solving, brainstorm, make and remake. This phase is followed by a convergent phase where students are mostly solving technical problems to bring their projects to life. This essay is only about this first phase. Before the pandemic, I observed how smartphones and digital fabrication (e.g., working with drafting and 3D modeling software, laser cutters, or 3D printers) could interfere with a student’s creativity. But it was not until the pandemic that I became aware of the ways these tools and other types of digital technology could inhibit this very important feeling of discomfort.
This first “divergent” phase of design can be uncomfortable for students and practitioners alike. The discomfort comes from a number of sources: the need to generate more than one project idea, the critique of these ideas, the uncertainty of solving an open-ended problem, or the vulnerability of sharing imperfect ideas, sketches, and models. In an ideal scenario, students confront their discomfort and work through it over multiple projects, eventually embracing the process. I try my best to create an environment that helps students navigate this first phase. Not all design processes highlight it, and many design processes attempt to remove the discomfort altogether. But students learn important skills during the process of working through the discomfort. I didn’t appreciate its importance until it was diminished over Zoom.
This essay is a follow-up to one I co-wrote a year ago about a tool I used to facilitate the shift to virtual teaching and learning. At the time, I thought it necessary to preserve creativity and collaboration during the shift to a virtual world. But after a year of Zoom, I’m now wondering how we could have additionally preserved the discomfort.
I spent nearly six years teaching design studios to middle and high school students at NuVu Studio, an innovative school in Cambridge, MA. At NuVu students are in three-week full-day classes, called “studios” in which they effectively do a semester’s worth of work. The observations in this essay are based on the contrast between these experiences, which were mostly in-person (I taught one studio in a virtual learning environment at NuVu in the fall) and studios over the past fifteen months which were in virtual and hybrid learning environments: 7th and 8th graders in a Boston Public Charter School, undergrad and grad students at Harvard, sophomores at RISD, and juniors and seniors at Keene State College. I was also a student myself this year when I took a wonderful online art class through Tufts.
This past year, digital technologies including Zoom and other video-based apps infiltrated the lives of many of us. Whether these tools attempted to replace, replicate or augment activities in the physical world, they arrived without us having much ability to plan for their use; we were in a pandemic, and in order to be connected to the world around us, we had to use them. Why am I picking on digital technology and not technology in general? Aren’t they all the same? They’re not. Perhaps it’s because these tools alter our natural behavior through their affordances. For instance, when we are on Zoom, we sit staring at each other with implied eye contact or a total absence of eye contact. But maybe the explanation is simply that we get sucked into a screen, disconnected from the realities of the physical world.
How digital technology gets in the way of discomfort
When we transitioned in March 2020 to virtual teaching and learning there were aspects of my teaching that I feared would be impossible to replicate over Zoom, namely desk crits. A “desk crit” is a meeting between a design educator and a student or team of students. These meetings are the backbone of many studio-based design courses. In a desk crit, project ideas are discussed and critiqued, new perspectives are shared, feedback is given on the dissonance between these ideas and what a student is making, technical help is given and deliverables are assigned for the next desk crit. Desk crits can be uncomfortable for students when they are learning how to receive feedback on their ideas. But this feedback is what makes design more than just a problem-solving methodology and is part of what contributes to transferable skills in other disciplines. The feedback gives students outside perspectives on their project ideas and it also helps them to place their project ideas within cultural, historical, and social contexts.
A desk crit, like its name implies, often happens around a desk. The subject of the essay I co-wrote last spring was mostly focused on how a tool that could virtually replace a desk encouraged creativity and collaboration. The tool we used, Milanote, provided a place for students to post their sketches, photographs of prototypes, links to research, and notes about their ideas: all the important things that a good digital desk should afford. But what wasn’t replaceable was the aspect of desk crits related to giving critical feedback on project ideas and what can be an accompanying discomfort. Encouraging students to clarify their ideas is an activity I do at almost every desk crit. I’ve noticed that when students can clearly articulate their ideas they are more engaged and excited about their projects, it’s easier for them to think about next steps, to collaborate with their teams, and to get feedback from outside reviewers.
Zoom doesn’t allow me to read the subtleties of a student’s body language, which means that uncomfortable conversations about their work are more difficult to navigate and often don’t happen (had I known these students in-person from before the pandemic I imagine this would have been easier). In addition, the format of Zoom requires an interaction that makes the desk crit uncomfortable in a non-productive way. When I’m giving a desk crit in person we’re often sitting side by side, looking at their work. I’m aware of their body language and I’ll occasionally make eye contact but not the face-to-face stare (try staring at someone while critiquing their ideas) that happens in Zoom. This spring I taught in hybrid learning environments at both RISD and Keene State College and if Zoom thwarts the reading of body language when I’m virtual, the wearing of masks thwarts the reading of facial expressions in person. Sometimes students even wear masks on Zoom which prevents the reading of both body language and facial expressions. It’s been a tough year.
As I explained above, I saw the effect of Zoom on the efficacy of desk crits. In addition, Zoom affected students’ ability to be fully present in the “classroom” because of the option to turn the camera off, or even to watch Youtube videos undetected with the camera on (issues I only encountered with the middle schoolers). I also began to think more generally about other ways that discomfort is affected by digital technology, for instance, software like the Adobe Suite, parametric software like Revit, or even modeling software like Tinkercad, can give a project a false level of finish; there’s no more sharing imperfect work when the software output looks perfect. These softwares can also introduce a level of certainty to an uncertain outcome by imposing limitations on a design. A final thought is the omnipresence of smartphones, and how often students turn to them.
Toward an analog future
To state the obvious, during this very difficult year, Zoom made staying connected possible. I sure hope we don’t experience another year that requires such heavy use of it. I’d like to propose a return to the classroom where we’re dramatically more judicious about digital technology. What would it look like for student learning if we stopped using digital technology for students new to the design process (do technology companies, driven by a culture of capitalism, have the best judgment for what works best for student learning?) What does a future look like with less digital technology, not more? I’d love to imagine a classroom where we default to analog, not digital. For instance, instead of using personal computers with their accompanying distractions, we’d go to the library and use books for research. In a few days, on May 25th, 2021, my teaching will be over and I’m having a screen-free day with two of my collaborators. I’m buying us analog watches so that when we meet up for lunch, none of us is late. It’s going to be an uncomfortable day but I’m looking forward to it.
I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch!
Many thanks to Yusuf Ahmed, Kyle Browne, Andrew Dalrymple, Mariel Norris, Penny Webb, and Amy Shulman Weinberg for your very helpful feedback. To the amazing GoFA community. And to my students for your hard work and patience.
