Design and Strategize for the Extraordinary

What does "highest and best use" mean in the context of design and strategy?

Everything is designed for a purpose. Houses are designed to be lived in. Chairs are designed to be sat in. That seems obvious, of course, but I think we often glide past that when we think about what we're designing or the strategies we're creating. What is the ultimate point of the thing?

Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by "ultimate point"?

Beyond simply understanding the basic purpose of the thing is the question of its "highest and best use." It's about striving for the Platonic ideal, if you will - the most perfect and complete expression of that object or strategy. Of all the things that something might be, which of those is the most aspirational? What is the greatest possible thing it might be used for? 

Consider houses, for example. Yes, they're designed to be lived in. But they can be designed to raise happy families in. That would raise the bar for design. It would no longer be enough to design a house simply to be lived in. We'd now need to consider what families are and what happiness is and how houses might be optimized to make families happy. And wouldn't everybody with a family want to move into a house that has been optimized to maximize their happiness?

Or take chairs. Yes, chairs are meant to be sat in. But what if you imagined the greatest possible purpose of a chair? What if you designed a chair to relieve the burdens of the day? Everybody would want a chair optimized for that.

Can you give an example of a design project where you specifically focused on the "highest and best use" principle?

We were asked by a major aquarium how they might best help blind visitors enjoy their visits. To explore that, we interviewed blind oceanographers. We asked them how they first fell in love with the ocean. And it turned out that each of their stories turned on feelings like wonder and awe. To help the aquarium serve their blind visitors, we need to communicate the mystery and other-worldliness that blind visitors can’t see.

Some might argue that "highest and best use" is subjective and open to interpretation. How do you respond to that?

That's absolutely fair. Of course, my highest and best may not be someone else's. But that doesn't exactly matter. In both cases, we're each looking to make the chair or house or aquarium into the extraordinary version of itself, rather than a conventional, uninspiring version.

How can designers and strategists practically apply this "highest and best use" philosophy in their work?

Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself at the beginning of a project. "If this were going to be the best possible, most extraordinary version of the thing you're designing, what would be true of it?" And "If budget were no object at all, what would you design?" It doesn't mean you have to build it that way, but knowing the answers — or at least your answers — will free you up to see possibilities you won’t otherwise see.