Are you designing the world you want?
If you feel sad about the world, there is a better question
[Why Design Is Hard launches next week! Join office hours on Thursday]
Many of us often complain about the technological world. We’re unhappy with the attention economy, dark patterns, late-stage capitalism, AI-hype, and much more.
Recently I saw this quote that captured this sentiment well:
One day, James Williams… addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: “How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?” There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.
If you were in the room, would you put up your hand?
More importantly, these sorts of questions have the wrong framing if we actually want a better world. The better question is:
How can you have more influence on the world you are designing?
This shifts the focus from what we can’t control, to what we can.
Here are three highlights from the book Why Design Is Hard that help us get there:
Understand gravity problems: how the best designers reframe problems to make them actionable, rather than complain about what they can’t change.
Design talent is a distraction: power and influence matter far more towards influencing the world than how much talent you have. We should focus more on those attributes than gaining more skills and talents.
Your hidden superpowers: we’ve forgotten how about rare abilities to investigate problems and create simple explanations for complex ideas can be used to gain influence on teams and in organizations.
The book launches next week. You can read the first full excerpt here. Please help spread the word. Thanks.