The Hobby Revival: Creativity, Nostalgia and Community

You talked about at the beginning this digital fatigue and Gen Zs, you know, grew up on their phone, whereas millennials didn't.

Why do you think these younger generations are craving this slower, manual processes with crafts and other tactile hobbies? They're still balancing, of course, this instant digital gratification, but any insight into, into that?

I mean, I think the keyword is balance.

I think Gen Z and, and also, like, Gen Alpha, younger generations are really interested in the tactile.

My husband collects and uses typewriters.

My nieces and nephews, they're two to 14 years old, 18 years old, they come over to our house and they just wanna touch the typewriters.

[laughs] They, they wanna try them.

They have lots of questions, like, "So you just put paper in it? Where does the ink come from?" And, like, it really makes them start thinking about, you know, for them, a lot of their experiences with creativity are digitally mediated, and so when they come over to our house and there's a clay wheel and there's typewriters and there's art supplies all over the place, I think there really is this interest and curiosity that kind of reveals the mechanics of this stuff to you.

Like my nephew asking, "Where does the ink come from?" You never really think about that on a computer.

You're not really thinking, and most of us don't even print stuff anymore.

So to suddenly have, like, a tangible, I wrote a thing and now I'm holding it, that seems to, like, blow their minds a little bit.

Screens and digital interfaces, I think about this a lot, they are smooth.

The texture of them, they're smooth.

But then all the experiences that we have on them are optimized.

They are smooth.

They are frictionless.

A lot of user experience design thinks about how to make experiences easier, more consumable, more doable online.

And I think you can really only enjoy so much frictionless life before you're like, "I want some friction." And, and we saw, like, friction maxing was trending earlier this year, right? This idea of I want friction.

I want challenge.

I want something that's difficult.

And so I really don't think of it as a coincidence at all.

It's all coming from this same root place of this curiosity and this interest of making things with your hands, doing things with your hands, holding the things you make.

Coming from a liberal arts background and a liberal arts education, it's so human to recognize that good stories come out of friction.

Stories come from conflict and tension and things happening.

Even just at the basic level, like Cinderella loses her slipper.