In a small town in rural China, my colleague and I had just finished up a morning of group interviews with one of our client’s dealers when we were informed the hosting owner wanted to take us to lunch. He came outside with a huge grin, yelling to his assistants, smiling, and shaking hands. Our translator let us know he wanted to take us to the best restaurant in town. I absolutely love the food in China, it just doesn’t always love me, and in this small town even the proposition of ‘the best restaurant in town’ worried me. But we couldn’t disappoint our host, so we hopped in our van and followed his convoy.
Wow was I glad we did. Upon arriving at a small rural strip mall, we entered the lobby to see the grandest seafood selection I had ever seen. I’ve been to China plenty of times and had some world-class meals there, but this selection topped them all. Our host began pointing at fish and crustaceans and then looked at us for a thumb up or down. After selecting what seemed like 27 items, we made our way to a private room upstairs.
As the meal began, our host quickly expressed a sentiment I had heard before on business trips to China, “We are so happy you are here to help our business and improve our technology.” This expression of honest gratitude was quite humbling to receive. In truth we were there to help our client figure out how to sell his dealership more product. But in the grand scheme, if a product is more innovative, solves more problems, lasts longer, or makes a daily task easier, everyone wins. Our host recognized this, knowing that a better product makes his business more profitable, but also improves the lives of many in his community.
This gentleman was not as wealthy or as educated as many of those I have shared meals with in China, but as we talked over dish, after dish, after dish of amazing seafood, his wisdom about the effects of innovation on his community was deep. He expressed how much his team admired western technology, and that they strive to improve their own manufacturing and quality. The key point he said was their largest barrier to innovation was their access to knowledge. Whether it’s their economic situation, filtered internet access, or lack of accessible education, he shared concern that they live with limited access to the world’s wealth of information. The reason he said his team was so enthusiastic about our visit was that we represented access to better technology. He and his colleagues were hopeful about the potential of their lives with simply a better product that we could design for them to use and sell.
As designers, we strive to solve problems, craft beautiful artifacts, improve efficiency with sustainability, so on and so forth, and all of these things are worth investing our lives and careers in. But on this day, in a village in China, I realized we can also provide something less tangible, but really even greater, and that’s hope. I admit that may sound extremely pretentious, as if my sheer wealth of American knowledge could bestow hope upon these Chinese workers. But if we handle this responsibility without self-aggrandizing, it’s really at the core of everything we should do. Every good deed, every act of love, and every piece of knowledge we share with a friend, colleague, child or stranger, builds upon another and cultivates hope. I have designed for a lot of reasons such as a paycheck, a passion, a problem, or a person. Let’s not forget to design for hope.