For the Unseen

^{Dawn Lee Qing Hui}

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I have always found myself lingering at the edges of conversations, of rooms, of moments,

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Rarely feeling the urgency or need to speak, rather so I felt better not to. Instead, I found reasoning and motive between each word, particularly the silence after, to simply process and take it all in carefully. There is a kind of clarity that comes with staying quiet. The kind that isn’t loud but precise. You begin to notice the smallest things, the slight hesitations in tone that could possibly suggest something else entirely, the tension behind certain words. I grew up watching those small messages, not words but what is sat upon and simply everything in between them.

This is where I started to get interested in the field of design. While sitting in the silence and just absorbing what is around me, I was able to feel something, some solace maybe, through the designs that surrounded me, regardless it being of objects, messages, posters or anything at all. I found that instead of conversations that were floating around, there was something in the design that felt like it was speaking directly to me.

Messages that were not screaming for attention, but still reached me, deeply. Sitting on train rides, walking past bus stops, the streets, neither bold nor loud, yet felt like the designs around understood something.

One of the first pieces that reached me was a simple subway campaign, a muted poster with nothing but a single line in the corner stating: “The city never sleeps, but maybe you should.” It didn’t brand itself. It didn’t call for interaction, it just existed softly, in your periphery. I stood looking at it longer than I thought I would, thinking about the reason behind it, as it made me feel seen in a way.

That moment stayed with me.

There were others, like “Dear Data” project by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, where it was a medium for intimate, hand-drawn correspondence. A kind of data that listened first and not cold or statistical.

At first, I thought that design was simply about expressing ideas. About sending messages without using words. About taking what someone could not say and saying it for them, in a clear and powerful manner. And there is still truth in this. But over time as I got more into what design is about, I started to question what it meant to “give a voice”.

Thinking that maybe it is about sitting with what is hidden, not simply sending a message out or to fix or translate it, but to let it be understood on its own terms.

I realised that within each pause and space, I began to notice those who might just be like me. The way that someone might be going through a problem, and their voices are just not loud enough, that it goes unheard or hidden. Albeit, they themselves may not know or be able to identify the core of the issues themselves, yet are still experiencing and voicing out the symptoms, screaming it even.

The same way, problems, and I mean chronic, underlying, buried,

problems

The problem isn’t that people aren’t speaking.
It is that they are speaking all the time. Yet still not heard. Not even by themselves.

We are overstimulated.
Fed with content before we could even feel our own thoughts.
Consuming more, understanding less.
Even when we become aware of it, we don’t stop.

We continue even when our minds ache.
We let more content in again, telling ourselves that this is the last time.

A kind of addiction.
Be it to media, to movement, to noise. Or to not being alone with ourselves.

Coming up with the Digital Regulatory Authority (DRA), made it even clearer to me. The way it heard the issue, the underlying problem, the one that was never said aloud. The way that even when we are all clearly overstimulated by the abyss of content out there and yet still not stopping. While I was trying to understand the core of it all, I learned that we all require some assistance in restraining, though it sounds bad literally. I decided to dive deeper into it, somewhat like the behind the scenes. I realised that it was all within the silence when it happens.

When designing DRA, what went through was that I wanted a way where I could help users make and free up space, where it shapes the in-between-things in peoples’ lives, understanding the emotional weight behind it. To not be eaten away by what was somewhat considered inevitable due to the society that we grew and live in. As this was a problem that required a bold solution yet requiring a quieter kind of care.

It is a response to the noise.

Overstimulation is not a trend to be fixed or to be aware of, but a symptom of our collective difficulty in stopping.

We designed a space. A pause.
A moment where a user might stop the constant absorption of content, because they are allowed to, and they could.

Because it met them in their fatigue. In all that fog.

Letting them know that there is meaning in stillness.
That there is no need to keep going just because everything else does.

A design where it helps users realised they are overwhelmed, without overwhelming
them further.

That it is a ‘together’ movement.

Listening to everything in-between, I wanted to ensure that my designs are heard by all even the quietest ones, we are all here, a community as one. There is someone out there. Despite so, realising that there is just so many ways a design could be interpreted, we are all still different. Thus, listening longer and more through the pauses of others, is what designers do, to sound into the silences, not to fill them, but to understand what they hold.

In my approach to design now, I return time and time again to that quiet space, to understand what is not yet ready, where nothing has quite been formed but feelings. In a way I felt that there are designs that listens before speaking, and more on its presence.