Convenience at the cost of connection
Are our choices to live and design convenient lives disconnecting us from ourselves, each other, and nature?
In this essay, I won’t break down a report or some other piece of information. Instead, I want to summarize bits and pieces of reflections, insights, discussions, and frustrations that keep linking back to one idea: convenience.
I will argue (or suggest) that the obsession of societies, individuals, designers, and businesses with ease, human- and user-centered solutions, consensus, and convenience disconnects us from capabilities, others, and nature. What once was an aim for development and growth might have turned out to be slow poison.
Disclaimer: All views are my own and do not reflect those of my employers or other affiliated organizations. Essays are not peer-reviewed, do not constitute scientific theories or findings, and the perspectives can change as new information emerges.
Updates:
I am teaching a summer school, “Designing with Nature for Sustainability,” in August at Aalto University, Finland. You can still apply and join the course! The application period ends 31.5.
I am collecting questions, challenges, situations, and perspectives for the “Ask Emilija” segment of the Multispecies Digest video lectures. If you have anything you want addressed in an upcoming lecture, please share.
(Life of) convencience
Let’s start with unpacking convenience.
(And I apologize in advance for the number of times I will use the words convenient and inconvenient.)
Though searches in each online dictionary gave me slightly different results, I will use the Merriam-Webster to explore the varied meanings of the word. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word convenience is both a noun and an adjective that refers to:
fitness or suitability for performing an action or fulfilling a requirement (noun);
something (such as an appliance, device, or service) conducive to comfort or ease (noun);
(in Brittish) a toilet (noun);
a suitable or convenient time (noun);
freedom from discomfort (noun);
designed for quick and easy preparation or use (adjective).
Wikipedia entry on convenience (I know… of all sources I could refer to I’m referring to Wikipedia… but it makes a good point, so I am ok with that) states “convenient procedures, products and services are those intended to increase ease in accessibility, save resources (such as time, effort and energy) and decrease frustration.”
The meaning of convenience can be boiled down to ease, suitability, usability, freedom from hardship, reduced frustrations, and comfort. Most of these have been utilized as goals and aspirations in design and as tools to drive sales and generate profits in commerce. On the one hand, it’s understandable that we as individuals and as a society want to make the world a bit easier and more hospitable. We want to make our lives just a little (or a lot) better, smoother, inviting, and restful. Survival is tiring. Fighting daily battles with the world is tiring. On the other hand, it is dangerous to use convenience and ease as the ideal, the goal, and the measurement of whether something is good or bad, if people and organizations are working hard enough, or if co-existence and connection with others are worth it.
Why am I thinking and writing about convenience?
My curiosity, or rather a desire to vent, rant, and reflect, about convenience has come up in several areas of my life over the past weeks.
Have we started seeing education as a convenient service?
First, as an educator, I have continuously reflected on the changing attitudes I see. Since 2018, I have felt that students, and even some educators and policymakers, have started to view education as a service. A service that needs to be human- and user-centered. A service in which the service providers (aka me, other faculty and staff, plus the institution as a whole) need to have thought through all customer journeys and focused on reducing most, if not all, confusion, challenges, issues, moments of friction, conflicts, pressure around deadlines, etc. And this impression of mine has only gotten stronger over the years.
Maybe it’s impacted by the fact that in the design school, we teach our students a lot about human- and user-centered design, usability, customer journeys, intuitive products and services, and the identification and satisfaction of user needs. Maybe not.
While things can and should be done to ensure that education and its delivery are good, I do not believe that education and learning need to be convenient, or easy, or frustration-free. Part of education is about learning to think, to figure out hard moments, to negotiate, to be challenged, to be confused. It’s also part of life, work, and relationships. Thus, I’m questioning where the students’ and educators’ desire for smoothness, a clear path forward, ease of learning, and convenience at every touchpoint and situation comes from.
One of my hypotheses is that the standard set by user-centered design, in which convenience, ease of use, and the removal of all friction and confusion are the ‘good’ we should all strive for, impacts what students expect from education and the world around them. If something is inconvenient, challenging, complex, complicated, confusing, or has friction, then the people providing the education have not done their job well and should be punished for that.
Furthermore, and supported by studies on the use of AI to perform tasks (some of which I have linked below), the pursuit of convenience, ease, and discomfort reduction is likely negatively impacting our ability to utilize our brains, cognitive processes, reasoning abilities, and even lowering our intellectual self-esteem. We cognitively offload to tools and others. And that offloading is really convenient. When we cannot do that, we might become irritated, frustrated, and confused. Why isn’t there someone or something to offload to? Why isn’t there someone telling me what exactly I need to do? Why hasn’t someone done the cognitive labour for me? Why hasn’t someone thought a bit harder to ensure I do not need to use my brain?
The joys of inconvenience
Second, as someone leaning towards the introverted end of the spectrum, I often have caught myself feeling that many social situations and interactions can be inconvenient. They require effort and concentration. For example, they often require me to leave the house, which in Finnish winter time is a hard task. Years of living alone through the COVID pandemic and hyperfocusing on doctoral research have allowed me to indulge in the ease, comfort, ‘peace,’ and convenience of limited social interactions. Often, it felt like a luxury that I had excuses not to leave my house and prioritize my need for and want of solitude. So many things were hard that connecting to others was not on top of my priority list. (Granted, I was not always connected to myself either, so those years were a fabulous time to do the hard inner work to reconnect with myself.)
But, since recovering from the doctoral marathon, I have started to cherish how fun, fulfilling, exciting, and full of connection the inconvenient moments are. A Sunday lunch with friends an hour away when it’s freezing out? Inconvenient, but exactly what I want to do. A long work lunch with a friend who's also a colleague? Inefficient, but full of connection, dialogue, mutual learning, and laughter. Again, exactly what I want. Has UPS delivered my package to the further away K-Supermarket? Inconvenient. But that place stocks exciting products from around the world, and on the walk there, I get to see my neighbourhood. Is Excel not doing what I need it to do? Inconvenient, but not a reason to slam my keyboard and think that the creators of Excel are incompetent. Just take a few breaths in and out and admit that I might need to improve my Excel skills. (I might even say that some of the best things in life are inconvenient: pets, families, friends, long hikes, healthy food, travel…)
I still feel the initial frustration, irritation, disappointment, and an occasional inner battle when something is inconvenient and, thus, annoying or even unfair. However, through inner reflection and strengthening my ability to be present with uncomfortable feelings, I have arrived at the place where I can see those situations as moments for new experiences, learning, and connection. Connection with myself, with others, with tools, with this silly, annoying, inconvenient but beautiful world. Once I get over the initial waves of irritation and disappointment, I can accept that my discomfort and inconvenience do not mean someone has not thought enough, prioritized me enough, or optimized efficiency. It’s just life.
Are modern conveniences disconnecting us from nature?
Third, while writing the previous essay, in which I reflected on the negative impact of microplastics on photosynthesis, I thought about how convenient yet disconnected from nature my current lifestyle is. Living in an apartment in a suburb… Buying all my food from the supermarket… Working from home on some of the days…
My current life is very different from the small-town one I had in my childhood, the one my parents still have. There, the year, and especially summer, is planned and lived around the garden, the weather, and the harvest. Like, what are we going to do today? Depends on the weather… If it’s hot and dry, we need to water the garden. Is it going to be cold? We must try to protect fruit trees from the frost and close the greenhouses (but also remember to open the doors in the morning, not too early and not too late, so the tomato plants do not become too cold or too hot). Have the potatoes sprouted and become slightly squishy? We need to remove the sprouts and continue eating them because the new harvest won’t come for two more months. Do we want strawberries, but it’s not strawberry season? We’re all out of luck. Has it snowed a lot? We need to go to the garden and remove snow from the greenhouse roofs and maybe shovel it into the greenhouse so we don’t need to water early in the spring. These thought and behaviour patterns are built around care for the garden. Because if we take care of the garden, it will provide for us.
I feel that urban lifestyles are quite different (at least mine is). In the supermarket, I can most often buy whatever I want. Ensuring that my food and produce are properly seeded, planted, watered, protected, and kept fresh is someone else’s problem. Did I forget a bag or my takeaway cup? No worries; there’s a single-use substitute available for free or a small fee. Is it freezing outside? I can stay in my dry, warm apartment and see on my phone that the temperature will rise in a few days. No need to reflect how much Nordic nature needs the cold, snow, and ice for a sufficiently long period of time, even though I might prefer +10. Is the meeting far away, and is it unpleasant outside? No worries; no need to walk all the way and feel the heat or cold or mist because the bus (or for many, a car) is right there. That's all for a low fee of 3 euros and the low, low cost of not getting to smell the grass and flowers, hear the bird songs, or see the neighbourhood squirrels run up a tree. Want a cozy evening of relaxation or help falling asleep during a heatwave? We've got you! Just put on the electric fan and turn on some tropical rain sounds on YouTube! (BTW, did you know that some of the rain sound audios on YouTube actually are sounds of chicken being fried?)
I keep noticing how urban environments have been built and maintained in a way that reduces the need for and opportunities to interact with nature. Both the pleasant moments and processes of nature and the unpleasant, inconvenient, annoying ones. Commerce, infrastructure, technology, and the striving for convenience are mediating the relationships between urban humans and urban nature. The thinking about nature, the dependence on natural processes, and the need to care for nature are displaced and designated to organizations, processes, protocols, and procedures.
Multispecies themes
Feels like I’ve been going on and on about convenience. But why? Primarily, I think it is critically important to reflect upon and challenge our expectations of convenience as we shift towards multispecies design, commerce, and living.
Design should rethink its glorification of convenience.
My reflections and grievances with convenience have prompted me to wonder if it is time for us as individuals, as professionals, and as a society to rethink our infatuation with convenience. Not everything needs to be smooth, easy, or convenient, with every detail tailored to meet as many arbitrary user needs as possible. By overdoing the work, we might be setting up our users and society at large for failure. If most or all the cognitive work is offloaded to operating systems, digital tools, and engineers, designers, and business professionals who build and deliver them, then some humans do not need to think anymore. Small inconveniences can also foster disconnect, dislike, and frustration towards those who are doing their best to deliver or provide something.
I’m not sure how to do this, or when, or how possible it is. I just have questions. How would we design our products and services if convenience was not the top priority? How would we research user needs if we focused on deep and meaningful needs like connection over quick, in-the-moment desire for convenience? What if connection to self, others, and nature were the top priority? Can we prevent escapism and cognitive offloading while delivering good services and products? What even is a good product or service if we remove convenience as an evaluation factor? Would that be accepted by businesses? Or is selling convenience the top choice for short-term profit-making at the cost of human connection to nature?
I don’t know how to answer those.
Multispecies co-existence and cohabitation is inconvenient
Maintaining and strengthening our ability to connect and co-exist with human and nonhuman others is another reason to challenge our focus on convenience. Because, let’s be honest, being around others can be greatly inconvenient. Sharing spaces and resources… Having a difference in opinions… Trying to meet contrasting needs… All of that comes with frustrations, disappointments, frictions, and hard decisions. If an individual is used to convenience, these emotions and feelings might be too much to bear.
Multispecies co-existence is also challenging. When was the last time you enjoyed being bitten by a mosquito? I doubt any of us will ever learn to enjoy that. How would you feel about a full ban on artificial urban lighting to save natural processes, support insects, and protect many species? Many of us living in towns and cities would find that appalling. Would you support the removal of half of the existing roads, parking lots, and paved paths to increase urban greenery and biodiversity? Not sure how many would find that acceptable at first. Would you accept rats, spiders, squirrels, and other beings your city might consider pests as an important part of the city's biodiversity that needs to be protected? Again, I’m not sure how most of us would feel about that.
The bottom line is: living with others and living in multispecies worlds is inconvenient. And it might be a good idea to start preparing for that.
The multispecies shift in design, business, and policymaking is and will be inconvenient
The final and main point that I want to make is that shifting our individual and collective thinking, values, priorities, practices, and actions towards multispecies co-existence will be inconvenient. Each of us needs to do work on becoming more thoughtful, educated, knowledgeable, tolerant, and emotionally aware as we expand our considerations to include nature. Doing work? Learning? Sounds like a lot of work… Sounds inconvenient…
Currently, multispecies design, justice, organizations, policy, and sustainability research are in their infancy. We, the researchers, practitioners, and educators, do not have all the answers. Likely, we will never have all the answers. I highly encourage us to drop expectations that there are clear, well-researched, step-by-step instructions for frictionless multispecies projects. There are none. And if someone is offering and trying to sell that to you, I would encourage you to check how much the creator actually understands about the topic. Also, I do not think that multispecies researchers will ever be able to provide generalized, 100%-approved, always-a-good-idea design features, such as doors for hedgehogs in urban infrastructure, that designers can take and easily implement in their work. I highly doubt that (but maybe I’m wrong).
Multispecies work requires emotional and mental labour to work on ourselves, on our inner thoughts, cognitive patterns and pathways, habits, and assumptions. It also requires sitting with the feelings of having contributed to destructive systems, of not knowing, of being lost and confused, of being frustrated with others for their negligence towards nature. Multispecies work also requires the additional labour of advocating to others, trying to shift the discussion, and sometimes facing ridicule, smirks, and blatant rejection. Such work is neither easy nor convenient.
The most convenient path forward is to stay on the human-centered path. But if you are reading this, you likely understand that the convenient path leads us into a catastrophe.
Closing remarks
A brief essay I had envisioned for this week has somehow evolved into a more extensive (and hopefully at least somewhat coherent) exploration. I likely have overlooked important ideas and considerations. I likely also overgeneralized in places.
But my main point remains: we as individuals, creators, and society need to rethink our relationship with convenience. Blind striving for convenience is disconnecting us from ourselves, our abilities and capabilities, our friendships and relationships, and, most importantly, from nature.
If any of this resonated, comment below.
If you can think of someone who might benefit from reading this, share with them!
Hope to catch you in the next one!
If you are interested to know more:
VOX article “Your phone is destroying your social life: Technology and the cost of convenience, explained”
Draft paper from 1998 (!) “Convenience, schedules and sustainability” by
Alan Warde, Elizabeth Shove & Dale Southerton, Lancaster University (Open Access)
Youtube video “How Convenience is Ruining Your Life (and what to do about it)” by Sayaka Wakita
Pre-print of paper “Modeling Changes in Individuals' Cognitive Self-Esteem With and Without Access To Search Tools” by Mahir Akgun and Sacip Toker (Open Access)
Paper “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking” by Michael Gerlich in Societies journal (Open Access)
Multispecies digest
Lighthearted yet research-informed analysis of situations, projects, and life through the multispecies lens. Paired with bi-weekly video lectures on multispecies and more-than-human design, decision-making, and business for those who want to know more.