Public Spaces: Ideas of the Future with My Nguyen, Lionel Ohayon, Sashi Caan, Kristian Englund and Paris Swann
My Nguyen of Holland America Group hosts a panel of design thinking and innovation experts to discuss the future of the cruise industry and how to innovate in times of crisis. Joining My are Shashi Caan, SC Collective, Paris Swann, associate vice president of architectural design for Royal Caribbean Group, Kristian Englund, senior architect at YCA Design, and Lionel Ohayon, principal and founder of ICRAVE.
Watch the panel by clicking below, or read the full transcript.
My Nguyen (00:00:11):
Hi everyone. My name is My Nguyen from Holland America and Seabourn calling in from Seattle, Washington. I'm your moderator for today. We have an amazing panel of big picture thinkers talking about Public Spaces: Ideas of the Future. What if? What does that even look like? And we're going to start by having every panelist introduce themselves, and then I'll dive in to some questions about what these talented future thinkers think about future of design. Let's start with you, Shashi.
Shashi Caan (00:00:44):
Hi, I'm Shashi Caan. I'm from the SC Collective here in New York City. We have a firm in the UK as well. We are multidisciplinary designers and very much concerned with the future of design. And so we do a lot of research and we think about those future ideas, especially in this moment where we know that we desperately need to be thinking ahead.
My Nguyen (00:01:14):
Thanks, Shashi.
Paris Swann (00:01:17):
Hello, I'm Paris Swann, associate vice president of architectural design for Royal Caribbean Group. I lead the design teams for celebrity cruises as well as two-week cruises, and I've been with Royal Caribbean now for four years. Excited to be part of this panel and discussion as innovation and design excellence is the backbone of what we do at Royal Caribbean and is so much part of our DNA. So this discussion is close to heart.
Kristian Englund (00:01:56):
Hello, my name is Kristian Englund. I'm a senior architect in YCA Design. We're based out of Oslo and we do ship design, interior and exterior next to also getting involved in the complete ship design space from A to Z through these lead architect roles that we often have on these projects. My reason for being here today is to talk a little bit also about technology and the fact that I have been involved in certain projects with sustainability and technology inspiration, and I want to try to give my input on how I see that into the future of ship design.
Lionel Ohayon (00:02:52):
Hello, my name is Lionel Ohayon. I am the founder and creative director at ICRAVE. We're a design and innovation studio out of New York City. Our fascination is with the experience of space. And we have an incredible team, multidisciplinary, working at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds that we all live in. We have some great experience doing cruise ships and airports and hospitality, and even hospitals. All sorts of new avenues. And what I think it interesting about this conversation today about public spaces is really how much it has to say about the future for all of our spaces. So I'm happy to be here and joining this conversation.
My Nguyen (00:03:34):
Awesome. Thank you for joining us all from significant corners of the world. So, as innovators, we can give hope of what's next. How are we handling innovation in a time of crisis? Shashi, do you want to start by talking about your broad experience of what you're observing from different industries from the world? We're in a type of crisis now. How are we dealing with innovation?
Shashi Caan (00:04:03):
Oh, my goodness. Good question. So, COVID, this pandemic, has hit every single country in the world. There are 195 countries, or 194, depending on how the UN identifies them. And we know that data has been reflected from at least 188. We know that this pandemic has hurt everyone. Every industry. We're grounded. There are restrictions galore. Health and safety is a serious concern. Our economics are destroyed across the world, and we know that education is disrupted across the world. Every industry, every job, all of our lives, every demographic. So we know that we were given, not just one lemon, but just a bucket of the sourest lemons that we could possibly have. And what's interesting about this from our perspective and our practice as we work on multidisciplinary projects is that we know that we've actually sort of seen this coming.
Shashi Caan (00:05:14):
While the pandemic hit a little unexpectedly, the virus was not expected, we know that we were in this period of massive disruption. A renaissance, so to speak. We know that we needed to rethink all our processes. We needed to think about the integration of design education, ideas and how we manifest those in appropriate ways to support human activities. So, this is where we are. And then, if we stay with this idea of the lemons, of course there are many, many ingredients. We can approach this from any perspective. We can be creative. Certainly one of the biggest ingredients is creativity and innovation.
Shashi Caan (00:06:08):
We almost need to reinvent ourselves. We know that we can't do that alone given our time pressures and our resources, so collaboration is essential. These conversations are the backbone of what needs to happen. We know that we need to do it fast, so speed is one of those ingredients. We know that technology is going to shape everything. It's the biggest ingredient that is holding us together and allowing us to have these conversation and experiences. And I suppose if there is one thing in this massive, big bucket of unknowns, we know that we have to experiment, explore, do new things and that while we always think of that as this sort of allowance of failure, failure Caanot be seen as an option for us anymore. We have to think of failure as eliminating the possibilities for our abilities into the future. So we know how to do this in our own private bubbles.
Shashi Caan (00:07:26):
And, of course, the theme of this seminar is so timely, insightful, because it's where we all come together. The human needs are what drives us, and our intrinsic human needs aren't going away any time soon. We need the companionship. We need the comradery. We need to come together to discuss those ideas as we shape those public places and spaces that will allow us to innovate and become ever better.
My Nguyen (00:07:59):
I love how you are linking our environment to our emotion, because it is so emotion to tie the two. And sometimes people are just thinking of one without the other. So that's interesting that you're talking about a time of renaissance, and I'm curious to hear from the other panelists. Do you feel like this is a time and a tipping point, that we should be changing forever? Or people that are holding on to going back to normal? What are your thoughts on that as future thinkers? Do you want to start with you, Lionel? You're on mute, Lionel.
Lionel Ohayon (00:08:41):
Sorry about that. I think it's important for us to really take a step back from where we are today, put it into context of other things that have happened for us around the world in the context of history, and say what do we really believe the opportunity for change is? What will we go back to? And take the default for how life was beforehand and chart a path forward. For the design community, largely, it's an opportunity for us to stake a claim and decide what seat at the table we want to have in shaping that new world. I think that that' critically important as a conversation. I think people have to ask themselves in their studios, in their design teams, in their offices, what is our role right now to move that conversation forward?
Lionel Ohayon (00:09:31):
I'll tell you, when we did our first project in healthcare, we realized that our opportunity to impact the outcomes of healthcare had to put a circle around medicine. We don't do any of that stuff, so what can we actually affect? Can we have a positive effect on the outcomes of people in hospitals being a design team, and what is our goal? And so we set a goal that we want to create a hospital that could actually be an active participant in your cure. Can we do that? What can we learn from how people behave and their emotions and the environments that they live in? How can you change the perception of walking into a cancer hospital from the most horrific experience of your life to actually saying I might go there two hours early because it offers me an opportunity that I didn't otherwise have, and it's opened these doors for me that I didn't see?
Lionel Ohayon (00:10:21):
So for me, we have to take this as an opportunity. I think, largely, people will go back to the way it was. That's human nature. There's behaviors where we're creatures of habit. In the world that we all exist in, I think you'll see great changing. You'll see all these studios trying different ways of collaboration. What does it mean to work together? How can we decouple people from being slaves to design and work? There's a lot of industries like that, where maybe we can find a better work-life balance. But largely I think what I see as an opportunity and what I see as where we can go from here isn't so much about the effect of what we're going through in this pandemic forward. It's just an opportunity to pivot. How do we want to see that pivot, and what are we willing to take on as a community to actually lead that charge?
My Nguyen (00:11:15):
Playing off of the opportunity to pivot, Paris, what are your thoughts from the cruise industry side? Is this an opportunity to go into the future or is there discussions about staying past normal and going into the future? What are your thoughts?
Paris Swann (00:11:36):
Yeah, absolutely. Much along the lines of what Lionel just mentioned, I think this is an opportunity. I think the situation we're in, as trying and troubling as it is especially in the cruise industry, it's presented lots of new challenges. I do think that it's an opportunity to make that pivot and to look even further into the future. From our perspective at Royal Caribbean Group, this is an opportunity. We're not operating under the constant daily pressures of our normal lives. We are under different pressures, sometimes heavier and more unknown. But I think we have a great opportunity to innovate even past the immediate future or past a concern around what does post-COVID look like, and to leverage that innovation for a much longer term.
Paris Swann (00:12:39):
We're taking advantage of this down time. We're studying every possible way we could improve and innovate across operations, across design, across integration. And I think it's the prime time, and it will be what we make of it. I think as designers, we have the unique position of being creative problem solvers to be able to drive that even further.
My Nguyen (00:13:10):
I'm just going to put a general question out there. What does reimagining look like, in your opinion? Shashi, do you want to take that on first and then to Kristian?
Shashi Caan (00:13:24):
Sure. Some of the things that we've always thought were broken is that while designers are at the forefront of leading change, we often don't. Often what we do is regurgitate. And we regurgitate because we have pressures and because there is an industry and an expectation that exists. And so I've always thought that the responsibility of the designer is to reimagine, but to reimagine with such a level of responsibility that we give back something that begins to work. Now in this moment in time as we pivot, that's a fantastic word, I do happen to think that it is a time of reinvention. It's not just changing direction. We are at a pretty critical moment in our history.
Shashi Caan (00:14:35):
We have had a lot of circumstances of coming to a major juncture, and then COVID hits. And if we have to pivot out of this and if we have to go back, yes, we can look at all of our history, we can look at our new technologies or old technologies. And there are many answers we don't have, but one of the places where we can very easily go to is human nature. It's the essential nature of who we are. And the fact is that human beings are a resilient species. We find a way to overcome adversity and change and we transform. Well, we know that we're challenged with ideas of certainty. What does it mean to feel certain about going into a public place and know that I'm not going to contract a virus? And maybe I'm not concerned for me, but what about the other people that I'm coming into contact with? Should I be concerned? Where is the responsibility with that?
Shashi Caan (00:15:44):
What about our ability to grow in this moment? How do we feel safe? How do we contribute back? How do we build this resilience? How do we reimagine that public space? I think that... A couple of people have talked about this, pivoting back to human needs. Well, there is a physical, there is a literal, there is an emotional, there is a psychological, there is a perceptual. Then there is a phenomenological. We've never integrated phenomenon back into an active ingredient that designers use. But certainty we can work with perception, we can work with emotion, we can work with psychology. But we now need to integrate those components to rebuild into our design process so that we can deliver environments back to people where we are fully supported.
My Nguyen (00:16:56):
Reinventing. Yeah.
Lionel Ohayon (00:17:04):
The reimagining of the world we live in is happening in front of us, right? The world is being reimagined. So you don't have to take on the burden of reimagining a new world. In a lot of ways, that's really liberating. The world is being reimagined. Like you said earlier, Shashi, it's happening before we dealt with this pandemic. So this pandemic is actually an opportunity to really say, well, has this accelerated things? Has this set the tone for a new way forward? That's not conjecture. It's not futurist thinking. Let's take advantage of understanding that the things that we thought to be true, which were largely functions of a society that built a certain system, aren't true anymore. In doing so, how big of a challenge can we take on in reimagining?
Lionel Ohayon (00:18:01):
I've talked about can we take on traffic? Can designers affect the future of the ecological world without just thinking about the materials we use. If we think of a city that no longer is bound by the confines and the constructs of a 9 to 5 system, because now people have learned that they can work at home, they can go to the office, it doesn't need to be so defined along those lines. Might we then affect traffic? And if we affect traffic, what's the impact for our cities? Reimagining using bicycles and bicycle lanes and walking cities, and all those parts that start to unfold simply because we just understood something that just happened which is like, oh. I don't have to be at work at the same time on a five-day schedule and leave at the same time, which is a remarkable thing that humanity has not figured out yet.
Lionel Ohayon (00:18:55):
So there's little tiny things that are just effervescing around us. Like, oh, we can reimagine this. The idea of what public space means, what it means to go on vacation, which is directly related to cruise ships. What does that even mean today? How long will you spend on a vacation if you're not bound by these constructs? So I think the reimagining part is there. It's just like, what part of it do you want to grab on to and which way do you want to run with it? [crosstalk 00:19:33]
Shashi Caan (00:19:33):
To add to this, yes, it's all of that. But it's also an opportunity to go deeper. We can do with this moment whatever we want. And we will come out of it, and there will be a world and much of it may look and feel the same, and yet things have shifted. And so I'm reminded of an Aristotle quote. Talking of going back in history, the philosophers we are thinking of the meaning of life. And he at one point said that "The end of labor is to gain leisure." And so, if labor is this 9-5 job and that's what shifted, and it has been shifting for the last two decades almost, we've had a number of opportunities where we thought our workforce was going to work from home. How many times have we done that?
Shashi Caan (00:20:24):
In my career of 25 years, I think it's three times where we've designed massive offices working with [inaudible 00:20:32] my former firm where we were putting all the workforce to work remotely. Now we're forced to. So things have changed, and I guess for me going back to basics means can we rethink those ideas of what is labor? What is profession? What is thinking? What is creativity? What is leisure? What does it mean to connect with people? Where do I need to come together to rest and relax if resting and relaxing for me, working remotely from home, means I can take a break whenever I want. I can go lie on the sofa, get an ice pop because it's not hot, and just say, okay, I'm now resting.
Shashi Caan (00:21:19):
So I just think that there's a collapse of time and space. And in that moment, without getting too... I appreciate this is not so accessible. But at one extreme, as creatives, we have the opportunity to start in that place. And of course we can scale back and come all the way back. What's the next step I'm going to take from here to there? How do I just literally work in the restaurant down the street, have their panels that keep me separated from people? How am I going to make sure that I haven't touched anything? There is that level of the immediacy of this. I just think we have an opportunity to seriously rethink. Certainty for the next 15 months, we've got this dilemma. So we have a little time, and maybe we have enough time to put creativity first.
My Nguyen (00:22:22):
Yeah. Creativity and design and technology. [crosstalk 00:22:28]
Lionel Ohayon (00:22:27):
Let's just go back and forth on that, because I think it's an interesting thing. You're talking about the space between the absolute and the esoteric, right? The expansion and contraction of space and time is definitely a conversation I can have with you ad nauseum because it's something that fascinates me and I talk about it all the time. I get a lot of glazed eyes when I go on and on about it. But having said that. The immediacy of how should we fix a restaurant so we can go to the restaurant now. Those are the two spectrum ends. You're like, I need an answer for tomorrow. I want to go to a restaurant tomorrow. And then there's, well, how do we rethink futuristic thinking into what a society could be?
Lionel Ohayon (00:23:09):
Those are the spectrum. Where we need to decide as professionals is, professionally, where do you want to take this thing as it moves in the direction now? And what we've always done as architects and designers and thinkers is not taking that road to concrete solutions. And other people stepped in and took it for us and said why didn't architects and designers and philosophers and thinkers do that? It's because we were thinking about what it could be in 200 years. And that's an important endeavor as well. Because of what's happened now, because change is at our doorstep, every developer, every client of mine is calling right now is calling because they want something that they haven't seen before.
Lionel Ohayon (00:23:55):
And so the opportunity at hand right now is to grab that moment and to shift forward into what does retail look like now? Start drawing now. What does that look like in two years from now? What does a cruise ship look like now, and hos is that going to look two years from now? So that we can actually move that ship. No pun intended. Move it a little bit into the direction that you want to go in. So to me, the message for me is that's a critical piece of the puzzle today that people need to roll their sleeves up and start thinking that way.
My Nguyen (00:24:34):
So Kristian and Paris, is that happening? Does the cruise see change and innovation as necessary?
Kristian Englund (00:24:43):
Absolutely. I think innovation is a necessity. We have to look at what is change and what is innovation. Because if you look at many things that you are designing and changing, it's not really innovation. And I want to use the example of food service in the cruise industry. How it started out with the more formal three-course meals served in a main dining room. And then, to put a point to this, I think the next generation development was that a la carte and all these things started to come in, which I think probably came from the demands in the market. That they wanted to have more options and people wanted to have more diversity.
Kristian Englund (00:25:48):
But now we are going through this special situation with the virus and COVID-19 and all these things. I think the cruise industry had already started going in the direction before COVID-19 to look into more street food, all these things, which we're drawing from the land-based input. And I think now we can start looking really at how to reimagine the food service and how to turn it upside down. Because I think that, in order to innovate, you need to solve multiple problems. It's not enough to just go with the flow or the demand from the market. You have to put some extra ingredients.
Kristian Englund (00:26:41):
And to pull this back to technology, I would like to reference this phrase coming from Shashi about what kind of ingredients do we put into the lemonade when the lemons are the main ingredients? And I think technology is something that doesn't have a taste, it doesn't have a color in the lemonade. It's not about the microchips and the wires, but it's a taste enhancer that we as designers need to use to enhance all the other elements. All the way from human factors to physical surroundings. All that in the mix. So I think that is the important thing. [crosstalk 00:27:35]
My Nguyen (00:27:35):
What are your thoughts, Paris?
Paris Swann (00:27:37):
I would agree. I think there's an opportunity on so many scales here. To your point, Kristian, yeah, you can make small changes. You can elevate design. You can make things a little bit better here and there in an incremental way, but I think it's about looking at all of the opportunities. The most immediate in stretching our thinking of really what can designers affect? How can designers influence this new evolution or these changes that are happening just by nature of the situation we're all in? To Lionel's point about traffic, I think that's a great idea. You're thinking about things that they're not what people typically would consider in the realm of design background of teams that we work with.
Paris Swann (00:28:27):
But I think, when we start to expand our thinking and we start to look at all of the small changes we can make that can start to... It might not be innovation, but more evolution of the existing systems that we have. And being able to have the strategic mindset to look out all the way to the physiological, the psychological, the emotional needs and how our society can evolve. To me, it's exciting because there's so many different levels at which we can contribute to that conversation as designers. And I think, especially with our focus in public spaces and coming from the cruise industry, essentially the cruise ship is a microcosm. I always joke, and before the pandemic it never seemed to hit me, the irony. But we build floating cities.
Paris Swann (00:29:24):
So to find a way to apply that kind of mindset, that creative design thinking towards the problems that are all the way from materiality and what's safe to touch and where can germs reside on materials, to the way that people flow through space, the operational changes that are necessary in the immediate term, all the way through to what is leisure? What do guests need psychologically and emotionally and physically from an experience? And what is, in my mind, exploration? There's leisure, which we provide, and we provide plenty of entertainment and lots of things to do and distract from, but there's also an element of hospitality that I think is so critical, and it's one of the reasons I fell in love with it, is the curiosity, the exploration.
Paris Swann (00:30:20):
It's leisure with access to a broader viewpoint. And it's that combination, I think, that is really unique and can help launch us into examining those larger question. It's all a matter of planning it out and finding the time and creating those structures and empowering designers to examine those questions, big and small and medium. So, for me, the time is now. And to take advantage of this moment is the best thing that we can do with our skillset to contribute to that positive evolution and innovation across all levels of public spaces and how we use them to interact and facilitate our lives.
My Nguyen (00:31:06):
Do you think the next phase of cruising is to go more high-tech? To change the public spaces into different concepts of leisure? We hear a lot about touchless right now because of the adaptation to COVID. That has to do with technology. Probably a lot of artificial intelligence. There's a lot of spinning plates or things to rein it down. I'm sure the audience is wondering, what is a public space going to look like when we start cruising again? What are your thoughts?
Paris Swann (00:31:43):
I think there's a lot of things that are more immediate. Like the notion of touchless and using technology to sort of facilitate a safer cruising experience is definitely more immediate. Probably in the next two to three years is going to be the big focus. But I think we're looking at that experience as we also can't take away the socializing aspect. We recognize that there is a big reason that people gravitate towards the cruise experience, and it's not to look at their phone to see entertainment. It's not to dine 20 feet from the next table and to not meet their neighbor. There's a community feeling of being on that ship and being part of small floating city that technology can either help support or sometimes even get in the way of.
Paris Swann (00:32:43):
So we see those adaptations to the current situation as more literally that, adaptations, and small scale innovations in terms of how we access a self-serve food venue, or how do we manage flows, how do we manage masked people, how do we look at mustering and those kinds of issues? And we see those as the immediate problem to solve, to help with. But there's an opportunity here to examine the longer-term picture of what the cruise experience can be. And so far, we've done really well at filling everyone's days with a menu of all the different things they can do. If you've ever read a cruise program, it can be a little dizzying in terms of the options available. But I think in the future it will less about having every flavor on the menu and more about gearing our experience towards and satisfying those larger emotional, psychological, physiological needs of our guests and supporting that kind of change in that thinking.
Paris Swann (00:34:01):
It's not going to be a huge change from what they see now in terms of the guest on board. It's going to be the changes that we need to make sure that it's safe and that it works. But I think that this is a moment where we can start to reexamine, what is the ships that are going to be debuted in 4, 5, 6, 10 years, what do they need to be? And how do they need to adapt to the COVID world but also to the future of travel?
My Nguyen (00:34:35):
Thanks, Paris. Kristian, what are your thoughts on where technology plays in all of this? There's a huge delta. There's ships that have some technology but they're not really advanced, and then there are some ships that already are on that touchless road and can think for you and tell you where you want to eat or what you probably like to eat. So what are your thoughts for the future of cruising? Is that technology going to tip toward the more future developed technology?
Kristian Englund (00:35:10):
Yeah. I think even though there is various levels of technology depending on the concepts from different companies and how they use this technology, I think for the future, I really believe that we have to take it into account. By looking at the bigger perspective, when you look at the different generations since the seventies when cruising was young, how they have been on the ships, what they expected, and then you look forward. And now we are to my generation which is the Millennials which is born after 1980. We are now on the ships. We have families, we have kids, we're starting to use this also as young adults and couples.
Kristian Englund (00:36:06):
But there is the next generation, which I think much more will demand from us that we are looking into this aspect. And I like to use this example of you are sitting on a tram and then you see a three-year-old teaching Grandma how to use an iPad. And I like to try to imagine this three-year-old in 20, 25 years from now is going to be one of the customers of the cruise ships. And what do they demand from us? Then I think we have to be very specific about how we look at the interface. How they are leaving the ship and their surroundings. So for us, for example, how signage and communication, we know that digital signage was a big thing for a while. But that is already old, because it means you need to go over to that specific point and get organized. Which is fine for us, because we're used to looking at the phone or going places.
Kristian Englund (00:37:18):
But for the next generation, I'm trying to imagine what will they expect? To have the information presented directly, augmented reality has now bypassed virtual reality, and all these things. How do we enhance sense, tactility, all the things that people want to experience when they go on ships in the future. So I think we have to, from my point of view.
My Nguyen (00:37:45):
Lionel, Shashi, any thoughts?
Lionel Ohayon (00:37:52):
I think what's interesting is we always talk about technology and this big innovation. And you think about that two or three-year-old, even six-year-olds, right? They don't see technology as innovation they way we do, because they didn't see it before technology was there. It's kind of like the technology of a sole on a shoe. We just expect your shoe should have a sole so your feet don't wear out. You know what I mean? And so I always try to understand like you are, well, okay, so that's not part of the innovation cycle for kids. And ships, in a large way, are virtual realities. And they're even augmented realities. That's what they have been designed to be for people. To leave their reality and go into this either perfect or altered state, right?
Lionel Ohayon (00:38:38):
So, technology in a lot of ways needs to be... The dream of technology is that it's invisible, like you said. It's the additive. It's the thing that makes it better, but it's not in your face. So to the extent that the ships start to see themselves as opportunities for people to augment their reality... And maybe it's not an all-inclusive value proposition. Maybe the value proposition is completely different and has changed in a way that we maybe don't anticipate yet. Maybe it's a work profile. Maybe it's a wellness profile. Maybe it's all of the above, or different people can pick from a menu of things and somehow the ship comes together to answer those parts of your world that need to be augmented in your real life.
Lionel Ohayon (00:39:25):
For me, I always think about that step into the looking glass. You actually step onto a ship. You have left the world behind. So it's like, okay, what have you got? Right? Which cruise ship line is going to take that leap and completely alter the state of what the expectation is? I want to be involved when I find out, but I think somebody is going to take that leap and just say, let's blow it all open for a minute. My experience in the institution, it's a very interesting one-upmanship. We've got this, the tallest, the biggest, the longest, the first of. I want to make sure we have the first. And they're actually responding to a marketing profile that they need to actually put people on ships.
Lionel Ohayon (00:40:14):
It'll be interesting to see how that augmented reality on these cruise ships becomes something completely different. I think it's an encouraging moment for cruise ships, especially because there's so many being built right now, to say we'll have something completely new emerge and change the way that we understand that.
Shashi Caan (00:40:37):
This is why it's a renaissance moment. Because for the first time, we have the emerging generations who are so facile, for whom this technology is an extension of their human nature. And then for the older generations, it's not. When I think about what design needs to do, Lionel, in the last conversation, you said something like... Which I was really struck with because, as obvious as it was, I hadn't really connected it. Hospitals have hospitality in them. And it's going back to those very basic aspects of how we name things and the integration of what we need.
Shashi Caan (00:41:31):
So if today we are working, living, socializing, being entertained or entertaining, I wouldn't know where to begin sorting all that out to prepare for [inaudible 00:41:48] Because, yes, of course we want to address this tomorrow. But the reality is that in the next two years, unless any travel, it doesn't matter what, a hotel room, an automobile, a bus, a train, an airplane, unless you can make me intrinsically feel safe, I'm not going to do it. And that for me is where it comes back to basics of human nature. In our basic human nature... I love this idea of the microcosm, Paris, you talked about. I love the idea of, Kristian, what you said about change and innovation, the distinction between that.
Shashi Caan (00:42:36):
And yet, we don't have time to really take such baby steps anymore. Because it's collapsed. It's here. So I know that if I go on a vacation, my biggest reason for it, biggest need, is discovery and delight. Wherever I go, I want to be delighted. Now whether it's what Lionel said, this stepping onto this blown open, completely new experience and being absolutely delighted by it, not expecting it, or whether it's a need to just be super supported in a way that I can't be right now, or most importantly the social aspect. If I'm spending so much time alone, then how am I getting together with my loved ones or to meet new loved ones I want to meet? I don't know yet, but I need that. How are we going to do that?
Shashi Caan (00:43:38):
So for me then, this moment, while we do have to reimagine, it is imagining with a sense of wonder and addressing the immediate which is how am I going to make people feel safe and secure in the immediate? How am I integrating the social needs and finding that essential one ingredient that I have to leave my safe environment for? What will that be? And maybe that's reinventing everything, but maybe it is just this one little step. However, I know that it's probably bigger than change. And if innovation is always a little out of grasp, then somewhere we're being asked in this moment in time to move ourselves a bit further with our own creativity.
Shashi Caan (00:44:36):
So not easy. Because what I really want is just answers. Please, just let me resume my life so I can get back to normal. But we know that we'll never go back to that normal. We don't know what the new normal is, and yet there is this transition. And that's where I think that the creatives in the world, the designers, who have this one foot in this imaginary total creativity and on the other hand it has to be practical. We have to be able to give the real experiences, and it's got to meet all those criteria. It's not an easy walk. It's not an easy path to walk.
Shashi Caan (00:45:18):
So this culinary experience that we have, going back to the making lemonade, this is sort of a fantastic opportunity to have this diversity of experience and creatives together to say, well, what are those immediate ingredients that we can pull together? And then still, though, going back, it'll be shape, scale, size, proportion, texture, sound, smell. Can you get me an environment that smells clean? I don't want to smell Clorox, but can I smell the scents of antibacterial, whatever that is? Can I feel safe touching everything? Can I go hug someone, because I desperately need that? That's kind of back to basics in some respects.And maybe if we can go there and integrate the creativity and the intellectual intelligence and the emotional intelligence, we arrive with a new package of some sort.
My Nguyen (00:46:29):
Thank you, Shahi. Well, your ideas.. All of you have been so wonderful in your input. I have one more question for you before we close this great session. As innovators and future thinkers, chaos is an opportunity. And you've all demonstrated that, in this time of lemons, there are all these different ingredients for lemonade. And so, thinking in the future is something that excites us and we feel is needed. There is a mindset where by nature people are just frozen. Either with their head in the sand or holding on to past normal because they just don't know how to think ahead. What is some advice for you for people that may not resonate about thinking in the future? As future thinkers, grounding it to people in the now? Lionel, do you want to start?
Lionel Ohayon (00:47:33):
Sure. I often tell young designers who I meet that the most important thing they'll ever design is their own path. That, unlike any other time in history, there is no path that is set out for you. You have to figure out your path, and that's more important than any building or any project or anything. And I think that that's part of... There's so much anxiety today about the future. You can't enjoy the moment because everybody's worried about the future. Even this moment right now that is in so many ways a tragedy, obviously, but in so many ways this incredible gift to stop and breathe and be with the people you love and evaluate what you want your own future to look like.
Lionel Ohayon (00:48:16):
That's critical time well-spent. What have I gleaned from this thing so I'm just not rushing back to the way it was? I think that there's this big problem in our society today that's driven by technology that one needs to innovate, right? Innovation is important, make sure you innovate. And the why of the innovation isn't always there. It's just like, we're innovating because innovating is what we do. And there's this kind of sense that, wherever you're at, you're not there. I'm Canadian, so I just say it's about Americans. It's this typical American condition that you can never arrive. You're in pursuit of whatever it is that you want. The pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of innovation. The pursuit of a new, bluer ocean. Or whatever that thing is. Innovation and future thinking needs to reside in today, and it needs to understand its purpose for its movement to a new world.
Lionel Ohayon (00:49:14):
And I think that that's a critical thing that I see people in my studio get bound with. That they don't know if their ideas have meaning, if they're worth anything, because they're not something anyone's ever not seen before, which is virtually impossible in the first place. And I think the whole society is kind of hamstrung with this idea that tomorrow is this better place that we'll never arrive at. And that's why we have this kind of dystopian view of ourselves. Everything that comes out in television, all the popular series and everything, they prove this world of dystopia that is so clear. Everyone can identify with that. Oh, that world, I know that world. We're heading that way.
Lionel Ohayon (00:49:54):
To me, this future thinking is important to hold high in regard, the opportunity that the future is actually something beautiful and great, and the future that we've created... It's not only the things that make headlines that are terrible, and it's not only things that make headlines that are so innovative that they change the world, like an iPhone. And to me, that's a lot of what you have all been speaking about today on the panel. The emotion, the family, the need for community. What can we do to our world, because of what we just went through, that can say these are the people I want to be around. I know that now because I was just forced to be with them. Or these are people I don't want to be around. Or these are things I do want to do. These are things I don't ever want to do again.
Lionel Ohayon (00:50:38):
And then let those things that are existential changes in our lives lead the innovation, lead the kind of ideas that move forward to create a society where we can be happier and be more content, I think.
My Nguyen (00:50:56):
Great. Kristian, what are your thoughts? You're on mute still, Kristian.
Kristian Englund (00:51:11):
Sorry, here I am. What I would like to say is based on my personal experience about chasing innovation and how the world is getting more and more complicated, more and more information is available for more and more people. So I had all these ideas, and I thought in a way at the beginning that you have to have an idea and you have to double up it and you need to make it all work and go out there and have this great thing. But I've learned through the last 10 years that it never goes in the direction you want it to go. It always happens in a different way, and new stuff pops up that you didn't even imagine would happen when you started.
Kristian Englund (00:51:59):
And once I opened up to discuss more with people around me and start to look at, instead of me learning this piece of the puzzle because I need it, let's go talk to the greatest person that knows the most about it and get these people involved. And it has turned my development into something complete different, and now internally in YSA and also with other partners, we are now really looking at something great that could be a really meaningful platform for technology cooperation between the ship industry and the technology providers. So it's been a long process, but my point is to young designers and the people who are afraid of what's going on is to analyze and reach out and collaborate. And that's why I think this panel and what you did to have these discussions is so great. I think this is what we need to do more of. So that's what I think.
My Nguyen (00:53:13):
Thank you. Paris?
Paris Swann (00:53:17):
I would second that wholeheartedly. I think I'd give very similar advice to young designers that I've worked with. The most advantage that you can build for yourself and for your own contribution to all of the issues that we're currently facing and we might face in the future is to design your own path. And to design it not around a project or a specific title or achievement or even a specific idea, but more around a purpose. And I think if you focus your path towards a purpose, that will stay pretty consistent. I think a lot, unfortunately, of contributing factors to people feeling paralyzed or frozen in the moment that we're in right now, it comes from having so much unknown.
Paris Swann (00:54:13):
We're spoiled a bit in our society in terms of how much technology and other developments have allowed us to know, the certainty it's been able to bring us. And I think that there's value in understanding that your reaction of fear and paralysis is a reaction to not knowing, and that that is okay. And that is normal. And to recognize internally that the best thing that you can do, because these are answers that we're not going to have and that are going to constantly evolve and change as we understand more, that the best thing that you can do in the face of that uncertainty is to remain agile and to understand at your core your purpose. And how you want to contribute to the world and how you want to contribute to the design challenges of our industry but also the larger notion of innovation and the inherent evolution of our thinking from moments like this in society.
Paris Swann (00:55:25):
So my biggest soap box is always agility is the most important. You're not going to know all the answers, and you should probably get used to accepting that. Sooner rather than later, in my experience. The more you push and strive and hit the books and say I'm going to learn this new thing or I'm going to know everything about that, to Kristian's point, the more you're going to be disappointed. I think it's about reaching out. First you have to have that conversation with yourself and understand that I don't know much of much, and neither does anybody else, and that seems to be okay. And then sort of reach out to the people that do have that expertise or who do have that other purpose or who have identified where their path is, and learn and just absorb and be open to the possibility that in the future the path could shift, and that's okay.
Paris Swann (00:56:31):
So I think, for me, the most resounding message I'd like to send to designers and creative thinkers in this time is the sooner you can accept that we don't know the answers, the better. And once you can get there, you can start to actually explore what those answers could be. And you can experiment. And that's the fun part of innovation, right? And try to look at it from the point of view as an opportunity instead of an insurmountable challenge. And literally just break it down into bits. We say often, "The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. So get your knife, and get your fork, and sit down."
My Nguyen (00:57:15):
And get your lemonade.
Paris Swann (00:57:22):
Exactly. We've got a few elephants in front of us. Grab a fork. That's the only way.
My Nguyen (00:57:31):
Great, thank you. And Shashi, we would love to hear your closing thoughts on this.
Shashi Caan (00:57:36):
Well, gosh, everybody has already said so many amazing things. I get inspired and so many other thoughts get triggered. I would like for you to imagine with me, please. I saw this image in social media somewhere. I don't know who posted it, but it stayed with me because it was really profound. So imagine a school, a small, short corridor, knee-deep in green balloons. Balloons. Fully blown green balloons, knee-deep, whatever height you are. And the balloons apparently had names of the students of the classes in the school, and the teacher said, "Go find your balloon." And here we are in this corridor of balloons, and the kids can't find their balloon. Everybody's bumping in to each other. That's the chaos we're in.
Shashi Caan (00:58:35):
My, I think you started with "This is a chaotic moment." Yes, it is. That's the chaos. This is why that was poignant. So then the teacher said, "Okay, guys." Everybody's bumping around, nobody can grab a balloon. She said, "Okay, don't do that. Come back." They all ran back and she said, "Pick any one balloon. Just one at a time. Go out, pick one balloon." They picked one balloon. They all went and stood somewhere in a larger space. She said, "See the name on it and go find the person that has that name on it." And then, of course, they self-sorted.
Shashi Caan (00:59:10):
And I just always think that that's so profound, because that's the human ability. That's creativity in a pinch for me. That kind of connects back to... Both Lionel and Kristian talked a little bit about experience. Yes, this is our experience. When we learn from those experiences and if we're really open-minded and we rethink those experiences in different ways, we can rethink. Now, is that change? Is that innovation? I don't know, but surely it's creativity. And I do think that that's kind of the creativity. Those connecting really wild, amazing thoughts is what we need. And I think the future is now, and I think in this now future, our technology is in the likeness of us. [inaudible 01:00:09] is successful because it anticipates our questions. It makes the device easier to navigate even if I don't know how to. I don't need to know programming.
Shashi Caan (01:00:20):
Well, that methodology, that mindset, is what is going to be needed evermore. And so if I think about the most crazy, extraordinary, amazing, out of this world technology, I still think it needs to be grounded in human values. Who are we? What are our experiences? What do we need? What do we want? How do we experience them? What makes me feel a sense of discovery, delight, and what brings a smile to my face? If I can capture that, I'm good.
My Nguyen (01:00:57):
Beautiful, thank you. I think this has been a wonderful hour of discussion. The topic of this cruise conversation is Public Spaces: Ideas of the Future. And what I've been gathering is, there's really no cookie cutter answer to what a public space is going to look like. There's no wrong answer, there's no right answer. Because there's so many layers and elements of what we should be considering for what we're experiencing now and what we perceive as leisure in the future. And we hope that our audience has taken this audience to get inspired and have insights and listen to all of these great thoughts. Anything from emotion to technology and all of these ingredients that's making lemonade out of lemons in this renaissance time. So thank you so much to our talented panelists for your precious time. And this is the closing of our cruise conversations portion of Public Spaces: Ideas of the Future, and we hope to see you next time. Thank you so much.