To the people I have never designed for

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A short story on an unrealised project and a declaration of intents

Some years ago I wrote a piece on how I almost got blind in my left eye due to a corneal infection, how I then almost completely recovered my sight and how the healing process had an impact on my emotional approach to the practice of giving a shape to data.

In my mind there has always been a connection between seeing, not being able to see and my job — a job that at the moment doesn’t talk to the people who don’t have this ability — but it was a latent connection.

Last year, in September, I had a conference in my hometown in Italy, Vercelli. At the end of the conference a member of the audience came to me and asked me if I had ever designed something for visually impaired people. I said no, but I added that I actually would have loved to and we talked about it shortly. Immediately after our conversation I started having an image in mind, of small sculptures of data made to be touched and explored by the people who can’t see my usual projects. The latent connection had just been revived, but at the time I was working on many projects at the same time, so I just kept that idea in my mind without doing anything practical.

Then in October I had the honor of being selected as a finalist for the Hublot Design Prize 2021 and I went to London to talk about my work to the jury. At the end of my talk, the jury member Hans Ulrich Obrist asked me if I had any unrealised projects and my answer was very instinctual: I told him how communicating to people is my main purpose and how there is a category of people I’m clearly not talking to. I mentioned the image of sculptures of data to be touched and that moment reinforced my idea.

But I have to be honest, now we’re in 2022 and I still haven’t officially started working on it, because of ongoing projects, lack of time, personal reasons, etc. I’ve been brainstorming about it for months with Paolo Corti, friend and developer who collaborated with me at many projects and who would work on it with me. The reason I’m writing this piece is to force myself to actually do it, because I think it’s time to bring this idea to life, and maybe to start a discussion about it with the “external world”.

I have some images in mind — small objects with different shapes and weights that people can touch or hold in their hands for instance, different textures, different materials and sizes. But the most significant aspect to me is to work on it with the people this project is meant for. My ideas can be a starting point, but they’re not important at the moment. What’s important is to understand with the potential users of this project the elements to work on to let them explore and touch stories in an effective and also engaging way.

I have some organizations in mind that I’d love to collaborate with and some ideas on the technical aspects that Paolo helped me to come up with.

So this is where I am at the moment. Is writing about it helpful somehow? I’m not sure. Maybe yes, it is. Is it interesting for someone to read this post? Not sure about it either. But I want to try to work on this unrealised project, to do something for the people I have never designed for and to start saying it out loud.