Good Design

I am not a tidy person, and 3D reasoning is not my forte, but I have a librarian's heart. I'm very pleased that after almost three months, I've got the book section and my sorting area in workable order.

The gift of the library cart has made a HUGE & instant difference. I am in love with the human brains who designed these carts.
 Good design is a Liberator.

Design includes emotional design too. The feel of a place.
This bear helps with that. The bear is a cheering presence, and he holds my chair down when I'm gone. I asked a coworker if the bear did any work while I was gone, and he said no. (This coworker keeps telling me in his Chicago accent, "You're a funny lady.")

Here is the bear, amazed at the reappearance of my desktop, which had been buried for two months:

Overall, the thrift store is a marvel of poor design.
You know how hard it is to tap a tune out of rhythm? Poor design is way easier than that, of course––entropy being the rule of law––but still, I marvel at how awkwardly some of the work spaces are arranged. 

Sometimes things get rearranged . . . to make them worse.
This past week, the large clothes-sorting section was turned sideways, to make room for shelves (that no one wanted). 
Now the main clothes-sorter no longer sits under the lights.

"There's nothing you can do," she told me.

Ayayay! I think this kind of powerlessness is a poverty-survival strategy. Most of my coworkers have been poor since childhood.

"Nothing I can do" is a relative of "not my circus"--adopted not because you're not the owner or ringmaster of the circus, but because you're one of the animals.

NOT ideal, but when you really are trapped in an unjust situation, it makes sense.
Stops you from eating your heart out.

It's just that sometimes we DO (or could) have power to change some things––some things, some times––but when those times arrive, we miss them if we've sunk into accepting that we don't.

Good design includes good social design. Have  you seen that the Poor People's Campaign is being resurrected? (Guardian article on Rev William Barber, who is behind that.)

 Boy, is it ever needed. Poverty as I'm seeing it at work is like mud. 
It's NOT the lack of things––a coworker showed me pictures of her apartment that looks like a House Beautiful shoot, furnished entirely with things from the store––it's the lack of power that clumps around your ankles and sucks you down...

How to design systems to help people lift themselves out of that?
Rev. Barber says,

“I think failure is not having a vision,” he says. “The sin would be not to have an ambitious goal.
. . . Great men and women of the past are no longer here,” he said. “But we are their children. It is our turn now to change the country. The first victory is when we decide to fight together.”

________
Meanwhile, the Orphan Reds, inspired by the Vietnam War docuseries (they are too young to watch it, but they were still inspired), they have started to document the stories of the other toys.
Here they listen to Lion. 

Lion suffers from PTSD from life as a keychain (first thing I did was cut the loop that held the heavy ring metal on his head), and then being tossed in the thrift store dumpster, where I helped him escape.
 Did I already post this here? From FB: