It’s a Multimodal Life
by Christian Delise
December 2022
One of my favorite holiday movies is ‘The Family Man’, a modern era variation on ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, where Nicolas Cage plays a wealthy Wall Street bachelor living a seemingly attractive life- he dates supermodels, lives in a Manhattan Penthouse, and drives a V12 Ferrari. After running into an undercover Angel, played by Don Cheadle, he is given a glimpse of what his life might have been had he chosen to marry his college girlfriend and settle down with two kids in New Jersey, working for his father-in-law as a tire salesman instead of following through with his original, career oriented plans. Cringeworthy humor ensues as he adjusts from a self steering life enjoying the finer things to a coupon clipping domestication full of compromise. It has all the ingredients of a feel-good holiday story, as he starts to fall in love with the life he missed out on. At this time of year, as we all break from our professions, it’s a healthy exercise to reflect on our own trajectories and take note of how we can be grateful for wherever we are in life.
What I find interesting about the culture of holiday films is the familiar time travel concepts of Charles Dickens era themes across the genre: A Scrooge-like protagonist who values money and status above all else is confronted by a supernatural entity which manipulates the timeline of their life in order to force appreciation and gratitude upon our main character, an anti-hero turned hero. Through this process of redemption via introspection, our hero predictably realizes what is missing from his life- family, love, and an appreciation for the simple things. As usual, he ultimately reverts back to reality and realizes he can have both financial success and quality of life, and that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive choices. This is an aspect which always spoke to me, as it applies to the struggle of all modern day professionals.
The relatable conflict in many of us is that we are naturally wired as competitive beings-having drive towards success is not a character flaw, rather a necessary survival instinct. Taking the reigns of designing ones’ own life by self-authoring is a healthy element for manifesting the best version of ourselves possible, yet it carries with it the necessity of sacrifice, as anything worth having in life requires. The main message here is that it is essential to maintain balance by not forsaking kindness, humility, and family in order to achieve our goals. Every religion presents a variation on this theme…there are countless hints that the Universe is rigged to reward those who can master the art of balancing both victory and virtue.
To find more constructive meaning in these lessons, let’s go full nerd and examine the correlation of allegorical storytelling to simulation theory and multi-dimensional universes. Using Back to the Future rules, we can assume the ability to jump between multiple timelines and realities, let’s call them ‘Modes’, and witness the effect that different decisions would have had on our life. Regardless of what Mode we are living at any given moment, it’s always possible to envision ways in which a given reality could be improved or worsened based on key milestones- typically these are choices involving Love and Purpose.
Imagine a sound wave or string from an instrument which is vibrating in variation between high and low. Each instance of the wavelength represents a potential timeline, with the most harmonious and truest being in the center of the mass. The more erratic the timeline, the greater the volatility between highs and lows. Finding both purpose in our profession and people to share it with directly translates to our perception of happiness. However this is not a depiction of perfection, noting that the string is in constant movement and the solid line in the middle is merely an illusion. As with any algorithm, there are positive and negative variables always at play with potential for extremes to be produced. If our life has balance, we can operate in an ideal flow state with all the elements necessary for producing the right notes. To some this looks like we have it all, but we know the sacrifices it requires to remain positive momentum. If our intentions are pure, the timeline typically always resorts to the mean, or center, of truth.
In the User Experience Design field, we might call this flow state the Happy Path. When designing a digital product or application, it’s essential that we architect the main mental-modes that our user will operate in and implement the most intuitive way to navigate these interactions in order to accomplish the mission of the service. Have you ever played a video game or used an application which left you stuck or at a dead end - the lack of progress forces you to give up, or settle. Our own life simulations are made up of countless objectives, goals, and challenges which we must navigate in order to reach achievements, and if we fail to follow the right route, we are susceptible to diverge into darkness. An essential part of this game, it seems, is to confront the other Modes nearest to you and become keen in identifying the qualities of the right paths between them. It is only through lived experiences that one can sharpen their focus on these traits- this is why the holiday allegories all require a fully immersive acid trip that the main character must experience in order for it to affect true change within them. The same rings true for life- the more experiences we embrace, the deeper the lessons we learn.
From a Design Strategy perspective, when we approach a product in early development there is an exercise we practice which involves the exploration of multi-modal paths. Multimodal refers to the variety of interactions (or actions) possible for accomplishing a given task. This concept is bi-directional in nature, meaning the interactions can be the cause and / or the effect of a given circumstance. In one case, different mediums of communication can be used to express the same message to the user-As an example, when you leave your car door open, there is an audible chime accompanied by a graphic on the screen, as well as the cabin lights remaining on- this is a Multimodal indicator. The same technique is applied in Marketing campaigns which span across different platforms: TV / radio / social media. The benefit in this approach is that the message is not only more engaging but also serves as a set of redundancies should a user miss one of the other signals. Sometimes life presents messages to us in different forms: verbal, visual, physical, emotional, in order to inspire a certain reaction so that we may alter our personal course for the better.
Another form of multimodal user paths in the design world could involve any combination of a variety of methods a user could utilize along their journey to arrive at the same destination. In a digital journey, that could mean clicking a series of buttons or using voice commands to execute the same request. In a more literal case, an individual taking the train, a bicycle, or car (or any combination of those) to arrive at the same address would be considered a multi-modal journey. Thinking of how to apply different modalities to solve unique design problems is a practice utilizing both imagination and practical efficiency. It’s worth noting that sometimes the shortest path, although most direct, can be the least rewarding, while taking the long route, while more entertaining, gets us lost.
Once we realize the potential that lies in different Modes of our life, we can become more adaptable to navigating and building the best version of our own reality. It can be daunting for anyone to realize the power inherent in this perspective. Over-analyzing the gravity of each decision can be paralyzing, if we allow fear to cloud each judgement. Alternatively, harnessing the ability to fully manifest whatever one wants requires sacrifices, often times grave ones. So how do we strike a balance to achieve both success and contentment?
Often times, in life, as in product design development, we must test these experiences in order to ascertain for ourselves which path is the ideal flow for our mission. These experiences are part of an evolutionary toolkit which make us better equipped to handle inevitable variables for each journey we take and therefore to be more successful in adapting to them. If life is a choose-your-adventure simulation, it is possible to analyze the potential routes and choose the best sequence of decisions, so long as we accommodate for variables along the way. In the most basic form of modalities, we have the fork- this is a minimal amount of scenarios, usually several, where you have very direct outcomes as the result of simple inputs. While there is beauty in simplicity, most of us are aware that our high fidelity lives are more akin to a tree branch, wherein each variable happens erratically and produces equally unpredictable outcomes. Adaptability via redundancies is therefore the key to thriving in any given field.
When an unforeseen event occurs in life, we may not have the blueprint for dealing with it, but we can better plan to be unprepared by realizing that there is an inherent lesson involved by discovering each contingency of options. My Grandfather used to call these life lessons ‘paying tuition’, meaning our education doesn’t end when we graduate a university, we are constantly presented opportunities filled with peaks and valleys. By this metric, the more opportunities we seize, the better educated we will become. This is typically why companies pay higher salaries for those with more dynamic experience. As the architects of our own journeys, the biggest mistake we can make is staying in one place and expecting there to be solutions waiting for us when confronted by change. Discerning the lessons within each experience means everything.
When we reflect on our lives and what we have accomplished, or more importantly, have yet to accomplish, applying a multimodal analysis can provide healthy clarity and understanding. Is there a magic formula to operating which gives us both the Ferrari and the Family? Unfortunately not, but there are principals which are linked to achieving whatever your heart can imagine. While it has become a cliche life hack, writing down and charting out your goals truly is the ultimate secret to success. The more details you can provide the better, however a critical element that is often missing from the exercise is leaving room for the definitions to change. Every entrepreneur is aware that there are many different forms of success for any given project and a multitude of ways to achieve success. It’s imperative to imagine the variety of possible routes to arrive at any given goal you write down. Multimodal design strategy can have a profound effect if applied to our own lives.
If you want to take things to the next level and get into the holiday spirit, write down every detail about your current life, professionally and personally, and work backwards to chart how you arrived here. At each key milestone, examine what alternatives might have been present at the time, and imagine how different a reality you might have manifested had you chosen them. This is true introspective multimodal thinking. It can be an intimidating and oftentimes emotional exercise. Part of the purpose is to find gratitude for your current Mode and achieve peace with the coexistence of other potentialities, regardless of what they might hold. Now, overlay your current timeline with your projected future timeline of goals. Whether you believe things could be better, could be worse, could get better, or could get worse…. you’re right. None of the holiday films which we enjoy would be effective stories without the scary alternative reality moments. The light can not properly be appreciated without the dark. I believe that the Universe does have a true path for us, and like the vibrating string, finds a way to guide us back to center, if we are paying close enough attention. Realizing that we are the architects of our own journey is a sobering but essential mindset for us to breakthrough with hope, optimism, and gratitude for this multimodal life.