In their wonderful 1977 film for IBM, designers Charles and Ray

Eames explored how perspectives change by looking at the

relative scale of objects. For example, the film zooms out from

a man and woman on a picnic blanket to the grass surrounding

them.

The short film Powers of Ten by designers

Charles and Ray Eames

A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe and the

effect of adding another zero.

The film quickly progresses through Earth to the edge of the

universe, then zooms back into the nucleus of a carbon atom.

In the process, viewers get a wonderful understanding of

extremes at both ends of the scale, but also of how reframing

your viewpoint can create a new perspective on something

familiar and ordinary.

As designers, we can leverage the power of reframing to help

us innovate and solve wicked problems. We can create POVs

to help guide our product design process and connect us to

our users. And if we’re lucky, we might just see the world in a