the scale of fixing things

One of the many problems I have with design has to do with the scope of the problem.
Take commutes, for example.

Commutes are not that bad, unless you happen to make them in a vehicle. Worse if you happen to be driving that vehicle, and an order of magnitude worse if you're also driving in traffic. Multiplied by the amount of time you spend doing it.

How do you respond as a designer to the unpleasantness of the commute?

There's many scales of response, from the smallest, most palliative, to the most radical. Actually, it is a question of how much the designers are willing or able to question the larger issue.

The Brookstone approach deals with the smallest level, the most acute symptom. Here's a neck massager to relieve the tension of driving. Here's a sound system to distract you. Here's shoes to make the trip more comfortable. Here's a tab of aspirin for your headache. What is the least amount I can change? What can I sell in a box at the mall or at the checkout counter? At this level, the design considerations are ergonomic.

At the next scale up, you have the Limousine approach. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that in general, people are happier and more comfortable getting to work in the back of a chauffeured luxury sedan than driving a minibus. Change the mode of transport. Design considerations here are somewhat ergonomic and anthropometric, but more infrastructural, micro-economic.

At a leap more radical is the Proximity approach. Design proposals in this range involve relocating ones house to be closer to work (or vice versa), or making that distance feel less with various strategies. Walking a mile in the heart of Boston or Paris or New York is a delight. Walking a mile in suburban Phoenix is a banal death march. Design considerations are the urban planners: climate, visual interest, movement, urban grain.

The Telecommute approach calls into question the commute itself. Why do you need to be physically transported between your job and your home? This approach is a bit more radical in that it may propose solutions like working at home or living where you work. Definite infrastructural design considerations, some cultural and socioeconomic considerations and business practices are questioned.

The Pavlovian approach works shallowly in the motivations and feelings of the individual. If the commute is unpleasant, pharmacology or post-hypnotic suggestion may be able to make people happy to sit traffic. Behavioral and perceptual modification by applied force.

More difficult to perpetuate but more deeply and subtly engrained is the Propagandist approach. Rather than trying to whitewash away a natural predisposition towards a dislike of waiting in traffic, introducing a change in culture may over time give different values to commuting. Squashed and distorted human heads and appendages were seen as beautiful by different cultures in human history- why could thousands of cars in gridlock not be re-presented as a glorious, ecstatic agglomeration such as seen at Mecca during the Hajj? Why mayn't the intercourse of private vehicles become a dance more passionate and sensual than the tango, or more subtle than chess?

But this does not question the notion of living or working like the Hermit approach. Why, really, do you need to work? what is it, really, that you need to live? Why are the two different? Is it preferable to subsidence farm instead or adopt the shaved head of a mendicant and pray? Design proposals at this level require deeply personal, biological, spiritual and economic considerations.

One may find that design proposals in the Hermit approach are limited in viability because they come up against larger structures in human civilization. At this level, the Structuralist approach calls into question why civilizations have organized into the structures they have formed. Design proposals may include challenges to various forms of capitalism, neo-liberalism, forms of governments and economies.

At the highest level of design, one may attempt to join God at the drafting table in the Existential approach. Design proposals at this level may suggest meaning or reasons for existence, new religions, new purposes or directions for mankind. "Why am I unhappy commuting" is really only a sub-sub-sub-question of "Why?"