How can we escape the ‘infinity loop?’

Adapted from Nonlinear: Navigating Design With Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, February 4, 2025).

When I open my smartphone in the morning, every social media app is full of advertisements marketing something to me. I feel like I’m trapped in a circuitous loop from ads and information coming through my devices: “Buy this, buy that!” 

We’re all stuck in this loop. Can we fix it?

John Maeda (vice president of engineering, computational design, and AI at Microsoft) once created a computational artwork of an infinity loop that he often uses in his keynotes. We talked about my interpretation of his visual during a video livestream together back in 2020. I likened it to the accelerating paradigm of “marketers marketing and consumers consuming.” I often think about the harm of such paradigms accelerating and impinging on society and our planet.

How might we envision actually showing up for people when and where they need us the most? What are the vectors that will lead us to that place? Instead of being encouraged to buy things people don’t need, how can we creatively and intuitively deliver what they do need? We can imagine a wide range of answers to that question. In my own work at dreams • design + life, I pay particular attention to those opportunities that potentially foster a better way of showing up for people and communities. I try to prioritize our time for those projects that meet people where they are versus feeding into unsustainable cycles of consumption. In my mind, there are a couple qualities I tend to lean on that illuminate how brands might show up.

Utility

When we design something new that captures someone’s attention, what path of new utility are we actually creating for them? What are we making that’s actually useful for their needs? How are we helping them complete a step that’s naturally part of the journey they want to fulfill? Can that step be accomplished faster, better, and more meaningfully than the things they are already doing today? One of my first client partners was a biotech venture called Invoy, founded by Lubna Ahmad. Invoy helps people lose and maintain weight without depending on food journals, bathroom scales, or single diet solutions. Instead, Invoy uses breath technology and expert coaching to generate high engagement and a positive member experience, leading to sustainable weight loss and weight management. 

Stepping on an outdated bathroom scale [Image: courtesy MIT Press]

With Invoy, I wake up every morning and exhale into the breath device for a few seconds. Using the Invoy app, I answer a series of questions, reflecting on my behaviors over the past 24 hours, after which I allow the breath device to finish analyzing my breath sample. The app reveals a breath score at the end of the analysis (which takes no more than two minutes to finish). Later in the day, you can engage your Invoy program analyst through the chat feature in the app, and they will help you interpret your results and give you actionable recommendations that cut across diet, exercise, and many forms of habits. By breathing into the device every morning, I found myself empowered with a level of agency that I didn’t have before.

Information Relevance

To understand any new form of utility we can bring to someone’s journey, we also have to understand the full context of paradigms and realities they are experiencing. In the digital age, they likely have information impinging upon them in a million different directions. To give someone confidence that your new solution is appropriate for them, they need relevant information (benefits, reviews, ratings, feedback, etc.) that shows this utility is specifically for them and their needs. If we think back to Invoy and its focus on the morning moment of truth, the new utility of a breath device requires enveloping that within a delicate orchestration of information that would give someone confidence that it’s worthwhile to breathe into the device every morning.

The Invoy team could easily overwhelm their members with all the data that was at their disposal from every breath test. Instead, Invoy’s platform outputs a very simple breath score (on a scale of 0.0 to 15.0) that gives you a sense of whether you’re burning fat, staying neutral, or storing fat. If the resulting breath score falls below 3.0, that means you are probably using different energy stores (e.g., glucose from carbohydrates) other than fat. That may or may not be fine, but at least you know what’s exactly happening if you notice your weight trending up due to the likely storage of fat. If the breath score falls between 4.0 and 15.0, then you are surely using fat as an energy source and you should expect the fat composition in your body to decrease.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs [Image: courtesy MIT Press]

Emotional Resonance

Assuming that we create a new utility that proves itself beneficial, that’s great. To give someone confidence that the new utility is for them, we need relevant and succinct information that would provide them necessary context about the solution’s fit for their needs. We have to earn their respect and trust that our brand deserves the right to belong within their preferred journey. How we show up matters. With Invoy, eliciting a conversation with someone about their weight raises all types of stigmas and emotions. Every one of us can probably identify a life stage in which we had difficulty managing our weight. In those moments, we probably felt like failures. The reality is that we were probably working with outdated tools, such as the bathroom scale or food journal. When we look at that number on the scale, we feel judged and insecure. In reality, our weight challenges are not necessarily our fault as much as we are led to believe. Deep down (and many members have said this), members recognize their need for structure and an objective coach, who can be a bit more data-driven than a cheerleader—not someone that will blame them for their missteps and make them feel worse. Program analysts must be objective with the data, providing clear facts about what’s happening in each of their member’s bodies, but they also need to be compassionate in the delivery of key insights and behavioral recommendations. A good coach never beats up someone who falls off track. They must affirm and encourage a member when that member is doing something right, and they must offer constructive guidance whenever there’s a deviation. Add a healthy dose of empathy and compassion to be helpful, and that has garnered Invoy program analysts’ success in building emotional resonance with Invoy’s members over the long run.

* * *

Finding opportunities to break out of the infinity loop is not easy. Serendipity, proactiveness, and market timing may be the variables manifesting together that allow an innovation to succeed. These are vectors we have to sense, spot, and anticipate in the forest of ambiguity. We have to anticipate which technologies and key differentiators are potentially ready for prime time and cultivated by the right team. I find myself constantly scanning for potential client partners who I feel are playing the long game in what they invest in for their future customer experiences, thinking beyond their short-term goals. Bullishly, I want to find those companies that are putting in the hard work to build differentiated capabilities and intellectual property that could be meaningfully leveraged in the future to inform a new experience.

Kevin Bethune [Photo: Harrison Boyce/courtesy MIT Press]

The vectors that lead to these opportunities are out there, but they will not find you: you have to put yourself in the forest and move about to increase the chances of finding them. Ideally, you talk with people in the know, scan market movements, and find vectors that will lead you to new signals. Signals lead to incredible opportunities if you keep scanning, exploring, and experimenting proactively.

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