Curiosity as practice

Change is not an exceptional state we sit out. It is part of the work itself. Design keeps shifting through new technologies, new requirements, new social conditions, and new questions nobody asked before. The question is not whether we engage with that, but how.

Why curiosity is a competence, not a character trait

Design is a field that keeps changing. Curiosity is our answer to that. Anyone who waits until their own role is clarified from the outside slips into the reactive. Curiosity is therefore not a personality trait you have or do not have. It is an active decision: to engage yourself with what is happening now, instead of waiting until it catches up with you. That also means anticipating change and looking for where space for productive shift opens, before it becomes obvious. Such spaces often lie aside from client projects, where there is time to think without something having to be delivered at once. Sometimes it is the project itself that opens this space, because a topic can be useful there right now.

How we live this

• Share inspiration, discoveries, thoughts, and insights with the team. What one of us is finding or learning right now concerns the others too. No one is left to themselves as an individual, and still each person decides in the end what they take in and what fits their way of working.
  
  

• Go towards others. If you notice you can learn something from someone, or you are interested in how someone approaches a thing, seek the conversation and take what you can use for yourself.
  
  

• Try things out and perfect later. Working with a new tool does not have to be production-ready in order to get to know it. And what maybe goes wrong at first is much more material for learning than a setback.
  
  

• We run internal workshops not only on what a project currently demands, but on what interests and occupies us. In exchange with each other we process what is relevant for us right now, sometimes in a larger frame, sometimes also in a one-to-one in a smaller, focused session.
  
  

• Question what exists. Processes and stances are not carved in stone. Just because something has worked for a long time does not mean it is still the best solution. If it becomes clear that a flow no longer fits or a stance is out of date, we say so openly, even if it means questioning established routines everyone has got used to.

Your own part

Curiosity cannot be put on a slot in the calendar. It starts with questions you have to keep asking yourself: where could I use a little more openness right now? What do I simply accept without questioning it? What would I like to try? Which things around me are changing, or could become important in the future? Such questions are much more a stance and a habit than one-off checks. The more each person lives this curiosity and openness, the more it becomes a team that walks through the world with open eyes together. And it is exactly in that interplay that the real strength sits.