What I've learned about transformation design thus far #14

In traditional arts and crafts, the artisan takes raw material like clay, wood, stone, and shapes it into something new. The material resists and yields; the artisan feels and responds. The final piece emerges from dialogue between maker and made.

A designer who creates for transformation engages in a similar dialogue, but with a crucial difference: the material is a person. The guest arrives with their own history, their own patterns, their own readiness or resistance. They are not blank clay to be moulded but living beings with agency, preferences, and depths that no designer can fully know.