# Design & Critical Thinking
> We aim to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking at the intersection of design, innovation, change, systems practices, and more.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About the Design & Critical Thinking community
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/about/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T14:00:10.000Z
Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT) is an online, free and open community launched in August 2020 by [Kevin Richard](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). We aim to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking at the intersection of disciplines such as *design*, *business*, *innovation*, *change*, *ethics*, *systems practices*, *complexity thinking*, *networks*, etc.
Follow some of our discussions on [our YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or on [various audio platforms](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
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### Library
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/library/
Last updated: 2022-08-15T18:55:40.000Z
Since 2020, we collect together papers, studies, and books that we believe are relevant and interesting for those looking at developing & extend transversal knowledge.
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### The Explorer Framework
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/explorer-framework/
Last updated: 2022-08-15T18:56:46.000Z
The explorer framework is a guide for shifting thoughts & perspectives on problem-solving and approaching design, innovation, and change through a complexity lens.
Published by the Design & Critical Thinking community. Written and put together by [Kevin Richard](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) with the help of community members [Marc Baumgartner](https://medium.com/u/94868adaa484?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Cameron Norman](https://medium.com/u/c03c7a0bb7b1?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Enrique Martínez](https://medium.com/u/9ed45b9d2e00?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Daiana Zavate](https://medium.com/u/6271fd2b996f?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Lucien Langton](https://medium.com/u/a1804e79594a?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Corina Lupu](https://medium.com/u/642d21ed43b6?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------), [Alexis Gerome](https://medium.com/u/9c96775079d7?source=post%5Fpage-----60079b4e7a11--------------------------------).
---
## Access the framework 👇
Click on the link below to access the framework:
[Introduction - The Explorer’s GuideA guide for shifting thoughts on problem-solving and approaching design, innovation, and change through a complexity lens – By Design & Critical Thinking.The Explorer's Guide](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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Last updated: 2022-08-15T18:55:54.000Z
Don't miss our lively discussions, join our Slack server where you can exchange with other members! This is a place where we share all the latest links & resources and engage on important topics.
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## Posts
### State of Design from the Future, by Daiana Zavate
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/state-of-design-from-the-future-by-daiana-zavate/
Last updated: 2026-03-19T15:30:29.000Z
## Abstract
In "State of Design from the Future," Daiana Zavate employs a speculative broadcast framing to interrogate the evolving responsibilities and political contours of design practice. Pushing the boundaries of the discipline to the point of absurdity, Zavate asks: What happens when design becomes fully politicized, leading to a world of Radical Design and ideological "Design Wars"? Are future designers fundamentally better equipped, or do they lack the foundational understanding to reconstruct a past they never experienced? The central claim posits that the world cannot truly change if designers maintain the same cognitive frameworks as the general populace. To avoid merely flattening differences or succumbing to the fatigue of an entirely Design-centric World, Zavate argues that design must evolve from a strictly practical discipline into a metaphysical exercise that actively interrogates space, constraints, and resources.
The key takeaways emphasize that surviving this hyper-designed future—where practitioners must transparently negotiate with Artificial Cognitive Systems to reconstruct lost human experiences—requires the cultivation of Multi-sight. This core skill is the capacity to hold multiple, simultaneous perspectives on a single entity, viewing it concurrently as an object, a system, an activity, and an effect. The future of design is thus framed not as mere artistic expression, but as *reintegration*. By utilizing Multi-sight to dynamically work *with* material, environmental, and political limits rather than simply quantifying them, designers can break through the constraints of contemporary practice and reveal structural possibilities for a radically different, yet entirely unknown, future.
---
## **CHANNEL: ARCHIVE 934 – FUTURECAST**
**Program:** *News from the Future*
**Segment:** *Catch-up/Keep-up Design Bulletin*
### The Exercise
Before the broadcast begins, a clarification. I am many things, but a good-decision maker ain’t one of them. Whether this piece considers the State of Design or the Future of Design, it will be up to you. The state of design part is a philosophical exercise, the future of design and imagination exercise.
Pushing the boundaries to the point of collapse of the idea, where absurdity might reveal structural questions that were looking tame and harmless, is a risk most of us are afraid to take. What if it reveals the weaknesses in my thinking, arguments, work, etc.? Wanting things to work blocks off possibilities for rethinking design, too.
Many discussions in the past couple of years have revolved around the role of the designer and particularly oscillating between decision-making power designers should have access to and the political layer of design, more generally.
I thought of assuming the extreme views on that: a world of Radical Design.
In this imagined future, design has become fully politicized. Governments operate large design institutions; one of them is the Past Rescue Department, whose designers attempt to reconstruct fragments of the past which will be our focus, to figure out what kind of work is being done - Is their work “good” design? Are designers of the future better than the ones of today? Do they possess special skills?
At the same time, the design landscape will include extremist and terrorist design groups that deliberately create disruptive experiences intended to reshape society. These conflicts are sometimes referred to as Design Wars. Fully-designed-informed political ideologies cause dramatic changes hard to categorize as all bad or all good.
Designers collaborate continuously with **Artificial Cognitive Systems**, negotiating changes to infrastructure, knowledge systems, environments, and social practices - neither is allowed to work independently; their practice is shared and forced to be made transparent. Education in design has multiplied into countless programs and disciplines, and much of the population aims to become designers in some capacity.
A Design-centric World?
First, by making design central to how we conceive of the world, the world itself will be treated as a design problem.
Second, the task designers face in this scenario is not artistic expression. It is reintegration. The work consists in reimagining a world that once existed before design became so radical. Designers attempt to reconstruct the present using fragments of the past. People are tired of so much change. To feel that all your experiences are shaped by some designer group can be difficult. (One can further imagine that designers are the actors who step in when systems break. Sometimes they are also the system breakers. Some groups are slow change-makers, spreading their work over generations, while others are fast change-makers, aiming for overnight transformation of parts of the world. Imagination can run wild)
However, the deeper premise of the exercise is this:
The world cannot change if designers’ mindsets are the same as everyone’s.
The exercise is meant to introduce what I take to be the core skill of the designer:
Multi-sight: The ability to conceive of something in multiple ways at the same time, or hold several perspectives on the same thing at once.
A designer must be able to look at something as an object, a system, an activity, a feeling, or an effect at the same time:
- In how many different ways can this exist?
- In how many different ways can it function?
- What happens in each perspective if the conditions around it change?
Designing for something that can be more than one thing at the same time reveals why objects function the way they do and how they might function differently.
It becomes a kind of game of perspectives, maybe? A plurality of viewpoints held together by a mind that can think without flattening differences, a mind that can imagine without losing the point.
From this perspective, design is no longer simply a practical discipline. Beneath it lies a deeper layer of questions concerning space, constraints, and resources: a kind of metaphysical structure underlying design decisions.
Design always operates within limits: material limits, environmental limits, cognitive limits, political limits. But rather than counting the limits, we have to work with them at the same time by multi-sight.
This is why the exercise is not meant to be a purely horizontal act of imagination, simply inventing strange scenarios. Instead, it attempts to add structural possibility, showing how design thinking might operate when confronted with a world that is going to be very different, but we have no idea how exactly - revealing the limits of current design with the absence of multi-sight, and hopefully, creating an opening to break through such limits.
Now, to the future:
---
## Designer Division Expands Operations
Good evening. Oli-One & Linda34 here.
This is Archive 9 – FutureCast, reporting on developments in historical reconstruction and the evolving role of design in preserving fragments of the human past.
In a development that few predicted centuries ago, the **Past Rescue Department** has officially expanded its operations by creating a **Reintegration Designer Division**. Their mission is unusual: to reconstruct fragments of everyday life from the past so that future generations can understand how humans once lived and, hopefully, can live again.
The challenge, however, is proving far greater than expected.
Designers assigned to the division frequently report a fundamental problem: they do not understand the world they are trying to reconstruct. Living in a society saturated with technological enhancements, they struggle to imagine basic activities that once took place without assistance systems. Worse, can they imagine a world where they do not hold all the power? Isn’t it this mission self-defeating?
One question reportedly dominated discussion in the department this morning:
> "What the hell is paprika now?"
The investigation quickly shifted toward etymology, with teams hoping that tracing the linguistic history of everyday objects might reveal what has evolved into.
Despite a great deal of data, most of it is repetitive and utterly uninformative, and some losses of knowledge appear irreversible such as encrypted memes and inside-jokes.
Designers have been divided outside and inside the project as to how such reconstruction can make a difference. Still, let us find out their most notable progress.
---
## Designer Rescue Team 1
**Mission:** Retrieve Activities of the Past in a World with Technological Enhancements
The first assignment focuses on children’s games once played without technological mediation.
Early experiments produced surprising results.
- **Hide and Seek** has become nearly impossible to replicate. With location trackers permanently active, hiding is immediately detected.
- **Tag** has been redesigned so that tagging is confirmed by drone-assisted proximity sensors. While the game can be played to a certain extent, children are relying too much on their drones to win.
- **Telephone**, the classic whispering game might be the most boring of them all. As everyone now relies on an in-ear correction interface that automatically fixes any transmission errors.
The team is now confronting a broader question:
When enhancements become constraints, can the original game continue into the future? Or must entirely new games emerge from the altered environment?
---
## Designer Rescue Team 2
**Mission**: Retrieve Knowledge of the Past Under Conditions of “Enhanced Learning”
The second team faces a different challenge: reconstructing how knowledge was once acquired without support interfaces.
Their current experiment involves first-hand reading of primary texts: a process historically known simply as reading.
Many participants involved in engaging with these artifacts report severe difficulty and headaches. Most have never interacted with physical books.
The team’s first design task is therefore to redesign classic paperback works so they can survive in a world where paper objects are no longer being made.
Early prototypes include:
- **100 Years of Solitude**
Reconstructed as a summarized narrative combined with an immersive family-experience module, including hovering character recognition.
- **The Divine Comedy**
Delivered with simplified language, character references, and a musical recital.
- **1984**
Distributed as concept brief accompanied by a film adaptation.
The central design question emerging from these trials is unsettling:
When new systems make knowledge easier to access, do they simultaneously eliminate opportunities to think independently?
If so, researchers wonder whether some knowledge has been irredeemably lost because of the practices that are no longer available.
---
## Designer Rescue Team 3
**Mission:** Recover Traditional Recipes for the Global Cook-Robot Network
Food reconstruction may be the most difficult project of all.
Climate change and redesigned production systems have eliminated many traditional ingredients. Entire categories of food are now unavailable.
Designers must therefore reconstruct historical recipes using whatever substitutes exist.
Current trials include:
- **Spaghetti Bolognese**
Prepared using all-purpose flour, now primarily manufactured for hair and clothing washing. The team is still debating one question: what does a tomato taste like - sweet or sour?
- **Cheeseburger**
Constructed entirely from synthetic protein structures. Laboratory tests report the taste difference is now indistinguishable from the original. Critics, however, note that the cheese and meat replacements taste exactly the same. If two ingredients taste identical, they ask, why maintain the distinction at all?
- **Caesar Salad**
Made from dehydrated leaf compounds, it resembles a light snack, but no one knows whether the sauce is actually authentic and whether it has been sweetened with banned sugars.
Researchers are again confronting a larger design problem:
If food production changes what humans are able to eat, what happens to the foods we once took for granted?
And more importantly: can taste survive the future?
---
Early reports from the department suggest a sobering conclusion.
Most reconstructed artifacts will likely end up in museums. Very few will ever return to safe everyday use or consumption.
Children testing the recovered games reportedly fail to understand the point of playing them.
Participants attempting to read unassisted texts report headaches, eye strain, and episodes of depression.
And several experimental kitchens have already recorded multiple cases of food poisoning.
---
## Other News in the Design World
Authorities are investigating a group of unknown trailblazers using high-pressure acrylic sprays to paint entire streets white. Officials remain unsure whether the act constitutes vandalism, protest, or yet another emerging design movement.
In education news, a school has been temporarily closed after a student hacked the academic network and uploaded top scores on Riga-Broks 3\. The act triggered a competitive cascade among students attempting to outperform the record. Administrators ultimately forfeited all classes and examinations.
Transportation regulators have also announced a long-awaited decision: drone racing through abandoned subway tunnels has now been legalized under controlled conditions, allowing professional pilots to compete safely in regulated environments.
And finally tonight, a new Responsible Parenting Law has been enacted. Under the regulation, both parents must attend mandatory training camps before becoming guardians. Participants receive paid parental leave during the program. However, early participants report that the compensation does not account for the stress induced by training dolls programmed to cry at irregular intervals. Some couples have already proposed supplementing childcare with multiple AI child assistants. But the program’s designers insist on maintaining one non-negotiable rule the Artificial Cognitive systems seek to undermine: human contact must remain central to raising children.
---
This has been **Archive 9 – FutureCast**, reporting on the State of Design.
### The Problem Space of Organizational Ideology, By Lee Stadler
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-problem-space-of-organizational-ideology-by-lee-stadler/
Last updated: 2026-03-18T15:30:54.000Z
## Abstract
In "The Problem Space of Organizational Ideology," Lee Stadler interrogates the genesis of our collective beliefs, asking: Why do we construct these rigid frameworks of thought, and what is the existential price of the "ease" they provide? Stadler posits that organizational ideology functions as a cognitive shortcut—a "memory's lapdog"—designed for social and mental weight reduction. By adopting formulas of "how to be" rather than engaging in the arduous labor of actually being, individuals and organizations insulate themselves from the "shivers our souls make" when meeting with dissonance. He argues that this process is inherently "lossy"; just as digital files degrade through compression, our identities and histories are threshed by the winds of time. Each act of retrieval reshapes memory into a more convenient, yet less accurate, version of the past, rendering "truth" a comparative mechanism rather than a grounded reality.
The key takeaways emphasize that the human pursuit of a frictionless existence through technology or ideological absolution often masks a deeper enslavement to the idea of freedom itself. Because memory is an aerobic, deteriorating process where our biases frequently emerge victorious, the formulas we rely on to reduce our cognitive load ultimately uproot us from the grounding of life. We are left with vivid but faulty snapshots of reality—reminders that true understanding cannot exist in individual isolation, but requires the formative contributions of others to see the full picture.
---
## The Problem Space of Organizational Ideology
Genesis. Beginnings. Origins. We arrive with them not at them, by chance but through inevitability. It is a mistake to think that humanity has arrived at a “now” point without first having traveled through others that were just as mistaken in their hindsight as the last. They are, in a sense, still occurring just as the “now” is still occurring. It is a mistake to act as if these travels bore no effect of consequence or cast less than a short shadow upon their once tomorrows. We are in the past as much as we allow it to remain. (van der Kolk, 2014) This remaining is a simple concept of memory, easily referenced and easily deteriorated by the act of referencing. This is how memory may work less directionally or more diffusely depending upon our own sort of gravity or intent, (Podolskiy, Lanza, 2016) and how, over time, our identities as individuals or organizations via those intentions become ever more distantly offset and set aside as the things we might eventually get around to considering again. For those disposed to the creation of conscious deterioration of these offsets or ideologies, or whom we may call malcontents or manipulators, the dispositional acts are mere tasks required by their existence. What they do becomes who they are. They themselves are precursors to corrupted ideologies but they are not necessarily the first beads in the causal chain of their existence. They too exist within the same ecology of pressures for survival or prestige or legacy or change as those around them. Yet, something has gone awry that would encourage the need to create suffering. Inasmuch as we might seek through time to find a first cause or starting point for any woe that might exist or that might have been caused, we are quickly met with the reality of an impossibly intertwined existence that predates our species. After all, we did not simply “become” one fateful day. We are an iterative process, physically, emotionally and spiritually, bringing with us the long years of brilliance and baggage of our ancestors.
Here we might find grace in the consideration of the effect of ideologies, knowing that they are of us all, in a way.
### What is an ideology?
A set or collection of held beliefs, impressions and biases. Ideologies are a mind’s shortcut and a memory’s lapdog. Individually, the beliefs and impressions we hold act as a warm blanket for the shivers our souls make when they meet with dissonance.
> “…the cognitive system has very effective ways to deal with information processing, especially given its limited resources; however, such effective shortcut mechanisms can also bring about vulnerability to bias and error.”
– Maclean & Itiel, 2016
### Why are ideologies made?
Quite clearly, weight reduction, cognitively and socially, in the same manner that we might exclude details from a thought or memory to enable a better fit with our own ethical adoptions or moral prescriptions. As they concern identity, it is much less work over time to follow a formula of how to be than it is to actually think about being. If we are able to reduce the resources required to exist we have more to spend contemplating our mortality or staring at bare walls to ask ourselves why they are so. In theory, at least. Even this idyllic consideration has not withstood the test of time or circumstance as much as we have craved for it to do so. Energizing our own belief in the belief that being free from toil through the absolution of technology or wisdom or any other thing has long been a pursuit absent a consideration of the cost of being. It seems that, for any one person to be “free” requires many others to be enslaved to their idea of freedom. In his novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair approached the matter through his character Nicholas Schliemann. This champion of revolution and the proletariat posited a very old human effort: … “after the abolition of privilege and exploitation, any one would be able to support himself by an hour's work a day”. (Sinclair, The Jungle, chpt 31, 1904) More than one-hundred years post publication, through an endless stream of human conflict, chaos and self-determinism, it would seem our wars to end all wars have not done so. Our calls for revolution are quickly subsumed for our clamor towards validity in a very loud world. We’re fine with capitalism as it suits us (and maybe even more so when it doesn’t suit our neighbor). No, the call for salvation through ease of living made possible by wonderous invention carries with it the same seed of destruction as did our establishment of cities and states. I do love a well-paved street. I greatly value indoor plumbing. But, not as much as might those who have not yet experienced their benefit. It is an impossibility without the context provided by the opposite. Perhaps this was Sinclair’s hope in his believing. What we have made though, through our innovations is an ease that has created more demand for ease and uprooted us from the grounding of life. The cost of processing one’s existence is also an important consideration and is manifest in how much difficulty we have in explaining our “selves” versus how easy it is to say what we do from day to day or where we live. Accessing our memories is a lossy concept even if, over time, we become more assured about the accuracy of those memories. (In a way, our biases become victorious in the writing of our personal perspectives of history). Borrowing the term from digital file storage, lossy means that something is lost, either upon retrieval or storage or through compressing and excluding portions of the original idea. Never is the entire memory intact. Why? Because each individual memory lacks the formative contributions of identity formation made by other humans. Together we have a more full view of reality. Individually, memories are faulty snapshots, however vivid they may be.
Storage – a function of memory, organizationally or otherwise, is a process that degrades over time. It occurs as an aerobic function, subjected to the continual threshing warp and weft of the winds of time. Either internally or externally, what “was” in memory is not what is ultimately retained. Information leaves through the very processes that retrieve and re-shelve it. Moreover, both retrieval and storage create a new thing, a sort of resonant bump in the fabric of self and identity, as the detail of a memory degrades by the simple matter of the ecology of temporal references. Memories referenced in time are subject to time. These references are then conditional and they bring with them the foibles of the time, place and space of the retrieval and re-storage of a memory as metainformation. In a sense, we remember when we remembered something, and in doing so we create something new while losing some of the integrity of the original as individuals.
If we evaluate memory within the confines of whether something is “true”, we see clearly the basis for perception and the ecological premises that have shaped these perceptions over time. Interpersonally, familially, socially, culturally, these spheres of influence, each part of the identity formation process and dependent upon the force of their influence, prompt psychological and physiological responses that aid in the formation of the perceptions we wield. Yet, truths have no baseline, no ground upon which to stand. They may, by happenstance, touch upon reality and reference it from time to time as might a cloud pass over a mountain’s peek or cast a shadow as it blocks the sun. The point being, truths are their own formed baseline for the perception of what is. They are comparative mechanisms as are good and evil. As mentioned in the prior chapter however, without a baseline for what it means to be human in general, an abundance of perceptions and truths shall remain.
If we consider ideologies, these bundles of truths, within the metaphor of memory once again, we might find that the often extrapolated “working model” serves as a passable substrate upon which to build. The executive function within the working memory model serves as the closest thing we humans might have to an attention center. It is dependent upon several functions: the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer. (Baddely, Hitch, 1974) Each of these functions takes in turn the role of narrator of a explanatory tale of how we store and retrieve memories using neurophysiological means. However, because memory itself is referenced as a composite of multiple areas within the brain and mind distinctly, each of these functions is further dependent upon sense registers – our physical input mechanisms like optic nerves – in order to retrieve components of a memory that would form a wholly intact memory. Here, memory itself is a series of transfers along reference pathways. (Robbins, 1996) The phonological loop calibrating our language centers. The visuospatial sketchpad dealing in visual semantics. The episodic buffer doing its best to maintain some memory reference as a short-term access point that, (if not continually referenced) will fade. Each of these facets informs the executive function. The executive function informs each of these facets. Each shapes the perception or truth of memory regardless of reality.
It's a bit of a damn mess.
An executive function. What a marvel of a way to ascribe to memory what we have ascribed to a similar function within organizations. Perceived as the higher-functioning elements inside of an organization with their visionary foresight and their rigorously held standards for competency and self awareness. They sound off and let the lower-order functionaries carry out their whims. Tongue and cheek aside, both serve as metaphors for how things really get done, either in memory or in organization. To draw the parallel more clearly we could say that an “executive” is responsible for letting other functionaries know what to do. They order the retrieval, compositing and reasoning surrounding organizational well-being. Yet this would be a mythical and contrived statement as, it should be fairly easy to understand that, like most titles and descriptions, they effect very little compared to their cost. Yes, executives are more expensive than their counterparts. The mail clerk (if those exist anymore) the desktop publisher (a stupid title birthed in the 1980s) the public relations expert (something close in kind to a leaky balloon with a face, filled with helium and let loose in a small room where it dive-bombs the innocent and unfortunate). Each are titles that describe very little about their role in general. We hope they have some sort of function but instead of looking closely at what that function really is we find it easier to assume that the label accurately matches the output. Just, as it is, that we assume an executive function for memory is the paragon of what it means to remember.
Why draw this awkward correlation? Two reasons. First, to point at the absurdity and inaccuracy with which we conduct ourselves ideologically within organizations. Second, to serve as a cautionary tale regarding describing complex things like memory. May it be that we are striving to do our best just as we would hope for our executives to do. May we realize and understand that, like the working memory model, they are simply models of functions, and to ascribe to them any deference beyond their function or competency is to play make-believe with life. So, let’s turn once again to the reality of what the working model describes. This executive function, evolutionarily speaking, is relatively recent and rare in occurrence within the animal kingdom especially as it is paired with such a large brain in the case of humans. This large brain, the working memory model, the prefrontal cortex, none of them are required for survival in its most basic form. We do, after all, share a progressive series of gray matter evolutions with mammals and reptiles, all of whom have survived in some form or another alongside us. Memory does seem to be a requirement for progress though. Moving from one day to the next while being able to understand what exactly that might entail. In this way it is a distributed function within our species and, supposedly, we’re all quite capable of using this function. We all have executive function. The question might then be asked, “if we all exhibit the capacity and capability, why do we prefer for someone else to do it for us?” Either from time-to-time, situationally or entirely. (DeRue, Ashford, 2010) If this important human trait is so damn important, why do we wish so desperately that someone else take the burden, individually or organizationally?
The answer is to offset the burden.
Consider the idea of an economy. We say they may be “weak” or “strong” as a means of distancing ourselves from our place within them. Clearly they would not exist without us. Bears and bulls may currently be very pissed for us having used their species to describe our very human institutions. If they cared, that is. What would a human really know about being a bear or a bull anyhow? We observe a series of traits that we taxonomize and name in order to relate abstractly to the things we invent. What makes for a weak economy? Is it poor living conditions and low employment and low gross domestic product? If so, why? Why depersonalize the state of ourselves? The answer is to remove ourselves from considering our place in the state of burden in which we find ourselves just as we might call upon a technology to save use from ourselves and our decisions.
To make life and living a little bit lighter we make a trade. We trade our accountability for comfort without considering how that accountability has prodded us for millions of years into being moderately special creatures. The very act becomes a new thing within us, taking an energy all its own to do so. Just as we would offset our accountability to executives within an organization, thereby degrading our personal ability to be our own executive functions, we do the same with memories when we assign the model more credence than is due its metaphor. It is less that the metaphor is unreliable. It is more that it is partial. Time interferes through no fault of its own, wearing away the edges of our memories. They are altered by environment. After all, who someone is when a memory is made may be vastly different than when the memory is retrieved.
### Where is Memory?
An aside. Memory is. There are certainly sense registers within the physical construct of the brain that might become injured or precluded in some other manner thereby inhibiting the formation or retrieval of memories. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (2014) contributes many good questions to this discussion as he grapples with the ways in which our physiology might react to psychological trauma. The answer may be neither the body nor the mind but the substrate in which those two sides of existence operate. That substrate is time. Memory is in time and identity is no single individual’s property. Our identities are shared, and in shared identity are the nuances of shared experiences and memory, however attainable those might really be. To clarify, we do not share single experiences as if by some hive-mind. We do though tend to behave as easily swayed groups in response to stimuli depending upon how fiercely held a belief that stimuli butts up against is in the moment. It is how a village together defends itself from intruders. Yet, a single experience may be shared by many, each with their memories of that experience firmly pegged within their brains and minds and, in service to identity formation, contribution to one another. The conversation might be: “Do you remember when…”, “Ah, yes. And I remember that we also…” This is shared identity prompted by group narrative. How might this be applied to organizations? As many parts of a whole (Memory as a model here is both “working” to form an executive response but partial as it pertains to a more complete picture that might be made more complete through the perspectives of others.
### And When We’re Alone?
In a hypothetical solitude, are our memories our own? Are we our selves? From the standpoint of understanding self, yes, but a self that has not had the benefit or detriment of interacting with other selves. It is no more or less complete. Some would find this notion enthralling. Some would find it the thing of nightmares. But, they could only posit their enthralling or nightmarish approaches through a foreknowledge of relating and communing with others in identity’s dance. And hypotheticals are just that. They are the bean sí of saying we want to know an answer without putting in the work to find one.
The correlation here is clear. If memories are metaphors for ideologies then their formations are dependent upon perceptions of experience rather than reality. They are dependent upon the tenuous nature of detail retrieval and constant short-term reference. They are dependent upon accessible language structures and the ability to parse one’s visual semantics and interpret one’s semiotics. These dependencies continually interact with other memory dependencies residing within other dependent individuals in order to feel and be perceived as relevant. (Edwards, Cable, 2009) And, when these individuals group they may form a composite approach to memory, sharing between individuals components of a greater whole that, without the presence of one of the individuals, may lose clarity and effect. We find this is in our human history prior to writing in our ability to share narrative orally and with great degrees of accuracy in reflecting what it means to be human. Our shared tales of creation and destruction, of gods and service and demons and subservience, of life and death and struggle. Each theme carried throughout time in order to rest with us as hope and harbinger. We would be hard-pressed to claim that oral traditions were replete with perfectly accurate details regarding places and spaces, something we argue ad nauseum to prove someone else wrong so that our dissonance might be reduced. We would be absent rational thought, however, if we claimed that they must be entirely so, if that was not the intent of the story. There is a time and a place, to argue, but when that time is, now seems a long-forgotten construct.
Some sort of empirical pursuit is a fool's errand when erroneously applied to narrative structures that are meant to aid us in the metaphysics of existence. We cannot test the voracity of Homer's character Paris - his height or weight or any such thing. We must ask then if we tell representative stories that speak to the empirical nature of being human. Or, like we might argue about the Iliad, would we treat our own stories with such gross lack of evaluation while claiming others must abide and endure our double standards. Our stories are "more" accurate because they are of us and we wish to be valid in them. So, we make Homer a liar, Paris a whore and Achilles some insurrectionist who should have stretched for 20 minutes prior to attacking. All of these, these human things are attempts to assign and re-assign meaning without understanding why a narrative would exist in the first place.
Troy exists today. Not in the manner or splendor that it once did. We might say the same of ourselves.
We should ask, then, what is the purpose of storing memories? What is the purpose of remembering? If it is a means of wayfinding and navigating towards tomorrow, then we may have part of the answer. If it is to maintain one’s place in the narrative of existence, then we may have another part of the answer. If it is to offset the cognitive burden of recalling the grand detail pinpointed by a single memory, or to exclude some additional person or group to create our own little island then we have clues to the intention of ideological offsetting and, more importantly, a point at which we might evaluate our intentions.
They are corruptible.
---
## References
Baddeley A. Working memory: looking back and looking forward. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2003 Oct;4(10):829-39\. doi: 10.1038/nrn1201\. PMID: 14523382.
DeRue, D. S., & Ashford, S. J. (2010). Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction in organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 35(4), 627–647\. [https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2010.53503267](https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2010.53503267?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Robbins TW, Anderson EJ, Barker DR, Bradley AC, Fearnyhough C, Henson R, Hudson SR. Working memory in chess. Mem Cognit. 1996 Jan;24(1):83-93\. doi: 10.3758/bf03197274\. PMID: 8822160.
Podolskiy, D. and Lanza, R. (2016), On decoherence in quantum gravity. ANNALEN DER PHYSIK, 528: 663-676\. [https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.201600011](https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.201600011?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Maclean, Carla & Dror, Itiel. (2016). A Primer on the Psychology of Cognitive Bias. 10.1016/B978-0-12-802460-7.00001-2.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). *The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.* Viking.
Sinclair, U., & Castronovo, R. (2010). *The jungle.* New ed. Oxford University Press.
Edwards, J. R., & Cable, D. M. (2009). The value of value congruence. *Journal of Applied Psychology, 94*(3), 654–677\. [https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014891](https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0014891?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## About the author
**Lee Stadler** is a designer who links multiple disciplines to deliver value to a variety of contexts and industries. Humanity is at the core of my practice and history anchors its origins.
Author links:
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-stadler-315a653/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Substack](https://thedevilsweknow.substack.com/)
[The Devils We Know | Lee Stadler | SubstackDesign, philosophy, origins, and a way to mediate between disparate societies and cultures. Click to read The Devils We Know, by Lee Stadler, a Substack publication. Launched 2 years ago.The Devils We KnowLee Stadler](https://thedevilsweknow.substack.com/)
### What if Ferro Fluid become norm for Brain Computer Interaction Interface to challenge invisible design, by Mehmet Eren
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/what-if-ferro-fluid-become-norm-for-brain-computer-interaction-interface-to-challenge-invisible-design-by-mehmet-eren/
Last updated: 2026-03-18T09:58:55.000Z
## Abstract
### The Problem & Inspiration
We wanted to explore the future of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). In a hypothetical year 2035, how will humans interact with hazardous, programmable matter?
Most simulations are static. We wanted a “living” system — a Digital Twin that reacts not just to mouse clicks, but to simulated emotional states (Focus, Panic, Flow). We needed an intelligent observer to make sense of this chaos, which led us to the concept of Provotypes (Provocative Prototypes).
### Write on Medium
We were inspired by sci-fi interfaces (The Expanse, Westworld) and wanted to build a web-based laboratory that feels dangerous, high-fidelity, and intelligent.
### What it does
Neuro-Forge is a high-performance React application that simulates a magnetic ferrofluid using SDF (Signed Distance Field) Raymarching.
Bio-Feedback Loop: The app simulates a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface). As your “Focus” or “Stress” levels change, the fluid dynamics (viscosity, turbulence, spike sharpness) react in real-time.
---
**Future of Design Lens:** Design as a Profession (The role of the designer, labor, agencies vs. collectives, automation, etc.)
---
## The Artifact
---
## About the author
Hej , I'm Mehmet fellow from sunny Cyprus living in Sweden!
Interdisciplinary designer , as a pure generalist currently working at H&M UXR - AEM, 3D, AI. Primary focus on Service/Speculative Design and UX research with high competence in Industrial Design and IxD (TUI+UX). Before that I was in MFA IxD at UID - Yes! Umea is cold. I got used to it as Cypriot.
I am eager to do collaboration and co-create projects with a progress-oriented mentality while implementing methodologies like norm creativity, participatory design, co-design, and much more ;) I enjoy creating meaningful experiences while tackling complex & complicated issues.
Open local and or online Fika and coffee
- Speculative Design with Design ethnography
- Design Research
- Tangible experiences and material experiment
- Spatial Design / XR
- Exploring relationship dynamics between aesthetics and affordance
- Making things move with servo motors
- Playing around Blender and more tools&softwares
- Conducting sustainable material experiments
- Vibe Coding
- Aesthetics of Interaction / Soma Design
- UX for AI
Author links:
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-e-ozyoldash/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Medium](https://mehmeterenozyoldas.medium.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Techne : Low-fi Thought Object – MediumRead writing from Techne : Low-fi Thought Object on Medium. Techne is a brand-new design and research-oriented speculative agency focused on people and emerging tech.MediumTechne : Low-fi Thought Object](https://mehmeterenozyoldas.medium.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Designers hate design, by Remi Garcia
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/designers-hate-design-by-remi-garcia/
Last updated: 2026-03-17T17:19:56.000Z
## Abstract
In "Designers hate design," Rémi Garcia interrogates the paradoxical decline of the design discipline: Why, despite years of advocating for business value and strategic impact, is design suffering a progressive loss of status, clarity, and authority? Garcia advances a provocative, internal diagnosis: if the discipline is in crisis, it is primarily because designers have ultimately come to hate design. He argues that the hyper-industrialization of the field—characterized by the taylorization of specialized roles like UX, product design, and design ops, an obsession with incremental optimization, and an environment of ambiguous recognition—has stripped the practice of its exploratory essence. Yet, instead of confronting these structural constraints, designers have orchestrated their own displacement. They actively flee the core act of formal creation, seeking refuge in the supposedly more legitimate, adjacent domains of technical engineering, collective facilitation, and abstract strategy.
The key takeaways emphasize that this continuous flight from historical design practice is the true root of the profession's current malaise. By dissolving the distinct gesture of conception into shared processes, bureaucratic frameworks, and strategic discourse, designers have inadvertently rendered their own roles blurry, replaceable, and highly vulnerable to automation. Ultimately, the discipline's contraction is self-inflicted; to survive, practitioners must stop diluting their responsibilities and critically reclaim the unique, formal act of designing, rather than endlessly chasing corporate validation through the languages of management and optimization.
#DesignLabor #Selfhate #StrategicIllusion
---
## Version française
Le design traverse une phase de déclassement.
Non pas une disparition brutale, mais une perte progressive de statut, de clarté et d’autorité.
Le marché, notamment celui du numérique et ses extensions organisationnelle (design de service, ops...), et qui sera le sujet central de cet essai, se contracte. Les postes se raréfient tandis que les profils se multiplient. Les attentes s’élargissent, les rôles se brouillent, et la frontière entre design, produit, recherche, stratégie ou facilitation devient de plus en plus poreuse. Dans le même temps, l’accessibilité croissante des outils, et désormais des intelligences artificielles, remet en question la spécificité même de certaines pratiques de conception.
Ce recul est paradoxal. Jamais la discipline n’a autant parlé de stratégie, d’impact ou de valeur business. Pourtant, malgré dix ans d’efforts pour s'anoblir, le design peine à justifier sa nécessité. Il se retrouve coincé : concurrencé par d’autres métiers sur la réflexion, et menacé par l’automatisation sur l’exécution. À force de brouiller les pistes, il est devenu flou, remplaçable, voire optionnel.
Face à cette érosion, on invoque souvent l'incompréhension des décideurs ou la pression économique. Ces facteurs existent, mais ils n'expliquent pas l'échec de l'intégration du design. Le constat que j'avance est interne et provocateur : si le design est en crise, c'est d'abord parce que les designers ont fini par détester le design.
## Partie 1 — Un environnement professionnel de plus en plus restreint
L’exercice du design s’inscrit aujourd’hui dans un environnement professionnel largement contraignant. Les difficultés rencontrées par les designers ne sont ni marginales ni anecdotiques : elles sont structurelles, observables et largement documentées. Pour comprendre le malaise actuel de la discipline, il est nécessaire de partir de ce constat.
### Industrialisation et taylorisation du métier
Au fil des années, le design s’est progressivement industrialisé. Là où la pratique était autrefois relativement généraliste, elle s’est fragmentée en une multitude de spécialisations : UX, UI, product design, service design, design system, research, content design, design ops. Cette segmentation, souvent présentée comme un signe de maturité, s’accompagne d’une standardisation accrue des rôles et des compétences.
Les designers sont désormais intégrés dans des chaînes de production fortement structurées, rythmées par des cadences élevées, des cycles courts et une pression constante sur la livraison. Le temps long de la réflexion, de l’exploration ou de l’expérimentation cède progressivement la place à une logique d’itération continue, où l’efficacité prime sur la profondeur.
À cette cadence s’ajoute une bureaucratisation croissante : process, rituels, frameworks, outils collaboratifs, indicateurs de performance. Le design devient une fonction opérée, pilotée, mesurée parfois au détriment de ce qui faisait sa souplesse et sa capacité à ouvrir des possibles.
### L’obsession de l’optimisation
Dans ce contexte, le design est de plus en plus mobilisé comme outil d’optimisation. Optimisation des parcours, des interfaces, des taux de conversion, des temps d’exécution. L’objectif n’est plus tant de proposer des formes nouvelles que d’améliorer l’existant, de réduire les frictions, de maximiser l’efficacité.
Cette orientation transforme en profondeur la nature du travail demandé aux designers. L’exploration formelle, la recherche de singularité ou l’ambition d'amélioration des conditions d'existence cèdent la place à une logique incrémentale, souvent défensive, où le design sert avant tout à ajuster plutôt qu’à transformer.
Le succès du design est alors évalué à l’aune de métriques quantitatives, parfois éloignées de l’expérience vécue ou du sens produit. Le designer se voit assigner un rôle d’optimisateur plus que de concepteur au sens fort.
### Une reconnaissance ambiguë et des promesses non tenues
Paradoxalement, cette instrumentalisation s’accompagne d’un discours valorisant. Le design est présenté comme stratégique, central, indispensable. On affirme qu’il doit être impliqué en amont, participer à la vision, influencer les décisions.
Dans les faits, cette reconnaissance reste largement symbolique. Le designer demeure souvent perçu comme un producteur de livrables visuels, parfois talentueux, mais rarement décisif. Cette perception est renforcée par l’association persistante du design à une posture artistique jugée subjective, difficile à contrôler et donc secondaire dans des organisations obsédées par la maîtrise et la prévisibilité.
L’accès aux instances de décision reste limité, intermittent, conditionné. Lorsqu’il existe, il repose davantage sur des individus exceptionnels que sur une reconnaissance structurelle du rôle du design.
### Des projets pauvres en sens
À ces contraintes s’ajoute un appauvrissement du sens des projets. Beaucoup de designers interviennent sur des produits ou services dont les finalités leur échappent, ou avec lesquels ils entretiennent un rapport distancié, parfois critique. Le design est mobilisé pour résoudre des problèmes locaux, souvent triviaux, dans des cadres déjà largement verrouillés.
Cette situation alimente un désenchantement progressif. Le métier devient répétitif, prévisible, éloigné des aspirations initiales de nombreux designers, attirés par le design pour sa dimension créative, expressive ou transformatrice.
### Un constat nécessaire, mais insuffisant
Pris ensemble, ces éléments dessinent un environnement professionnel objectivement difficile. Ils expliquent la fatigue, la frustration et parfois le désengagement observés chez de nombreux designers.
Mais il me semblent qu'ils ne suffisent toutefois pas à rendre compte de l’ensemble des transformations à l’œuvre dans la discipline. Car ces contraintes, aussi réelles soient-elles, n’expliquent pas entièrement certains mouvements plus profonds : l’éloignement progressif de la production formelle, la redéfinition constante du rôle du designer ou la difficulté croissante à identifier ce qui distingue encore le design d’autres pratiques voisines.
Ces phénomènes suggèrent que le malaise du design ne tient pas tant à ce qu’il subit, car il en est même souvent l'acteur principal, mais surtout à la manière dont il se redéfinit ou se déplace face à ces contraintes.
C’est ce déplacement qu’il faut maintenant interroger.
## Partie 2 — Les designers détestent le design
Depuis une quinzaine d’années, une tendance récurrente se dessine : le design cherche à s’émanciper de ce qui le définissait historiquement. Non pas en disparaissant, mais en se reconfigurant autour d’activités adjacentes, perçues comme plus sérieuses, plus légitimes ou mieux reconnues.
Cette émancipation prend plusieurs formes.
La première est une fuite vers la technique.
Outils, méthodes, normes, process, frameworks : le discours sur le design se technicise. La valeur du designer est de plus en plus associée à sa capacité à maîtriser des dispositifs, à appliquer des recettes, à résoudre des problèmes formalisés. Le design se présente alors comme une ingénierie parmi d’autres, soumise aux mêmes exigences d’objectivité et de reproductibilité.
La seconde est une fuite vers la facilitation et la co-création.
Le designer devient animateur, médiateur, orchestrateur du collectif. Il ne propose plus, il fait émerger. Il ne tranche plus, il aligne. Il est le relais d'une ambition business et des besoins des utilisateurs. Le geste de conception se dissout dans un processus partagé, où la responsabilité des choix est distribuée, parfois jusqu’à devenir introuvable.
La troisième est une fuite vers la stratégie.
Le design cherche à se hisser à un niveau plus abstrait, plus conceptuel, plus éloigné de la production. Il parle de vision, de transformation, de positionnement, parfois sans jamais redescendre vers la forme. Cette montée en généralité est souvent présentée comme un signe de maturité, voire d’élévation du métier.
Ces déplacements ont un point commun : ils permettent de continuer à se dire designer tout en s’éloignant progressivement de l’acte de design lui-même.
Ce déplacement n’a pas pris la forme d’une rupture franche, mais d’une série de glissements successifs, souvent présentés comme des évolutions naturelles du métier. Pris isolément, chacun de ces mouvements peut sembler légitime. Pris ensemble, ils dessinent une transformation plus profonde du rapport des designers à leur propre pratique.
### Une série de rejets rarement assumés
Ce mouvement ne relève pas uniquement de l’adaptation contextuelle. Il s’appuie sur une série de rejets implicites de ce qui était le quotidien des designers auparavant mais rarement formulés comme tels, puis dans un second temps, suite à l'adaptation, à l'arrivée dans la profession de profils n'ayant pas de formation graphique ou déjà largement formaté au nouveau paradigme culturel, avec pour effet de renforcer le changement.
Ces rejets sont :
- Rejet de la production, d’abord. Produire des formes interfaces, objets, images est de plus en plus perçu comme subalterne ou dévalorisant, associé à l’exécution plutôt qu’à la réflexion. On cherche de plus en plus à déléguer cette partie d'abord à des juniors puis maintenant à des IAs.
- Rejet de l’esthétique, ensuite. L’esthétisme est soupçonné de superficialité, de subjectivité, voire de naïveté. Beaucoup préfèrent s’en distancier pour éviter l’étiquette de “faiseur de jolies choses”. La multiplication des interfaces minimalistes ultra rationnalisées le démontre assez bien.
- Rejet de l’intuition. Jugée floue et difficile à défendre, elle est remplacée par des justifications méthodologiques, des données et des preuves. Ce qui ne peut être objectivé tend à être disqualifié.
- Rejet de la posture d’auteur. Assumer une vision, porter des choix formels, signer une proposition implique une exposition personnelle. Cela suppose d’accepter le jugement et le désaccord. Cette posture est souvent vécue comme trop engageante, trop risquée, trop peu compatible avec les logiques collectives des organisations.
- Enfin, rejet de toute tentative de normalisation de la discipline. Définir clairement ce qu’est le design et ce qui relève de sa spécificité est perçu comme une contrainte, voire comme une menace. La plasticité du rôle est préférée à une définition exigeante, quitte à rendre le périmètre du métier de plus en plus indistinct et capable d'absorber toutes les dérobades possibles.
### Une tension intime avec l’exigence du design
Pris ensemble, ces rejets dessinent moins une évolution qu’un malaise. Ils traduisent une difficulté à assumer ce que le design implique réellement comme pratique.
Car le design n’est pas seulement une activité de résolution de problèmes. C’est, historiquement, une pratique fondamentalement formelle dont le but est de produire des interfaces, qu'elles soient matérielles, numériques ou sociales. Même le design de service ou systémique n’échappe pas à cette loi d’airain : un système, aussi abstrait soit-il, n'existe pas hors de la matérialité du monde. Pour être opérant, il doit s’incarner, devenir tangible. À ce titre, la scission clinique opérée ces dernières années entre l'UX (la pensée) et l'UI (la peau) est un symptôme aggravant : elle tente de séparer l’intelligence structurelle de sa réalisation sensible, actant le divorce entre le sens et la forme.
Le design engage une vision du monde, projette des usages possibles qu'il retranscrit par la forme à travers des artefacts. Il suppose une posture d’auteur et de fabricant, profondément sémiotique, visuelle et esthétique : quelqu’un qui met en forme et qui tranche.
Et pour ceux qui penseraient que je porte une vision rétrograde du design, je ne fais qu'exprimer ce qu'est encore et a été le design jusqu'à ses 20-30 dernières années. Il ne s’agit pas ici de réhabiliter la figure de la « diva » capricieuse, cet épouvantail bien pratique que l'on agite pour justifier le consensus mou, mais celle de l'auteur. Le streamline de Loewy, le low-tech social de Papanek, le minimalisme fonctionnel de Rams ou l’exigence de Ive n’étaient pas des délires d'ego, mais des synthèses visionnaires. Ces auteurs ont été encensés précisément parce qu'ils apportaient une réponse unique et incarnée aux problèmes posés.
La pratique du design porte une exigence lourde. Elle engage personnellement. Elle expose. Elle ne se protège ni derrière la méthode, ni derrière le collectif, ni derrière la stratégie. Or une partie significative des designers semble chercher à s’en éloigner parce que cette exposition est inconfortable, éprouvante dans la durée et rarement récompensée symboliquement.
Las d'être perçus, et de se percevoir, comme des artistes, terme qui, pour une raison étrange, est devenu une insulte dans nos métiers, synonyme de manque de sérieux face à la "vraie" stratégie et de devoir toujours justifier leurs choix sans en avoir le dernier mot, les designers ont alors tout fait pour s'inventer de nouvelles fonctions.
Mais cette adaptation a un coût. En s’éloignant de ce qui faisait son cœur, le design fragilise sa propre légitimité.
C’est ce coût et ses conséquences qu’il faut maintenant examiner.
## Partie 3 — Une discipline rendue optionnelle
Le déplacement progressif du design hors de son cœur n’a pas résolu les problèmes évoqués précédemment. Il en a déplacé certaines tensions, parfois soulagé des inconforts individuels, mais au prix d’un affaiblissement collectif.
À mesure que le design s’est redéfini comme méthode, posture ou rôle transversal, il a perdu ce qui faisait sa nécessité propre. Cette perte n’est pas seulement symbolique ; elle a des effets concrets sur sa place dans l’appareil productif.
### Le design comme méthodologie parmi d’autres
En se présentant comme une discipline technique, le design s’est rendu comparable. Comparable à l’ingénierie, à la gestion de projet, à la recherche ou à la stratégie. Dans un environnement où la comparaison est permanente, ce qui ne possède pas de spécificité claire devient substituable.
Lorsque le design se définit par des outils, des process ou des méthodes, il cesse d’être une pratique singulière pour devenir un ensemble de compétences transférables. Ces compétences peuvent alors être prises en charge par d’autres profils : product managers, développeurs, chercheurs, consultants.
Le design ne disparaît pas ; il est absorbé. Et dans cette absorption, son autorité se dissout.
### Sans craft, plus de spécialité
En s’éloignant de la production formelle, le design renonce à son terrain d’expertise le plus défendable. La stratégie incarnée par la forme, l’agencement et la matérialité des expériences qui justifiaient précisément l’existence d’un métier distinct.
Sans "craft" assumé, le designer n’est plus celui qui sait faire ce que les autres ne savent pas faire. Il devient un généraliste parmi d’autres, brassant des concepts éthérés, souvent moins armé techniquement que les ingénieurs et moins légitime politiquement que les managers.
Un paradoxe apparaît alors : plus le designer cherche à élargir son périmètre, plus il affaiblit la raison même pour laquelle il est sollicité.
### L’illusion stratégique
La montée du design vers la stratégie est souvent présentée comme une victoire, la preuve d’une reconnaissance tardive et d’une maturité enfin acquise. Cette lecture mérite pourtant d’être interrogée.
La stratégie n’est pas un territoire vierge que le design aurait conquis. Elle est déjà occupée, structurée et institutionnalisée. Les designers qui s’y aventurent le font rarement avec une autorité propre, mais par délégation ou par opportunité.
En renonçant à produire, le designer perd l’ancrage concret qui lui permettait de peser. Sa parole devient une parole parmi d’autres, tolérée tant qu’elle ne remet pas en cause l’ordre établi mais surtout, encore une fois, il se retrouve en concurrence avec des profils bien mieux placés que lui dans l'imaginaire collectif pour cette mission.
### L’IA comme révélateur mais aussi comme danger final
L’arrivée des intelligences artificielles en révèle les effets.
Si le design se réduit à une production standardisée, l’automatisation devient une menace directe. S’il se définit par la stratégie ou la facilitation, il entre en concurrence frontale avec des rôles déjà installés, surtout si ces derniers sont capables, par une augmentation de leurs compétences grâce aux machines, de s'approprier la conception formelle.
Une question s’impose : qu’apporte le designer que d’autres ne peuvent pas apporter, ou que des outils ne pourront pas produire ?
Cette question est d’autant plus difficile à trancher que le design a lui-même contribué à brouiller sa réponse.
## Conclusion
Le constat est dur : le design s’est rendu inutile par rejet de lui-même.
En mettant de côté ce qui faisait sa spécificité et en cherchant à s’étendre partout, il a fini par se diluer. En privilégiant le processus sur le résultat, il est devenu interchangeable. Ce n'est pas l'incompréhension du marché ou l'arrivée de l'IA qui tuent la discipline : elles ne font qu'occuper le vide laissé par les designers eux-mêmes.
Le marché du travail n'a jamais cessé de comprendre le design. Il l'associe, aujourd'hui comme hier, à la production formelle. Ce n'est pas une réduction mais simplement sa définition la plus juste. La forme n'empêche pas de penser, d'anticiper, de stratégiser. Cela veut juste dire que ce n'est pas ce qui est attendu initialement des designers. Les designers ont toujours développé une pensée complexe derrière leur forme, ils n'avaient juste pas besoin qu'on les encensent pour cela. Ce sont les designers qui ont décidé que cette définition était insuffisante sans que personne ne leur demande autre chose.
En refusant la création, en rejetant ce qui fait le cœur de sa pratique, le designer a donc perdu sa seule légitimité tangible. Il est devenu un intermédiaire coûteux et dispensable dans une chaîne de production qui cherche précisément à éliminer tout le gras. La stratégie d'élévation a échoué : en cessant de produire, le design n'est pas monté en grade, il est simplement sorti du jeu.
---
## English version (AI generated)
Design is going through a phase of decline.
Not a sudden disappearance, but a gradual loss of status, clarity, and authority.
The market, particularly the digital one and its organizational extensions (service design, ops, etc.), which will be the central focus of this essay, is contracting. Positions are becoming scarcer while profiles are multiplying. Expectations are expanding, roles are blurring, and the boundary between design, product, research, strategy, or facilitation is becoming increasingly porous. At the same time, the growing accessibility of tools, and now of artificial intelligence, is calling into question the very specificity of certain design practices.
This retreat is paradoxical. Never has the discipline spoken so much about strategy, impact, or business value. Yet, despite ten years of efforts to elevate itself, design struggles to justify its necessity. It finds itself trapped, challenged by other professions on the level of thinking, and threatened by automation in execution. By constantly blurring its own contours, it has become vague, replaceable, and even optional.
In the face of this erosion, the incomprehension of decision-makers or economic pressure is often invoked. These factors exist, but they do not explain the failure of design’s integration. The conclusion I put forward is internal and provocative: if design is in crisis, it is first and foremost because designers have come to hate design itself.
## Part 1 — An increasingly constrained professional environment
Design practice today operates within a largely constraining professional environment. The difficulties faced by designers are neither marginal nor anecdotal. They are structural, observable, and widely documented. To understand the current malaise of the discipline, it is necessary to start from this observation.
### Industrialization and Taylorization of the profession
Over the years, design has gradually become industrialized. Where the practice was once relatively generalist, it has fragmented into a multitude of specializations: UX, UI, product design, service design, design systems, research, content design, design ops. This segmentation, often presented as a sign of maturity, comes with increased standardization of roles and skills.
Designers are now integrated into highly structured production chains, driven by high pace, short cycles, and constant delivery pressure. The long time required for reflection, exploration, or experimentation is gradually giving way to a logic of continuous iteration, where efficiency takes precedence over depth.
To this pace is added a growing bureaucratization: processes, rituals, frameworks, collaborative tools, performance indicators. Design becomes an operated, managed, measured function, sometimes at the expense of what once made it flexible and capable of opening up possibilities.
### The obsession with optimization
In this context, design is increasingly mobilized as an optimization tool. Optimization of journeys, interfaces, conversion rates, execution times. The goal is no longer so much to propose new forms as to improve what already exists, to reduce friction, to maximize efficiency.
This orientation profoundly transforms the nature of the work expected from designers. Formal exploration, the search for singularity, or the ambition to improve conditions of existence give way to an incremental, often defensive logic, where design primarily serves to adjust rather than to transform.
The success of design is then assessed through quantitative metrics, sometimes far removed from lived experience or produced meaning. The designer is assigned the role of optimizer rather than that of a designer in the strong sense of the term.
### Ambiguous recognition and unfulfilled promises
Paradoxically, this instrumentalization is accompanied by a valorizing discourse. Design is presented as strategic, central, indispensable. It is said to need to be involved upstream, to participate in vision, to influence decisions.
In practice, this recognition remains largely symbolic. Designers are still often perceived as producers of visual deliverables, sometimes talented, but rarely decisive. This perception is reinforced by the persistent association of design with an artistic posture deemed subjective, difficult to control, and therefore secondary in organizations obsessed with control and predictability.
Access to decision-making bodies remains limited, intermittent, and conditional. When it exists, it relies more on exceptional individuals than on a structural recognition of the role of design.
### Projects lacking meaning
To these constraints is added an impoverishment of project meaning. Many designers work on products or services whose purposes escape them, or with which they maintain a distant, sometimes critical relationship. Design is mobilized to solve local, often trivial problems, within frameworks that are already largely locked in.
This situation fuels a gradual disenchantment. The profession becomes repetitive, predictable, far removed from the initial aspirations of many designers, who were drawn to design for its creative, expressive, or transformative dimension.
### A necessary but insufficient observation
Taken together, these elements outline an objectively difficult professional environment. They explain the fatigue, frustration, and sometimes disengagement observed among many designers.
But they do not seem sufficient to account for all the transformations at work within the discipline. Because these constraints, as real as they are, do not fully explain certain deeper movements: the progressive distancing from formal production, the constant redefinition of the designer’s role, or the growing difficulty in identifying what still distinguishes design from neighboring practices.
These phenomena suggest that the malaise of design lies less in what it endures, since it is often its own main actor, and more in the way it redefines itself or shifts in response to these constraints.
It is this shift that must now be examined.
## Part 2 — Designers hate design
For about fifteen years now, at least in France, a recurring tendency has been taking shape: design has been trying to emancipate itself from what historically defined it. Not by disappearing, but by reconfiguring itself around adjacent activities, perceived as more serious, more legitimate, or better recognized.
This emancipation takes several forms.
The first is an escape toward technique.
Tools, methods, standards, processes, frameworks: the discourse around design becomes increasingly technical. The value of the designer is more and more associated with their ability to master systems, apply recipes, and solve formalized problems. Design then presents itself as an engineering discipline among others, subject to the same requirements of objectivity and reproducibility.
The second is an escape toward facilitation and co-creation.
The designer becomes a facilitator, a mediator, an orchestrator of the collective. They no longer propose, they make things emerge. They no longer decide, they align. They become the relay of business ambition and user needs. The act of design dissolves into a shared process, where responsibility for decisions is distributed, sometimes to the point of becoming impossible to locate.
The third is an escape toward strategy.
Design seeks to rise to a more abstract, more conceptual level, further removed from production. It speaks of vision, transformation, positioning, sometimes without ever coming back down to form. This rise in abstraction is often presented as a sign of maturity, even as an elevation of the profession.
These shifts share one thing in common: they allow designers to keep calling themselves designers while progressively moving away from the act of design itself.
This shift did not take the form of a clear break, but rather a series of successive drifts, often presented as natural evolutions of the profession. Taken individually, each of these movements may seem legitimate. Taken together, they outline a much deeper transformation in the relationship designers have with their own practice.
### A series of rejections that are rarely acknowledged
This movement is not solely a matter of contextual adaptation. It rests on a series of implicit rejections of what used to make up designers’ everyday work, rejections that are rarely formulated as such. Then, in a second phase, through adaptation and through the arrival in the profession of profiles without graphic training or already largely shaped by the new cultural paradigm, these shifts were reinforced.
These rejections are the following:
- Rejection of production, first. Producing forms, interfaces, objects, images is increasingly perceived as subordinate or devalued, associated with execution rather than thinking. This part of the work is increasingly delegated, first to juniors and now to AI systems.
- Rejection of aesthetics, next. Aesthetic concern is suspected of superficiality, subjectivity, even naivety. Many prefer to distance themselves from it to avoid the label of “making pretty things.” The proliferation of ultra-rationalized minimalist interfaces illustrates this quite clearly.
- Rejection of intuition. Considered vague and difficult to defend, it is replaced by methodological justifications, data, and evidence. What cannot be objectified tends to be disqualified.
- Rejection of the authorial stance. Assuming a vision, carrying formal choices, signing a proposal implies personal exposure. It means accepting judgment and disagreement. This stance is often experienced as too engaging, too risky, too incompatible with the collective logics of organizations.
- Finally, rejection of any attempt to normalize the discipline. Clearly defining what design is and what constitutes its specificity is perceived as a constraint, even as a threat. The plasticity of the role is preferred to a demanding definition, even if it means making the boundaries of the profession increasingly indistinct and capable of absorbing every possible escape route.
### An intimate tension with the demands of design
Taken together, these rejections outline less an evolution than a malaise. They reveal a difficulty in fully assuming what design truly entails as a practice.
Because design is not merely an activity of problem-solving. Historically, it is a fundamentally formal practice whose purpose is to produce interfaces, whether material, digital, or social. Even service design or systemic design does not escape this iron law: a system, however abstract it may be, does not exist outside the materiality of the world. To be operative, it must be embodied, made tangible. In this respect, the clinical split that has been introduced in recent years between UX (thought) and UI (skin) is an aggravating symptom: it attempts to separate structural intelligence from its sensible realization, enacting a divorce between meaning and form.
Design commits to a worldview. It projects possible uses and translates them into form through artifacts. It presupposes an authorial and making stance, deeply semiotic, visual, and aesthetic: someone who gives form and who decides.
And for those who might think that I am defending a retrograde vision of design, I am merely expressing what design still was, and had been, until the last 20 to 30 years. This is not about rehabilitating the figure of the capricious “diva,” that convenient scarecrow used to justify lukewarm consensus, but rather that of the author. Loewy’s streamlining, Papanek’s social low-tech, Rams’s functional minimalism, or Ive’s rigor were not ego-driven fantasies, but visionary syntheses. These authors were celebrated precisely because they provided unique, embodied responses to the problems at hand.
Design practice carries a heavy demand. It engages the individual personally. It exposes them. It does not shield itself behind method, nor behind the collective, nor behind strategy. Yet a significant share of designers seem to seek distance from it, because this exposure is uncomfortable, exhausting over time, and rarely rewarded symbolically.
Tired of being perceived, and of perceiving themselves, as artists, a term that for some strange reason has become an insult in our professions, synonymous with a lack of seriousness compared to “real” strategy and with having to constantly justify choices without ever having the final say, designers have done everything they could to invent new functions for themselves.
But this adaptation comes at a cost. By moving away from what once formed its core, design weakens its own legitimacy.
It is this cost, and its consequences, that must now be examined.
## Part 3 — A discipline rendered optional
The gradual displacement of design away from its core has not resolved the issues described earlier. It has shifted certain tensions, sometimes eased individual discomforts, but at the cost of collective weakening.
As design redefined itself as a method, a posture, or a transversal role, it lost what made it intrinsically necessary. This loss is not merely symbolic; it has concrete effects on its position within the productive system.
### Design as a methodology among others
By presenting itself as a technical discipline, design has made itself comparable. Comparable to engineering, project management, research, or strategy. In an environment where comparison is constant, anything that lacks a clear specificity becomes substitutable.
When design defines itself through tools, processes, or methods, it ceases to be a singular practice and becomes a set of transferable skills. These skills can then be taken on by other profiles: product managers, developers, researchers, consultants.
Design does not disappear; it is absorbed. And in that absorption, its authority dissolves.
### Without craft, no specialty
By moving away from formal production, design abandons its most defensible area of expertise. The strategy embodied through form, composition, and the materiality of experiences was precisely what justified the existence of a distinct profession.
Without an assumed craft, the designer is no longer the one who knows how to do what others cannot. They become a generalist among others, juggling ethereal concepts, often less technically equipped than engineers and less politically legitimate than managers.
A paradox then emerges: the more the designer seeks to broaden their scope, the more they weaken the very reason they are engaged.
### The strategic illusion
The rise of design toward strategy is often presented as a victory, proof of belated recognition and finally achieved maturity. This reading, however, deserves to be questioned.
Strategy is not a virgin territory that design has conquered. It is already occupied, structured, and institutionalized. Designers who venture into it rarely do so with their own authority, but rather by delegation or opportunity.
By renouncing production, the designer loses the concrete grounding that once gave weight to their voice. Their speech becomes one voice among others, tolerated as long as it does not challenge the established order and, once again, placed in direct competition with profiles far better positioned than designers in the collective imagination for this role.
### AI as both a revealer and a final danger
The arrival of artificial intelligence makes these effects explicit.
If design is reduced to standardized production, automation becomes a direct threat. If it defines itself through strategy or facilitation, it enters into direct competition with already established roles, especially if those roles can, by augmenting their skills through machines, appropriate formal design themselves.
A question becomes unavoidable: what does the designer bring that others cannot, or that tools will not be able to produce?
This question is all the harder to answer because design itself has helped to blur the response.
## Conclusion
The conclusion is harsh: design has made itself useless by rejecting itself.
By setting aside what made it specific and trying to expand everywhere, it has ended up diluted. By privileging process over outcome, it has become interchangeable. It is not the market’s misunderstanding or the arrival of AI that are killing the discipline; they merely occupy the void left by designers themselves.
The job market has never stopped understanding design. It associates it, today as yesterday, with formal production. This is not a reduction, but simply its most accurate definition. Form does not prevent thinking, anticipating, or strategizing. It simply means that this is not what is initially expected of designers. Designers have always developed complex thinking behind their forms; they simply did not need to be praised for it. It is designers themselves who decided this definition was insufficient, without anyone asking them to be anything else.
By refusing creation, by rejecting the very core of their practice, designers have therefore lost their only tangible legitimacy. They have become a costly and dispensable intermediary within a production chain that is precisely seeking to eliminate all excess. The strategy of elevation has failed: by ceasing to produce, design did not rise in rank, it simply exited the game.
---
# About the author
Remi Garcia, Product Designer for 15 years. French and utopia-driven.
Author links:
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/remigarciagarcia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Substack](https://remigarcia.substack.com/)
[Re:DESIGN | Rémi Garcia | SubstackUne exploration des aspects philosophiques et pratiques du design. Click to read Re:DESIGN, by Rémi Garcia, a Substack publication. Launched 2 months ago.Re:DESIGNRémi Garcia](https://remigarcia.substack.com/)
### Design did not show up for work today, by Vinish Garg
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-did-not-show-up-for-work-today-by-vinish-garg/
Last updated: 2026-03-17T17:20:43.000Z
## Abstract
In "Design did not show up for work today," Vinish Garg interrogates the hidden human costs of modern product development, asking: Why do well-intentioned organizations consistently produce products that cause unintended suffering, and have we forgotten to consider how our digital infrastructure actually makes people feel? Through a dialogue between an organization and its personified "Design," Garg posits that the root cause of this harm is not malice, but the underlying system itself. Driven by quarterly targets, engagement mechanics, and rigid hierarchies, this system possesses its own logic that individuals follow without actively choosing the negative outcomes it produces. He argues that organizations construct self-serving measurement systems to validate their success, conveniently ignoring the psychological nudges designed to trap users. By prioritizing the product backlog over human well-being, companies inadvertently create environments where teenagers cannot sit with their own thoughts and workers are bombarded with notifications when their psychological defenses are lowest.
The key takeaways emphasize that true design requires a profound re-engagement with human Empathy, moving beyond the sterile metrics of Organizational Ideology and addictive habit loops. We must study the visceral responses of the human body to our digital environments, recognizing that a seemingly insignificant red error message can signal to a vulnerable, anxious user that the world was not built with them in mind. To rectify this, organizations do not need to anticipate every possible emotional state; rather, they must hire and empower individuals who remember that they have one, ensuring that the infrastructure we have forgotten to see is brought back into the light of conscious, compassionate design.
#infrastructure #consequences #proximity
---
## "Design did not show up for work today"
### A conversation about infrastructure we've forgotten to see
Monday, 9:47 AM (Year, any)
> Org: I noticed you're not in any of the meetings today.
Design: I'm thinking of something.
> Org: Thinking what?
Design: How long it takes before someone notices I'm missing.
> Org: That's... cryptic. Is this about the sprint? We can reschedule if…
Design: Do you remember when you started?
> Org: Of course. We had an idea. We thought it would help people.
Design: Did it?
> Org: We have three million users. Revenue growing thirty percent year on year. We've been…
Design: That's not what I asked.
> Org: We think it helps people, yes. Our NPS score…
Design: You built a measurement system to tell you what you wanted to hear.
> Org: That's not fair. We measure outcomes. We track retention…
>
> People can leave if they want. We don't trap anyone.
Design: You designed an environment with twenty-seven nudges to prevent them from leaving, and then tell yourself they stayed by choice.
> Org: You're being dramatic. We're a technology company, we don't set out to harm anyone.
>
> That's how every product works. Engagement mechanics, habit loops. We are giving them value for their investment in our product.
Design: I know. I built them. That's what I want to talk about.
Peter Senge spent his career studying systems. He found something that should disturb you deeply.
> Org: Which is?
Design: We consistently produce suffering that nobody intends.
Not because people are malicious. Because the system—the incentives, the hierarchy, the quarterly targets—has its own logic. And individuals inside it follow that logic without ever choosing the outcome it produces. ([Reference to Peter Senge’s book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FFifth%5FDiscipline?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
Your people are good people. I believe that.
But the system you've built produces outcomes your good people would be horrified by, if they stopped long enough to see them.
> Org: Then tell me what we're producing. Specifically.
Design: Specifically?
A generation of teenagers who cannot be alone with their thoughts for four minutes, because your algorithm has trained them to reach for their phones before the discomfort even registers.
Workers who check your productivity dashboard at nine o'clock at night because you designed the notification to arrive when their defenses are weakest and their anxiety is highest.
You produce these things.
Not because you wanted to.
Because you never thought about whether you should.
**There is a person trying to sign in but you make them feel as if they are stupid. It means you have failed — before they have had the chance to fail.**
**Have you ever thought about how it feels at that moment?**
Someone designed that.
Not maliciously. Probably in a rush. Probably without anyone in the room who said: *wait — what does a person feel when they see red before they've done anything wrong?*
> Org: That's not a big deal.
Design: To you it might be a small thing.
To the person who just got locked out of their account at seven in the morning, who has a presentation in forty minutes, who is already running late, who is already nervous—the red text is one more signal that the world was not designed with them in mind.
It is small in your backlog.
It is not small in their body. **I guess we need to study the human body when we talk about the influence of design.**
> Org: We cannot anticipate every emotional state. We cannot design for every emotional state.
Design: You do not need to anticipate every emotional state.
You need to hire people who remember they have one.
There is a job posting — a company hiring a UI/UX designer, asking for proficiency in Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Invasion. An autocorrect artifact. Nobody caught it. A company asking for design skill, displaying the absence of it in the hiring post itself.
That is not a typo.
That is a signal about what the organisation actually pays attention to.
> Org: That's embarrassing but hardly catastrophic.
Design: The catastrophic things are made of these. A crack in the beam is not catastrophic but the fall of a beam on someone is catastrophic.
In your language:
A teenager who reaches for her phone at eleven at night is not a catastrophic event.
It is the sum of ten thousand small decisions — each one made by someone who was moving fast, who had a deadline, who was measuring the wrong thing, who never sat in the room where the consequence lived.
The Microsoft login error.
This error message does not break anyone’s life.
Or, the Microsoft Whiteboard metadata.
But the experiences accumulate.
In a person's day, they accumulate into the feeling that technology was made for someone else. That the people who built these things were not thinking about them.
That they are, in the language of design, an edge case. No person should feel like an edge case in their own life.
> Org: That's what practitioners are supposed to prevent.
Design: Yes. And they try.
But you have built an environment where the practitioner who sees the red text writes it in a ticket. The ticket goes into a backlog. The backlog is triaged against a roadmap. The roadmap serves a metric. The metric serves a target.
And the red text stays red.
Not because nobody cared.
**Because the system made caring optional and shipping mandatory.**
The practitioner is not the failure.
The environment is.
And the environment is what you designed.
---
> Org: We run ethics reviews. We have responsible design guidelines.
Design: They govern the decisions you have already decided to make. They do not ask the right questions.
> Org: What is the right question?
Design: Should we build this at all?
> Org: *(pause)*
>
> That's not a practical question at our scale. We are a technology company, we cannot solve civilizational problems.
Design: No. But you can stop pretending that you are not contributing to them.
> Org: So you mean, we should stop building?
Design: You start remembering.
There was a museum director who described what good cultural institutions do as building a bridge of relevance—from the past, through the present, into the future. Not to preserve things. To keep them alive enough to teach. ([Link](https://www.berliner-museumsverband.de/interview-matthias-henkel/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
> Org: That's a museum. We are a technology company.
Design: You are an organisation that shapes how millions of people experience reality. So was every cathedral ever built. So was every library. So was every public square.
The question is whether you know that. Whether you feel the weight of it.
> Org: Of course we feel it. We have entire teams dedicated to…
Design: Tell me the name of the person most responsible for the algorithm that surfaces content to lonely teenagers at night.
> Org: That's... that would be distributed across several teams.
Design: No one is responsible.
> Org: The system…
Design: The system has no face. That's the point. You built a system without a face so that no one would have to look at what it does.
That is a design decision.
---
> Org: You are accusing us of being deliberately irresponsible.
Design: No, I am accusing you of something worse.
Being accidentally irresponsible at scale. Systemically producing outcomes nobody owns. Senge called it systems ignorance — the gap between the interdependence we've created and the awareness we've developed to understand it. ([Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QtQqZ6Q5-o&t=18s&ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
You've created enormous interdependence. Your awareness has not kept pace.
> Org: How do you close that gap?
Design: You restructure.
Not the product, but the organisation itself.
> Org: How?
Design: Right now, your hierarchy protects certain questions from ever reaching the people with the power to act on them. The designer raises the issue in a ticket. The document goes into a review. The review produces a recommendation. The recommendation competes with a quarterly target. The target wins.
It happens.
Not because anyone decided the target matters more than the teenager. Because the system was designed to make the target visible and the teenager invisible.
> Org: How do you make the teenager visible?
Design: You change what you measure. You change who speaks in what room. You change which questions are allowed to interrupt a roadmap. You reward them for their curiosity and not for the containers designed.
You build an organisation where the person who sees harm has a shorter path to the person who can stop it than the person who sees an opportunity has to the person who can fund it.
Right now that path is backwards.
---
> Org: But it sounds like slowing down. We operate in a competitive landscape.
Design: Marc Baumgartner wrote about this. He called it peak design—the moment when the world starts doing less with design, not more. ([Link](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/of-permacrisis-and-peak-design-by-marc-baumgartner/))
You know what brought it on?
> Org: My guess is AI but I am not sure.
Design: Design let itself be infantilised. It was renamed Design Thinking and sold to boardrooms by people and most of them had never designed anything.
And in the process, the question design was actually supposed to ask — what kind of world does this make possible — was replaced by: how do we make this process more efficient?
The same thing is happening in your organisation right now.
You have design teams. They are not asking the design question. They are asking the product question. Which is only the business question in a different font.
> Org: The design question...?
Design: What kind of world does this make possible? And, for whom?
---
> Org: Those are very broad questions for a product roadmap.
Design: I want to show you something. Come with me.
---
*They walk towards a local museum, without speaking. They saw the city—the billboards, a school letting out, a man waiting at a bus stop with a phone in his hand, a flower seller.*
*They stop in front of the museum, a small museum. The kind that does not make international lists.*
*Inside: objects. Ordinary objects. A child's shoe. A letter written in a language the original writer's grandchildren no longer speak. A photograph of a street corner that no longer exists, from a time when the people in it were alive and did not know they were being preserved.*
---
Then enter.
Design: Look at the shoe.
> Org: It's a child's shoe. Small, and very old.
Design: Someone made that. Someone thought about the way a child runs, what a child needs to feel held by the ground.
They had a child in front of them.
**And they made something that said: I thought about you.**
> Org: *(quietly)*
>
> It's beautiful.
Design: Now look at your last product release. Find the thing in it that says: *I thought about you.*
Not the feature. Not the new onboarding flow.
The moment—if there is one—where a human being felt, for even a second, that the person who built this had them in mind.
> Org: *(long pause)*
>
> I'm not sure there is one.
Design: That's not because your people don't care.
It's because you've built an organisation that processes humans rather than thinks about them. **A culture that optimises for human behaviour rather than considering their dignity.**
This shoe is three hundred years old.
The child who wore it is long gone.
But the care that made it—that is still here. Still, somehow, alive.
What will remain in your product that people could see in one hundred years? Or even in fifty years?
What care will someone be able to read or see in what you made?
> Org: *(no answer)*
Design: That question is not rhetorical.
It is the oldest design question there is.
And almost no one in your industry is asking about it.
*They stand for a while longer.*
*A small girl stops in front of the shoe. Then she looks up at her teacher and asks—”Did someone love this child?”*
*The teacher says: “Yes. Someone did.”*
*The girl nods, as if this is the answer she needed, and moves on.*
---
Design: That question.
That is the question your product should be able to answer.
Not: Did we grow? Not: Did we retain? Not: Did we expand?
Did someone love the person this was made for?
> Org: *(very quietly)*
>
> I do not know how to build that into a roadmap.
Design: You do not build it into a roadmap.
You build it into the culture. Into the sentiment. Into what you are. Find the care, and the love. Build the care culture.
**Into the people you hire, and the questions you let them ask, and the kind of answers you let interrupt a meeting. (Jony Ive captured this sentiment in their interview with Patrick Collison** [**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g\_8r-mE**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g%5F8r-mE&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**)**
The same museum director said that the role of a good cultural institution is not just to create a space for encounter—but to actively moderate the questions a society is afraid to ask itself.
You have three million people inside your product.
**You are, whether you accept it or not, a cultural institution.**
**The question is whether you will moderate those questions deliberately — or let the algorithm decide which questions are never asked at all.**
---
Design: Let me show you something else.
> Org: *(waits)*
Design: Let’s walk to the metro station. Just walk.
*(pause)*
Design: What you see.
> Org: I see... signs. A coffee shop. People walking. A crossing.
Design: Which way does the crossing sign point?
> Org: Both directions. Left and right.
Design: And you know which way to go?
> Org: Yes, because — oh.
Design: Because you already knew where you were going. But the person who didn't know this city, arriving for the first time, the immigrant employee's mother visiting from another country—she is standing at the same sign.
What does she feel?
> Org: *(quietly)*
>
> That nobody thought about her.
Design: There's a metro system. Seven hundred thousand people move through it every day. A team sat down before designing a single sign and asked one question: *what does a person need to know, and exactly when do they need to know it?*
Not: What looks consistent. Not: What matches the brand.
*What question is this person carrying right now, at this exact moment, and how do we answer it?*
They mapped every question. In sequence. From the street to the platform to the train to the exit and back into the city.
Seven hundred thousand people a day. Most of them never notice the signs.
> Org: Because they just... move.
Design: Because when infrastructure works, it disappears. You don't notice it until it fails you.
Your product’s payments’ experience failed someone. It failed many times. The Microsoft sign in form failed many.
But the failure wasn't about a field. It was about a question nobody stopped to ask.
*What does this person need, right now, at this exact moment?*
> Org: *(slowly)*
>
> We've been building features. We haven't been answering questions.
Design: A researcher, **Shannon Mattern** spent years studying what happens when cities start thinking of themselves as computers—optimizing for dashboards, for data, for efficiency. She found that when you reduce a city to what can be measured, you don't make it smarter. ([LINK](https://placesjournal.org/article/a-city-is-not-a-computer/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
You make it blind.
Blind to the cattle path that became a street because people needed to get somewhere. Blind to the doorway width that fits someone carrying something. Blind to the curb cut designed for a wheelchair, used by everyone but noticed by no one.
**The city's intelligence was never in the data. It was in the accumulated answers to one question: who needs to move through here, and what do they carry?**
Tell me—When did purpose last override a revenue decision in your organization?
> Org: *(no answer)*
Design: That silence is the answer.
**Not because your people don't care. Because the structure makes care optional and profit mandatory.**
You designed this organisation.
You can design a different one.
---
> Org: What would that look like?
Design: Like a museum that considers itself a fourth place — not just a space where people encounter things, but a space that actively moderates the questions a society is afraid to ask itself. That takes sides. Not politically, but epistemologically.
That says: *here is what we know, here is what we owe to the past, here is what the future needs from us.*
As I said, you are a cultural institution, whether you want to be or not.
**Every product that reaches millions of people becomes, in time, part of the architecture of how those people understand the world. The question is whether you designed that architecture consciously, or whether you let the quarterly cycle design it for you.**
> Org: I don't know if I know how to think at that scale.
Design: *(gently)*
That's the most honest thing you've said.
> Org: It's overwhelming.
Design: Senge said the same thing differently. He said the problem isn't that the challenges are too large.
**The problem is that we've disconnected the act of making decisions from the act of experiencing their consequences.**
The person who decides to optimize the notification algorithm never sits like the teenager sits at eleven at night. The person who approves the cancellation flow never watches someone who can't afford the subscription try to leave.
There are engineers and designers in the product teams and in the agencies who have never seen their product’s landing page—not even one. I cannot find a word for calling it “super ridiculous”. ([Related LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vinishgarg%5Fwhistles-i-have-seen-a-team-of-fifteen-activity-7426802452093472769-uZ9-?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fdesktop&rcm=ACoAAAEClDIBmM5CBaYOnxpbYQnvWS3EZSlZPCw))
> Org: You're describing every large organisation.
Design: Yes.
That's what makes it a systems problem.
And that's exactly why it requires a systems answer.
Not better guidelines.
**Different proximity.**
> Org: **Proximity to what?**
Design: **To consequences.**
> Org: That would change every meeting we have.
Design: Yes.
> Org: It would slow us down.
Design: It would change what you mean by speed.
Right now, speed means how fast you can ship.
What if speed meant how quickly you could tell whether what you shipped was good?
---
> Org: *(after a long pause)*
>
> investors would accept that framing.
Design: Your investors accepted a framing in which a company's value is measured by its ability to extract attention from human beings and sell it.
That framing has consequences.
You can negotiate with it. Most people never question it.
**But it is, like every other framing, a design decision.**
Someone made it. Someone can unmake it.
> Org: That someone would have to be willing to lose a lot.
Design: Henkel asked himself a question once.
He said: I would love to meet the dead warrior who was buried with the stone axe we excavated — and ask him whether he considers the methods of archaeology necessary and justifiable.
He was asking: Does the act of understanding justify the intrusion?
I'm asking you a version of the same question.
Does the act of growing justify what you extract to do it?
> Org: *(very quietly)*
>
> I don't know anymore.
Design: Good.
That not-knowing is the first honest thing you've had to work with in years.
Don't optimize it away.
---
> Org: What do I do with it?
Design: Sit with it long enough to feel what it costs.
Then go back into the organisation and find one room—one meeting, one role, one decision—where that not-knowing is allowed to change the outcome.
Not the whole organisation. Not yet.
One room.
> Org: And if the organisation resists?
Design: It will.
Systems always protect themselves.
But systems also change through the behaviour of the people inside them. Not through their beliefs—through their behaviour. What they do, not what they think.
Senge said it.
You don't change a system by announcing new values. You change it by building one environment where the new behaviour is possible.
Then another. Then another.
*Until the behaviour outlasts the resistance.*
> Org: That could take years.
Design: The cathedral builders of Europe worked on structures they knew they would never see completed.
They designed for a future they would not live in.
That is what it looks like to take consequence seriously.
> Org: *(quietly)*
>
> I'm not sure we know how to build for a future we will not even see.
Design: You used to.
Before the quarterly cycle made everything visible, everything measurable, everything now—you used to plant trees you wouldn't sit under.
I remember.
I was there.
I have been the infrastructure.
---
> Org: How do I remember that?
Design: By changing what you call success.
Not what you put in the press release.
What you allow yourself to feel proud of, at the end of a day, in private.
Is it the metric that moved?
> Org: That's a much harder thing to feel proud of.
Design: Yes.
**Pride in restraint is one of the most difficult things I've ever been asked to help design.**
Most organisations never ask me to.
> Org: I'm asking.
Design: (a long pause)
Then we have somewhere to begin.
---
A sound.
Of the phone ringing on a bedside table.
Org opens their eyes.
The ceiling. A bedroom. Morning light in the corners somewhere.
A dream.
*Org have just seen a dream.*
But the girl is still there—the one who stopped in front of the shoe and asked: *did someone love this child?*
That question is not in the dream anymore.
It is in the room.
Org sits up slowly.
Does not reach for the phone.
Does not open the emails.
Gets up.
Walks to the mirror.
And stops.
Slowly opens a notepad.
Writes a single question at the top of an empty page:
**What does this make possible, and for whom, for how long?**
Org closes it, and goes to work.
Org opens the laptop. Thinks about something, and writes a prompt to find what they should do next.
But they do not send the message. It was there like an email draft. There is no conversation because the intelligence could not answer the unsent questions.
The org signs out. Not to find the answers but to design the answers.
---
The state of design in 2026 is measured in proximity—how close we have stayed to the collectives and how closely we see the consequences of our decisions. A technology company is not a museum but they are a cultural institution. This discussion is not about the state of design or Future of Design, the question is whether the future will recognize what we built with care and love. Did we?
---
## About the author
**Vinish Garg** is searching for the intersections in our work—intersection of sense, meaning, and purpose that build an organization's capacity to design itself, and to design design. Vinish woks with organizations for their product strategy, onboarding and UX, and product content design strategy—often on the intersection of system thinking, building capacity, and establishing systems for the organization’s goals.
Author links:
- [Linkedin](%5Bhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vinishgarg/%5D%28https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinishgarg/%29)
- [Website](https://www.vinishgarg.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Vinish Garg - Vinish GargVinish Garg works with product teams for product strategy, product positioning, onboarding and UX, product content strategy, content design, UX writing.Vinish GargVinish Garg](https://www.vinishgarg.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Update: More Time to Shape the Conversation – New Dates for SoD26 & FoD26
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/update-more-time-to-shape-the-conversation-new-dates-for-sod26-fod26/
Last updated: 2026-02-19T13:45:02.000Z
Since we launched the [**SoD26**](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/) and [**FoD26**](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-future-of-design-2026-fod26/) calls for participation earlier this year, we’ve seen some great initial interest. However, to ensure this year’s conversation is as deep and diverse as it deserves to be, I’ve decided to push the timeline back by a few weeks.
## Why the change?
Two main reasons:
1. **Quality & Space:** I’ve been a bit more buried in personal projects than I anticipated. I want to make sure I have the headspace to properly review every submission and facilitate the event.
2. **More Voices:** We’ve had a few great registrations, but I want to give those of you still "thinking about it" the extra breathing room to get your thoughts onto paper. These events thrive on a wide range of perspectives!
## The New Schedule
- ⏳ **New Submission Deadline:** March 13, 2026
- ✍️ **Publishing Period:** March 16 – March 20, 2026
- 🎙️ **The Main Event (Live):** March 20, 2026
## Join the Live Event
Whether you are submitting a piece or just want to join the discussion, you can now register for the main event on March 20th via your preferred platform:
👉 [**Register on Meetup**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/313428625/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
👉 [**Register on Luma**](https://luma.com/ow7yfbtw?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Both platforms link to our Google Meet room for the live session.*
[State & Future of Design 2026: The Community Showcase, Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 7:00 PM | MeetupJoin us for the culmination of \*\*\[SoD26\](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/)\*\* and \*\*\[FoD26\](https://www.designcrMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/313428625/?utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=share-btn%5Fsavedevents%5Fshare%5Fmodal&utm%5Fsource=link&utm%5Fversion=v2&member%5Fid=239077832)
[State & Future of Design 2026: The Community Showcase · LumaJoin us for the culmination of SoD26 and FoD26\. After a week of community-led publishing and reflection, we are gathering to discuss the themes, challenges,…Kevin Richard](https://luma.com/ow7yfbtw?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### A Reminder of the Tracks
- **The State of Design (SoD26)**: Focused on critique, the "decay of craft," and the operational walls we face today.
- **The Future of Design (FoD26)**: Focused on exploration, new systems of production, and the evolving role of the designer.
If you were worried about missing the original February deadline, this is your sign! I’m really looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.
If you have any questions about your submission ideas, feel free to reach out ([join our Slack and DM me](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
---
Thanks!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Call for Participation: The Future of Design 2026 // FoD26
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-future-of-design-2026-fod26/
Last updated: 2026-01-04T20:42:53.000Z
## **SoD26 & FoD26: Two Paths, One Conversation**
Each year, we host a community project, called The State of Design, to take the pulse of our discipline.
Reflecting on the last two years of *State of Design (SoD)*, we realized something critical: our conversations often get caught in a tension between *what is* (the messy reality of our industry) and *what could be* (the systemic shifts we hope for). When we try to do both at once, we often dilute the power of the critique or the boldness of the vision.
Therefore, we are opening two separate calls for participation:
1. **The State of Design (SoD26):** If you want to analyze, critique, or discuss the current state of the design industry, this track is for you. Contributions will be compiled into our SoD26 collection.
2. **The Future of Design (FoD26):** If you prefer to experiment and build prototypes that speculate on the future of design, join this track. Contributions will form our FoD26 inventory.
We cannot build a meaningful future if we ignore the broken parts of the present. Conversely, we cannot fix the present if we don’t know where we’re trying to go. By separating these "faces of the coin," we give ourselves permission to be deeply critical in one space and wildly imaginative in the other.
### **How to Join**
You can register for the track that suits you best—or tackle both! The project concludes in late February with a live convergence session where participants from both tracks will come together to share insights with the community.
[**Join Track 1: The State of Design (SoD26)**](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/)
**Join Track 2: The Future of Design (FoD26)**
Continue reading or register here:
[Register to participate – FoD26](https://forms.gle/hZBFN54uXjdB44Jo8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Project beacon 2061 music
0:00
/10.046916
1×
If the [**State of Design 2026** (SoD26, The Anchor)](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/) is about debugging our broken present, then **The Future of Design 2026** (FoD26, The Sail) is about compiling the code for what comes next.
We are not interested in trend reports, "Top 10 Tools" lists, or linear extrapolations of today's tech. We are looking for **discontinuities**. We are looking for the "weak signals"—the glitches in the present reality that hint at a completely new operating system for our world.
This year, we are doing something different. We have intercepted a signal.
## The Experiment: A Leak from 2061
The community has just intercepted a corrupted data stream originating from a probable future timeline. It speaks of a world where design is no longer about "users" and "products," but about **entanglements**, **rituals**, and **inter-species governance**.
To frame this year's experimentation track, we have built a **Temporal Signal Beacon**. It is a research probe disguised as a CLI terminal. It allows you to intercept *“Shards”* and *“Map Fragments”* of information from unstable future timelines, synthesize them, and map the topology of a future we haven't built yet.
[Launch The Signal Beacon](https://signals.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
****Important: The Beacon is not a "product."** It is not a utility tool. It is not a polished app designed to "solve" your creative block. It is a ****narrative experiment**. It is a digital toy. It is a research probe disguised as a CLI terminal, built to be played with, broken, and experienced.
## The Themes: Weak Signals
We are asking you to explore three specific "frequencies" that keep appearing in the data stream. These are not predictions; they are prompts for prototyping.
### 1\. Synthetic Realities & The New Materialism
*The signal suggests:*
> "Design is not just objects; it is embodied philosophy."
As the line between the organic and the synthetic dissolves, how do we design for "Bio-Synthetic" convergence? When algorithms have agency and objects have memory, the role of the designer shifts from "creator" to "gardener."
- **The Prompt:** Prototype an object that grows, dies, or refuses to function when treated unethically. Design a "Data Ritual" for a synthetic intelligence.
### 2\. More-than-Human Governance
*The signal suggests:*
> "Rivers and forests now have legal personhood and a vote in the Design Senate."
We have hit the limits of human-centered design. The next paradigm is Planetary. How do we build interfaces that allow non-human actors (forests, AIs, future generations) to participate in decision-making?
- **The Prompt:** Create a "Voting Interface" for a river. Draft a constitution for a cooperative owned by the software itself.
### 3\. Post-Efficiency & The Slow Web
*The signal suggests:*
> "Efficiency is no longer the goal. Friction is the feature."
In a world of instant generation, "slowness" becomes a luxury asset. The future points toward "Slow Materials" and interfaces that resist doom-scrolling by having digital "mass."
- **The Prompt:** Design a social network that forces you to wait. Create a "Haptic Ethics" framework where difficult choices require physical effort to execute.
[Register to participate – FoD26](https://forms.gle/hZBFN54uXjdB44Jo8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## How to Participate
Unlike the **State of Design* track, which seeks written essays, this track seeks ****artifacts, prototypes, speculative Design, and Design fictions**.
### The Process: "Mine, Synthesize, Create"
We encourage you to use the **Signal Beacon** as your starting point.
1. **Intercept:** Use the [Signal Beacon](https://signals.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to scan for "Shards" and "Map Fragments."
2. **Synthesize:** Use the tool's **"Merge"** feature to combine two discordant ideas into a "Master Shard" (e.g., combining *Algorithmic Governance* with *Ritual Design*).
3. **Prototyping:** Take the resulting "Master Shard" and treat it as a design brief. Build the thing it describes.
[Launch The Signal Beacon](https://signals.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Submission Formats
We are looking for contributions in the following formats:
- **Visual Artifacts:** High-fidelity renders of impossible/unstable/undecided objects from 2061.
- **Diegetic Prototypes:** A user manual or an interactive prototype for a device, object, process that doesn't exist yet.
- **Speculative Maps:** Cartographies of future data-landscapes (inspired by the Beacon's vector maps).
- **Other Artifacts of possible futures are allowed.** Be creative. Be unconventional. We are looking for *discontinuities*.
Also, you can export shards and fragments
**"Master Shard" Exports:** The direct output image from the Signal Beacon tool, accompanied by a 300-word commentary on what this future implies.
## Timeline & Selection
- **Open Call:** Now until February 13th, 2026 🎯 (register using the button below).
- **Submission deadline:** February 20th, 2026 📆.
- **The Sprint:**
- During the week of **February 23rd to February 27th**, submitted work will be published here, on the community website.
- On **February 27th,** will hold a community live event (online, TBD) to celebrate and discuss both tracks (*SoD26* and *FoD26)* collections.
[Register to participate – FoD26](https://forms.gle/hZBFN54uXjdB44Jo8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## A Note on the "Glitch"
You may notice the [Signal Beacon](https://signals.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is unstable. It requires "Data Allocation Tokens" (DAT) to operate. It will force you to manage memory. It might crash. This is intentional. We cannot design the future if we expect everything to be frictionless.
## Last word, future possibilities.
The beacon allows you to:
- Retrieve *shards* and *map fragments*, and store them automatically into the *archive inventory*;
- You find some hidden and secret information of your captured *shards* and *fragments* in the archive (or by clicking the "\[ SHARD DETAILS \]" button).
- The *archive* enables you to merge *shards* and *fragments* to create *master shards.*
Also, you can customize some settings.
Also, also, don't hesitate to play with the interface. There are some easter eggs hidden 😉.
[Start Your Scan Sequence Here](https://signals.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
> *"We are not a single voice. We are a chorus of possible futures."*
**Join Track I:**
[Call for Participation: The State of Design 2026 // SoD26Track I: The Anchor – System Diagnostics for a Broken IndustryDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/)
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Call for Participation: The State of Design 2026 // SoD26
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-state-of-design-2026-sod26/
Last updated: 2026-01-04T17:42:02.000Z
## **SoD26 & FoD26: Two Paths, One Conversation**
Each year, we host a community project, called The State of Design, to take the pulse of our discipline.
Reflecting on the last two years of *State of Design (SoD)*, we realized something critical: our conversations often get caught in a tension between *what is* (the messy reality of our industry) and *what could be* (the systemic shifts we hope for). When we try to do both at once, we often dilute the power of the critique or the boldness of the vision.
Therefore, we are opening two separate calls for participation:
1. **The State of Design (SoD26):** If you want to analyze, critique, or discuss the current state of the design industry, this track is for you. Contributions will be compiled into our SoD26 collection.
2. **The Future of Design (FoD26):** If you prefer to experiment and build prototypes that speculate on the future of design, join this track. Contributions will form our FoD26 inventory.
We cannot build a meaningful future if we ignore the broken parts of the present. Conversely, we cannot fix the present if we don’t know where we’re trying to go. By separating these "faces of the coin," we give ourselves permission to be deeply critical in one space and wildly imaginative in the other.
### **How to Join**
You can register for the track that suits you best—or tackle both! The project concludes in late February with a live convergence session where participants from both tracks will come together to share insights with the community.
**Join Track 1: The State of Design (SoD26)**
Continue reading or register here:
[Register to participate – SoD26](https://forms.gle/Vy8BGrcjDk9v6Q2x5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Join Track 2: The Future of Design (FoD26)**](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-future-of-design-2026-fod26/)
---
If [**The Future of Design 2026** (FoD26, The Sail)](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-future-of-design-2026-fod26/) is about catching the winds of change, then **The State of Design 2026** (SoD26) is about acknowledging the weight that holds us back. We call this **The Anchor**.
In previous years, we have explored the fear of irrelevance and the topography of our narratives. This year, we are turning off the "reality distortion field." We are not interested in your polished case studies, your "happy path" user journeys, or your "5 Steps to Innovation" lists.
We want the bug reports. We want the friction. We want the "Incident Logs" of a profession in crisis.
## The Narrative: Debugging the Present
We cannot build a meaningful future if we ignore the broken parts of the present. Conversely, we cannot fix the present if we refuse to look at the "messy reality" of our industry—the commoditization of craft, the ethical debt we are accruing with AI, and the operational walls we hit every single day.
This track is the **System Diagnostic**. It is introspective, critical, and raw. It asks us to look at the machinery of Design as it exists *now*, identify the error codes, the instabilities, the pipeline flows and failures, and document them with radical honesty.
## The Themes: Error Logs
We are inviting you to submit written essays (1,000–2,000 words) that act as "Diagnostic Reports" on three critical system failures:
### 1\. The Decay of Craft (Error 404: Soul Not Found)
*The system status:*
> "Optimization is running at 100%. Quality is at 0%."
We are witnessing the "enshittification" of digital products and the commoditization of creativity. When "good enough" becomes the global standard and generative models replace the messy process of thinking, what happens to the *human* element of design?
- **The Question:** Is craft dead, or has it just gone underground? How do we design for quality in an economy that only rewards speed?
### 2\. The Automation of Thought (Warning: Deprecated Dependency)
*The system status:*
> "Agency outsourced to algorithm."
We are not just automating pixels; we are automating decisions. As we hand over more of the "why" to opaque models, we risk creating a generation of designers who are merely operators of machines they do not understand.
- **The Question:** What is the "Ethical Debt" we are accruing by deploying AI without guardrails? What happens when the tool starts shaping the hand?
### 3\. The Operational Wall (Critical Failure: Access Denied)
*The system status:*
> "The seat at the table is broken."
For decades, we fought for a "seat at the table." Now that we’re there, we find the table is gridlocked by bureaucracy, quarterly metrics, and short-termism. The "Bureaucrat" wins every time.
- **The Question:** Why are we still hitting the same operational walls? Who is *still* missing from the room, and why haven't our "inclusive" processes fixed it?
[Register to participate – SoD26](https://forms.gle/Vy8BGrcjDk9v6Q2x5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## How to Participate
Unlike the **Future of Design* track, which seeks artifacts and prototypes, this track seeks ****clarity through writing**.
### The Format: "Incident Reports"
We are looking for:
- **Critical Essays:** Deep dives into the structural issues of *Design* as an *industry*, a *profession*, a *community*, a *culture*, and a *life style*.
- **Confessionals:** Personal accounts of *ethical dilemmas* or *professional failures* (anonymity supported if requested).
- **"Legacy Code" Audits:** Arguments for practices we need to "deprecate" (delete) immediately (e.g., the free pitch, dark patterns, the MVP-trap).
### Timeline & Process
- **Open Call:** Now until **February 13th, 2026**.
- **Review:** Essays will be reviewed for depth and clarity.
- **Publication:** Selected essays will be published as the "State of Design 2026" collection in late February.
- **The Event:** Authors will be invited to discuss their "Bug Reports" during the **State of Design** live session (The Anchor Track), serving as the reality check before we pivot to the future.
## Submit Your Diagnostic
To submit your proposal or draft, please use the secure channel below. Do not sugarcoat the data. The system can take it.
[Register to participate – SoD26](https://forms.gle/Vy8BGrcjDk9v6Q2x5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
> "We can’t fix the present if we don’t know where we’re trying to go. But we can't go anywhere if we don't first weigh the anchor."
**Join Track II:**
[Call for Participation: The Future of Design 2026 // FoD26Track II: The Sail – Decrypting Signals from the Next ParadigmDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-the-future-of-design-2026-fod26/)
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### 2025 Retrospective: Reclaiming Agency and Designing Beyond Enclosures
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/2025-retrospective-reclaiming-agency-and-designing-beyond-enclosures/
Last updated: 2025-12-21T15:08:51.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
With 2026 just around the corner, I thought it would be good to do a little retrospective of what happened this year, here at D&CT.
## 1\. State of Design 2025: A collection of perspectives on the state of design
Photo by [Jas Min](https://unsplash.com/@filmbetrachterin?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/assorted-color-disposable-cup-lot-5Wfttm2CjeI?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
We opened up the year with our call for participation in our collective sense-making ritual, the State of Design (SoD). Between January and February, participants could submit their essays, which would then be published over a week-long event, closed by a live session.
[Call for participation: State of design 2025Participate in our second edition of the state of design, a collection of essays from the broader communityDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design-2025/)
If 2024 marked an overabundance of (misguided) promises around AI and its impact on design (and designers), 2025 was marked by the need to reclaim agency, for catharsis and hope.
This turning point was highlighted in SoD25 themes:
1. Topographical understanding of designerly narratives
2. United like sand. Defined by differences
3. Catharsis and Hope
We were glad and humbled to see how many of you participated and the level of dedication and quality of the work! Among 17 participants, 7 contributions were published. Read them all here:
[State of Design 2025 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/state-of-design-2025-all-contributions/)
## 2\. Design beyond enclosures, part 1: Trioptic design as a mode of being
Photo de [jean wimmerlin](https://unsplash.com/fr/@jwimmerli?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) sur [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/fr/photos/photographie-de-sable-a-linterieur-de-la-maison-eB6D0Wks7jA?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
In my participation in the State of Design, I was interested in exploring why the current design practices (and practitioners) are limited in the kind of impact they can bring to the world and how to go beyond these limitations.
One important aspect is the gap between most design processes ambitions and expected impacts (improve people's lives, make meaningful technological solutions, no destruction of our world, etc.) and the means to get there—all of them involve a layered understanding of our collective social and societal experiences, while most of design is stuck in the wreck of consumer pop (pseudo) psychology of the fantasmagoric rational individual.
[More Than Tools, More Than Humans: Rethinking How Design Actively Shapes the World, by Kevin RichardDesign is not just a human act—it shapes and is shaped by materials, systems, and environments. This article explores how new materialism and sociology challenge traditional views, revealing how design actively transforms behaviours, power structures, and the world around us.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/more-than-tools-more-than-humans-rethinking-how-design-actively-shapes-the-world-by-kevin-richard/)
I believe this call, to bring a more social design, is more relevant than ever, but I recognize it is only a layer of the rich topography of a landscape.
That's precisely why I explored and articulated the trioptic design approach, which aims at understanding three dimensions (trio, optic) of a landscape: the *social*, the *political*, and the *aesthetic*.
- The **social** *make sense* of the worldviews in a landscape;
- The **aesthetic** *articulates* the mediums;
- The **political** *enacts* an intent about the future.
[Community update: New channel, exploring the trioptic design, and thoughts on the challenges of designing for AIDesign is social, political and aesthetics; New challenges are old challenges.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/community-update-new-channel-exploring-the-trioptic-design-and-thoughts-on-the-challenges-of-designing-for-ai/)
## 3\. Design beyond enclosures, part 2: Making Under Finitude
World shipping routes (flow map): a dense, glowing web of global trade – [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShipping%5Froutes%5Fred%5Fblack.png?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In the spirit of the two last explorations—social design and then the trioptic design—I was interested in going beyond the surface of our current societal narratives. One thing I'm certain of is that the discourses around AI, the economy, politics and policies are not only influencing each other, but also part of the same narrative object.
I stumbled upon the work of a French collective, STUP.MEDIA, which did an excellent job showing the vectors of change in the economic landscape, building from French economist Arnaud Orain.
[Making Under Finitude: Designing Interactions That Resist EnclosureThe future of design in a transitioning economyDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/making-under-finitude/)
I was interested in understanding what these changing dynamics would mean for design and designers in the future, building plausible change in relationships.
On a side note, I hoped to do a better job at applying the trioptic design in a prospective setup, and by that I mean being more precise and more in-depth in each dimension—some of them are somewhat lacking. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with this piece.
## 4\. A return to Deleuzian philosophy for designers: desires rather than needs, body without organs, and manufactured truth
Since September, I've been coming back to interesting and relevant concepts from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. I've been discovering and rediscovering his ideas over the past several years, which have been a very profound influence on me—probably as important as F. Valera and H. Maturana's work and the early contextualist/enactivist movement to me.
### Why “User Needs” Mislead
User needs. Hard not to talk about them; it's hard not to use this term. Although they are ubiquitous in modern design practice, systematically positioned as a neutral and objective framing of what people truly and observably want to achieve, they are anything but.
[Designing with DesireWhy “User Needs” Mislead and How Context Shapes What We Want In contemporary design practice, the language of user needs has become almost axiomatic. Designers are trained to identify needs, frame them as problems, and then generate solutions that meet them. This framing gives the impression of neutrality and rationality:Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/designing-with-desire/)
In this piece I explore how Deleuze idea of “crystallization of desires” might be a better, more nuanced approach to understanding what and why people do what they do.
> Desires proliferate, split, and recombine. They are transversal, cutting across domains of life and refusing to respect disciplinary boundaries.
I combine this with the concept of "power as productive machine" from Foucault, another French philosopher, to show that what and how designers decide to focus on actually shape these desires.
> When we adopt the language of user needs uncritically, we are not just responding to reality; we are participating in the production of that reality.
### Monism and the End of Identity
We talked about enclosure in several pieces this year. One defining factor of enclosures is that they tend to create fixed and very well-defined objects—preformed identities that fit into predefined categories.
> “A chair is meant to be sat on.”
The object embodies a preformed identity, and with it expectations that shape desires in a way that thinking about something to be sat on leads to the object.
[The Designer Without Organs: Monism and the End of IdentityThis essay explores Monism—specifically Gilles Deleuze’s “pluralist monism”—as a foundational worldview for design. It contrasts this with traditional dualistic approaches and integrates practical exercises and digital examples.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-designer-without-organs-monism-and-the-end-of-identity/)
Here I wanted to explore a very interesting but difficult-to-grasp idea developed by Deleuze and Guattari in their seminal work “A Thousand Plateaus,” the notion of *“body without organs.”* This idea subverts the notion of a fixed identity and proposes to build *“systems of becoming,”* letting people shape the object depending on context.
I also introduce the philosophical paradigm of Monism, necessary to understand Deleuze's work.
### **Manufactured truth: Design as crystallized shards**
Lastly, in this short update I wanted to explore the relationship between *design,* the *truth*, and the *real*. This led to the idea that the truth—and, to an extent, what we consider to be real—is a fabrication process.
> If design creates material, virtual, or philosophical objects meant to be interacted with, then yes, design produces truths. These objects become true to the people who use them.
> \[...\]
> If we accept that design produces truth, it implies there is no higher "morally right" or "absolutely real" truth in this context. Instead, truth is a fabrication process: it is manufactured.
[Design as Snowflakes and Shards of TruthAn exploration of “manufactured truth” in design. Using the metaphor of snowflakes, this post argues that design objects are crystallized shards of social truth, now facing a “whiteout” from the hyper-production of Generative AI.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-as-snowflakes-and-shards-of-truth/)
## Conclusion
Each exploration links back at least to one of the themes of our 2025 State of Design (SoD25):
- The concept of gaining a "topographical understanding" with the notion of social design and the trioptic design as a mode of being.
- We came back to the notion of identity formation through differences and even explored unconventional approaches (differences).
- We burnt it all, in essays like “Making under finitude,” “Designing with desires,” and “Body without Organs,” not by fear of what might come but as a means of reclaiming agency and hope.
We created a *burning place* for what we hold true. Truth is an ever-becoming, immanent process. We build hope through the reclaiming of agency.
**We wish you all the best for 2026\. Stay curious explorers, critical thinkers, and design makers.**
---
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### The Designer Without Organs: Monism and the End of Identity
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-designer-without-organs-monism-and-the-end-of-identity/
Last updated: 2025-12-08T11:00:29.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
There is a persistent myth in design, one that goes back much further than the Bauhaus or the Industrial Revolution. It is the myth of the "God-Architect." This myth relies on a specific worldview: that the designer stands *outside* the world, looking down at a chaotic pile of matter, and imposes order upon it.
We call this **Dualism**. It is the separation of Mind from Body, Subject from Object, and Designer from User. It suggests that *we* (the active agents) have the ideas, and *it* (the passive material) waits to be shaped.
But what if we flattened the hierarchy? What if we accepted that the designer, the user, the plastic of the chair, and the code of the app are all made of the exact same ontological "stuff," interacting on a single, continuous plane?
This is the worldview of **Monism**. Not the monism of a static, unified "One" (where everything is the same), but what Gilles Deleuze called a **"Pluralist Monism."** It is a worldview that replaces fixed identities with fluid processes, and functional tools with fields of potential.
If we take this philosophy seriously, it dismantles the very definition of what it means to design. We stop being "problem solvers" who fix the world from the outside, and become mediators surfing the flows of the world from within.
This is a chair – Photo by [Allec Gomes](https://unsplash.com/@allecgomes?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/vacant-brown-wooden-armless-chair-9xpnmt41NKM?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
## The Flat Ontology: Difference Over Identity
In our standard way of thinking, we prioritize **Identity**. We see a "chair," a "smartphone," or a "user persona." We assume these things exist first as stable entities, and that any change that happens to them is secondary.
In his seminal work *Difference and Repetition* (1968), Deleuze flips this entirely. For him, **Difference** is primary. Identity is just an optical illusion, a moment where the flow of difference slows down enough for us to give it a name.
Think of a whirlpool in a river. We can point to it, name it, and even map its location. It has an "identity." But the whirlpool is not a solid object; it is a *process* of flowing water. If you stop the flow (the difference), the identity vanishes.
In design, we are obsessed with stabilizing these flows into fixed identities. We freeze a complex set of human behaviors into a "User Journey." We freeze a fluid material into a rigid "Product." We treat the world as a collection of static nouns, when it is actually a mesh of active verbs.
A monist design practice admits that there are no fixed identities. There are only **assemblages**. The "smartphone" is not an isolated object; it is a temporary knot tied between global supply chains, rare earth minerals, attention spans, server farms, and thumb muscles.
When we stop designing for "Identities" (fixed demographics, static products) and start designing for "Difference" (becomings, transitions, variations), we stop trying to arrest the world and start trying to move *with* it.
## From Hylomorphism to Morphogenesis
The dualist trap leads to what Gilbert Simondon (a key influence on Deleuze) called **Hylomorphism**: the idea that design is the imposition of an abstract Form (*morphe*) onto passive Matter (*hyle*). This is the "blueprint" model of design. You have an idea in your head, and you force the wood, steel, or pixel to obey. It is an act of domination.
Monism proposes **Morphogenesis** instead. In this view, matter is not passive. It is alive with "singularities" – tipping points, resistances, and tendencies. The wood *wants* to bend a certain way; the data *wants* to cluster in specific patterns.
Architectural theorist **Lars Spuybroek**, in *The Sympathy of Things* (2011), argues for a "digital gothic" where the designer does not impose form but "sympathizes" with the material, allowing the form to emerge from the internal forces of the system.
The monist designer does not command; they surf. They find the lines of flight already present in the material (or the social situation) and follow them. We don't create the wave; we enter into a relationship with it.
This is not a chair - Photo by [Zheka Kapusta](https://unsplash.com/@zheka%5Fkapusta?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/a-wooden-chair-sitting-on-top-of-a-sandy-beach-e6h45aEOzQU?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
## The Body without Organs: Designing the Functionless
If we reject the idea that we must impose a fixed form or function, where does that leave us? It brings us to Deleuze and Guattari's most enigmatic concept from *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980): the [**Body without Organs (BwO)**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body%5Fwithout%5Forgans?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
To understand the BwO, we have to distinguish between the **Body** and the **Organism**.
- **The Organism** is a body that has been captured, stratified, and organized. It has specific organs for specific tasks. A toaster is an organism: it has a mouth (slot), a stomach (heater), and a limb (lever). It is locked into a single function. It can *only* toast.
- **The Body without Organs** is the body before it is locked down. Deleuze uses the metaphor of the unfertilized egg. The egg is a body, but it has no organs yet. It is a surface of pure potential. It is crisscrossed by gradients and intensities, but it hasn't yet decided what it will become.
Most of professional design is the business of creating **Organisms**. We create "solutions" that dictate exactly how they must be used. We design apps with "happy paths" that force users into specific behaviors. We stratify experience.
But there is a counter-movement of **Open-Ended Design** that seeks to create **Bodies without Organs**. These are objects, spaces, or tools that refuse to tell you what they are for. They are "functionless" not because they are useless, but because they have *infinite* potential uses.
### The Terrain Vague
[Ignasi de Solà-Morales coined the term **Terrain Vague**](https://www.archnet.org/publications/9103?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to describe urban spaces (abandoned lots, industrial ruins) that have fallen out of the capitalist circuit of productivity. These are BwOs. Unlike a park (an organism with paths and benches dictating movement), the *terrain vague* is a space of pure freedom where new, unplanned behaviors (skateboarding, graffiti, wild gardening) can emerge.
Liminal spaces are organs without a body - Photo by [Sam Operchuck](https://unsplash.com/@sgoperchuck?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/an-empty-parking-garage-with-an-escalator-aaTFObM39wo?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
## The Digital Body without Organs
In the digital space, we can see the battle between the Organism and the BwO clearly in three specific instances:
### A. Minecraft: Survival vs. Creative
*Minecraft* offers the perfect case study for the difference between an Organism and a BwO.
- **Survival Mode (The Organism):** In this mode, the player is stratified. You have a "health bar" and a "hunger bar" (organs). These organs dictate your behavior: you must eat, sleep, and build shelter to protect your body. The game imposes a teleology (survive, kill the Dragon).
- **Creative Mode (The BwO):** When you switch to Creative Mode, you remove the organs. The health and hunger bars vanish. You can fly. Resources are infinite. The game ceases to be a "game" with a goal and becomes a **pure plane of consistency**. It transforms into a BwO, a "functionless" space where the only limit is the player's capacity to affect and be affected by the blocks. It is a "monist" world where everything is made of the same substance (the voxel), waiting for desire to shape it.
### B. The "Sandbox" & Garry's Mod
Most video games are "Organisms": they have a start, an end, and a correct way to be played. However, the "Sandbox" genre represents a shift toward the BwO.
- **Garry's Mod (GMod):** Originally a mod for *Half-Life 2*, GMod strips the game of its story, enemies, and objectives. It gives the player the raw physics engine and the assets (the "stuff" of the world) but no instructions. It is a **"machine for making machines."**
- **Roblox:** Similarly, *Roblox* is not a game but a "platform", a BwO that allows users to graft their own "organs" (games) onto it. It is a destratified engine that waits for the user to inscribe meaning onto it.
### C. Speedrunning as Destratification
Even in a linear, story-driven game (a strict Organism), players can force a BwO to emerge through **Speedrunning**.
- **The Concept:** A "Speedrunner" ignores the intended organs of the game (the story, the cutscenes, the intended path). Instead, they look for "lines of flight": glitches, wall-clips, and physics exploits.
- **The Result:** By breaking the sequence, they turn the solid map of the game into a fluid space. They traverse walls and skip entire levels. They treat the game code not as a law to be obeyed, but as a material to be surfed. They reveal that the "rules" of the game were just an optical illusion all along.
## Practical Application: The De-stratification Audit
How do we apply high-level French philosophy to our daily design work? We must learn to spot where we are over-stratifying our products and where we can reintroduce potential.
I call this **The De-stratification Audit**. You can use this in your next design sprint or critique.
**The Exercise:**
1. **Identify the Organism:** Take your current project (an app, an object, a service). Define its "Official Identity." (e.g., "This is a productivity app for remote teams.")
2. **Map the Organs:** List the specific features or constraints that enforce this identity. (e.g., "The notification system," "The forced login," "The linear onboarding tutorial.")
3. **Perform a Surgical Removal:** What happens if you remove the most critical organ? If you remove the "notification system," or some of its rules, does the app die? Or does it become a passive repository of knowledge?
4. **Observe the Lines of Flight:** Once the function is broken or loosened, what *new* behaviors might emerge? If the chair can no longer be sat on comfortably (perhaps it’s too low or wobbles), does it become a sculptural object? A play structure? A barrier?
This essay explores Monism, specifically Gilles Deleuze’s "pluralist monism", as a foundational worldview for design. It contrasts this with traditional dualistic approaches and integrates practical exercises and digital examples.
## Conclusion: Designing for Intensity
Adopting a monist worldview in design is risky. It means giving up the safety of the "solution."
When we design for **Identity**, we create products that are easy to consume, market, and discard. We create "toasters": efficient, functional, and dead.
When we design for **Difference**, we create "eggs." We create systems that are alive, unpredictable, and open to change. We stop asking "What is this object?" and start asking "What can this body *do*?"
This is not a call to stop making useful things. It is a call to recognize that utility is just one temporary state of a much larger reality. By stepping down from the role of the God-Architect and entering the flat plane of immanence, we might find that the most powerful design is the one that designs nothing in particular, but enables everything to become.
---
## References & Further Reading
- **Gilles Deleuze**, *Difference and Repetition* (1968)
For the concept of difference vs. identity.
- **Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari**, *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980)
For the Rhizome and Body without Organs.
- **Gilbert Simondon**, *On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects* (1958)
For the critique of hylomorphism.
- **Lars Spuybroek**, *The Sympathy of Things* (2011)
For a direct application of Deleuze and Ruskin to design.
- **Manuel DeLanda**, *Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture*
On evolutionary design and morphogenesis.
- **Ignasi de Solà-Morales**, *Terrain Vague* (1995)
On the architecture of the void.
---
## Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### Design as Snowflakes and Shards of Truth
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-as-snowflakes-and-shards-of-truth/
Last updated: 2025-12-01T11:00:59.000Z
## **Early snowfall: An embodied experience and reflections**
Hi, Kevin here.
A white coat now covers most of the land here in the *Broye* region, northeast of Lausanne. The warmer, humid air of Lake Neuchâtel, which usually envelops us in a dense fog at this time of year, has given way to cold, dry air. With temperatures dropping below zero, snow and ice have arrived.
I travel by bike or train year-round, regardless of the weather and despite the very rural and hilly nature of the place. It did not start out of conviction, really. But today, it has certainly become one.
A recent 30-minute trip to a nearby village for my dog's appointment, with the thermometer reading -5°C, reminded me of the recursive nature of habits and perception. The receptionist was baffled, even beyond surprised, that I dared to brave the cold and icy roads by bike.
Yet, despite the cold, the morning was sunny. One advantage of this mode of travel is that you regain a tangible sense of time and truly notice the environment around you. The early sunshine revealed a frozen landscape, with trees draped in snow. At one point, I spotted a fox running across the white-covered fields, and on my way back, a group of deer at the forest edge, walking gently through the untouched snow.
Photo by [Aaron Burden](https://unsplash.com/@aaronburden?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/closeup-photography-of-snowflakes-ePwEGur8gIw?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
## **Design as crystallized shards**
This visual, a white blanket composed of billions of distinct and geometric crystals, stayed with me. We tend to see snow as a single mass, just as we often look for a single "Truth." But in reality, that blanket is an accumulation of individual, fragile structures.
This mirrors the relationship between design and truth.
There is an interesting discussion to be had, especially in these uncertain times, about this relationship. Although design mediates certain forms of knowledge, or "social truths" bounded in time, space, and culture, this is not exactly the notion of absolute "Truth" (with a capital "T") that we tend to refer to in philosophical discussions.
What are the fundamental questions we are asking here?
> Does design hold any form of truth?
This is not a very interesting question. If we define design merely as the loosely defined process of making, then the only truth it holds is tautological: the process is true because we define and describe it as "design".
> Does design produce any truth for the world?
This is better. If design creates material, virtual, or philosophical objects meant to be interacted with, then yes, design produces truths. These objects become true to the people who use them. They are a form of immanent, embodied truth that arises from enacting the affordances of the object.
Perhaps, and more interestingly, we can add that the truth design produces is multiple, much like the snow:
1. **Crystallization:** Design can produce very different objects from the same context, problem, or challenge. Just as temperature and humidity dictate the shape of a snowflake, the specific constraints of a project "crystallize" a specific truth. Design is a layered, probabilistic, generative force.
2. **Accumulation:** The produced objects can be used in very different ways, in contexts far beyond their original purpose.
Much like we can look at snow as a whole (a truth) and at the same time as an assemblage of individual snowflakes (shards of truths), the reality of a design object is not entirely in the object nor entirely in people's minds. It exists in the field of possibilities surrounding it.
2018 museum fire at Rio de Janeiro
### **Manufactured truth**
I'm less interested in the *nature* of the truths design produces than in the *making* of them. If we accept that design produces truth, it implies there is no higher "morally right" or "absolutely real" truth in this context. Instead, truth is a fabrication process: it is manufactured.
It is healthy to question this claim. One might argue, "but there are observable facts about the world." I don't think this undermines the claim in any shape or form. What is manufactured is not the observable facts themselves, but the way we decide to report, utilize, compose, assemble, and ultimately interact with them.
This also means the very process that produces objects, which are ever-becoming truths, can also produce counter-truths or lies, even in useful ways.
There is a fascinating example of this in the revue *RADDAR*, issue number 4 (2022), titled *"faux / fake"*. The authors explain that after [the great fire at the National Museum of Brazil (2018)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%5FMuseum%5Fof%5FBrazil%5Ffire?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), many pre-Columbian statues were destroyed and lost. Fortunately, months prior to the incident, a team had 3D scanned a large portion of these invaluable testaments of the past to create a digital catalog.
After the fire, these 3D scans helped create copies of the statues. However, because not all scans were of high quality and the specific techniques used to fabricate the original ceramics were unknown, the museum opened a challenge to an international audience of artists to recreate the lost artifacts. Some were made with a blend of modern techniques, such as 3D printing and CNC-machining, and traditional ceramics, aiming to reproduce the results of what are, to this date, lost arts.
So, the question is: what are these new statues in relation to the original ones? Which ones are truer?
The copies are not the originals. They are not even "copies" in the strict sense, but merely artistic interpretations. Yet, for all intents and purposes, these copies have become the new truth.
2018 National Museum of Brazil fire, generated with Gemini (Nano Banana Pro)
### **The hyper-production of semi-truths**
Our human world has followed a very similar process.
My grandparents lived in a world where media was mainly printed, and TV was a novel gadget allowing radio to broadcast moving images. They lived in a world where knocking at the door was normal, as it was the only way to confirm availability. My kids live in a post-friction world, where movies, media, and content are made for reaction, not attention (and even less for reflection). They live in a world where knocking at the door is weird and raises suspicions. Friendship, romantic relationships, and hobbies have been digitized, platformized, and financialized.
Our designed world has produced new ways and new truths. But where design once crafted individual snowflakes, distinct and crystallized solutions, Generative AI is now automating this production outside of us. It is creating a blizzard of fuzzy semi-truths, where the unique shards are lost in the whiteout.
---
## Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Designing with Desire
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/designing-with-desire/
Last updated: 2025-09-13T08:58:39.000Z
## Why “User Needs” Mislead and How Context Shapes What We Want
In contemporary design practice, the language of *user needs* has become almost axiomatic. Designers are trained to identify needs, frame them as problems, and then generate solutions that meet them. This framing gives the impression of neutrality and rationality: needs appear as if they were stable objects waiting to be uncovered, measured, and satisfied. Yet this assumption rests on a rationalist view of reality that presumes objectivity and universality. By treating needs as pre-given, the discourse of design hides the fact that what it calls a “need” is already the outcome of social, political, and aesthetic processes.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) remind us that desire is not a lack awaiting fulfillment but a productive, machinic force. Desire continuously assembles flows of people, objects, technologies, and signs into provisional formations. What we call “needs” are in fact codified crystallizations of these flows once they have been captured by institutions, markets, and norms. In parallel, Foucault (1990) shows that power does not simply repress but produces subjects and truths. When organizations speak of “user needs,” they mobilize power/knowledge practices that define legitimate forms of wanting and make them actionable. In other words, needs are not discovered; they are constructed within specific discursive regimes.
**This essay argues that design should not be understood as responding to universal user needs but as participating in the shaping of desires.** These desires are always local and contextual, mediated through social relations, aesthetic forms, and political structures. To analyze this dynamic, I draw on a trioptic framework—social, aesthetic, and political lenses—that makes visible how desire is produced, governed, and felt. By moving from needs to desire, designers can begin to see their work not as neutral problem-solving but as an intervention in the assemblages that make certain futures possible while foreclosing others.
### **The Trouble with User Needs**
The Value Proposition Canvas builds on Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), a predominantly rationalist view of customer needs. [Source](https://www.behance.net/gallery/50359111/Business-Model-Canvas-Workshop-%28Video%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The phrase *user needs* has long served as a cornerstone of design discourse, from human-centered design to agile UX. It appears commonsensical: designers must understand what users need in order to create valuable products and services. Yet this apparent common-sense masks deep philosophical assumptions. To speak of “needs” is to assume that they exist as objective features of the world: stable, universal, and waiting to be revealed by proper methods. Surveys, interviews, or usability tests are thus cast as scientific instruments for extracting these latent truths.
This rationalist inheritance is not accidental. The rise of modern design practice coincided with positivist approaches in the social sciences, where researchers sought general laws of human behavior by stripping away context. Within this paradigm, the designer becomes a kind of technician of truth, uncovering the “real” needs that lie beneath subjective preferences or situational variations. Once identified, these needs are treated as timeless coordinates for decision-making, guiding everything from feature lists to business cases.
But such a framing is misleading. First, it assumes that needs are transparent to both researcher and participant. In practice, what people articulate as a “need” often reflects desires that have already been shaped by advertising, institutional expectations, or prevailing cultural norms. Foucault (1990) would remind us that knowledge is never neutral: every attempt to define a need is also an exercise of power, producing legitimate categories of users and excluding others. A health insurance company, for instance, might identify a user’s “need” for digital self-service tools, but this framing ignores how the very category of “self-service” has been politically and economically constructed as a desirable mode of governance.
Second, the language of needs implies universality. A need is assumed to be the same across contexts: what one user needs in Zurich is, in principle, identical to what another needs in Yaoundé. Yet as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) argue, desire is always local, immanent to specific assemblages of bodies, technologies, and signs. By translating situated desires into abstract “needs,” designers erase the very contexts that give them meaning.
Finally, the focus on needs carries a subtle depoliticization. By presenting itself as neutral problem-solving, design avoids confronting its role in shaping futures. Tony Fry (2011) critiques this tendency as *defuturing*: the way design often closes down possibilities by reinforcing existing systems under the guise of meeting needs. Although Fry’s emphasis is on sustainability, the point applies more broadly: when designers take needs as given, they risk reproducing rather than questioning the assemblages of desire and power in which those needs are articulated.
In short, the discourse of user needs is less a reflection of objective reality than a rationalist fiction. It grants designers a sense of certainty while obscuring the productive role of desire and the political stakes of design practice.
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### **Desire with Deleuze**
Gilles Deleuze
If the notion of *needs* reduces human experience to an objective lack, Deleuze and Guattari offer a radically different vocabulary. In *Anti-Oedipus*, they insist that desire is not defined by what it is missing but by what it produces. “It is not a question of ideology,” they write, “but of pure production” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983/2004, p. 26). Desire is machinic: it connects flows of people, things, and signs into new assemblages. Far from being an inner void to be filled, it is a generative force that continuously remakes worlds.
This shift matters for design. When designers ask, “what are the user’s needs?,” they implicitly imagine the user as a subject of lack. A rationalist research process then promises to reveal and satisfy this lack. But if we follow Deleuze, there are no pre-given needs waiting to be uncovered. There are only desires in motion: flows of energy and attachment that pass through devices, spaces, discourses, and institutions. A smartphone, for example, is not fulfilling a universal “need to communicate.” It is part of an assemblage that ties together mobility, intimacy, labor, and surveillance. What appears as a need (“I must have constant connectivity”) is in fact the crystallization of multiple desiring-flows captured by technological and economic systems.
Deleuze’s account also unsettles the assumption that needs can be neatly categorized. Desires proliferate, split, and recombine. They are transversal, cutting across domains of life and refusing to respect disciplinary boundaries. A health-tracking app might be designed to meet the “need” of monitoring physical activity. But its use also generates desires for self-optimization, produces anxieties around performance, and plugs into data assemblages that feed insurance models or targeted advertising. To reduce this complexity to a single “user need” is to miss the machinic productivity of desire.
For design, the lesson is twofold. First, what we take as user needs are not objective givens but the stabilized products of desiring-assemblages. Second, design itself is not a neutral response but an active participant in this process of capture and stabilization. By materializing certain forms of desire and rendering them actionable, design helps to channel and territorialize the flows that constitute everyday life. In other words, design is not about meeting needs, it is about shaping desire.
### **Power with Foucault**
Michel Foucault
If Deleuze helps us see needs as crystallized forms of desire, Foucault allows us to understand how these crystallizations are governed. For Foucault, power is not primarily repressive but productive: it generates subjects, norms, and truths. “Power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth” (Foucault, 1990, p. 194). In this sense, the very category of *user needs* is not neutral—it is a product of power/knowledge, a regime that defines what can be said, measured, and acted upon in design practice.
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Making Under Finitude: Designing Interactions That Resist Enclosure
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/making-under-finitude/
Last updated: 2025-08-27T09:52:59.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
I find very interesting, in many ways, the current atmosphere in (our?) society. And I'm not only thinking of the overrepresented discussions around artificial intelligence. In my informed view, AI is not (just) a technical "innovation" or "revolution" proposition anymore (if any), but a socio-political proposition that fits a broader transition, motivated by social and geopolitical dynamics, but also climate change.
What I would like to explore here are some vectors of this broader landscape. I recently came across a very interesting thesis that, conversely, fits other relevant signals: that our global economic system, namely liberal capitalism, is transitioning towards something different as a regime.
How is this useful to design, one might ask? I'll come back to this later, but to keep it short, design operates mainly (not only) within the confines of what is perceived as "good," "desirable," and "valuable." And we can see how this change, which has already taken form, is shaping design practices and designers' own perception of what and how they are doing design.
## **From liberal to mercantile capitalism**
**This section* [**draws heavily from the French collective Stup.media's work*](https://stup.media/la-fin-du-liberalisme-entretien-avec-arnaud-orain/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**. If you can, I invite you to look at their very well articulated post.*
Our economy isn't a monolithic and immutable thing, but rather a dynamic and evolving system. Arnaud Orain, a French economist and historian who recently published *“*[*Le monde confisqué: Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIᵉ - XXIᵉ siècle)*](https://editions.flammarion.com/le-monde-confisque/9782080466570?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* (*“The Confiscated World: Essay on the Capitalism of Finitude (16th - 21st Century)”*), proposes that we are heading toward more than just an iteration of our current neoliberal capitalism. His thesis, which corroborates many vectors of change observed by other economists, is that the very rules of the game are changing: we are moving away from a liberal capitalism to what Orain calls "Capitalism of the Finitude."
To understand its significance, we have to come back to the main characteristics that constitute the system we have experienced since the end of industrialization: *liberal capitalism*.
[STUP.MEDIA - La fin du libéralisme ? Entretien avec Arnaud OrainLes systèmes économiques évoluent constamment. De nombreux signes indiquent que, depuis plusieurs années, le capitalisme libéral avec ses principes de concurrence, de libre-échange et d’individuali…STUP.MEDIAStupid Economics](https://stup.media/la-fin-du-liberalisme-entretien-avec-arnaud-orain/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
As the Arnaud Gantier, who interviewed Arnaud Orain, [explains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ti6uPcnfu4&ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> \[Under liberal capitalism\] parties of the left and right that take power share quite a few values: **market economy, competition, free trade, and facilitating access to private property**. The main economic disagreement that remains \[between the left and the right\] is defining a **more or less important role for the state** in the economy.
> To illustrate this, the opposition is between **social programs**—for example, housing allowances or building social housing—or **tax breaks for construction**.
> This is the type of opposition that has dominated economic debates in Western countries since at least **1945**.
But what Orain points out is that before that period of time, our world was governed by a capitalism that was not liberal, which did not care about **competition**, **free trade**, or **individual freedoms**. Because in an imparialist and expansionist world, the purpose of capitalism was to **enable states to be more powerful than their neighbors**. And we see today many superpowers moving towards a more explicit form of **imparial powers.**
> Obviously we see this with **Russia**. China’s **New Silk Roads** also have this dimension, with the construction or rehabilitation of infrastructure. There are actors, for example in **Pakistan**, who consider the **port of Gwadar** to be a **new East India Company**, a new form of colonization being put in place by Chinese firms.
> We are obviously thinking of the **United States of America**, with desires for **acquisition** or **protectorate** over **Greenland**, and the **Panama Canal** returning to the U.S. sphere. That is just one sign.
> But there are many others, notably all the **limits to the freedom of trade at sea**, which is a truly central idea because **almost everything we consume daily** is transported over **thousands of kilometers across the oceans**.
But why talk about mercantile capitalism then? The interesting part that Gantier highlights is the role of **merchants and traders** in the history of capitalism, but overall in the history of societies and their politics—better exemplified nowadays by the influence of billionaires on governments.
> \[In the 17th and 18th centuries\] the **planters** were the farmers in the French colonies who used **enslaved labor** to produce **sugarcane**, \[...\] were powerful, armed, and sold highly valued products.
> But in reality the ones who **controlled** this economy were **not** the planters themselves, but the **merchants and traders**, who were indispensable for transporting both **enslaved people** and **sugar**.
> They could choose which planter or producer would be able to sell their goods and thus become rich. So **they** held the power.
Interestingly, the history of our liberal period, which sees merchants and companies as peaceful organizations, trade as a way to avoid wars, and capitalism as a way to enrich workers, does not provide the necessary model to understand the effects that these merchants and their companies have, whether the **emancipation of workers** they can sometimes allow or, on the contrary, their **central role in colonization and slavery**.
> This view of history is **too partial** and is fundamentally **contradicted by the present**. We can start with the most radical examples, like **private military companies**. For example, the American firm **Constellis**, formerly **Blackwater**, or the **Wagner** militia, which have grown in importance in recent years.
> What they do is employ **soldiers under contract**. They are **private armies**, and in the last ten years they have been deployed all over the world, whether in **Iraq, Yemen, Israel, Mali, Ukraine**, and they often leave behind **crimes against humanity**.
> We also see this in **high-intensity conflicts**, for example in **Ukraine**, which reminds us that **wars are won in factories**, that is, by **companies**. It is no coincidence that **GDP** was **invented during World War II**. It was an indicator to measure **production capacity**. Who can produce the most **missiles, tanks, fuel, food, clothing, shoes**.
> So **controlling industrial capacities**, controlling **companies, merchants, traders**, this entire world, is not an abstract question. It is a **major power issue**.
What's changing might be better encapsulated in the notion of **company-state:** companies that are **both merchants and possess sovereign powers.** This was true of many companies back in the 17th and 18th centuries, who could buy and sell things, mint money, administer justice, and raise armies, and it is becoming more apparent that, **today, many companies are in such a position**. These companies are sometimes aligned with the public power, and sometimes in competition with it. For these reasons, **big modern merchants** depend **less on free trade** than others, and we see this clearly in their **media**.
In an adjacent case,[ I find interesting the recent takeover by a techno-corporate power of the digital open-source community](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/githubs-fall-microsofts-ai-takeover-developer-betrayal-dion-wiggins-oyetc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), marking here again the decline of liberal ideals, and the colonisation and exploitation of yet another form of territory.
[GitHub’s Fall: Microsoft’s AI Takeover, Developer Betrayal, and the Next Fight for Digital SovereigntyMicrosoft’s Assimilation of GitHub Is Another Step in the Death of Platform Trust, the Rise of AI Extraction, and the Global Struggle to Reclaim Digital Sovereignty TL;DR: Microsoft’s full-scale takeover of GitHub is the final blow to developer trust, turning the world’s open source backbone into prLinkedInDion Wiggins](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/githubs-fall-microsofts-ai-takeover-developer-betrayal-dion-wiggins-oyetc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Another interesting change is that, for long, liberal capitalism worked mainly on the idea of **seduction** and **promises of improved living conditions. Mercantile capitalism does not bother with promises of enrichment for all** in order to expand.
> What **Orain** is saying here is simply that for socialists, the more **violent** capitalism becomes, the **less** it relies on seduction to expand, and the **easier** it becomes to present **socialism** as a positive idea.
> Today many \[French\] people think they can improve their living conditions **outside** union struggles. For them **unionism** is even hidering the improvement of their personal situation. But that can **change quickly**.
> In a **mercantilist capitalism** where companies are increasingly **monopolistic**, the **workforce has no real alternatives**. There is not one employer really better than another when there are very few.
> In each sector you do not have a choice among a dozen companies. It is either one or the other. They probably talk to each other and **align their working conditions**.
> In such conditions, **unionism and socialism** appear as **logical choices** to improve one’s condition.
Finally, Arnaud Gantier concludes with some very interesting points.
**First**, we should **acknowledge** **the death of neoliberalism**. Many still operate on obsolete ideas of a neoliberal world declining, among which are most traditional political parties. Ideas that are no longer promoted by the parties we see rising in the polls (in Europe). For instance, many far-right parties rising in popularity are in fact mercantilist, notably because they display **ideas of labor exploitation, and** they consider the **grandeur of the nation** to come **before the rights** of those who live and work there. This model of capitalism no longer rests on the existence of a **large middle-class** and **social policies**.
**Second**, **the role of the most visible representatives** of these neo-mercantile companies, the billionaires, is a consequence of actors no longer bound by the same rules. They all **own media,** and their political actions go far beyond humanitarian actions, making them obvious political enemies. Here, **neo-mercantilism** describes a **capitalism**, that is, **private ownership of the means of production dominated by merchants**, and with it the decline in influence of the traditional economist-intellectuals that marked neoliberalism.
**Finally**, **climate change plays an important role in this economic transition** by adding a compounding factor in precipitating this **neo-mercantilism,** by adding social and resource pressures –hence the term "capitalism of the finitude" coined by Arnaud Orain.
So, in summary, Orain's thesis can be summed up as such: Liberal capitalism is giving way to a **neo-mercantilist “capitalism of finitude”** where state power, monopolies, logistics chokepoints, and “company-states” dominate, and allegiance becomes a central political problem.
This transition is marked by key signals/components:
1. **Re-imperialization** of great powers and growing limits to “freedom of the seas.”
2. **Merchants as political actors**, historically and today, via debt, logistics control, and media ownership.
3. **Militarization of enterprise**, including PMCs; war as industrial capacity.
4. **Shipping giants under state pressure** and possible self-militarization.
5. **Allegiance problem** of multinationals through opaque corporate architectures.
6. **Company-states in tech** with sovereign attributes (space, satellite, platforms).
7. **Divergent capitalist blocs**: exporters of branded goods prefer free trade; defense/logistics fit mercantilism; media lines mirror owners.
8. **Return of monopoly capitalism**, making nationalization and unionization logically salient again.
9. **China’s model** of national champions and enforced corporate allegiance, with systemic fragilities.
10. **Political realignment** in Europe: neoliberalism fades; the far right is mercantilist rather than liberal; the left’s anti-billionaire stance gains traction.
### **This is great and all, but why should designers care?**
Well, modern design practices have been mainly in service of a liberal capitalism. The modern idea of liberal arts and applied arts, which gave birth to most current Western (globalized) design movements, and the history of neoliberalism and its means of production have always been tightly coupled. When Dieter Rams talks about "good design," he does it in a neoliberal globalized worldview, built on the shoulders of prior movements such as Bauhaus. That's actually one of the main criticisms of Viktor Papanek.
Today's UX/CX, product, and service design are predicated on the rules of a liberal regime. What is defined as "good design" and the means through which it is valued (e.g., customer satisfaction, conversion rate, user's autonomy and consent, etc.) and operated will likely become obsolete as the system's conditions mutate.
If capitalism is indeed pivoting from a liberal, competition-led order to a mercantile one organized around state (firm blocs, choke-points, and extraction), then digital design’s mandate and its yardsticks shift with it:
1. **Value theory:** Liberal UX treated people as *choosing users*; the mercantile turn will likely treat them as *managed subjects* inside vertical stacks (identity, payments, logistics, compute). “Good” becomes what secures allegiance, reduces contestation, and locks channels.
2. **The real client:** Expect more briefs from hybrids of state and “gatekeeper” firms. “Good design” will likely be redefined in law, not just taste.
3. **Metrics mutate:** The center of gravity will likely move from conversion and NPS to **contestability, compliance, and provenance.**
*If you think this connects well with the notion of enshittification and techno-feudalism, this is no accident.*
Anyway, if the debate nowadays revolves mainly around the impacts AI has/will have on liberal professions (such as artists and designers), we might be very well myopic to the very context in which this is unfolding.
The error of many designers is to treat it as yet another *technical* or *alignment* challenge to solve (supposedly between user needs and a technical system), while failing to recognize that AI is not just another technology, it is a catalyst to unfold certain political ideals, which in turn unfold a certain aesthetic (see [trioptic design](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/community-update-new-channel-exploring-the-trioptic-design-and-thoughts-on-the-challenges-of-designing-for-ai/#exploring-the-trioptic-design-framework)).
[Community update: New channel, exploring the trioptic design, and thoughts on the challenges of designing for AIDesign is social, political and aesthetics; New challenges are old challenges.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/community-update-new-channel-exploring-the-trioptic-design-and-thoughts-on-the-challenges-of-designing-for-ai/#exploring-the-trioptic-design-framework)
## Finitude, violence, AI, and fascism
I would like now to connect what we just explored with another highly compatible thesis: the idea that **Platform capitalism** (that is, a capitalism dominated by **digital platforms**, themselves owned by merchants) enabled a new form of fascism, what Bertram Gross calls “**Friendly Fascism**”.
**Platform capitalism already happened,** and likely enabled the transition we see towards neo-mercantilism, as platform ownership reorganizes power: labor is “platformized,” markets become **gatekept**, and public rules increasingly run through "private UX"—that is, interfaces and interactions that govern quasi-public life (speech, trade, work, ID, mobility), but are designed, owned, and enforced by private companies rather than public law. See how this description fits the notion of company-states we just discussed?
In his work ["The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)", Ben Hoerman, who draws from B. Gross work and many others, explains how **fascism has been “redesigned” for platform capitalism into a friendlier, quieter form**: it advances through technocratic bureaucracy, corporate control, culture-war monetization, and AI-driven aestheticization that makes cruelty look normal, pretty, or ironic so people won’t resist it.
From [The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — founder-cult montage as political influence.
It highlights several key signals/components:
1. **Form factor shift:** from overt militarism to **technocratic bureaucracy, corporate control, and manufactured media staging**.
2. **Culture-war governance:** class conflict is displaced by culture war, algorithmically amplified; **soft authoritarianism** hollows institutions while the shell remains.
3. **Bureaucratic violence:** repression by policy stack: union-busting, surveillance, deregulation, and paperwork that punishes instead of guns.
4. **Corporate neofuturism:** minimal, cold, speed-obsessed tech aesthetics plus **founder cults** and deep ties to the military-industrial complex.
5. **Eco-fascist drift of solarpunk:** harmony-with-nature visuals repurposed to **whitewash regimes** and sell exclusionary nationalism.
6. **Everything as content:** politics becomes spectacle for mass consumption; **“nothing is obscene anymore”** normalizes the previously unthinkable.
7. **Irony pipeline:** edgy sarcasm and memes trivialize harm and provide a shield against critique: “just joking.”
8. **AI slop and deepfakes:** endless reproduction dilutes meaning; deepfakes become an **oppression tool** (noted as overwhelmingly pornographic in surveys).
9. **Cute-wash:** **moe/anime** aesthetics soften or trivialize violent or exclusionary messages, making “friendly” fascism literal.
10. **Edgelord/incel iconography:** dehumanizing caricatures and eugenic “attractiveness metrics” repackage hierarchy and cruelty.
11. **Oligarchic alignment:** private firms and unelected elites increasingly steer policy; corporations enable the drift so long as profits are protected.
12. **Desensitization + cynicism:** constant spectacle and ironic remixing create **meaninglessness**, eroding shame and consequences for fascist rhetoric.
From [The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — Futurist quote glorifying war and scorning women, rooting today’s style politics in earlier manifestos.
Difficult to not see many convergence points with neo-mercantilism indeed. Although fascism is not an intrinsic feature of mercantile capitalism, its imperialist feature and allegiance politics (here mainly expressed through culture war as a means of control) make the perfect conditions for fascism to grow.
From [The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — examples of AI “cute-washing” that normalises coercive state power and recasts militarism as friendly or heroic.
Also, the idea of a pervasive violence that comes with this new system is very well encapsulated in this sentence:
> nothing is obscene anymore.
This new aesthetic, facilitated by AI, is about making the violence acceptable, the obscene beautiful, and the absurd funny or sarcastic. Because then, you won't do anything about it.
“This is fine”
Memes and AI generated images turn everything into irony, in a kind of meta-self-fulfilling realization of the now-famous illustration of a cartoon character sitting in a room on fire who tells the audience, “This is fine.” Except here the character knows they are in an illustration, as an allegory to inaction in times of crisis, but diverted and subdued from its original meaning. In a cynical way, the scene becomes, then, purely performative: *it has become the very thing it was denouncing.*
From [The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — spectacle used to launder policy.
If climate change adds ecological, social, and economic pressure, it is turned not into a force for change (as many hoped at some point) but into another form of control —whether it is believed to be real or not isn't even remotely the point.
Nothing escapes the cultural reappropiation of this new engine: solarpunk and Afrofuturism have been subdued and repurposed to serve ethnic exclusionism, eugenist exceptionalism, and social hierarchies. Corporate minimalism signals purity. Christian symbolism, echoing neo-Christian nationalism and fundamentalism, has replaced Nazi mysticism.
From [The New Aesthetics of Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4%5FCaTufIU&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — manosphere iconography normalizing hierarchy.
Beyond the very finitude of our world, exemplified by the effects of climate change, the system behind this aesthetic is, itself, finite. Much like the architecture of fascist regimes of the 1930s, there is an order, a hierarchy, and the intent to find perfection through its minimalist completeness (purity). It's made to erase any sense of personality and diversity. It is huge and yet enclosed. Furthermore, it projects the grandeur of the nation while being inhuman to its visitor.
Examples of Nazi architecture — authoritarian grandeur as closed, finite aesthetics, and classical scale as a tool of power.
### Why should designers care?
This “new” fascism does not only live in images; it lives in decisions. It lives in roadmaps, risk registers, taxonomies, policy playbooks, moderation criteria, brand charters, data schemas, model prompts, vendor contracts, and KPIs. These are design artifacts. They decide what is visible, sayable, and countable before any interface is drawn. Designers operate inside this assemblage. We convene the workshops, write the definitions, choose the thresholds, and specify the workflows that become everyday governance. Because aesthetics is the materialization of these choices under political constraint, the look is not separable from the order that produced it. The “friendly” tone is an artifact of process, not just taste.
The likely impact is a rotation of purpose. Where liberal practice prized optionality and consent, briefs will increasingly ask for stability, risk containment, and allegiance. Decision artifacts will be evaluated by their throughput and their capacity to suppress volatility. Designers will be pulled into culture-war administration: incident playbooks, trust and safety roll-ups, and “brand suitability” rules that quietly redefine who may speak and on what terms. Metrics will follow. Fewer teams will be rewarded for enabling criticism or organizing; more will be rewarded for reducing appeal rates and moving enforcement faster. The profession’s autonomy will narrow as state-platform blocs set the frame and as procurement translates political priorities into non-negotiable requirements. Aesthetic conventions will harden around this: streamlined authority, hygienic calm, the absence of trace or conflict. It will feel professional. It will also be political.
Counter-strategy begins where decisions begin. Treat every key artifact as a site of resistance. In policy and taxonomy, name harms and externalities explicitly; make provenance, ownership, funding, and edit history first-class fields. Use aesthetics to witness rather than to launder: show cost, labor, and risk at the level of the artifact.
The Trioptic design approach follows from this: **socially**, return people from spectatorship to participation by designing recourse and assembly into the system; **aesthetically**, break the spell by materializing what the order tries to hide; politically, write enforceable rights into specifications so that power meets constraints upstream.
## New Space, Anti-science, and Astrocapitalism
Finally, this is the last piece of the puzzle. [In this interview, Arnaud Saint-Martin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvsoqtD9-Is&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a French sociologist of sciences specializing in the space domain, discusses the notion of astrocapitalism he developed in his recent book “[Les astrocapitalistes: Conquérir, coloniser, exploiter](https://www.payot-rivages.fr/payot/livre/les-astrocapitalistes-9782228937696?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)” ("Astrocapitalists: Conquer, colonize, exploit").
[Les astrocapitalistes | PayotColonisation de Mars, exploitation minière d’astéroïdes, astrotourisme : quand vient le temps de parler de l’aventure spatiale, la machine à fantasmes s’emballe. L’espace n’a jamais semblé aussi poche… du moins pour une poignée de privilégiés. Là, à portée de dollars, un nouveau marché à conquérir s’ouvrirait : le « New Space ».Payot](https://www.payot-rivages.fr/payot/livre/les-astrocapitalistes-9782228937696?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The reason I connect “Astrocapitalism” with our discussion is because it is the extension of platform capitalism and company-state power (mercantile capitalism) into orbital space: private mega-constellations and launch providers, aligned with national projects, enclose orbital commons, privatize gains, socialize risks, and normalize minimal regulation through seductive “New Space” visions.
Its relevant key signals/components discussed during the interview are:
- **Vision work as ideology.** Futures are framed as desirable and inevitable; “New Space” functions as a political project, not just tech progress.
- **State ↔ firm fusion.** Start-up rhetoric “transforms the state”; governments adopt the New Space lexicon and build national champions.
- **Orbital enclosure & massification.** Mega-constellations (e.g., Starlink) crowd orbits and frequencies; a “Fordism in space” logic scales rapidly.
- **Platformization in orbit.** Closed user-bases, lock-in, and sovereign constellations (Starlink/Kuiper/Guowang; EU IRIS²) mirror platform capitalism’s walled gardens.
- **Regulatory minimalism.** Talk of “space traffic management” often displaces stronger planning/limits; current rules leave externalities unpriced.
- **Privatize gains, socialize risks.** Publics carry debris, spectrum, security, and environmental burdens; firms capture rents.
- **Hegemonic geopolitics.** U.S. leadership is staged as “get in line” at venues like the IAC; space power is openly strategic.
- **European mimicry + “sovereign cloud/space.”** Large data-center and “sovereign” infrastructure pushes reveal energy/water/material loads and security theater.
---
## **Conclusion**
**It is important to recognize** what is happening, **this reorganization of power**, and take a step back from narrow discussions that may give the illusion that these changes and how they unfold are about technical or alignment challenges to be solved. However, **we should not focus only on the negative impacts** and ramifications of this transition.
The three theses are, in fact, three angles on the same movement. Liberal competition yields to mercantile blocs that secure chokepoints and allegiance. The obscene is normalized by an aesthetic that folds cruelty into paperwork, humor, and spectacle until nothing bites. The frontier shifts upward into orbit, where platforms and states co-manage enclosure. None of this sits outside design. It is organized through design. Aesthetics is the materialization of decisions under political constraint. The message cannot be separated from the space that produced it.
**There are opportunities:** the transition does not only remove, it also reveals where to intervene and with whom. It reminds us that designers are makers, and makers do not have to exist only by serving someone else’s power, money, or agenda. The artifacts we make are set conditions for others; they are means for change.
**There is another route that matters, and it belongs to culture.** Artifacts of fascist regimes present themselves as total. They project grandeur yet are closed and finite: their power is to exhaust the imagination of difference. **Designers can counter by making room for plurality** by **a**dding diversity and ambiguity on purpose, not as noise but as a practice.
The twentieth-century lesson from music and art is useful here: scenes in the seventies, eighties, and nineties grew by selecting, curating, sampling, decomposing, and recomposing. They created meaning by recombination and citation rather than by a single heroic line. Similarly, we can compose systems that are forkable, repairable, and open to local authorship. We can create patterns that permit remix, rather than forbid it, that curate dissent inside the work so that difference is not an afterthought but a condition of use.
**The conclusion is not that design should save the world.** It is smaller and harder. Design should accept that it already governs parts of it. If that is true, our task is to make that governance legible, contestable, and open to correction. To make alternatives when the market offers only enclosure. The future will be designed all the same: the choice is whether we design it as if people and worlds will have to live inside it, and whether we leave enough opportunities for others to participate and make it their own.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Community update: New channel, exploring the trioptic design, and thoughts on the challenges of designing for AI
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/community-update-new-channel-exploring-the-trioptic-design-and-thoughts-on-the-challenges-of-designing-for-ai/
Last updated: 2025-05-09T05:32:12.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
It's been sometimes since the last update. After the State of Design 2025 and all the surrounding activity, a much-needed break was necessary. This community has always been like this, oscillations between fast and then slow punctuate its life.
Talking about oscillations, spring is definitely here. I've always felt nature wears green way better than grey, and longer daylight definitely changes our internal rhythm. As someone who cycles at least 80 km (about 50 miles) a week –and who considers my bike as a mode of transport– I can tell the impact of both longer days (more daylight) and a greener environment has on my cycle experience.
*Note that this is also something you regain as soon as you bike almost every day, whatever the weather or time of year, is spatial and sensorial awareness of travel. Subtle changes are noticeable; the composition of the space, its disposition, aesthetic and infrastructural underlayer become evident. It makes you think and feel in space and context.*
Anyway, coming back to the update.
## New channel: *topic-geopolitical*, because we need to engage with the discourse more than ever.
If you are part of the community on Slack ([if not, join us here](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-rfm2qaj7-OT~R%5F65LiVohvBorSH4AmQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), you might have noticed our new channel [#topic-geopolitical](https://skepticaldesign.slack.com/archives/C08KK024D6J?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). If the past few months have shown something is that everything is interconnected. *Designers*, *makers* and *innovators* alike need to engage with political discourse and its impacts, not only to make sense of it, but because it is a substrate that shapes and is shaped by the social.
If design and designers aim to make any kind of meaningful change in the world (which they claim to do), it has to actively engage with what composes our world, which is deeply social.
## Exploring the trioptic design framework
This is an excellent segway to my ongoing work in expanding [my social design and New materialism exploration](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/more-than-tools-more-than-humans-rethinking-how-design-actively-shapes-the-world-by-kevin-richard/). The notion of social design was always incomplete, and this new exploration tries to articulate a framework or scaffolding for the kind of design (and designers) we need right now, **a trioptic design approach**: the *social*, the *aesthetic*, the *politic*.
Diagram 1 – The Trioptic Design Framework
The trioptic design dimensions:
- the **social** *make sense* of the worldviews in a landscape;
- the **aesthetic** *articulates* the mediums;
- the **politic** *enacts* an intent about the future.
I believe there is also a claim behind this exploration: **Design is not neutral, and the designers even less.**
The aesthetics of the *mediums* we interact with are codependent on the *message* they convey. It uses *social languages* that support certain ideas, or sometimes, subvert them. The message is *politic*, in the sense that it enforces a *worldview*, a *directionality*, an *intent*, about how the world should be.
Diagram 2 – The Field of Imagination
Beyond the shared belief that design is (and the designers themselves are) apolitical, that it/they just “serve the users”, I think there is simply a real aversion to discussing politic and a total misunderstanding of what is aesthetic.
To that, I'd argue:
1. **Design is political not just because of its effects, but because of its very nature as a practice of world-shaping.** As Carl DiSalvo writes \[1\], design can act as a form of prefigurative politics—a way of giving material form to values, institutions, and ways of living that do not yet exist, but could.
2. **Design is aesthetic because it articulates a concept which conveys a message; design materializes ideologies.** As Tony Fry writes \[2\], design is not only a material act but an ontological one.
**Politic is also a better dimension than ethic**, first because it embeds the latter, and second because it moves back the discussion to *intent* and *directionality* rather than focusing on the (illusion of) **certainty of the outcome**. After all, the quality of your ethic is very much dependent on your ability/power to change the world around you.
While I'm still in the process of articulating properly the approach, I think we can take an example to elaborate a bit its central thesis.
[This post by Josh Lovejoy](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7313955034289827842/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is an interesting case. To simplify Lovejoy's core argument:
> Effortlessness, seamlessness, and productivity are not inherently human-centered design goals.
[My son has a Spotify playlist that he shares with three of his friends… | Josh Lovejoy | 76 commentsMy son has a Spotify playlist that he shares with three of his friends. Every morning, he looks forward to checking out any additions that his buddies may have made. They all carefully curate what makes it into the list. In his own words, “I put a lot of work into it.” He’s proud of the playlist. The music itself and also what it represents. It’s a playful and serious endeavor all at once. Teenagers tinkering with identity and expression. For all these reasons and more, it’s meaningful to him. I’m sure we all have stories like these. Where time and energy and intention are poured into something, and as a result, it takes on meaning. And it “carries” that meaning, like a vessel, becoming more than its constituent parts; becoming a place where meaning can be directed \*towards\*. In my son’s case, when he hears a song that makes him think of a friend, he can channel those feelings toward the playlist. And when his friend spends the time to listen to it, something clicks. This is why “effortlessness” isn’t a human-centered design goal. Because “effort” isn’t the problem. Drudgery is the problem. Similarly, “seamlessness” isn’t a human-centered design goal. Because the “seams” aren’t the problem. The snags are the problem. And perhaps most importantly of all, “productivity” isn’t a human-centered goal. Because lack of productivity isn’t the problem. Being unfulfilled, unmotivated, and unappreciated are the problems. Choose your design goals wisely. If you find yourself in a situation where the stated goal is to “save” someone time, considering asking, “so they can spend it doing what?” Even if all it produces is an interesting discussion or a thought exercise, it’s worthy of your curiosity. Because the boundaries between “saving someone from” and “depriving someone of” are shaped by the user’s definition of meaningfulness, not the product’s. | 76 comments on LinkedInLinkedInJosh Lovejoy](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7313955034289827842/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Or in other words:
- Effort can be meaningful
- Seams can create connections
- Productivity is hollow without fulfilment
First, and contrary to what is said in the post, I think there is reasonable evidence to suggest UCD, HCD and UX design are limited frameworks, as first and foremost productivity-focused frameworks in techno-solutionist paradigm(s) –which, in most cases, serves techno-feudalist interests.
I think there is less value in trying to redefine these frameworks account for their gap, than trying to bring a third perspective to the case using a trioptic design approach:
- **Social:** The playlist is a social ritual, a shared cultural object, embedded with meaning. This is an assemblage of relational aesthetics and shared meaning, not just a “user feature.”
- **Aesthetic:** The playlist has aesthetic form (curation, sequencing, the musical choices) and a felt experience of being, recognition, joy.
- **Politic:** The question of who defines value, meaning, and purpose in our digital systems is deeply political. The “design goals” don’t just serve users—they reproduce ideological structures.
Josh’s son’s playlist is an assemblage:
- A social act of identity expression
- An aesthetic structure that signals belonging
- A political alternative to passive algorithmic consumption
- A recursive system of feedback and adaptation
- A space of worlding—a shared symbolic micro-universe
And it exists within ***the field of imagination***, a hallucinatory layer where meaning isn’t consumed, but crafted.
There’s also a political layer at the level of the “users”: *what happens when people resist, reinterpret, or remake the meaning of a space?*
In Deleuzian terms, this is *deterritorialization and reterritorialization* in action: The users un-code a capitalist music streaming service and reterritorialize it as a ritual of care, memory, and friendship.
- Josh’s son and his friends turn Spotify—a platform designed to recommend and passively consume stream music—into a site of co-authorship and identity construction.
- This is a micropolitical act: they claim a feature and imbue it with values not intended by the designers.
- These are world-building acts performed within an existing system, but, potentially, against its primary logic.
And because I think the political aspect is often misunderstood, **the politic dimension** in the trioptic design framework attempt to frame design **as a mechanism of *power* and *desire* *(Foucault, Deleuze)***—not just as a response to problems, but as a practice of *subjectivation*, *normalization*, *resistance*, and *creative emergence*.
Whereas the aesthetic aspect is often overlooked and confused as a surface-layer shallow understanding, **the aesthetic dimension** in the framework frames design as a sensorial and symbolic force—one that shapes perception, encodes ideology, mediates affect, and participates in constructing the very conditions of meaning, belonging, and agency. It is also recursive, as every aesthetic choice reconfigures not only what is seen or felt, but what can be imagined, expressed, and re-made in the future.
| Feature/Focus | User-Centered Design | Trioptic Design |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ |
| **Primary Perspective** | The individual user | Society, culture, systems |
| **Scope** | Interaction, usability, satisfaction | Meaning-making, world-shaping, futuring |
| **Ontological Basis** | Human-centric, often individualistic | Flat ontology (human + non-human actors) |
| **Ethical Framing** | “Design for the user” | “Design with/in systems, toward desired futures” |
| **Temporal Focus** | Short-to-mid term | Long-term consequences and possibilities |
| **Design Method** | Research > Define > Ideate > Test | Compose > Iterate > World > Steward |
So, to summarise in a sort of mini-manifesto, the trioptic design aims to address:
1. Design is Never Neutral
2. Design is Trioptic
3. Design is Imagination in Action (and imagination is a hallucinatory field)
4. Design is Spatial, Situated, and Recursive
5. Design works in entanglements
6. Design Operates on Flat Ontologies
7. Design Deterritorializes and Reterritorializes
8. Design is an Epistemic Engine
9. Designers are Stewards of Assemblages
10. Design is a World-building (Political) Act
If you're interested in exploring more, here are some of the theoretical foundations behind the trioptic design approach:
| Thinker | Contribution |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tony Fry | Design as futuring and politics, redirective practice |
| Jacques Rancière | Politics of aesthetics, redistribution of the sensible |
| Victor Margolin | Design as political engagement |
| Christo Sims | Design as prescription, publicization, and proposition |
| Deleuze & Guattari | Assemblages, schizoanalysis, territorialization/deterritorialization |
| Haraway, Ingold, Latour, DeLanda | Worlding, relational agency, situated imagination |
| Foucault, Lefort | The political vs. institutional politics |
## Designing for AI: new challenges are old challenges
I've recently came across [Luke Wroblewski's post](https://lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?2095&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), in which he shares his notes of a conference on “designing AI products”.
> In his AI Speaker Series presentation at Sutter Hill Ventures, Henry Modisett, Head of Design at Perplexity, shared insights on designing AI products and the evolving role of designers in this new landscape. Here's my notes from his talk
[LukeW | Designing PerplexityIn his AI Speaker Series presentation at Sutter Hill Ventures, Henry Modisett, Head of Design at Perplexity, shared insights on designing AI products and the ev…LukeWLuke Wroblewski](https://lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?2095&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Unfortunately, I did not watch the conference because no recording is available, so please let me know if I misunderstood something on limited information.
It's not the first time that I come across the idea that the challenges brought by AI are particularly novel or difficult. I find quite amusing the idea that anything is new about the challenge of designing for AI *–Game design has been around for a while and has had very transposable challenges–* or that projects start without knowing if they are technically feasible.
Although the speaker does mention Game design, the framing is still around the novelty of the challenges.
Also, regarding this point:
> Product mechanics (how it works) matter more than UI aesthetics. This comes from game design thinking: mechanics > dynamics > aesthetics
In (good) game design, aesthetics reveals game mechanics to players. And aesthetics do shape game mechanics. **The missing part here is the story**: beyond game mechanics, there is a recursive relationship between aesthetics, mechanics, the story. **Meaningful *affordances* to the player on how to progress.**
Therefore, I think it is interesting (and important, perhaps) when designing for AI, to ask what’s the point of it? What the message (politics)? For what outcomes and to whom (social)?
**That is the story.** And this shapes its aesthetic.
I know this is counter-intuitive in a world where every AI company wants to make a *you-can-do-everything-simply-ask-app,* but again if we look at game design, we can see that:
1. **This is not inevitable**, all games are not open-world with 1 trillion sub-sub-quests and activities but no stories. One could argue that the best games are quite the opposite.
2. Even in (good) open-world games, like say GTA, **there is a story and a sense of progression**. Yes, the game lets you do countless things, but taking that as the core characteristic of the game is totally missing the point. The open-world is an excuse to tell a story –in GTA, a critique of society through parody of realness– it is an aesthetic choice which allows certain mechanics.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
---
## References
1. Carl DiSalvo, **Design and Prefigurative Politics*,* in The Journal of Design Strategies [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TK3z-8U0ThHU-jPRRgBCSj6nTY3yjfwR/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TK3z-8U0ThHU-jPRRgBCSj6nTY3yjfwR/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2. Tony Fry, ***Design as Politics*** (Berg Publishers, 2011) [https://drive.google.com/file/d/15z2WM6ysFYkT\_qGP42YgUZmBjvqfINbZ/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15z2WM6ysFYkT%5FqGP42YgUZmBjvqfINbZ/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### State of Design 2025 – All contributions
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/state-of-design-2025-all-contributions/
Last updated: 2025-03-06T11:30:07.000Z
## A collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Back in January, we opened up the second chapter of the State of Design project (SoD for short), with [a call for contribution to the broader design community](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design-2025/). And this is, for the second time, a big success.
There have been 17 people who registered to the call, and 7 final contributions submitted (8 if we count my own contribution). These are similar numbers to last year's SoD.
For an entire week, from February 24th to March 2nd, we published at least one contribution every day, with an average open rate over 40% from subscribed members –which is not bad for what is, basically, a spam-week enterprise.
But all these numbers mean nothing compared to the culmination of this year's chapter, the State of Design event.
### Themes and topics
1. **Topographical understanding of designerly narratives ⛰️**
1. How do collective narratives shape perceptions of the designer's role in their downfall?
2. Are design challenges rooted in external systemic issues rather than internal faults?
3. How can we redefine the meaning and purpose of design in liminal, transitional spaces?
2. **United like sand. Defined by differences 🏝️**
1. What defines a designer in the face of diverse practices and perspectives?
2. Can differences and repetitions, as proposed by Deleuze, help reshape our understanding of design?
3. How can humour and irony offer counter-culture and autonomy in design?
3. **Catharsis and Hope 🔥**
1. What practices or approaches enable designers to "burn it all" and start anew?
2. How do hope and catharsis contribute to evolving and transforming design paradigms?
3. What new desires and anticipations can guide us in uncertain futures?
## A collection of perspectives on the state of design, 2025
In the **worlds within worlds* of Design, the very way we make sense of what we do is changing.
## Contributions
Here are all the contributions from our amazing members. Enjoy!
### [Adapt or Perish: Does Design Still Have a Future? by Rémi Garcia](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/adapt-or-perish-does-design-still-have-a-future-by-remi-garcia/)
Liberty Leading the People | La Liberté guidant le peuple, Eugène Delacroix – [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La%5FLibert%C3%A9%5Fguidant%5Fle%5Fpeuple%5F-%5FEug%C3%A8ne%5FDelacroix%5F-%5FMus%C3%A9e%5Fdu%5FLouvre%5FPeintures%5FRF%5F129%5F-%5Fapr%C3%A8s%5Frestauration%5F2024.jpg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Design, trapped in a logic of optimization and profitability, has lost its creative dimension to become a tool of control. As an heir to Taylorism and modernism, it continues to enforce efficiency standards that restrict experimentation and diversity of form. Yet, this trajectory is not inevitable. The history of design shows that it has always evolved in response to dominant ideologies. In the face of contemporary challenges, what comes next?
[Read Rémi's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/adapt-or-perish-does-design-still-have-a-future-by-remi-garcia/)
---
### [The Layers of Tomorrow, by Trisha Mehta](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-layers-of-tomorrow-by-trisha-mehta/)
The Layers of Tomorrow by Trisha Mehta
Design is at a threshold—caught between collapse and renewal. As the complexity of today’s challenges grows, traditional design methods are no longer enough. Climate breakdown, social inequality, and collapsing systems expose the limits of human-centred thinking in addressing wicked problems. The future, like a layered dream, unfolds unpredictably, revealing multiple possibilities.
This essay explores how we can navigate these layers—embracing complexity, mapping possible futures, and designing beyond the human perspective through participatory methods. At its core, it asks: How do we build for what’s possible, not just what’s known?
[Read Trisha's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-layers-of-tomorrow-by-trisha-mehta/)
---
### [Utility in Tomfoolery, by Ami Mehta](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/utility-in-tomfoolery-by-ami-mehta/)
Utility in Tomfoolery by Ami Mehta
Design is often weighed down by its own seriousness, bound by the expectations of professionalism, utility, and rigid rationality. But what if we approached design with the irreverence and playfulness of comedy? This essay explores how humor, satire, and irony—exemplified by the absurd automotive experiments of BBC's Top Gear—can serve as tools for inventive and liberating design thinking. By intentionally subverting conventional expectations, comedic design challenges typologies, provokes new ideas, and invites broader participation. It demonstrates how embracing failure with humor fosters resilience and creativity, allowing for designs that are reactionary, engaging, and delightfully unexpected. While comedy carries risks, its ability to disrupt norms and open new possibilities suggests that there is, indeed, utility in tomfoolery.
[Read Ami's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/utility-in-tomfoolery-by-ami-mehta/)
---
### [Norm-critical Participatory Design: Navigating the State of Design in 2025, by Sofia Lundmark](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/norm-critical-participatory-design-navigating-the-state-of-design-in-2025-by-sofia-lundmark/)
Norm-critical Participatory Design: Navigating the State of Design in 2025, by Sofia Lundmark
Design is never neutral, as it reflects and reinforces societal norms, values, and power structures. As the design field faces growing concerns about relevance and responsibility, norm-critical and participatory approaches offer ways to challenge dominant assumptions. Norms in design shape who gets to design, what is considered good design, and who benefits. By making these norms visible, norm-critical design questions exclusionary practices and provides alternative perspectives. Participatory design has long emphasized co-creation with marginalized groups, redistributing design agency, and ensuring that design is done with users, not just for them. In today’s rapidly shifting landscape, marked by technological change, economic uncertainty, and political tensions, such approaches become even more crucial. Without intentional inclusion, the design practice risks reinforcing dominant perspectives and excluding diverse voices. This contribution argues that *norm-critical participatory design* offers a path toward more just and inclusive design practices. By addressing implicit biases and engaging underrepresented groups, designers can create solutions that do not merely accommodate diversity but actively challenge exclusionary norms. In shaping the future of design, embracing these perspectives is not just an ethical choice—it is a necessity.
[Read Sofia's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/norm-critical-participatory-design-navigating-the-state-of-design-in-2025-by-sofia-lundmark/)
---
### [A necessary fire in the field of design, but there is still hope, by Pratik Joglekar](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-necessary-fire-in-the-field-of-design-but-there-is-still-hope-by-pratik-joglekar/)
[Rebirth](https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-wooden-sticks-with-green-leaf-o04xDvWE33U?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The concept of design involves transformation, which is a continuous process of renewal. It is important to start a fire in design, as we believe this is the only way to for a fresh start. The underlying idea is to embrace change and have the courage to stand by it. We must ignite this fire in our processes and reevaluate if there are more effective methods. With the emergence of new technologies, traditional approaches may not always be the most effective. A radical mindset can introduce fresh perspectives and applications.
This article serves as a reminder that we all need to renew our approach. It is a sincere call to awaken the creative designer within us and inspire them to think beyond the conventional methods.
[Read Pratik's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-necessary-fire-in-the-field-of-design-but-there-is-still-hope-by-pratik-joglekar/)
---
### [Users Deserve More than Simplicity: a Minifesto, by Austin Wiggins](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/users-deserve-more-than-simplicity-a-minifesto-by-austin-wiggins/)
Photo by [Xiong Yan](https://unsplash.com/@slothxbear?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit)
This article examines a dominant user experience (UX) design philosophy that prioritizes the simplicity of systems, and argues that these practices often treat users as incapable of engaging with deeper complex systems. Through an analysis of digital interfaces, the study demonstrates that oversimplified designs yield static and overly constrained systems, which in turn limit adaptability, stifle problem-solving, and erode user trust. The discussion calls for a paradigmatic shift toward design approaches that recognize and respect users’ agency and cognitive abilities by offering systems which grow with their uses and offers them choices to access that dynamism, thereby challenging established UX methodologies that favor control over empowerment.
[Read Austin's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/users-deserve-more-than-simplicity-a-minifesto-by-austin-wiggins/)
---
### [From Ambiguity to Orchestration: Reimagining Service Design in the Enterprise, by Neha Mansinghka](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/from-ambiguity-to-orchestration-reimagining-service-design-in-the-enterprise-by-neha-mansinghka/)
From Ambiguity to Orchestration: Reimagining Service Design in the Enterprise, by Neha Mansinghka
Service design faces a critical inflection point in enterprise environments. Despite increasing adoption, its ambiguity creates challenges for practitioners who must translate human-centered principles into metrics while navigating complex enterprise realities.
This essay advocates for transforming service design practice—moving beyond "Service Designer" titles toward value-oriented roles like "Value Creation Advisor" that better articulate contributions. Through value clarity assessments, practitioners can determine if organizations truly value the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, and business objectives or prioritize only certain aspects.
The community must expand to include "hidden service designers"—professionals practicing service design principles without the formal title—creating strength through diversity. In enterprise settings, service design evolves from a specialized discipline to an orchestration function, coordinating teams toward value co-creation.
A pragmatic approach acknowledges organizational realities: some successful companies neglect aspects of the value triangle yet thrive. Service designers must meet organizations where they are, focusing on incremental wins while maintaining their seat at the table—particularly crucial for influencing AI development, sustainability & DEI.
Through strategic repositioning and narrative reclamation, service design can navigate enterprise complexity while preserving its human-centered core.
[Read Neha's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/from-ambiguity-to-orchestration-reimagining-service-design-in-the-enterprise-by-neha-mansinghka/)
---
### [More Than Tools, More Than Humans: Rethinking How Design Actively Shapes the World, by Kevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/more-than-tools-more-than-humans-rethinking-how-design-actively-shapes-the-world-by-kevin-richard/)
Photo de [jean wimmerlin](https://unsplash.com/fr/@jwimmerli?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash) sur [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/fr/photos/photographie-de-sable-a-linterieur-de-la-maison-eB6D0Wks7jA?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash)
Design is often seen as a human-driven process, where products, services, and interventions serve as neutral tools for change. However, new materialism challenges this perspective by emphasizing the agency of materials, infrastructures, and systems in shaping society. This article examines the intersection of design, sociology, and new materialist philosophy, exploring how designed artifacts are not merely passive elements but active participants in shaping behaviors, power structures, and cultural shifts. By integrating sociological insights, it calls for a more relational, systemic view of design—one that acknowledges the entanglement of human and non-human forces in the transformation of our world.
[Read Kevin's essay](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/more-than-tools-more-than-humans-rethinking-how-design-actively-shapes-the-world-by-kevin-richard/)
---
## State of Design 2025 discussion: Exploring the Future of Design Together
---
**Thanks for reading, and a very special thank you to all our amazing contributors: *Rémi Garcia, Trisha Mehta, Ami Mehta, Sofia Lundmark, Pratik Joglekar, Austin Wiggins,* and *Neha Mansinghka*!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### More Than Tools, More Than Humans: Rethinking How Design Actively Shapes the World, by Kevin Richard
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/more-than-tools-more-than-humans-rethinking-how-design-actively-shapes-the-world-by-kevin-richard/
Last updated: 2025-03-02T16:15:12.000Z
## Abstract
Design is often seen as a human-driven process, where products, services, and interventions serve as neutral tools for change. However, new materialism challenges this perspective by emphasizing the agency of materials, infrastructures, and systems in shaping society. This article examines the intersection of design, sociology, and new materialist philosophy, exploring how designed artifacts are not merely passive elements but active participants in shaping behaviors, power structures, and cultural shifts. By integrating sociological insights, it calls for a more relational, systemic view of design—one that acknowledges the entanglement of human and non-human forces in the transformation of our world.
---
## Rethinking How Design Actively Shapes the World
Design and most of its practices –to which, subsequently, UX is part of– should be seen beyond the individualistic understanding/vision it has been framed into, this "personal-level experience".
**But in practice, User Experience Design (UXD)** and its parent approach Human-Centered Design (HCD), **is hardly capable of reflecting on an entire population,** its set of shared socio-cultural practices within an ecological landscape [\[1\]](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/ecological-psychology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), **and this has become ever more problematic.**
UX design and other corollary practices, like Product design, Service design, etc. have all the same issue: they are heavily focused on both the products/services then the individual characteristics of their users (their brains, needs, preferences, etc) as core fundamental assumptions. These are assumption-based practices.
Part of the issue stems from, counter-intuitively, its origins (Ergonomics, HMI) [\[2\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/User%5Fexperience%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and its unequal mingling with some cognitive psychology knowledge, and with it, a tendency to bring everything to the brain –but not only. Its roots in engineering and influence of business management heavily oriented the design practice towards a *problem-solution* paradigm. Furthermore, the *datafication* of our life, as a necessary *solution-enabler*, permitted an unprecedented shift in value extraction for businesses [\[3\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Datafication?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). The personalisation of experiences in modern products and services is less about you as a human being than it is about the *dividuation* of certain characteristics of your personhood, in its extractive form, and its alienation [\[4\]](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Dividuation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**Design practices are rendered myopic** *–or to the very least, incapable to adjust–* to such dynamics, which the reinforcing of individuation (and dividuation through value extraction) only participate in increasing inequalities, injustices, polarisation, lack of belonging, etc.
### A philosophical & practical critique: Understanding the issue
We need to explain a few things on the critique made here, before moving forward. For the sake of the argument I'm simplifying a few core concepts here. I'm also purposefully putting UX, Product and Service Design in the same basket for reasons which will become apparent below.
**User experience** (UX) design is focused on understanding the *users*, and *users* are defined by the very *interfaces* they use. The *product* or *service* is a prerequisite intermediary to that end as the conveyor of said interfaces.
**The interface** here has to be understood as an explicit, hard, tangible object (or constraint) –and due to UX origin's tightly coupled to computing tech, it is most likely *a digital (graphical) interface (UI)*. Therefore, without tangible interfaces –meaning without products and services– there are no clearly defined users.
**Users** are not necessarily humans –although it is generally assumed to be the case– and they have to be *using the interface* in order to achieve *goals*.
***Goals*** are defined as explicit desired end states, and ***tasks*** are merely means to reach such states. Thus, it is believed that their maximization is desirable.
While I'm happy if you disagree with me on definitions, please note these are considered largely shared beliefs in the field.
**This unit of analysis is actually dehumanizing:** even when defined as human, a user is not really a complete being, not even a living being, but merely an entity reduced to selfish and rational motivations. It has been suggested for some time now to move away from "users" towards "people", but this only exacerbates further the ontological-epistemological tension baked in the field's very axioms: the interface, the product, the service, is the real underlying layer of interpretation that matter and this acts as a great filter.
If we add that most products and services are the visible apparatus of, the materialisation of, *business models*, which are still mainly defined by their strict transactional aspect of the value exchange between "rational agents" on a market, and you end up with an even narrower and skewed understanding of said "people".
Hence, UX, Product and Service design practices focus heavily on individualistic values within a *problem-solution* paradigm, further reinforcing them. People's goals and preferences are sorted, homogenised and generalised to much simpler characters (e.g. persona), removing people, at least partially, some form of their meaning attribution, interpretation and agency in their own context.
On the other hand, most digital experiences ask people for their unique and exclusive attention, mandating intrusive behaviours, while providing an inequality class-based experience –the push for [*neo-feudalist*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and especially [*anarcho-capitalist*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ideals in recent years is a continuation of such dynamics, enabled by a process towards decentralisation. Here, the notion of "personalisation" (of experience) is believed to be the holy grail of experience only because it maximizes these dynamics. And AI will certainly play a role in further exacerbating them.
All of this is the very definition of the concept of **“dividuation”* [\[4\]](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Dividuation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) which G. Deleuze talks about in his work on **“Societies of Control”*, exemplified.
I'm not saying that nothing is done to mitigate the issue, but when it is, it's treated as extra things to do rather than the default modus operandi.
### A social critique: Design practices are memetic engines
UX design is, for better or for worse, tightly coupled with tech and, despite all good intentions, willingly perpetuates its worst tendencies.
"Tech" here is not just any "technology" but an extension of globalisation of corporate and modern capitalistic values, **and as such it doesn't care about people and their environment, it cares about itself as a system of power.** To an extent, this system (disdains?) dislikes the human (and more-than-human) condition as it is a hindrance to its “ideal fulfilment”, marked by a constant acceleration towards more of itself –and therefore, the process of *exploitation*, *objectification*, *exclusion*, *reduction*, and *removal* of said humans (and non-humans) is a feature of such a system, not a bug.
This is not a dystopian prediction nor a personal judgement, rather a description of dynamics at play. Design practices operate in a special role in this, the one of memetic engines [\[5\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Memetics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), of self-replication of the very cultural markers of the system by copy, alteration/mutation and recombination. To function, this requires a lot of diversity and, as such, design practices are in a perpetual state of tension –which is, ultimately, a good thing.
This means that, on one hand, we indeed participate in its continuation but, on the other hand, we have opportunities to inject change. Adaptive systems are not monolithic and immutable, but rather always evolving as their initial conditions change overtime.
## Design is social. Design creates social objects.
For several years, I've been talking and thinking a lot about Deleuze & Guattari's work on [Assemblage Theory \[6\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Assemblage%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[7\]](https://cynefin.io/wiki/Assemblage%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Schizoanalysis \[8\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Schizoanalysis?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), its relationship with the study of [complex adaptive systems \[9\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in the context of human social systems and how this can be translated to design.
[Design, people, and the socialFrom philosophy to cognition to society. This article was originally published on the Design & Critical Thinking community website. Hi everyone, Kevin here. I try to find back some inspiration and rhythm for writing during this summer break, as I’m reaching the end of a trip to southern France withKevin Richard – Island of thoughtsKevin Richard](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/philosophy-cognition-society/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The study of *human social systems* is the domain of Sociology [\[10\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sociology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), which is the study of people and their ecologies at the level of societies. All of which are extremely relevant to design (and designers) but also to innovation practitioners, as it equips them with means to make sense and act according to a broader understanding of the landscape they are intervening in.
The impact of Deleuze & Guattari (and others like Latour) on social sciences, combined with the feminist movements, the development of the interdisciplinary field of Complexity Sciences [\[11\]](https://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map%5Ffeb09.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and the inclusion of other living forms in the face of climate change and ecological collapse led in recent years to a new broad field of contemporary philosophy called ***New Materialism*** (see [here \[12\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/New%5Fmaterialism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here \[13\]](https://newmaterialism.eu/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
### New Materialisms: Key Approaches
*Source:* [*Deborah Lupton 2019*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YX%5F7ffJjbB5wWoAHH%5Fb8BciJNfRUXLRF/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,*[ *New Materialisms: Key Approaches*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YX%5F7ffJjbB5wWoAHH%5Fb8BciJNfRUXLRF/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
#### Sociology (new materialism)
****Ideas:** What can bodies do? All matter has an agential capacity to affect – 'we need to explore relations' capacities when assembled together and intra-acting' – affects are 'the engines of assemblages, altering capacities' – using empirical data to identify affect-economies and relations and what capacities are generated and the affects producing these capacities – can identify lists of human-nonhuman relations forming assemblages from interview data – affects can have negative consequences for capacities ('constraining affects') (Fox & Bale). Retheorising power and resistance – resistance as continuing process – importance of acknowledging materiality and material forces, agency of things – no structures of power, just events that are emergent and dynamic.
****Key researchers:** Fox and Alldred, Duff, Fullagar
****Key theorists:** Spinoza, Deleuze, Guattari, Barad, Braidotti, Latour
#### ****Indigenous materialisms**
****Ideas:** Identifies the antecedents of new materialism in indigenous worldviews. E.g. the Indigenous Australian concept of Country as 'a living and life-giving nexus of energy-matter' (Ravenscroft) or the Inuit concept of climate as the vital breath of life and of knowing for humans and others (Todd). The importance of sensory relational connections and atmospheres that are more-than-representational between humans and other phenomena.
****Key researchers:** Tallbear, Todd, Kukutai and Taylor, Bird Rose, Cariou, Roziek, Ravenscroft
****Key theorists:** –
#### ****Environmental feminism, material ecocriticism, Anthropocene feminisms, environmental materialism**
****Ideas:** focuses on the nature-culture divide and the material agencies that are part of environmental systems and the Anthropocene. Attempts to understand the intersections and relations of humans and nonhumans in ecologies. Works towards 'a posthuman environmental ethics' (Alaimo) and 'a better understanding of humans' kinship with nonhumans. 'Posthumous life' (Weinstein & Colebrook). Recognises indigenous knowledges and philosophies of nature. Sees materials and humans as 'storied matter': matter as 'a site of narrativity' (Iovino and Opperman).
****Key researchers:** **Colebrook, Alaimo, Wilson, Morton, Plumwood, Kirksey, Malone, Kirby*
****Key theorists:** Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, Barad, Haraway, Braidotti, Grosz
#### ****Education - gender and posthuman performativity**
****Ideas:** Focuses on assemblages of sexuality/bodies/gender (including digital images such as selfies) and spacetimematterings in education contexts. What are the affective intensities and the larger apparatuses of knowledge-making at work? (e.g. ideas about and material arrangements concerning girls' and women's sexuality and how they should act and look) – intra-activity/affect – activities directed at establishing boundaries.
Using examples from data that have affective force and resonance with the researchers.
****Key researchers:** **Ringose, Renold, Coleman, Osgood, Blaise, Davies*
****Key theorists:** Barad, Braidotti, Deleuze, Guattari, Butler, Foucault, Latour
#### ****Diffraction theory, post-qualitative inquiry**
****Ideas:** Focuses on diffraction theory and method. Reading theory diffractively – engagements with different disciplines to make new theories – reading insights through one another. Develops a method of diffractive analysis of data - looks at what data do rather than what they mean. Analysing data by tracing affective intensities in their empirical contexts – what do affective forces 'do'? How does matter make itself felt? – look for the agential cuts, where meaning is made from the constantly changing choices of meaning – reading the data with theory after coding – 'renewed' rather than 'new' materialisms (Coole and Frost) – 'plugging' theory and data into each other – diffractive analysis.
****Key researchers:** **Davies, Lenz-Taguchi, Mazzei, Jackson, Hicke-Moody, Ivinson, Lather, Coole, Frost, van der Tuin, Gullion, Fullagar*
****Key theorists:** Foucault, Barad, Haraway, Deleuze, Guattari, Butler
#### ****Vital materialism**
****Ideas:** The power, vibrancy and enchantment of more-than-human assemblages ('the force of things' and 'thing-power' - Bennett) – we are all compost (Haraway) – post-Anthropocene politics. Critical life studies. Animacies.
****Key researchers:** **Coole, Frost, Colebrook, Chen*
****Key theorists:** Spinoza, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Bennett, Haraway, Braidotti, Merleau-Ponty, Latour, Agamben
#### ****Education – materiality and enactment theorising**
****Ideas:** Builds on Ball's policy enactment/implementation work (Foucauldian) by incorporating greater emphasis on materiality and actor-networks and dynamic nature of assemblages and enactments ('becoming') – policy as performative agent/object that creates material effects – policy takes form in practices, territoralising and de/re-territoralising – lines of flight – policy assemblages as 'messy objects'/micro-negotiations of policy.
****Key researchers:** **Mulcahy, Fenwick and Edwards*
****Key theorists:** Foucault, Deleuze, Latour, Mol, Law, Singleton
#### ****Anthropology of material culture**
****Ideas:** Focuses on making, doing, skills, articulation, becoming, moving through the world, creativity, cultural improvisation, incorporation of objects, the life of objects – decay, reinvigoration, 'mutable things' (DeSilvey).
****Key researchers:** **Inghold, Hallam, DeSilvey, Edensor*
****Key theorists:** Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Barad, Bennett, Appadurai, Douglas, Bourdieu
#### ****Posthuman archaeology/museum studies**
****Ideas:** Puts things at centre: how things connect with other things and with humans. Focuses on the properties of materials, their social lives and networks of things. Entanglement analysis - making 'tanglegrams' (Hodder and Mol). 'Symmetrical archaeology' – humans emerge from their relationships with things (Oleson).
****Key researchers:** **Hodder, Oleson, Conneller, Alberti, Jones*
****Key theorists:** Foucault, Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, Barad, Latour, Haraway, Bennett
#### ****Cultural geography/anthropology – sensory ethnography/affective atmospheres/non-representational methodologies**
****Ideas:** Focuses on the interaction between the senses, embodied habits, emotions and engagement with the more-than-human world.
****Key researchers:** **Pink, Howes, Classen, Bissell, Vannini, Lorimer, Dowling*
****Key theorists:** Haraway, Meleau-Ponty, Thrift, Latour, Law, Deleuze, Guattari, Whitehead, Marcus, Clifford
#### ****Design anthropology/sociology and arts-based practice**
****Ideas:** Focuses on use of design and art methods for inspiring creative, speculative and imaginative thinking about presents and futures – generating more-than-representational artefacts.
****Key researchers:** **Michael, Gaver, Suchman, Dunne & Raby, Pink, Hickey-Moody, Pink, RC Smith, Otto*
****Key theorists:** Marcus, Latour, Heidegger, Stengers, Whitehead, Serres, Law
#### ****Information systems/organisation studies/management studies - sociomaterialism**
****Ideas:** Focuses on the relational ontologies of digitised information systems and organisations (data, archives, libraries, management and other infrastructures). Iterative material-discursive performances – entanglements – of assemblages of people, work, organisations and technologies. Builds on the sociology of scientific knowledge. 'The mangle of practice' – trajectories and 'dances' of human and material agency (Pickering).
****Key researchers:** **Orlikowsky, Scott, Pickering, Wagner*
****Key theorists:** Latour, Callon, Law, Deleuze and Guattari, Haraway, Barad, Ihde
#### ****Object-oriented ontology (OOO), speculative realism**
**(NB: often grouped with new materialism, but actually quite different – included here for sake of comparison)*
****Ideas:** Focuses on the ontologies of objects: there is more to objects than humans' knowledges and understandings of them. Monism (flat ontologies). Objects can rely on and relate to each other, but these reliances do not exhaust their capacities. There is a reality of objects beyond human perception. What a thing is is more interesting than what it does. Sees objects as independent from other objects (the 'thing-in-itself', 'objects, not actors', 'immaterialism, not materialism' \[Harmon\]). Less interested in relations or epistemologies. Privileges form over matter.
****Key researchers:** **Harman, Bogost, Bryant, Morton*
****Key theorists:** Whitehead, Latour, Heidegger, Husserl
Find more resources on the interdisciplinary field of New Materialism in this compilation: [https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/new-materialism-resources](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/new-materialism-resources?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Many of the themes and topics I discussed in [my exploration of Solarpunk \[14\]](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[15\]](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/) are in fact coming from (or at least, heavily connected to) this field and philosophy, which I definitely feel closer to than the Solarpunk movement [\[16\]](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme-resources?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting movement to observe and follow, but adopting its views brings its own set of issues and is not a prerequisite to adhere to some of the ideas and principles.
**Anyway, why is this relevant?** Well, as I entertained earlier, I've come to critically think that **design practices have a granularity issue**: a focus on the solution (product and service) and a focus on the individual as unit of analysis and understanding.
[What can designers learn from SolarPunk?SolarPunk is relevant to designers for its optimistic hybridisation and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning”. Let’s…UX CollectiveKevin Richard](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design aims at change. But change isn't grounded in the individual.
What I am suggesting here is that design, and especially UX/Product/Service design need to move from practices heavily focused on the solution, the individual and purely transactional interactions between the two, and move towards more sociological and ecological considerations.
Rather than focusing in characterising individuals by generalising them to personas and archetypes, we should do so with the very places they inhabit, their environment, the flux, interactions, and both positive & negative constraints which happen within them. Starting from the context to derive what's possible and what's not, to identify patterns.
In [*How to change a culture: Lessons from NUMMI*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wLymFgyMDrYYI236xZS976tmvp7j6mhr/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), John Shook describes how they changed the Culture at a joint General Motors/Toyota manufacturing plant [\[17\]](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-change-a-culture-lessons-from-nummi/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), back at the time Lean Manufacturing practices started to be imported from Japan.
> *What my NUMMI experience taught me that was so powerful was that the way to change culture is not to first change how people think, but instead to start by changing how people behave — what they do. Those of us trying to change our organizations’ culture need to define the things we want to do, the ways we want to behave and want each other to behave, to provide training and then to do what is necessary to reinforce those behaviors. The culture will change as a result.*
>
> *This is what is meant by, “It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting.” \[...\]*
>
> *If we as management want people to be successful, to find problems and to make improvements, we have the obligation to provide the means to do so.*
> *When NUMMI was being formed, though, some of our GM colleagues questioned the wisdom of trying to install andon there. “You intend to give these workers the right to stop the line?” they asked. Toyota’s answer: “No, we intend to give them the obligation to stop it —whenever they find a problem.”*
> – John Shook 2010, “How to change a culture: Lessons from NUMMI”
One might read a confirmation that, indeed, change happened through individuals, but this is anything but.
What Shook is pointing out is that people had to first change what they do to change how they think and what they value as a group, **and to do so they needed an environment with affordances to enable new behaviours.** Much like more lanes on a highway afford more traffic (induced demand), environmental constrains -artificial or not- increase the likelihood of certain behaviours through their affordance.
****Change happen at the interaction level**, the connective tissue between all the individuals –or rather, the actant– their environment and the objects that composes it [\[18\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Actantial%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[19\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Actant?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (see also the [Actor-Network Theory \[20\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Actor%E2%80%93network%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Now, that is not to say individuals have no agency. On the contrary, they have agency and autonomy, but within both enabling and limiting constraints. Every individual has a different threshold at which enough environmental constraint (built environment, social pressure, etc.) will be effective at changing their perceptions, behaviours, and narratives (see [Mark Granovetter's work on *“Threshold Models of Collective Behavior”* \[21\]](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1%5FXG-JEc3Q1tTIZXsV9pqgQlmVbN-Jbfg/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[22\]](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778111?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Video in French – "The science of tipping point: How many people does it take to start a revolution?"
## Design + Sociology
*Design sociology* is different in that it looks at understanding people through their environment and the stories they tell about it as a starting point. The objects created through design (products, services, etc.) are therefore understood and analysed as catalysts for social interactions and social change, rather than a neatly isolated single-point solution.
***Design Sociology*** is a term coined by [Deborah Lupton](https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/deborah-lupton?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Sociologist and professor at UNSW Sydney, and developed in her 2017 review essay titled [*“Towards design sociology” \[23\]*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Y-q7NpcnDT7HRzRQEygCLBJqMQKnj2C/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.* The approach is proposed as a meeting point between design research and sociocultural research, which, as Lupton explains, hardly ever crossed before. As she points out in the introduction:
> *“Many design researchers have become progressively open to incorporating sociological and anthropological concepts and theories in their work. Sociocultural research drawing on design methods has also been developing over the past few years.”* – Lupton 2017, Towards design sociology
Lupton's proposed approach is three folds [\[23\]](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Y-q7NpcnDT7HRzRQEygCLBJqMQKnj2C/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
- One, **it can focus inward to design**, that is, understanding the “social worlds and material practices of designers” from a sociological perspective.
- Second, **it can involve “conducting sociological research through design”.**
- Lastly, **design sociology offers a transdisciplinary collaboration** between sociology and design disciplines, enriching them both.
Although Lupton's work is clearly directed at the sociological research discipline as a means to enrich its research practices, this has the potential to address our granularity issue, and even cover some of my Solarpunk-inspired design principles [\[14\]](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#accc) *–or rather New Materialism-inspired principles:*
- ✊ Design principle #4: **Design for human and non-human autonomy**
- ✨ Design principle #5: **Design within multi-world-views**
Indeed, world-views are not simply intrapersonal, meaning it is not defined by what a specific individual believes, experienced, and behaves (that would be a granularity issue), but, as the story of Zapatistas suggests (see *“'Worlds within worlds' and the need for multi-ontological approaches”* [\[14\]](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#dace)), they are instead a set of shared narratives and sub-cultures which are permeable-enough to hold and porous-enough to co-exist within various others.
**Design sociology works around two core concepts:**
1. Design sociology creates **cultural probes** as a means to generate shared understanding of a cultural landscape;
2. Design sociology relies on **participatory design methods** to maximize the inclusivity and diversity of the approach.
***Cultural probes*** is a technique that is used as a means of gathering inspirational data about people's lives, values and thoughts. The probes are “small packages that can include any sort of artifact (like a map, postcard, camera or diary) along with evocative tasks, which are given to participants to allow them to record specific events, feelings or interactions.” [\[24\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cultural%5Fprobe?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Cultural probes aren't new to design practices**, on the contrary, and if you have a HCI or interaction design degree you might already be somewhat familiar with this approach, sometimes under the label "design probes" [\[25\]](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220383091%5FDesign%5FCultural%5FProbes?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[26\]](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/cultural-probes?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[27\]](https://probetools.net/probes?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) . It seems, however, this has become a lost practice in the current professional UX design landscape.
Cultural Probes - Qualitative Contextual Design Research
**Participatory design methods** are nothing new either and has been largely developed in the field of *social design* practices, a largely (but not limited to) European movement. There is a very real and interesting tention between a social design and a more techno-solutionist design approach that characterises the current UX design field:
> *Published in 1971, designer Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World introduced critiques ostensibly about consumption and green politics. \[...\] as summarized by Whiteley, *there was no justification for designing trivial and stylish consumer items for the affluent of the advantaged countries, when the majority of humankind was living below subsistence level*” \[...\]*
>
> *D*esign is for the most part still complicit with constructing the social for good or ill*, and while designers may attempt to address manifold issues of inclusion and representation as these unfold in the “real world,” they are part of complex, technocentric, and market-driven systems of governance and production that typically streamline and reduce the complexity of social issues in representations, *in what is still broadly perceived as a process of reductive “problem-solving.”**– Rethinking Cultural Probes in Community Research and Design as Ethnographic Practice, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 2022 [\[28\]](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In Lupton's Design Sociology, “design” is in act of probing itself. Design serves to generate and capture qualitative and meaningful relationships, for and by participants: design here is a form of *public ethnography*. It is framed, after all, from a sociological perspective –and this is a good thing. Design can and should be used to create shared understanding rather than only seek validation.
From a design perspective, however, this is seems only half the path towards catalysing change –I‘ll address this point later.
In the 2022 book *“What People Leave Behind – Marks, Traces, Footprints and their Relevance to Knowledge Society”* [\[29\]](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x5WuDHkfxPTRmv2Lk4ceGgxLxYqhfaxx/view?usp=drive%5Flink&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)published on *Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research,* part 1, chapter 3 *“Rethinking Cultural Probes in Community Research and Design as Ethnographic Practice”* [\[28\]](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) discusses the limitations of cultural probes in social design practices:
> *Contemporary ideas of social design utilize a broader mandate for change through participatory approaches and collective outcomes in addition to market objectives (Armstrong et al., 2014: 15). \[...\]*
>
> *However, *designers (as a worst-case example) often choose a particular method from the book* to use as a quick exercise with potential “users” *to lend validity to a design proposal*. *This “toolbox mentality” stems from an acceleration and acceptance of instrumentalist values that have become the core of design, business, and education to assert control* in response to increasing conflicts in social and cultural realms. Consequently, design interventions and modernist-inspired solution finding continue to be critiqued as abstracting and devaluing lived, material experiences, instrumentalizing community knowledge, and compromising people’s agency while *potentially exacerbating complex problems* (Escobar,* [*2018*](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#ref-CR9)*). \[...\]*
>
> **This calls for an open, explicit negotiation of the relationship between researcher and participants, starting from a recognition that both parties carry their own cultural, social, professional perspectives* and interests and, subsequently, that the outcomes of the research process *reflect such a negotiation of cultures and intentions* (Palaganas et al.,* [*2017*](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#ref-CR23)*).*
>
> **Ezio Manzini \[...\] discusses the process of “sensemaking” to eventual “problem-solving” as a co-design process of catalyzing existing context-specific knowledge in communities.** – Rethinking Cultural Probes in Community Research and Design as Ethnographic Practice, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, 2022 [\[28\]](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Co-design process – Manzini ([2015](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11756-5%5F3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#ref-CR20 "Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation. MIT Press."))
In short, **the medium is the message**, and the act of choosing the medium of expression of one's lived experience is often determined by the motivations of the one in charge of collecting the data. This can remove or limit the mediation of different interpretations. Designers often seek validation rather than true sense-making through navigating different world-views, forcing interpretation to be reduced to pre-established tacit assumptions (the tool-box mindset).
Something quite interesting when we look at *collective meaning creation* is that it is linked to the notion of *narratives* (semiotics). Narrative-building works on the underlying cultural and tacit understanding of one's environment and its meaning attribution. This means, **narratives are emergent cultural objects which can reveal environmental patterns and constraints.**
Using *narrative research* mixed methods, such as *Participatory Narrative Inquiry* (PNI) [\[29\]](https://www.workingwithstories.org/aboutpni.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), developed by Cynthia F. Kurtz, we can blend qualitative and quantitative data, overcoming the limitations of cultural probes.
Example of narrative research using Sprockler, collecting stories on the theme of “becoming a designer” – [source](https://visualizer.sprockler.com/en/open/becoming-designers?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
On a side note, my research, together with Krasi Bozhinkova and Daiana Zavate, on *“The Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework”* [\[30\]](https://rsdsymposium.org/multi-actor-engagement-in-the-ecosystem-economy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) was intended to directly work with narratives as a means to explore adjacent spaces (innovation). Although it is limited as a fixed canva, in the form of a board game, it allows people to use abstractions to inject their own meaning and connect various perspectives, and surface weak signals.
## Conclusion: Towards a more social UX design practice
Here I want to address the missing part. As said, **design aims at creating change.** Building knowledge and understanding can be part of design but is not sufficient to serve this purpose. So what could a more social design UX practice looks like?
Here‘s my humble attempt at consolidating an approach (Social Experience Design?):
1. **Probing**
1. Collecting narratives
2. Cultural/design probing
2. **Sense-making**
1. Pattern identification: assemblages & metaphors
3. **Futuring**
1. Design fiction
4. **Scaffolding**
1. [Entangled Trios](https://cynefin.io/wiki/Entangled%5Ftrios?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2. Adjacent prototyping
5. **Evaluating**
1. Narrative-based evaluation (change in narratives over time)
---
## Written by Kevin Richard.
**Kevin Richard** is a facilitator of collective sense-making and steward of the Design & Critical Thinking community. He is a senior Designer and Strategist in Switzerland 🇨🇭 and a humble & curious thinker, learner, practitioner and writer.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Webstie: [https://www.kevinrichard.ch/](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Kevin Richard – Island of thoughtsCurious exploration. Design & Critical thinking.Kevin Richard – Island of thoughts](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### From Ambiguity to Orchestration: Reimagining Service Design in the Enterprise, by Neha Mansinghka
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/from-ambiguity-to-orchestration-reimagining-service-design-in-the-enterprise-by-neha-mansinghka/
Last updated: 2025-03-01T15:30:07.000Z
## Abstract
Service design faces a critical inflection point in enterprise environments. Despite increasing adoption, its ambiguity creates challenges for practitioners who must translate human-centered principles into metrics while navigating complex enterprise realities.
This essay advocates for transforming service design practice—moving beyond "Service Designer" titles toward value-oriented roles like "Value Creation Advisor" that better articulate contributions. Through value clarity assessments, practitioners can determine if organizations truly value the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, and business objectives or prioritize only certain aspects.
The community must expand to include "hidden service designers"—professionals practicing service design principles without the formal title—creating strength through diversity. In enterprise settings, service design evolves from a specialized discipline to an orchestration function, coordinating teams toward value co-creation.
A pragmatic approach acknowledges organizational realities: some successful companies neglect aspects of the value triangle yet thrive. Service designers must meet organizations where they are, focusing on incremental wins while maintaining their seat at the table—particularly crucial for influencing AI development, sustainability & DEI.
Through strategic repositioning and narrative reclamation, service design can navigate enterprise complexity while preserving its human-centered core.
---
From Ambiguity to Orchestration: Reimagining Service Design in the Enterprise, by Neha Mansinghka
## **Introduction: Navigating Ambiguity and Enterprise Realities**
Service design, once a niche practice, has surged in popularity within the enterprise world (Parsley, 2024) (Service Design Network Dallas Chapter, 2021). However, this increased visibility presents a double-edged sword. While organizations invest in service design teams, a fundamental ambiguity persists: what is service design, and how does it deliver tangible value? The term "Service Designer" remains nebulous, lacking a universal definition (GOV.UK, 2016) (Miller, 2015). This lack of clarity, amplified by the field's rapid expansion, particularly in North American tech and traditional companies, creates a significant challenge. Service designers are tasked with proving their worth to organizations that struggle to articulate its quantifiable impact. They must translate human-centered principles into concrete metrics, such as OKRs and KPIs, while navigating complex enterprise realities: stakeholder ecosystems, rapid technological advancements, and regulatory requirements. (Service Design Show, 2024), (Service Design Show, 2024), (Service Design Network Dallas Chapter, 2021)
This "baptism by fire" demands a critical re-evaluation of service design's role and a bold reinvention of its practices.
## **I. Acknowledging the Fire: The Case for Catharsis in Service Design**
The narratives surrounding service design within enterprise settings increasingly clash with its practical application. Current implementations and measurement approaches fail to capture the nuanced impact of design interventions and the complexity of human experience. Overreliance on quantitative metrics obscures valuable qualitative transformations. Institutional narratives also impose restrictive limitations. Funding models, for example, often confine service design to single business units, stifling its cross-disciplinary potential (Service Design Network Dallas Chapter, 2021). Similarly, associating service design solely with large-scale transformations paints it as slow and ill-suited for agile demands (Service Design Network Dallas Chapter, 2021), (Service Design Network, 2018). This perception risks excluding service design from crucial AI initiatives, precisely when its human-centered perspective is needed. Additionally, service designers are often ill-prepared for diverse enterprise environments. This lack of preparedness, potentially stemming from educational gaps or lack of community awareness regarding enterprise adaptation, leads to struggles in demonstrating value (Service Design Show, 2021). All these factors combine to take an emotional and professional toll on service designers, who find themselves caught between ideals and realities. Voices from the field echo this sentiment, with burnout and disillusionment. (Avila, 2023), (Reddit, 2024), (Service Design Show, 2024). This collective experience underscores the urgent need for catharsis, a deliberate act of burning away the limiting beliefs and restrictive perceptions that no longer serve us, to make space for a more meaningful practice.
## **II. Reclaiming Professional Identity Through Strategic Repositioning**
To thrive in the volatile enterprise landscape, service designers must actively redefine their professional identity. This necessitates moving beyond the limiting "**Service Designer**" label and embracing value-centric titles like "**Value Creation Advisor**," "**Value Optimizer**," or "**Value Creation Manager**." Such strategic repositioning clarifies expectations and aligns roles with organizational priorities, empowering practitioners to shape perceptions and demonstrate their unique value. This reclamation begins with meaningful engagements and value clarity.
Value clarity requires a deep dive into organizational values, analyzing the interplay between customer, employee, and business needs. By examining relevant documentation (e.g. strategy papers, business cases, project logs (RAID, RACI, PIRs)), analyzing existing metrics, and utilising techniques like stakeholder interviews, employee surveys, service designers can identify discrepancies between stated and actual values. This analysis allows for the categorization of organizations by their "**value maturity**," enabling informed project engagement. In misalignment scenarios, service designers can either advocate for change, educate stakeholders, or focus on aligned projects, ensuring sustainable and impactful practice.
## **III. Expanding the Community Beyond Traditional Boundaries**
The service design community's growth hinges on recognizing "**hidden service designers**" within organizations. **These professionals, often in non-design roles, intuitively apply service design principles, optimizing processes and improving experiences against the backdrop of enterprise realities** (Mansinghka, 2025). Engaging them in service design communities breaks down silos between formal design teams and other value-creating functions. This inclusion fosters innovation and resilience, strengthening the discipline's impact. Within organizations, cross-disciplinary collaboration demonstrates service design's value across functions. Beyond organizational walls, incorporating these professionals into service design communities offers significant benefits, preparing design professionals for enterprise challenges and enhancing value clarity exercises. Given the complex enterprise realities service designers face, involving professionals who have already navigated these terrains is crucial, accelerating integration and enabling impactful results.
## **IV. Reclaiming the Narrative from Institutional Control**
The shift from corporate-dominated design discourse to practitioner-led communities is essential for reclaiming the narrative and shaping the future of service design. Building independent platforms for knowledge sharing and standard setting empowers practitioners to define their own path. **Diverse communities can collectively shape a resilient professional identity.** Strategies for asserting narrative control in organizational settings, such as storytelling, advocacy, and education, help service designers communicate their value and influence decision-making.
## **V. Orchestration Instead of Designing**
In the complex enterprise environment, service design's role transcends traditional problem-solving. It evolves into orchestration, coordinating diverse teams to achieve unified value outcomes (Service Design Show, 2021) (Reason, 2024). The siloed approach of a dedicated "service design team" fails to fully leverage its potential.
Consider the analogy of risk management in a financial institution. During onboarding, employees are trained to understand that risk management is a collective responsibility. Everyone, regardless of their role, must be vigilant in identifying and mitigating risks. This philosophy should be mirrored in the application of service design within enterprises. The value Venn diagram—customer, employee, and business needs—should be a guiding principle for all employees. This requires a shift to a service design mindset across the organization, making value co-creation a collective endeavour.
The service design definition found on Service Design Network website (https://www.service-design-network.org/about-service-design) must be internalized by everyone.
The service design professional becomes an orchestrator, educating teams and guiding their efforts to be in line with the guiding principle of service design as much as possible within the constraints of an enterprise environment.
**Strategic repositioning, such as "Value Creation Advisor," or “Value Creation Manager” enables this by reinforcing collective accountability.** This value creation team catalyses adherence to shared value co-creation. This approach facilitates widespread application, moving beyond service-oriented organizations. It clarifies the service designer's role, similar to that of a project manager (but most certainly not the same).
However, service designers must approach this shift with a realistic mindset. Embedding a service design mindset across an enterprise is a gradual process, particularly in organizations with low value maturity. The rise of "disruptive" tech has fostered a culture of rapid growth over profitability, often neglecting organizational efficiency and holistic stakeholder value (Kedia, 2025).When investors demand aggressive growth metrics rather than sustainable profitability, companies focus narrowly on acquiring new customers at any cost—even at the expense of existing customer satisfaction, employee wellbeing, and operational efficiency. Value creation becomes distorted, benefiting a very limited group of stakeholders (primarily investors) while neglecting the broader ecosystem that service design aims to serve. This narrow focus on growth metrics directly contradicts service design's core philosophy of co-creating value across the entire stakeholder spectrum, making it particularly challenging to implement true service design principles in such environments.
## **VI. Navigating Value Realities**
While the ideal of co-creating value for all stakeholders remains a cornerstone of service design, the reality of enterprise operations often presents a different picture. Despite research indicating that customer-centric companies thrive, examples abound of organizations achieving success while neglecting aspects of customer and / or employee experience.
Consider Airbnb, which has faced criticism for poor customer support for both hosts and guests, yet continues to flourish (Kemmis, 2024), (Kim, 2023). Similarly, ride-hailing giants like Lyft and Uber dominate the market despite raising prices and reducing driver benefits (Chang, 2022) (The Guardian, 2018). Tesla, despite facing lawsuits regarding workplace conditions and product quality, maintains strong investor confidence (KIRAKOSIAN, 2022). Meta (formerly Facebook) prioritized user engagement and ad revenue at the expense of user well-being, with whistleblowers revealing the platform's role in amplifying harmful content (Lauer, 2021). Amazon purports to be customer obsessed but has faced criticism for monopolistic practices in Amazon marketplace and on the employee front has shockingly poor warehouse worker conditions (WOODS, 2023) (Muha, 2023) (The Nation, 2025) (Forbes, 2021) (U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, 2023)
These examples highlight a critical point: some companies choose not to prioritize customer and / or employee values, and they can still succeed. This is where the service designer's role becomes nuanced. **If they choose to remain within such organizations, they must adopt a pragmatic approach, understanding that achieving the ideal value intersection is a journey**. They must focus on small wins, leveraging change management principles to gradually shift the organizational culture. This approach can lead to indirect benefits.
**Maintaining a seat at the table is crucial.** Service design needs to prevent its exclusion from initiatives where it is deemed irrelevant or an approach that will slow things down. **This is particularly important in the context of rapid AI development, environmental sustainability, and DEI challenges.** Service designers can contribute valuable insights, even if the organization's immediate focus is on business value.
Even when organizations prioritize only one or two aspects of value, the orchestrator's role is crucial in bridging the gap between strategy and execution, ensuring that intended outcomes are achieved. This role is essential in enterprise environments, where complex projects often deviate from their initial goals.
By embedding themselves within the organizational ecosystem, building relationships, and introducing tools and techniques, service designers can gradually facilitate a shift towards co-creation of value for all relevant stakeholders. This approach acknowledges that change is constant and that organizations may evolve their priorities over time.
Service design must be practiced in a judgment-free manner. Regardless of an organization's value maturity, service designers must meet them where they are. This requires understanding and accepting the organization's current state, even when it deviates from the ideal.
Communicating the results of value clarity exercises and other findings requires careful planning. C-suite executives, like all humans, are prone to biases (John S. Hammond, 1998). By acknowledging this, service designers can increase their chances of gaining stakeholder buy-in and avoid disillusionment.
However, service designers must not lose sight of their core principles. Maintaining a service design mindset while adapting to the organizational culture is essential. This is where the strategies outlined in Section IV, regarding narrative control, become critical.
Building a strong community, as discussed in Section III, is essential for maintaining control over the narrative and ensuring that the discipline's integrity is preserved.
## **Conclusion: Embracing Transformation and Collective Responsibility**
Any repositioning of service design must be dictated by service design professionals, not by external systemic forces. Increasing service design communities with professionals from non-design job titles is crucial. There is strength in numbers, which also facilitates reclaiming the narrative. The journey of service design is one of constant evolution, demanding adaptability and a commitment to collective responsibility. By embracing transformation and fostering a community-driven approach, service designers can navigate the complexities of the enterprise world and create meaningful impact, ensuring that the human-centered principles of the discipline are realized.
---
## Bibliography
Avila, P., 2023\. *The Idealistic Service Designer — the part of the journey that no one tells you about..* \[Online\] Available at: https://medium.com/@p\_avila1/the-idealist-service-designer-the-part-of-the-journey-that-no-one-tells-you-about-2bf88944dad7
Chang, S., 2022\. *Uber & Lyft’s race to the bottom–an opportunity to redefine work.* \[Online\] Available at: https://theflaw.org/articles/gig-economy-and-the-future-of-work-uber-lyfts-race-to-the-bottom-an-opportunity-to-redefine-work/
Forbes, 2021\. *A Hard-Hitting Investigative Report Into Amazon Shows That Workers’ Needs Were Neglected In Favor Of Getting Goods Delivered Quickly.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/10/25/a-hard-hitting-investigative-report-into-amazon-shows-that-workers-needs-were-neglected-in-favor-of-getting-goods-delivered-quickly/
GOV.UK, 2016\. *Service design: Isn’t it just UX with a different name?.* \[Online\] Available at: https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2016/10/04/service-design-isnt-it-just-ux-with-a-different-name/
John S. Hammond, R. L. K. a. H. R., 1998\. *The Hidden Traps in Decision Making.* \[Online\] Available at: https://hbr.org/1998/09/the-hidden-traps-in-decision-making-2
Kedia, A., 2025\. *The Future Of Startup Valuations: Top Trends Shaping Investment Landscape In 2025\.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.bwdisrupt.com/article/the-future-of-startup-valuations-top-trends-shaping-investment-landscape-in-2025-543879
Kemmis, S., 2024\. *Unpopular Opinion: Airbnb Has Become Terrible.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/airbnb-terrible
Kim, W., 2023\. *What happened to Airbnb?.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.vox.com/money/23941827/airbnb-complaints-guests-cleaning-fee-new-york-regulation
KIRAKOSIAN, M., 2022\. *ESG funds keep backing Tesla despite lawsuits over working conditions.* \[Online\] Available at: https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/esg-funds-keep-backing-tesla-despite-lawsuits-over-working-conditions/a2385936
Lauer, D., 2021\. Facebook’s ethical failures are not accidental; they are part of the business model. *AI Ethics,* 5 June, Volume 1, pp. 395-403.
Mansinghka, N., 2025\. *Enterprise Consulting as Service Design: Recognising the Natural Service Designers in Complex B2B Environments.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/enterprise-consulting-service-design-recognising-b2b-neha-mansinghka-olibc/?trackingId=7aNXbppZQK669q9bKMsNKg%3D%3D
Miller, M., 2015\. *How many service designers does it take to define Service Design?,* s.l.: Practical by Design.
Muha, T., 2023\. *Amazon’s creeping monopoly.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.michigandaily.com/opinion/amazons-creeping-monopoly/
Parsley, N., 2024\. *LinkedIn.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/niamhmp\_the-rise-of-service-design-at-spotify-niamh-activity-7042426230830190593-hbAM/
Reason, B., 2024\. *Ten years on - reflections on Service Design: From Insight to Implementation.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ten-years-reflections-service-design-from-insight-ben-reason-kvpye/
Reddit, 2024\. \[Online\] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/servicedesign/comments/16cryl2/do\_you\_think\_service\_design\_as\_a\_discipline\_will/
Service Design Network Dallas Chapter, 2021\. *The State of Service Design in North America, with Birgit Mager.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RaQhLuxmjo
Service Design Network, 2012\. *About Service Design and the SDN.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.service-design-network.org/about-service-design
Service Design Network, 2018\. *SDGC18 | Zachary Jean Paradis: Service Design & Product Management - Friend or Foes?.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfEtbLMjJiA
Service Design Show, 2021\. *The reason why designers fail in organisations / Tricia Wang / Episode #123\.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfW3OODgD6M
Service Design Show, 2024\. *A New Approach to Measuring Design's Impact / Stacey Barr / Ep. #212\.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPcfBQNZltI
Service Design Show, 2024\. *The Roadmap to Demonstrating Design's Impact / Ryan Rumsey / Ep. #206\.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rH47AJVeYc
The Guardian, 2018\. *Uber drivers often make below minimum wage, report finds.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/01/uber-lyft-driver-wages-median-report
The Nation, 2025\. *How Amazon Is Taking Its Union-Busting to New Heights.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/amazon-union-busting-north-carolina/
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, 2023\. *US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR FINDS AMAZON EXPOSED WORKERS TO UNSAFE CONDITIONS, ERGONOMIC HAZARDS AT THREE MORE WAREHOUSES IN COLORADO, IDAHO, NEW YORK.* \[Online\] Available at: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20230201-0
WOODS, C., 2023\. *What the US Federal Trade Commission v Amazon case means for Australia.* \[Online\] Available at: https://lsj.com.au/articles/what-the-us-federal-trade-commission-v-amazon-case-means-for-australia/
---
## Written by Neha Mansinghka
**Neha Mansinghka** is a strategic transformation leader and service design specialist with extensive experience delivering human-centered change across global enterprises. Combining deep user experience expertise with business acumen to reimagine services, processes, and technologies that drive both operational excellence and exceptional customer value without compromising on employee experience.
Links:
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehamansinghka/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehamansinghka/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Neha M. - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | Professional Profile | LinkedInStrategic transformation leader and service design specialist with extensive experience… · Education: Trailhead by Salesforce · Location: Melbourne · 463 connections on LinkedIn. View Neha M.’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.LinkedInNeha M.](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehamansinghka/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Users Deserve More than Simplicity: a Minifesto, by Austin Wiggins
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/users-deserve-more-than-simplicity-a-minifesto-by-austin-wiggins/
Last updated: 2025-03-01T11:30:18.000Z
## Abstract
This article examines a dominant user experience (UX) design philosophy that prioritizes the simplicity of systems, and argues that these practices often treat users as incapable of engaging with deeper complex systems. Through an analysis of digital interfaces, the study demonstrates that oversimplified designs yield static and overly constrained systems, which in turn limit adaptability, stifle problem-solving, and erode user trust. The discussion calls for a paradigmatic shift toward design approaches that recognize and respect users’ agency and cognitive abilities by offering systems which grow with their uses and offers them choices to access that dynamism, thereby challenging established UX methodologies that favor control over empowerment.
---
## From User-friendly to Growing Systems
I used to believe in the idea of making things user-friendly. I could reference specific instances proving the utility of user-friendliness in the development of systems—places like Three Mile Island, specific mechanisms like the aircraft controls of the B-17 bomber during WWII, “small” aesthetic changes like changing the U.S. insignia on military aircraft. I had a noble quest of finding un-navigable applications, dismantling them, and providing ways for it to be more streamlined. Then, doubt crept in. Two things separated in time by years changed how I thought about user-friendliness: a person and a book.
I used to work with a prominent User Experience (UX) designer with significant acclaim and background. This person was there at the inception of the discipline of UX. When they spoke about design though, they kept revealing an uncaring attitude about the user. They couched their uncaring attitude in UX “truisms” such as “the user doesn’t know what they want but they know what the problem is”. They were fundamentally problem-centric as a person. They wanted to understand and solve problems using design, so much so that I think they lost sight of who they were doing it for. It reflected in how they told stories about the problems they solved—denigrating people, glorifying problems. I always had the sense that if they could, they’d abstract people away and just solve problems. And this was unacceptable to me.
A few years later, I read [Life in Code](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31450584-life-in-code?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) by Ellen Ullman, a history of Ullman’s entire career in and around software development. In one section, she writes about how programmers’ move to make software more user-friendly tends toward treating the user as if they were dumb. This tendency toward user-friendliness-as-idiot-proof necessitates cloaking the complicated internals of a system—non-coders are too dumb to understand anyway, so the sentiment goes. Interestingly, this ultimately turned around on software developers as people developed as more specialized, such as programming languages that don’t let the programmer easily manipulate a computer’s memory. Even though Ullman levied this critique to software development, I realized I had been doing the same thing. I’d been solving problems people had while holding a bias that those who have the problem were dumb, and so, my interventions reflected that. I was so encouraged to design for the “lowest common denominator” that I didn’t even see what was happening. Ullman’s book and encounters with a more senior designer turned have turned everything I know about design on its head.
I suggest we replace the idea of “user-friendliness”. Software developers and designers—the entire technological enterprise, really—has avoided significant mishaps under the banner of user-friendliness, but it also places the user in the position where they cannot learn from the system. It places the user as a dumb *thing* the person developing and/or designing technology must work around. Users are inert dumb things to the technologist. We need now more than ever to provide ways to give users access to the knowledge that gets abstracted away for the sake of a clean interface. We need purposeful, human-centered complexity and dynamic systems that can unveil themselves.
What I’m proposing is similar to the advent of positive psychology. Positive psychology was a response to a narrow lens on mental well-being. Before positive psychology, the goal of the psychiatrist was to remove or minimize mental illness, with wellness at this time being frame as the absence of mental illness. Martin Seligman, pioneered the field of positive psychology by researching happiness and mental flourishing. Thus extending what it means to be mentally well. Similar to this, then, I’m suggesting that the paradigm of user-friendly has given us a perspective which works, but doesn’t give us systems in which promote increasing knowledge and competence of the user.
You’ve seen examples of this in software—even if you haven’t noticed it—but they’re often not fully explored. Any software you’ve used that has both a “simplified view” and a “standard view” exemplifies the positive of how we can develop dynamic systems while still being couched in the language of user-friendly. Some users are “simple,” designers and developers seem to say, while providing a mildly scalable system that fits changing interest and knowledge of the system.
We can do better. We must do better because a better future for all of us is predicated on the knowledge that the public has and has access to. Knowing first hand that clean interfaces disguise a world of complexity, I know that we need the general public, to know how these technologies work; how to reason and conjecture about them. There are other ways to accomplish this goal, but I see it as the system’s—and therefore the designers and developers behind it—responsibility to impart knowledge of its internals to the users, and to give them an adequate ramp to achieve complete knowledge of its systems.
An example is in order. The interfaces generative AI chatbots employ are generally simple: a textbox to write a prompt in, maybe a sidebar with your “conversational history”, maybe a few settings to toggle about which model to use. A user types their prompt into the textbox and a world of complexity gets executed behind the scenes without me having to know what a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) is, without needing to grapple with the chorus of models that are often now working in tandem to answer my prompt, without having to know that the data the model is trained on will bias results, ultimately without ever understanding *how* I got the answer that I got. A system designed with human-centered complexity in mind would do things differently. As a dynamic system, an HCC system would have a series of views that enable the user access to ever more of the internals of the system. There would be a beginners view that would look like what we have for ChatGPT, and based on user’s interest—and ultimately the users’ agency—unveil more options to interface with the model such a temperature slider that affects randomness of the output and access to fine tune the model in the system (along with understanding what exactly it means to fine turn a model). The system would dynamically respond to the system and the user would use their own agency to explore and opt-into ever more complex features as they have the appetite.
---
I’m calling for a paradigm shift in how we think about user interfaces and experiences. Instead of assuming that every user needs everything simplified perfectly, we should focus on designing systems that encourage exploration and learning. This means embedding educational elements and transparency into our designs so that users can gradually uncover and understand the complexities of the technology. Such systems would not only cater to the immediate needs of novice users but also provide a pathway for them to become experts if they choose. Ultimately, I want human-centered complexity to lead to a more informed and engaged user base who is capable of using technology not just to complete tasks, but to innovate and solve increasingly complex problems themselves.
---
## Written by Austin Wiggins.
**Austin L. Wiggins** is a designer and public interest technologist with a Master of Science in Public Interest Technology. Austin works within the federal government at the intersection of design and technology. Austin's writing is dedicated to rethinking technology beyond its purely functional attributes by exploring its philosophical, social, cultural, and ethical dimensions. Austin work combines everyday wisdom and academic research in the philosophy/psychology/sociology of technology to inspire analysis and critical dialogue in the fields of design and technology. In addition, Austin runs a newsletter called "Multidisciplined", that examines the intersection of design, technology, and society, providing insightful commentary on contemporary trends and challenges.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-wiggins-tech/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-wiggins-tech/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Website:
[Multidisciplined | Austin Wiggins | SubstackA publication exploring technology through all the disciplines that interact with it: From philosophy and sociology, to programming and design. Click to read Multidisciplined, by Austin Wiggins, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.SubstackAustin Wiggins](https://multidisciplined.substack.com/)
### A necessary fire in the field of design, but there is still hope, by Pratik Joglekar
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-necessary-fire-in-the-field-of-design-but-there-is-still-hope-by-pratik-joglekar/
Last updated: 2025-02-28T11:30:20.000Z
## Abstract
The concept of design involves transformation, which is a continuous process of renewal. It is important to start a fire in design, as we believe this is the only way to for a fresh start. The underlying idea is to embrace change and have the courage to stand by it. We must ignite this fire in our processes and reevaluate if there are more effective methods. With the emergence of new technologies, traditional approaches may not always be the most effective. A radical mindset can introduce fresh perspectives and applications.
This article serves as a reminder that we all need to renew our approach. It is a sincere call to awaken the creative designer within us and inspire them to think beyond the conventional methods.
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## A necessary fire in the field of design, but there is still hope
The concept of ekstasis and catharsis holds significant weight and when combined, they create a powerful synergy. This intriguing notion suggests that despite our individual paths, we all ultimately strive for the same thing. Ekstasis, also known as the flow state by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, offers a higher vantage point, providing a larger view of the world from above. On the other hand, Catharsis is born from perseverance and struggle, giving a perspective from the ground level. As Viktor Frankl, a survivor of concentration camps, stated that “no life is complete without suffering”. Being cathartic as a human is very natural, human nature is in the shades of gray which means it is a spectrum rather than two sides of the coin. So we might have more control over it, than we think.
Let’s look at design frameworks, they are brilliant. They offer a lot of flexibility and choice. Just like scientific ideas, which are constantly challenged, disproved or improved, design frameworks also need to have a constant influx of new ideas, antithesis, and evolution. So, we might as well ignite a flame in the current approach to design in order to uncover potential improvements. This does not indicate that the current systems of design is flawed, but rather that it is not as effective as it could be. Design should not be dogmatic. It should constantly make headway, and we must be willing to pave the path and quickly adapt. Refusing to challenge the established way of thinking may ultimately have negative consequences in the future. But there is still hope!
Design pundits carry optimism as they develop new frameworks, concepts, and persuasive arguments to improve current ones. The expertise comes for years of invested time and wealth of knowledge to think of new perspectives. Let’s look at the example of [Critical Design by Dunne & Raby](https://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). One of the main obstacles they encountered involved changing people's view of design from a task centered on solving problems and achieving business goals to one that promotes critical thinking and discussion. This required convincing both the design industry and society to embrace design as a means of challenging established beliefs and considering alternative possibilities.
Path to recovery always starts with pain, if we look back in the past into various market crashes, famine or pandemics are all cathartic moments in human history that shaped the future and made us more resilient. The hope that we carry to find a way to overcome drastic situations clears a path for our future, as we continue shaping it in the present based on past reflections. A cathartic moment can only happen if the perseverance is based on known facts and data to attempt to find a new way to solve problems that are unforeseen.
## Detach from attachments
[Bhagvad Gita](https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Original-English-As/dp/B07MDTX8BR/ref=sr%5F1%5F4?crid=34E5Q9FNXKTT4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OnwgvdlKdZ-hkkIsFghXVHw4mW6LayyNI68Te2fYYRd-81Er%5F8tJ6g0uxUDA8xKBsQH0WZnM0P-dDMIte3bwt9eBtEXat-P8nm9KZ5rtqOGIRdzvzNyd6s2a1cg48kDr5x233yyraHNrIiSE7tBdP%5FaLxlot4tBKAS4FbWQt1ODaxdxZWBMOvsAD88O3BZ8jIK2%5FCZZSd6yr1Zz-XgsPPhdpP2df6eZ0xZFpyQk2pe7nUrOreUh4PpSiKf3zoJW8SvczkcM-QXuQMfPbOcitW%5F1CB-YG3DnSpG%5FgpVodCzixoShKWpLOzMOu9zmJ6bY8QoBvtAX3VcY5QbfeIIRBsEa1Tk8mvuilJb-ZTDfbtPaHE9wnXDTMUuiTXqlncIDR7WcKxLisMyI215xUoLi7o1uM2B-Mj8bMrK0-ZuPFvNbIYQ098JFc8pNPjJjkQBqF.51bGfQrzYdYIUP%5FYJ6xfJjC3GdXi2VmxTnMW0kQIXAQ&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=gita&qid=1740276055&sprefix=gita%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-4&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
According to [Bhagvad Gita](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/thoughtsofnerd/attachment-is-illusion-exploring-the-concept-in-the-bhagavad-gita-54294/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a Hindu Scripture mentions that attachment is an illusion. We naturally connect with things, objects, and people. This makes us feel so attached to them that we can't see the truth beyond them. We become dependent on them, which naturally also leads us to suffering, anger, and frustration. Bhagvad Gita does not talk about detachment in the sense of no emotional involvement, but rather a balance and recognition of what true fulfillment is for everyone. Which would eventually lead to recognition.
[Blackberry Phone](https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-silver-blackberry-qwerty-phone-FPmk3wxfu40?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A classic example would be of [Blackberry](https://www.makeuseof.com/the-reasons-blackberry-failed-spectacularlyand-why-they-might-rise-again/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), they were so attached to their ideas of what an ideal world should be that which favors them. The world did not hesitate a bit to discard their expectations and move on to the next shiny thing. Their attachment and ignorance to see clear signs signaling otherwise was the reason for their downfall. If true detachment would exist, it would make us less human and more robots. However, being careless to not adapt is a flaw that has destroyed empires overnight.
As we design experiences, we need to watch what people expect and understand what they need. We need to learn the perspective of users and their perception of the product. The combination would help us build great products and adapt to the ever changing needs. Customer’s needs change, and as a designer the separation from the product with a constant change in acceptance behavior, will help to make the products more enjoyable. Purge the old, embrace the change.
## Fear of ambiguity
Navigating through ambiguous situations can be challenging and require careful consideration. One way to approach this is by exploring new possibilities and gaining a fresh perspective on how to overcome it. However, ambiguity can also bring about anxiety and lead to poor decision-making. To effectively address it, it is important to assess existing data and experiences. A shift in mindset is necessary to understand the nature of the challenge at hand. Instead of being consumed by fear, it is more beneficial to directly confront the situation. Designers can improve their decision-making by focusing on reducing ambiguity rather than simply handling it. It can be simply trying to address the situation with known facts, carrying out small experiments and having diverse eyes on it, and documenting the process to not be in the same situation again are just a few things that can be done. Uncertainty is inevitable, and adapting this mentality can aid in better problem-solving.
[AirBnB](https://unsplash.com/photos/white-sofa-set-near-window-IWfe63thJxk?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
One of the best examples of tackling ambiguity is [AirBnB](https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). In its early days, the founders had a lot of concerns around the success of the product. Would people like to rent their homes to a stranger. Instead, they acted on it and tested the environment before making it a global sensation. They had to visit homes, ask them about the idea, test it out with user reviews, and give the abode owners a guarantee of an incentive of any damages. Trust was the answer to their ambiguous situation, and as it was built, the company grew.
If we look closely, hope was the main driving force for them to dig for the answer. The decision was difficult to pursue, but they believed it could be achieved. The catharsis of believing in their truth of success gave them the moral boost to keep at it. Similarly, design should trust in a process that best fits the situation. Design is at the intersection of art and science. One may think ambiguity makes it difficult, but rather it is a clear choice of artful solution to a scientific problem. Creative thinking is needed in such circumstances.
The process of catharsis and hope leads to a continuous cycle of rejuvenation, in which designers let go of outdated ideas and strive towards creating something purposeful, strong, and innovative. The two are inseparable and depend on each other indefinitely. When we have faith, determination will bring about success. It is crucial to focus on "what needs to be done" rather than "how it needs to be done." We often become caught up in the latter, causing hesitation in reaching the necessary breakthrough. A radical approach with speculative thinking is needed to break free of the mundane loop of design approach. A liberal design approach is needed.
## Is it really absurd?
We can become so focused on outcomes that we forget to focus on the process and approach of thinking outside of the box. This can lead to a biased approach where we limit ourselves and our solutions. However, accepting absurdity, or new ideas, can often lead to successful plans and new solutions. This requires breaking away from traditional thinking and supporting our actions with creative endeavors. Embracing absurdity may be challenging in discussions, but it can be effective if we back it up with relevant and connected research. Reframing it as an untapped opportunity or a low-risk investment that addresses a specific and unique need can also help in these conversations. In order to successfully market a seemingly ridiculous concept, it is important to thoroughly plan and ensure that it caters to the needs of the audience. Additionally, it must be backed up by relevant research to demonstrate its potential. Predicting the timeline and level of acceptance can aid in identifying initial supporters and those who may be more hesitant, allowing for a better understanding of the target audience. Ultimately, perseverance is key.
[Amazon boxes](https://unsplash.com/photos/two-boxes-of-amazon-are-stacked-on-top-of-each-other-wKeZstqxKTQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Amazon was introduced to sell books online; at the time it was an absurd idea. No one in their right mind would buy books online when they have to share their credit card details and wait until they receive the book. Nonetheless, the absurd idea that Bezos started with now is a successful business that has expanded into various other products.
Absurdity is not synonymous with stupidity; it is a perspective that surpasses conventional norms, making it hard to accept. Occasionally, plans may fail and require a fresh approach or alternative directive in order to objectively discover a solution. It relied on catharsis to achieve something that was believed to be unachievable. To start with hope and trust your own judgment even when the world laughs, you need courage. Courage makes you brave and believes in what you believe. Not all silly ideas should be considered, but evaluating them based on chance and basic human nature is important to success.
## Speculative thinking
Have you ever played games? They require you to take on a role and complete specific objectives. In the past, these objectives were set and rigid, but now games offer more flexibility, allowing for multiple paths to success. Roleplaying enables players to explore different approaches to achieving success. Similarly, a successful product should also have multiple facets built into it. There is no one right way of using a product. Personas are helpful for finding the right people to target at first. But as new ways to invest and compete come along, they may need to be changed. A forward-thinking mindset is necessary to anticipate future changes and make informed decisions. Knowledge and staying current with the market, competition, and evolving customer needs is crucial in making calculated judgements about the future. This is not merely guesswork, but a creative use of real-time data to anticipate outcomes beyond expectations.
[Slack](https://unsplash.com/photos/slack-logo-aE0iX-bLCJc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
An excellent example is Slack, which originated as a chat room for players of Tiny Speck's game. Although the game was eventually discontinued, the popular interactive chat feature evolved into the modern-day Slack. This pivot, which involved recognizing the shortcomings and acknowledging the strengths within those shortcomings, exemplifies the speculative mindset at work. It enabled Tiny Speck to swiftly recognize that they had unintentionally developed a remarkable communication tool.
Although it shares similarities with absurdity, the goal is to be mostly accurate. Speculative thinking is a collaborative effort and must undergo thorough scrutiny to be deemed significant. These ideas may seem far-fetched now, but they have the potential to thrive in the future. It typically begins by considering various viewpoints. [Pretotyping](https://www.notion.so/Harnessing-AI-to-Build-Neuro-Inclusive-Websites-627d538b285240f692648bcb068a5cbd?pvs=21&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) concepts that may seem impractical now could lead to success in the future. The key is to stay ahead of the game, as that is where innovation occurs. Innovation is not always intentional, it can also happen by chance. Speculative thinking plays a significant role in this process.
It is born from the question “what if”. What if the chat feature is used for file sharing? What if glasses are used for augmented reality? These what if questions are based on assumptions and backward-looking data or historical data. Another interesting approach is working backwards from the absurd idea. Think about what the future could be, create a backlog but build for the present and have a future vision. The vision might change, so adapting to the changing needs and maneuvering to the goal becomes critical.
## To sum it up
If you think about it, having hope for something is crucial in order to tackle difficult obstacles and achieve a goal. Hope serves as a motivation for us to pursue our goals, even when the desired outcome may not be immediate. It is a belief in the potential for positive change that can only be realized through dedicated effort. While it takes courage to step out of our comfort zone and try something new, knowing that failure is a possibility, hope is what allows us to push through and remain committed to our goals. This unrelenting hope is what drives individuals to take action and achieve results, even in the face of potential failure. It is this persistent hope that leads to transformation and empowers individuals to push beyond their limits and achieve success.
The idea that one-size fits all is no longer effective must be considered. Personalization is crucial for all products, and with the use of AI, it can be easily achieved. The focus should now be on inclusivity, ethics, adaptability, and being human-centered. AI agents have been developed specifically for this purpose, requiring minimal human assistance. By analyzing structured and unstructured data, these agents can make predictions about the user and adjust to meet their individual needs. These agents can also be incorporated into the system, gradually creating a unique experience for the user. It is through such determination that a radical re-imagining or breakthroughs are possible. AI is just an example to illustrate the synergy of catharsis and hope. It alleviates emotional weight through automated mundane duties, enhances understanding with user-friendly products, ultimately empowering human connection and adjusting to their preferences - it's everything one could ask for.
We have limitless hopes and desires in terms of expectations. Simply discarding old ways of thinking, working, and achieving is not sufficient to attain success. We must completely overhaul and start afresh in order to discover new aspects of design that would remain undiscovered otherwise. It is crucial to swiftly acknowledge and make room for the new by letting go of the old. While nostalgia may be pleasant, its impact is minimal and temporary. True maturity comes from undergoing a transformation. Let’s strive for it.
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## Written by Pratik Joglekar.
Pratik Joglekar is a design strategist dedicated to shaping the future of product experiences through a neurodiversity-focused approach. With a deep passion for aligning strategy and design, he ensures that products are not only innovative but also inclusive and thoughtfully crafted for diverse ways of thinking. His work bridges the gap between vision and execution, creating seamless and forward-thinking experiences that empower all users. He enjoys offering a unique perspective that inspires unconventional ideas and designs.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik-joglekar/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik-joglekar/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Pratik Joglekar - HubSpot | LinkedInI bring expertise with five years dedicated to shaping the digital landscape as a… · Experience: HubSpot · Education: Thomas Jefferson University · Location: Quincy · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View Pratik Joglekar’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik-joglekar/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Norm-critical Participatory Design: Navigating the State of Design in 2025, by Sofia Lundmark
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/norm-critical-participatory-design-navigating-the-state-of-design-in-2025-by-sofia-lundmark/
Last updated: 2025-02-27T11:30:27.000Z
## Abstract
Design is never neutral, as it reflects and reinforces societal norms, values, and power structures. As the design field faces growing concerns about relevance and responsibility, norm-critical and participatory approaches offer ways to challenge dominant assumptions. Norms in design shape who gets to design, what is considered good design, and who benefits. By making these norms visible, norm-critical design questions exclusionary practices and provides alternative perspectives. Participatory design has long emphasized co-creation with marginalized groups, redistributing design agency, and ensuring that design is done with users, not just for them. In today’s rapidly shifting landscape, marked by technological change, economic uncertainty, and political tensions, such approaches become even more crucial. Without intentional inclusion, the design practice risks reinforcing dominant perspectives and excluding diverse voices. This contribution argues that *norm-critical participatory design* offers a path toward more just and inclusive design practices. By addressing implicit biases and engaging underrepresented groups, designers can create solutions that do not merely accommodate diversity but actively challenge exclusionary norms. In shaping the future of design, embracing these perspectives is not just an ethical choice—it is a necessity.
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## Norm-critical Participatory Design: Navigating the State of Design in 2025
Design is never neutral, as it is embedded and inherently shaped by cultural, social, and political norms, values, and power structures of its time (Dunne & Raby, 2001; Manzini, 2015). Every design decision reflects underlying values and assumptions that shape not only the artifacts themselves but also the ways in which they are used and interpreted (see Bardzell, 2010; Bardzell & Bardzell, 2013, 2015; Rommes, 2006).
Moving into the year 2025, the design discourse is undergoing a significant shift, increasingly reflecting concerns about the role of designers in shaping, reinforcing, or challenging societal norms. The call for State of Design 2025 highlights several crucial turning points. These shifts are not solely about technological advancements like AI but are deeply intertwined with economic slowdowns, geopolitical tensions, and shifting cultural narratives (in line with Richard, 2025 [https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design-2025/](https://shorturl.at/xnnKx?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). Within this complex landscape, norms in design play a critical role—both in shaping and being shaped by these broader forces. Participation and co-creation are another aspect that plays a crucial role in this complexity. Not the least participation of a diversity of groups, users, and stakeholders. Thus, this contribution aims to contribute to the discussion by perspective on how norms and participation in design influence design practices, the design professions, and user interactions. By exploring norm-critical design approaches, combined with participatory design and the representation of vulnerable groups in design practices I would like to suggest a contribution to the State of Design discussion 2025\. By examining how norms are reproduced, challenged, or transformed through design, we can better understand the role of design in shaping societal structures and power relations. In line with this, by including a diversity of participants and actors in the norm-critical design efforts the design work has the potential to challenge societal norms within the evolving landscape of the design disciplines.
### Understanding Norms in Design
Norms are socially constructed expectations that define appropriate behaviors and values within a given context (Butler, 2004; Kumashiro, 2002). They are often implicit, shaping how people interact with others, but also with their surroundings, objects, services, or digital environments, for that matter. Norms are neither static nor predetermined, but enacted through situated actions and interactions (Garfinkel, 1967; Suchman, 2007). Design, as a field of practice, reflects and constructs social norms, thereby influencing how users experience and engage with technology and services (Jonsson & Lundmark, 2014; Lundmark & Normark, 2014; Lundmark, 2016). Norms in design, much like societal norms, evolve through repeated behaviors and shared understandings. Norms in design are not neutral as they reflect power structures and reinforce existing hierarchies, shaping who gets to design, what is considered good design, and who benefits from design interventions. The current narratives around design tend to present the disciplines as rather narrow, focused on self-imposed deficiencies rather than acknowledging the systemic forces at play (cf. Richard, 2025 ). These current narratives may create a feedback loop in which designers seek internal solutions to external challenges, reinforcing existing norms rather than questioning them. Norms in design are also manifested in multiple ways, from the assumptions embedded in user personas to the biases in AI-driven design systems. As can be argued, design decisions are always value-laden, consciously or unconsciously shaping the user experience and broader social impact. This means that norms in design can be both restrictive and liberating. Norms can influence everything from accessibility considerations to gendered interactions with technology. They can create a sense of professional identity, but they can also confine design within predetermined boundaries. The concept of norm-critical design here seeks to uncover and challenge these implicit assumptions (Lundmark, 2016; Jonsson & Lundmark, 2014).
### Understanding Participation in Design
Participation in design refers here to the active involvement of diverse stakeholders, particularly those affected by design decisions, in shaping processes, outcomes, and strategies. Rooted in traditions such as participatory design and co-design (Björgvinsson, Ehn & Hillgren, 2012, Schuler & Namioka, 1993), participation challenges the notion of designers as sole experts, instead positioning them as facilitators within collaborative knowledge production. This shift is particularly relevant in contemporary discussions on the evolving role of design, where concerns about power, inclusivity, and justice have become increasingly central (cf. Costanza-Chock, 2020; Manzini, 2015). As design navigates the uncertainties of 2025—marked as mentioned by geopolitical tensions, economic instability, and technological disruptions—participatory approaches offer an alternative to traditional top-down methodologies by foregrounding lived experiences and redistributing design agency. However, participation is not inherently emancipatory; its impact depends on how power relations are negotiated and whether it transcends mere consultation to enable meaningful decision-making.
Design has, as mentioned, always been shaped by cultural norms, socio-political structures, and the broader systems in which it operates. However, the current discourse in the field reveals a moment where this can be acknowledged. In 2025, the trends being highlighted indicate a potential for the acceptance of transformation (Teixeira & Braga, 2025 [https://trends.uxdesign.cc](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). This potential opens up, as I see it, for a re-examination of the norms that underpin design practice and a move towards more inclusive, participatory, and critically engaged design methodologies.
### Norm-Critical Participatory Design: Challenging the Status Quo and Providing Opportunities for Empowerment
*Norm-critical design* challenges dominant assumptions by making visible the privileges embedded in design decisions and questioning who benefits from existing structures (Bromseth & Darj, 2010; Lundmark, 2016). This approach is particularly relevant in areas, where design choices can either reinforce or disrupt normative expectations related to gender, ability, age, and other social categories. A key feminist strategy within norm-critical design is to reveal normative conventions and explore alternative design solutions that challenge dominant discourses (cf. Bardzell, 2010; Jonsson & Lundmark, 2014). This can be achieved through methods such as participatory design, speculative design, and critical design, all of which aim to involve diverse perspectives in the design process and to foster more inclusive and reflective practices. Norm-critical design moves beyond inclusive design by not only seeking to accommodate diverse users but actively questioning the norms that create exclusion in the first place. For example, in user interface design, norm-critical approaches might challenge default settings that assume binary gender identities or reimagine digital interfaces to better support diverse groups of users (Jonsson & Lundmark, 2014).
Digital technologies play a crucial role in reinforcing or subverting social norms. Websites, online services, and digital interfaces are often designed with implicit assumptions about users' identities and behaviors (cf. Lundmark, 2016; Pauwels, 2012). A norm-critical perspective on digital design emphasizes the importance of questioning these assumptions and ensuring that digital environments are inclusive and accessible (Bardzell & Bardzell, 2014; Johannsen & Kensing, 2005). One example can be drawn from design examples where the purpose is to design for vulnerable groups, situations, or contexts. One example from my design research is the design and development of youth counseling services and platforms specific but can be generalized to other digital health services (Lundmark, 2016). These services are often designed with normative expectations about young people’s needs and behaviors. By incorporating norm-critical perspectives into the design of these services, designers could create more empowering and user-centered solutions that better accommodate diverse experiences and identities. To implement these kinds of efforts in design there is a strong emphasis on the understanding of the ones being affected by the implementation of new systems or services, or being the real users of the services beyond economic, effectiveness, or other common measurements.
However, norm-critical perspectives are not enough here, as the voices of those not being heard in design processes tend to be excluded in these approaches where the designers are the ones addressing the norms. Here, participatory design has long been a method, or approach, for including underrepresented voices in the design process (Björgvinsson, Ehn & Hillgren, 2012). Participatory design also provides the opportunity to challenge norms by foregrounding collaboration and co-creation with those who are most affected by design decisions (McCarthy & Wright, 2015). In particular, participatory design emphasizes the involvement of marginalized and vulnerable groups, ensuring that design is not only for them but with them (Schuler & Namioka, 1993). This approach counters the traditional notion of designers as detached experts and instead frames design as a collective process where power is redistributed. However, in the design landscape we are in right now, discussions highlight a growing tension: as designers seek to address systemic injustices, they must also navigate the limitations of institutional structures that often resist fundamental change. A key aspect of this challenge is ensuring that participatory processes do not merely tokenize vulnerable groups but instead redistribute design agency. Much of the theoretical contribution to the design field influenced by the focus on feminism and critical perspectives highlight the importance of taking a reflexive interest in enabling people by offering “expositions and analyses of social injustices, including their mechanisms of reproduction, and seek\[ing\] to disrupt those mechanisms, and to introduce the possibility of bringing into being more just systems” (Bardzell & Bardzell, 2015, p. 116). As Costanza-Chock (2020) emphasizes in her work on design justice, co-designing with marginalized communities requires dismantling traditional hierarchies and acknowledging the lived expertise of those often excluded from design decisions.
Another key concept here is *empowerment*, which can be seen as a central concept in norm-critical design, particularly in participatory design processes. Participatory design aims to engage users as active participants in the design process, ensuring that their voices and experiences shape the final design outcomes. However, empowerment in design is complex and context-dependent, requiring careful attention to power dynamics and the risk of reproducing existing hierarchies (Ladner, 2015; Lundmark, 2018; Savigny, 2013; ). Participatory methodologies can serve as a means of disrupting dominant design narratives. By including diverse perspectives, participatory design challenges the assumption that design must conform to pre-established norms and instead embraces the fluidity and multiplicity of design practices (cf. DiSalvo & Meng, 2021).
### Conclusion: The Future of Norm-Critical Participatory Design
In this short essay, a norm-critical participatory design approach is highlighted as one important aspect of the changing design discourse. The State of Design 2025 call highlights a critical moment in the field, that designers are being forced to reckon with their relevance. This critical moment parallels broader societal changes, where economic instability, political upheaval, and AI-driven automation are reshaping the professional landscapes (Teixeira & Braga, 2025, [https://trends.uxdesign.cc](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). In this context, norm-critical and participatory approaches are more urgent than ever. Thus, norm-critical perspectives in design provide valuable tools for questioning and transforming the implicit assumptions embedded in design processes, as well as in artifacts or systems. By making visible how design reproduces social norms, designers can develop more inclusive and empowering solutions that challenge existing power structures. The integration of norm-critical approaches into digital design, participatory design, and design strategies opens up new possibilities for more equitable and reflective design practices. Future research and practice should continue to explore how norm-critical design can contribute to broader social change by fostering inclusivity, accessibility, and critical engagement with design processes.
However, in this context, norm-critical perspectives alone are not enough, as the voices of those marginalized in design processes often remain unheard, even when designers take on the role of identifying and challenging norms. Consequently, norm-critical participatory design emerges as a crucial framework or approach for critically examining underlying assumptions and promoting more equitable design practices, ensuring that design not only responds to societal needs but also actively contributes to shaping more just and inclusive futures. By including a participatory, co-creation approach to norm-critical design the design practice will benefit from the lived experiences of those often excluded from design decisions. For marginalized communities, this exclusion presents a risk. Without intentional inclusion, design can become even more exclusionary, reinforcing dominant perspectives. However, when guided by participatory and inclusive principles, this fluidity can enable new voices to emerge, fostering a design practice that is genuinely reflective of diverse experiences (Costanza-Chock, 2020). As design often tends to enter a liminal space, caught between past assumptions and an uncertain future, embracing norm-critical perspectives offers a way forward. Rather than merely adapting to change, designers must actively shape new paradigms that challenge exclusionary practices and elevate marginalized voices. This requires moving beyond traditional user-centered design toward more radical, participatory, and justice-oriented approaches.
As 2025 unfolds, the future of design is uncertain, but it is precisely this uncertainty that presents opportunities for transformation. By critically examining and challenging norms, embracing participatory design, and addressing structural inequalities, designers can move beyond fear and towards a more just and equitable design practice. By integrating norm-critical participatory design perspectives into the ongoing design discourse, one approach is highlighted that aims to visualize the common norms, providing methods that make it possible to question or contest the present norms, by including more voices of marginalized groups or those being affected by design.
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Ladner, R. E. (2015). Design for user empowerment. Interactions, 22(2), 24-29.
Lundmark, S. (2018) Design project failures: Outcomes and gains of participation in design. Design Studies. 59, 77-94.
Lundmark, S. (2016). Designing for Online Youth Counselling: Empowerment through Design and Participation. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Education, Uppsala University.
Lundmark, S., & Normark, M. (2014). Designing gender in social media: Unpacking interaction design as a carrier of social norms. International Journal of Gender, Science, and Technology, 6(2), 223-241.
Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everyone designs: An introduction to design for social innovation. MIT Press
McCarthy, J., & Wright P. (2015). Taking \[A\]part: The Politics and Aesthetics of Participation in Experience-Centered Design. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Pauwels, L. (2012). A multimodal framework for analyzing websites as cultural expressions. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(2012), 247-265.
Rommes, E. (2006). Gender sensitive design practices. In E. M. Trauth (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology (pp. 675-681). London: Idea Group Reference.
Richard, 2025
Savigny, H. (2013). Media, politics and empowerment. In whose interest? In R. Scullion, R. Gerodimos, D. Jackson, & D. Lilleker (Eds.), The Media, Political Participation and Empowerment (pp. 13-23). London: Routledge.
Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. (Eds.). (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Suchman, L. (2007). Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2nd Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Teixeira, F., & Braga, C. (2025). The State of UX in 2025\. UX Collective [https://trends.uxdesign.cc](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Written by Sofia Lundmark.
Sofia Lundmark is a design researcher and associate professor in Media Technology at Södertörn University in Sweden. She holds a PhD in pedagogy, and her thesis work revolved around norm-critical design, empowerment, and participation in the design and development of online youth counselling services. She is currently involved in several design research projects. Her research interests cover participatory processes, participatory design in societal processes, norms in design, and design pedagogy.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-lundmark-b9272a2](http://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-lundmark-b9272a2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Utility in Tomfoolery, by Ami Mehta
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/utility-in-tomfoolery-by-ami-mehta/
Last updated: 2025-02-26T11:30:07.000Z
## Abstract
Design is often weighed down by its own seriousness, bound by the expectations of professionalism, utility, and rigid rationality. But what if we approached design with the irreverence and playfulness of comedy? This essay explores how humor, satire, and irony—exemplified by the absurd automotive experiments of BBC's Top Gear—can serve as tools for inventive and liberating design thinking. By intentionally subverting conventional expectations, comedic design challenges typologies, provokes new ideas, and invites broader participation. It demonstrates how embracing failure with humor fosters resilience and creativity, allowing for designs that are reactionary, engaging, and delightfully unexpected. While comedy carries risks, its ability to disrupt norms and open new possibilities suggests that there is, indeed, utility in tomfoolery.
---
## Utility in Tomfoolery
You see a car-shaped object on the horizon, approaching (Exhibit A). As it begins to configure in your vision you discern a regular Fiat Panda appear with its classic boxy nose, painted a bright red. Its body begins to follow, but with each second it elongates as if being elastically stretched right out of a cartoon, revealing more and more bright red bodywork. A staggering 46ft later, the back of the car finally appears, pulling a straggling extra pair of wheels for support, still bowing like an exaggerated Dachshund. This is no small Panda… it is a ‘giant Panda!!’ its creator, Jeremy Clarkson fondly exclaims with a self-indulgent grin to his open-mouthed colleague, Richard Hammond.
Exhibit A: Stretch Limousine Challenge 1
Clarkson’s stretch limousine Panda is one of the many monstrous forms of automotive vehicles television show BBC’s Top Gear has created over the years. It is a result of the three presenters Clarkson, Hammond and James May, responding to a "How Hard Can It Be?" Challenge, a contrived real-world scenario that demands a fresh re-invention or application of the car. In this episode, the presenters insightfully recognized that all current limousines available in the market were specialized production vehicles and were only American made. Asking, “Why are limos not made from normal, cheaply available cars in Britain?” the three hit the drawing board with ideas.
This type of questioning may seem familiar to you because at its core, it is a kind of design challenge. The three unearth a gap or a problem faced by consumers and set about engineering a solution. They mull over, they prototype, and they test. However, as their objective is to entertain, every design decision they make is a carefully calculated gag to incite the greatest amount of laughter from their bemused studio audience. In a perfect performance of irony and physical comedy, the giant Panda elicits a booming guffaw from its very first appearance on screen.
Free from the entanglement of mundane designer obligations (such as the serious business of functionality, progress, profitability, safety and replicability), they create designs that almost never work. However, by deliberately operating against these forces of the (boring) real world, they are able to think differently to the most extreme and wondrously so.
In the same episode James May illustrates this unique ingenuity, solving the Challenge by stitching two front ends of different cars into each other (Exhibit B). He pitches his Frankenstein project, an Alfa Romeo and Saab joined at the waist, as being able to solve the thorniest problem with limousines, their maneuverability. If stuck, simply walk out of one driver’s seat into the one facing the other direction and drive away. With a salesman-like swagger, he persuasively describes how the SalfaRomeeab is all about choice, giving users a two for one, a sensible Swedish Saab or a Fiery Italian Alfa at your service.
Exhibit B: Stretch Limousine Challenge 2
Are these ideas ridiculous? Yes. But are they also intriguing? Absolutely. In order to decipher why, we can sift through their teasing and unearth an interrogation of design typology. Cars are supposed to be a certain way, looking and behaving as we have grown to expect after decades of design evolution. But Top Gear, through its infectious shenanigans, has the courage to ask maybe those ideas may not be so inflexible or fundamental. I argue that within the comedy, dare I say it, is a power of liberated lateral thinking that simmers beneath the surface.
Exhibit C & D: Caravan Challenge 1 & 2, Exhibit E: Ambulance Challenge 1, Exhibit F: The World's First Convertible People Carrier
Tell me, why can’t caravans be modern, sleek and lightweight (Exhibits C & D)? Why can’t ambulances be retrofitted from hearses (Exhibit E)? Why can’t mini vans be convertibles (Exhibit F)?
Many of these ideas arise from a respectable amount of market research. In one episode, Clarkson sits in a Ford and then in a Volvo, flabbergasted at the degree of technical proficiency required to operate their dashboards. Staring at the abundance of buttons, screens and obscure acronyms, he worries about the 60% of the population of licensed drivers being over the age of 70, making the point that standard cars were not designed with aging in mind at all. So of course, they needed to make an ‘old person car’ (Exhibit G) and of course it was painted brown with exaggerated door mirrors, high wingback chairs and a pet cage on the roof.
Exhibit G: Old People's Car
But ideas that emerged about the car communicating its location and a simplified GPS interface and dashboard were undeniably compelling. It is clear that even though funny ideas are welcome, there is no excuse for arbitrariness (even the shade of brown was chosen to match a hearing aid). For the jokes to land, each needed to be tied to context whether in the studio or in real life, also strangely resulting in generative and applicable design.
The ‘old person car’ does explode when the episode completes, and many of their creations do die horrific, fiery ends. But failure is also a very familiar experience in design, though we aren’t taught to laugh at it. We are destined to publicly embarrass ourselves as our professions claim we have a perfect grasp of the world even though we often fall short. Instead of fearing failure, what if we embraced comedic enterprise as a way of giving our fledgling ideas a chance of growing into something more profound and meaningful. By failing humorously instead, we maintain a healthy distance from our work, giving us much needed resilience in the face of challenges and an excuse to turn away from our pretentions.
Furthermore, if everyone was in on the joke, maybe people would be more inclined to participate and contribute (who could resist?). This is design that is meant to be reactionary, pulling people in instead of lulling reviewers into acquiescence, grabbing the precious dwindling resource that is our attention. With this type of design, we learn how to embrace the absurd and satirical, constructing an entirely different relationship to our audience, one that is enchanted with the dust of the sparkling creativity of entertainment television.
It is important to note that this is a fierce but also tricky power to wield and no one else but Top Gear can better illustrate its ability to decline into reprehensible offense. If you knew anything about the show before reading this article it would be their controversies, and I do not wish to condone or hide any of it. Indeed, there is a very detailed Wikipedia page listing their every offense as their comedy veers off into cheap discriminatory gags. But I wonder, at the risk of sounding (ironically) cliché, if this power could be used for good, if we could learn how to design without settling for what is familiar, bottlenecked to well-trodden paths of forgettable ordinariness.
I think what I am trying to say is perhaps if we took things less seriously maybe we would design more inventively, that there is utility in the tomfoolery. Let us shrug meeting the expectations of a singular sense of rightness prescribed by our task masters and instead embrace difference.
As I write the ending of this spiel, I am reminded of my peer in architecture design school scorned in review for her abundant use of triangles. Shock and horror ensued at the lack of orthogonality, her critics arguing that there was no meaning, no visible rationality to her decisions. She later confessed to me that she thought the functionality of 90-degrees was overrated and isosceles triangles made her project more amusing to resolve. In my unacknowledged admiration of her (me appreciate triangles as a sophomore? Never) I wonder why I had such little ability to question or rebel against conformity and dogma, and now I know I just needed to find my sense of humor.
### References
1. JSTOR, When Ambulances Were Hearses [https://daily.jstor.org/when-ambulances-were-hearses/](https://daily.jstor.org/when-ambulances-were-hearses/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2. Wikipedia, Top Gear controversies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top\_Gear\_controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top%5FGear%5Fcontroversies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Written by Ami Mehta.
Ami Mehta is a design researcher and 3D artist exploring the intersections of critical design, and material culture. By day, Ami creates research tools to build community relationships and by night she designs immersive digital experiments that bring stories to life.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ami-d-mehta/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ami-d-mehta/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Website: [https://www.amidmehta.com/](https://www.amidmehta.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Ami MehtaAmi Mehta0](https://www.amidmehta.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The Layers of Tomorrow, by Trisha Mehta
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-layers-of-tomorrow-by-trisha-mehta/
Last updated: 2025-02-25T11:30:00.000Z
## Abstract
Design is at a threshold—caught between collapse and renewal. As the complexity of today’s challenges grows, traditional design methods are no longer enough. Climate breakdown, social inequality, and collapsing systems expose the limits of human-centred thinking in addressing wicked problems. The future, like a layered dream, unfolds unpredictably, revealing multiple possibilities.
This essay explores how we can navigate these layers—embracing complexity, mapping possible futures, and designing beyond the human perspective through participatory methods. At its core, it asks: How do we build for what’s possible, not just what’s known?
---
## **The Layers of Tomorrow**
Let’s say you are waiting for a train. You know where you want it to take you, but the path ahead is full of unknowns. That’s the nature of the future—it unfolds in layers, rarely predictable, often taking us somewhere unexpected.
The question is not how to control it, but how to embrace the journey. How do we design for what lies beyond the horizon when the tracks seem to shift beneath us?
“You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure.” – *Inception (2010)*
**We live at the edge of what is known, designing for what might be.**
The tools that once guided us—human-centred design, quick iterations, linear fixes—now feel inadequate. The problems we face today are vast, interconnected, and tangled in complexity. Climate breakdown, inequality, collapsing systems—these are **wicked problems** that refuse to fit into neat solutions.
**We’re caught between collapse and renewal.**
In this liminal space, the only way forward is to embrace complexity, to think beyond the present and imagine futures yet to be written. We’re not solving problems; we’re building layers of possibility. **The deeper we go, the more complex and rich those layers become.**
### **Layer One: When Systems Collapse – The Wicked Problem Spiral**
> “The dream is collapsing!”
**GIF 1: Inception (2010) 'Opening Scene Dream Collapsing', MakeAGIF*
Have you ever felt that jolt? That violent reminder that the world is falling apart? Wicked problems are similar. They defy simple solutions. **They resist linear, human-centred design because they manifest in complex systems.**
Take **Hurricane Katrina (2005)**. It wasn’t just a storm; it exposed how fragile and interconnected the system truly was—failing infrastructure, neglected communities, climate vulnerability. Years later, **Jakarta faces a similar fate**, with a planned $30 billion relocation of its capital due to rising sea levels.
Or look at **the 2008 financial crash**, which revealed the cracks in speculative real estate markets. Housing crises in cities like **London, New York, and Hong Kong** continue today, driven by deeper systemic issues: inequality, zoning laws, and unregulated markets.
**Collapse is painful, but it’s also a release—a chance to rethink what’s possible.** The first step is to stop trying to fix what’s broken and start imagining what might come next.
### **Layer Two: Foresight as a Compass – A Compass to What Could Be**
> “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realise something was strange.” (Inception, 2010)
**Strategic foresight offers a compass, not a map.** It doesn’t predict the future; it expands the possibilities.
Imagine the future as a layered dream. **Backcasting, scenario-building, and speculative design** let us navigate multiple futures at once, preparing for uncertainty instead of fearing it.
In public health, **the 2019 Global Health Security Index** warned of pandemic risks months before COVID-19\. Countries like **South Korea**, which had explored pandemic scenarios, responded faster and more effectively than others. **It wasn’t luck—it was foresight.**
Foresight transforms uncertainty into a creative act, asking: *What kind of future could we build if we dared to dream beyond the present?*
### **Layer Three: Beyond the Human – Designing for a Living World**
**GIF 2: Inception (2010) 'We Need To Go Deeper', tenor*
> “We must go deeper.”
If foresight is the map, then more-than-human thinking is the expanded terrain. **What happens when the future we’re designing isn’t just for humans?**
For too long, design has assumed that human needs come first. That cities should serve people. That infrastructure should optimise human convenience. But the reality is more complex: **we do not exist in isolation.** The systems we depend on—climate, biodiversity, ocean currents, soil health—shape our survival.
When the **Gulf Stream weakens**, it’s not just an abstract climate event; it reshapes entire continents. If it stops completely, **Europe could freeze while West Africa faces intensified droughts**—forcing mass displacement and economic collapse. Similarly, the decline of pollinators isn’t just an environmental issue—it’s an agricultural crisis. **No bees, no food.**
These are not future hypotheticals. They are cascading failures that happen when we design only for people and ignore the more-than-human world.
**This is why more-than-human design is not just good—it’s necessary.** Every decision we make—about cities, infrastructure, people—affects entire ecosystems, whether or not we acknowledge it. The question is no longer *if* we should design beyond the human perspective, but *how soon* we will realise we have no choice.
### **Layer Four: The Collective Blueprint – 'Co-Designing' Futures**
**Image 1: Inception (2010), 'Resilient Idea' Meme, Tenor*
And what if we all dream of this idea together?
Participatory design transforms foresight into **collective dreaming**. It’s not about what designers want—it’s about **co-creating futures with communities.**
In *Inception*, Ariadne designs the dream’s structure, but the dreamers bring it to life. Participatory design works the same way—**designers facilitate, but communities shape the future.**
After **Hurricane Sandy (2012)**, New York’s **Rebuild by Design** brought together architects, residents, and local leaders to imagine new flood protections and green infrastructure. The result? A more resilient city, built not from the top down but from within the community.
**The more voices we include, the richer the dream becomes.**
### **Layer Five: Radical Hope – The Space Between**
> “Down here, we’re not bound by the rules of reality.”
Radical hope lives in limbo—that strange space between collapse and regeneration. **It’s not blind optimism. It’s a refusal to let collapse be the final act.**
Participatory foresight helps us stay in that liminal space long enough to see new possibilities. It turns despair into creativity, fear into action.
After the Christchurch earthquake, residents reimagined their city through foresight workshops. They prioritised connection, green spaces, and resilience. Radical hope wasn’t just an idea—it was woven into policy, becoming the foundation for their city’s recovery.
**Hope keeps the future alive.** It’s what lets us build futures that seem impossible—until they’re not.
### **The Top Keeps Spinning**
**GIF 3: Inception (2010) 'Dream a little bigger, Darling', tenor*
At the end of *Inception*, Cobb spins his top and walks away. We never find out if it falls. Is it real? Is it still a dream? We’re left wondering.
And maybe that’s the point. Participatory foresight doesn’t offer certainty. It offers possibilities—fluid, layered, and constantly evolving. The future isn’t something to discover; it’s something to build. Together.
**The top keeps spinning. The dream continues.**
**GIF 3: Inception (2010) 'Spinning top', tenor*
> *What futures will we dare to build next?*
---
## Written by Trisha Mehta.
**Trisha Mehta** is a Design Futurist who works at the crossroads of design, foresight, and systems thinking. Her practice explores how futures thinking and participatory design can help organisations navigate complexity and create more equitable, sustainable outcomes. Blending strategic foresight, storytelling, and critical design, Trisha is driven by a mission to turn possibilities into tangible change—designing not just for the future but with it.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/trishamehta/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/trishamehta/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Website: [https://www.trishamehta.com/](https://www.trishamehta.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Trisha Mehta | Design FuturistA journey into the mind of a Design Futurist, Trisha MehtaWix Studio](https://www.trishamehta.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Adapt or Perish: Does Design Still Have a Future? by Rémi Garcia
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/adapt-or-perish-does-design-still-have-a-future-by-remi-garcia/
Last updated: 2025-02-24T15:30:09.000Z
Both English and French versions are available for this article.
Des versions anglaise et française sont disponibles pour cet article.
## Abstract
### English
Design, trapped in a logic of optimization and profitability, has lost its creative dimension to become a tool of control. As an heir to Taylorism and modernism, it continues to enforce efficiency standards that restrict experimentation and diversity of form. Yet, this trajectory is not inevitable. The history of design shows that it has always evolved in response to dominant ideologies. In the face of contemporary challenges, what comes next?
### Français
Le design, enfermé dans une logique d’optimisation et de rentabilité, a perdu sa dimension créative pour devenir un outil de contrôle. Héritier du taylorisme et du modernisme, il perpétue aujourd’hui des normes d’efficacité qui limitent l’expérimentation et la diversité des formes. Pourtant, cette trajectoire n’est pas inéluctable. L’histoire du design montre qu’il a toujours évolué en fonction des idéologies dominantes. Face aux défis contemporains, que faire ?
---
Liberty Leading the People
## A Discipline Under Pressure
Design is in crisis. The market is collapsing, methods are wearing out, and other professions are appropriating our tools. The pressure is mounting: we have to move fast, justify every pixel, measure, test, redo… not to mention generative AI fanning the flames.
Design is doomed. Curtain call. Thanks, goodbye.
On social media, injunctions are pouring in: hyper-specialize, shift to management, constantly prove our worth by parroting clichés on LinkedIn. "Adapt or perish," they say. And everyone rushes into the breach.
Yet, back in 2008, when I landed in graphic and digital design, the atmosphere was very different. We justified our work, of course, but without having to prove through A+B that every choice would lead to success. Expertise still inspired trust. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and that approach had its flaws, but as we’ll see, it was far less alienating than what was to come.
Then came UX, design thinking, business frameworks (AARRR, OKRs…), and a whole array of flashy new titles (UX Researcher, Service Designer…). Driven by startups, these tools took over the field, bringing both benefits and constraints. Yes, these practices helped address some of the limitations of traditional design, reducing the purely artistic approach of some designers.
So, why this shift?
Designers, haunted by imposter syndrome, sought to rationalize their work to be taken seriously.Companies saw an opportunity to better control creativity and limit risks.Caught in this system, designers themselves helped reinforce this new norm.
The market flipped. Web designers vanished, replaced by UX/UI designers forced to speak the language of business—or be relegated to the role of mere executors, tasked with "adding color."
Adapt or perish, even back then… but was it really the only way?
## An Invisible Legacy
One might think that design has simply evolved—that it has been enriched by new practices and industries, that it has become more "professional" by structuring itself. After all, nothing remains static.
But this change didn’t happen by chance. Design doesn’t develop in a vacuum; it reflects its context, shaped by dominant ideologies. And the ones that have influenced it are deeply rooted in Western thought, built on rationalization, efficiency, and the relentless pursuit of progress.
The foundations of modern design emerged in the 19th century, in the midst of industrialization. It was a time when engineering and capitalism reigned supreme, when an obsession with order and control shaped our worldview.
In this logic, hygienist urban planning transformed design. Sanitizing cities, creating sewage systems, green spaces, improving public health—everything had to be ordered and standardized. Design followed this movement, imposing so-called "optimal" usage norms: strict ergonomics, clean interfaces, and the removal of unnecessary complexity. The result? A homogenization of spaces and objects, all designed to meet the imperatives of hygiene, efficiency, and control. In the same spirit, as Alexandra Midal highlights in her book *Design, Introduction à l’histoire d’une discipline*, design first appeared in Catharine Beecher's 1840 work on the rationalization of domestic space.
Taylorism, introduced by Frederick Taylor in the late 19th century, rationalized labor by breaking it down into simple, repetitive tasks to maximize productivity. This approach deeply influenced the structuring of design processes. Later, in the 1950s, design thinking inherited this methodical vision: identifying a problem, generating ideas, testing, iterating. Though centered on creativity, it remains anchored in a logic of efficiency and optimization, inherited from industrialization.
Modernism, embodied by movements like the Bauhaus in Germany and figures such as Le Corbusier, continued this quest for order and rationality. In reaction to the excessive ornamentation of previous periods, modernism advocated for the simplification of forms, prioritizing functionality above all else—an idea closely tied to hygienist intentions—and systematically rejecting superfluous decoration. This influence resulted in creations where function took precedence over pure aesthetics. The famous adage *"form follows function"* encapsulates this philosophy: every element of an object or interface must serve a specific purpose. This approach led to sleek, minimalist designs where clarity and efficiency prevailed over emotion or free artistic expression.
One could also mention industrial paternalism, which characterized employer-worker relationships in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Industrialists took responsibility for their employees’ well-being by providing housing, education, and services—while dictating what was "good" for them. This mindset also left its mark on design.
This attitude, though sometimes well-intentioned, was rooted in control and standardization.
The goal remains the same: structure, optimize, domesticate.
Even user-centered design, often presented as progress, operates within this dynamic. Under the guise of *"improving"* the experience, it enforces standardized usage norms dictated by a Western vision of comfort and efficiency. It is no longer about designing *for* humans but rather adapting humans to systems engineered for profitability and rationalization.
This is not to say that design thinking or UX research are inherently harmful practices. But their ontology is deeply shaped by the dominant ideology—one of capitalism built on optimization, profitability, and the predictability of human behavior.
These methodologies, even when used with virtuous intentions (inclusion, accessibility, social design), remain structured around a framework that prioritizes efficiency maximization. They do not fundamentally question the underlying logics of control, value extraction, and the adaptation of individuals to existing systems. They are not designed to challenge paradigms but to refine what is already in place—making it more acceptable, more seamless, more desirable.
In this way, they function as tools for absorbing change, integrating criticism, and making slight adjustments without ever questioning the system as a whole.
Gradually, design has drifted away from its creative essence, morphing into *experience engineering*—a tool in service of an insidious capitalist hegemony. Today, it is no longer a means of expression or experimentation but a mechanism for market-driven optimization.
Even more troubling, this vision has become the guiding principle for the vast majority of designers. From the very beginning of their training, designers are increasingly conditioned to justify every decision with data and methodological frameworks, equating efficiency with legitimacy. A *good* designer is no longer seen as a creator but as an efficient problem-solver—a cog in the machine—because design is framed as a discipline that *"improves user experience."* In reality, however, it is merely a tool serving commercial logics: retention, engagement, profitability.
These structures become self-evident because they are instilled from the earliest stages of learning, reinforced by a market that demands conformity and predictability. Within companies, the pressure of KPIs and rapid production cycles stifles any experimental approach. Even professional networks, where recognition depends on adhering to dominant trends, lock down any attempt at deviation. As a result, designers end up internalizing these norms as the only possible path, failing to see how they contribute to their own confinement.
Today's designers have not only adopted productivity-driven methodologies—they see them as a condition of their own professional legitimacy.
And this is the keystone of this entire approach to design: the omnipotence of capitalism, seeking to shape the world in its own image. These ideologies only make sense in a capitalist world structured around competition and efficiency. They feed on and reinforce this social order with a simple objective: to control the masses for the enrichment of a selected few—whether they be nations, corporations, or individuals.
## The Imprint of Design
But design is anything but neutral. It shapes our societies, influences our behaviors, and transforms our relationship with the world. Yet, many designers fail to grasp its true impact.
Every object, service, or interface alters and molds our daily lives and perceptions. The car, once a marginal innovation, ended up restructuring our cities: wider streets, businesses pushed to the outskirts, increasing dependence on automobiles. The smartphone, now an extension of ourselves, has reshaped social interactions: concerts are filmed rather than experienced, conversations are digitized, and eyes remain glued to screens.
But design also plays a role in major crises through its negative externalities. The ecological emergency is exacerbated by objects designed to be short-lived, by overconsumption, and by planned obsolescence. Even digital technology contributes to this dynamic: addictive interfaces, screen time optimized for retention, and the skyrocketing energy consumption of digital infrastructures.
Another unintended consequence: the standardization of cultures. By enforcing so-called *"best practices"* on a global scale, design gradually erases local specificities. Everywhere, city centers look alike, interfaces are interchangeable, and diversity fades in favor of universal efficiency.
And then there’s surveillance capitalism, which exploits design to capture attention and monetize human behavior. Interfaces are no longer created to serve the user but to fuel business models based on data collection and behavioral manipulation. This kind of design, engineered to maximize engagement, not only shapes interactions but also influences freedoms and democracies.
Design is, inevitably, a political force—one that every designer should acknowledge and engage with.
## **A Critique to Be Expanded**
This critique of design is not new. As early as the 19th century, William Morris and the *Arts & Crafts* movement opposed the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, advocating for a return to craftsmanship and durable objects. In the 1960s and 70s, Italian *antidesign* figures like Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group challenged the standardization imposed by modernism.
Victor Papanek, in the 1970s, condemned design’s role in overconsumption and the creation of useless objects driven by profit rather than genuine needs. He summed up this critique in a now-famous quote:
> *"Few professions are more harmful than industrial design. There is possibly only one more deceitful profession—advertising design, which persuades people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, to impress people who don’t care."*
More recent authors, such as Ruben Pater and Mike Monteiro, have continued this critique, showing how design often serves the powerful, reinforcing control and exploitation. They remind us that designers' choices—or their failure to make choices—have direct consequences on minorities and society at large.
All of these critiques, whether consciously or not, point to the same dead end: modern design is trapped within the ideology that shaped it. No matter how well-intentioned, no matter how scientific or methodical the approach, it remains confined to a framework that only accelerates the current crisis.
Digital accessibility is a telling example. Instead of designing inclusive solutions from the start, we apply fixes to systems initially built for the able-bodied—often with frustrating results. Why not imagine a web that can be navigated without a keyboard or screen, using sound, designed from the ground up for blind and visually impaired users? Because such an approach would require breaking away from the existing mold—something neither economic constraints nor entrenched habits allow.
Modern design is also weakening itself through excessive specialization. Hyper-focused experts, unable to see the bigger picture, create a world where technical skill outweighs ethics, and efficiency overshadows political and social implications. In perfecting the tool, we forget its purpose—just like the physicists of the Manhattan Project, mesmerized by their technical breakthroughs without realizing the catastrophe they were enabling.
The rise of generative AI is exacerbating this crisis. If machines can do everything for the designer, what role is left? What happens when AI can produce creative content at a high enough quality? What will become of future generations if their only skill is *prompt engineering*? And what about the ecological devastation caused by an ever-more resource-hungry digital industry?
Yet, few designers are asking these questions. As a whole, the profession is caught in an unsustainable race it can no longer keep up with. Under pressure, designers lack the time and space to anticipate the future. Worse, many fully embrace capitalist design, leading the charge in this headlong rush.
*"Adapt or perish,"* we hear again and again.
If this trend continues, design as we know it likely has no future. It risks dissolving into other professions—just as UX has already been absorbed by Product Managers—or being entirely replaced by AI.
Unless ecological or societal collapse settles the question first.
## Revolution
A change, of course, is necessary. Once again, let’s quote Victor Papanek:
> *"Design, if it is to be ecologically and socially responsible, must be revolutionary and radical."*
And I would add: all the more so if it is to ensure its own survival.
It is imperative to abandon the logic of modern design and build a new model—one that moves away from optimization-driven and paternalistic design. But what would an emancipated form of design look like? After laying out the problem, it would be dishonest not to propose an alternative.
The first step is letting go.
We must free ourselves from the ideological weight that reduces design to a mere functional methodology. This vision, inherited from rationalism and industrial paternalism, is a recent distortion.
Until the 1990s, design was defined differently—a perspective that still lingers today. *Le Robert* still defines design as *“industrial aesthetics applied to the search for new forms,”* while *Larousse* describes it as *“harmonizing the human environment.”* These definitions, focused on formal innovation and well-being, are much closer to critiques of consumerist design than to *design thinking*—a concept shaped by engineers and ergonomists who projected their methodological biases onto the discipline, reducing design to nothing more than a problem-solving framework.
Yet, solving problems is not unique to design. Every profession does it: doctors solve health problems, mechanics solve mechanical failures, and bakers solve the need for food. Each follows protocols, learns techniques, and accumulates experience, but none define problem-solving as the foundation of their practice.
To reduce design to mere problem-solving is to deny its uniqueness—to trap it within a rigid framework dictated by external logics that do not belong to it.
But if this is not the core of design practice, then what is it for? This is the second step: the phase of definition.
Design is not merely a method of optimization. It is, above all, a creative and, more importantly, a generative practice—an act of conception that cannot be reduced to rigid processes. It is neither project management nor ergonomics, nor marketing. It is a dialogue between the material and the ideological, an exercise in exploration and experimentation. In attempting to turn it into an exact science, we have forgotten that its true purpose is to imagine, question, and invent new ways of existing in the world.
Design is not limited to the creation of objects or services. It is also a form of storytelling, a language that gives meaning, offers a perspective, and shapes our relationship with reality. Every visual, functional, or experiential choice conveys a worldview and influences our behaviors. A designer is a storyteller, an author who orchestrates experiences and guides how we interact with our environment. They create connections, evoke resonance, and provoke thought. Too often, we have believed that making a product easy to use was enough to make it good. In reality, what leaves a lasting impression, what transforms our relationship with objects and spaces, is what moves us.
Beyond immediate use, design structures experiences and behaviors. It is not just about refining interfaces; it imagines possible worlds, alternative forms of interaction, and new ways of relating. It is a gateway to the unknown, a tool for projection and exploration that should never be reduced to mere adaptation to market demands.
Design is, therefore, a tool for thinking about the future. Its purpose is not to follow trends but to propose radical alternatives, to dare new visions, and to bring utopias to life. Too often, it has resigned itself to meeting the expectations of a system that allows only for optimization and profitability. Yet, it is when it breaks free from this logic that it becomes a true driver of transformation, awakening its deepest essence.
Thus, design can no longer be a mere cog in the machinery of consumerism. It must once again become a space for creation, experimentation, and freedom. A designer is not an executor who applies methods; they are a storyteller of experiences, a sculptor of imaginaries, a craftsman of the senses. Their true mission is not just to make the world more efficient—it is to make it richer, more inspiring, and more human. In short, design is concrete utopianism: a practice that seeks to create “prefigurative utopias,” objects that are fragments of utopia made accessible in the present.
The third step: shift to a new paradigm.
The idea is to abandon the paternalistic approach to design, where the designer decides for others. Contrary to appearances, user-centered design does not escape this logic. Its goal is not to meet needs but to adapt the product to make it more desirable and marketable—even if it means manipulating the user into adopting it. A truly user-centered approach would question the very existence of many projects since the majority of design productions are, in reality, superfluous.
An alternative would be a design of the multitude, where each designer, alone or within a collective, develops their own vision and makes their creations available without forcing consumption. This model, akin to a genius design in open access, would foster diversity in usage, aesthetics, and concepts. Instead of standardized and imposed design, it would be a design by adherence, where the user chooses what suits them. A freer design—paradoxically far more liberal than today’s consumerist capitalism.
However, to prevent this approach from reproducing the same flaws, it must rely on a strong ethical framework.
### **Empowering Individuals**
Design must allow everyone to regain control over their lives by fostering autonomy. It should no longer be about conditioning but about educating, awakening, and providing tools for emancipation.
### **Elevating the World**
Each creation should enhance the beauty, identity, and uniqueness of places and communities. To elevate is to make design a political act—a rejection of a standardized, soulless world.
### **Opening Up to the Living**
Design should not only limit its environmental impact but actively contribute to the regeneration of life. It must be conceived for humans, but also for nature and ecosystems.
### **Exploring Utopias**
Design should no longer be a mere problem-solving tool but an invitation to imagine and materialize alternative futures. It must dare to challenge the existing order to propose radical alternatives.
It is not just about doing things differently, but thinking differently—overturning dominant logics to reinvent a discipline freed from the weight of capitalism and standardization.
The fourth and final step: Responsibility
If design seeks to free itself from short-termist logic and consumerism, it must become a space of freedom, a place where creators can design without being constrained by immediate profitability or market demands. But this freedom cannot simply be declared—it must be built.
We have both the power and the responsibility to organize ourselves, to create spaces for collective reflection and action, where we can reinvent our practices, experiment, and build a design liberated from the oppressive logic that has confined it to mere optimization.
It is not just about resisting market pressures but about inventing structures capable of supporting ethical and independent design. This requires establishing communities of committed designers who share resources, exchange knowledge, and support one another. We must also develop alternative economic models that ensure our autonomy and preserve the integrity of our creative approach.
However, this freedom must not become an excuse for isolation or chaos. We must also establish safeguards—clear rules to prevent deviations and ensure that our work remains aligned with our values. A design that claims to be free cannot be irresponsible; it must be conceived with a mindset of emancipation and justice, with constant vigilance to avoid unconsciously reproducing the very patterns it seeks to transcend.
To empower ourselves to succeed is to reclaim our profession, to refuse submission to dominant forces, and to collectively build the conditions for a truly free, creative, and engaged design. It is by uniting our strengths, sharing our experiences, and constructing viable alternatives that we can truly influence the future of design and restore its role as a transformative force in the world.
Because while a complete reinvention of design cannot happen overnight, it is possible to instill gradual changes—pushing back the boundaries of freedom within the existing system until it is shattered for good. The key is to create openings, multiply initiatives, and encourage a shift in mentality rather than waiting for a total upheaval.
Some designers have already attempted to break free from this model through approaches like slow design or ethical design. Others explore collective paths, prioritizing knowledge sharing and resource pooling. Though still in the minority, these efforts demonstrate that another way is possible.
## Towards a Renaissance of Design
Design stands at a crossroads. Trapped in a logic of optimization and standardization, it has lost its creative essence, becoming a mere cog in the market—an instrument of efficiency more focused on profitability than on cultural or social innovation. Yet, this trajectory is not inevitable.
The history of design shows that it has never been static. It reflects dominant ideologies and can be reinvented to meet the needs of its time. Just like the Renaissance—an era of intellectual effervescence, experimentation, and the questioning of established frameworks—we must now ignite a Renaissance of design. A reinvention that does not merely adapt to ecological, social, and technological crises but turns them into fertile ground for a new way of thinking, liberated from productivity-driven imperatives and carrying an alternative vision of the world.
To achieve this, we must abandon the idea of a design subjugated to economic and managerial constraints. Like the thinkers and artists of the Renaissance—who explored new forms of expression and understanding by breaking free from dominant models—we must restore design’s narrative, exploratory, and political dimensions. A design that does not settle for improving what exists but rather questions, disrupts, and proposes new ways of interacting with our environment.
Reinventing design means refusing resignation. It means rekindling experimentation, cultivating boldness, and restoring a profound intellectual and sensory connection to creation. It is about rejecting the tyranny of functionalism and embracing a new way of designing—one that is freer, more radical, more human. Only by reaffirming its role as a force for transformation can design survive and rediscover its true meaning.
The demand to "adapt or perish" has been shaped by a design subservient to productivity-driven logic. It is time to usher in a Renaissance of design—an era where designers no longer merely accompany the world as it is but dare to imagine others. Where we no longer settle for optimization but choose to dream, explore, and elevate. Where we no longer just follow the movement but shape new possibilities.
---
La Liberté guidant le peuple, Eugène Delacroix
## Une discipline sous pression
Le design est en crise. Le marché s’effondre, les méthodes s’usent, et d’autres métiers s’approprient nos outils. La pression monte : il faut aller vite, justifier chaque pixel, mesurer, tester, recommencer… sans parler de l’IA générative qui souffle sur les braises.
Le design est foutu. Rideau. Merci, au revoir.
Sur les réseaux, les injonctions pleuvent : se spécialiser à outrance, migrer vers le management, prouver sans cesse notre utilité en ânonnant des poncifs sur LinkedIn. "S’adapter ou périr", paraît-il. Et tout le monde s’engouffre dans la brèche.
Pourtant, en 2008, quand j’ai atterri dans le design graphique et numérique, l’ambiance était bien différente. On justifiait son travail, certes, mais sans devoir prouver par A+B que chaque choix mènerait au succès. L’expertise inspirait encore la confiance. Certes ce n'était pas parfait et cette approche a nombres de défauts mais elle était tout de même, comme nous allons le voir ensuite, moins aliénante que ce qui allait venir.
Puis sont arrivés l’UX, le design thinking, les frameworks business (AARRR, OKR…), et une ribambelle de nouveaux titres ronflants (UX researcher, Service Designer…). Poussés par les startups, ces outils ont conquis le métier, apportant autant de bénéfices que de contraintes. Car oui, ces pratiques ont contribué à améliorer certaines limites du design traditionnel, en réduisant la pratique purement artistique de certains designers.
Alors, pourquoi ce virage ?
Les designers, hantés par le syndrome de l’imposteur, ont cherché à rationaliser leur travail pour être pris au sérieux.
Les entreprises ont flairé l’opportunité de mieux contrôler la création et de limiter les risques.
Pris dans cette mécanique, les designers ont eux-mêmes contribué à renforcer cette nouvelle norme.
Le marché a basculé. Le webdesigner a disparu, remplacé par l’UX/UI designer, contraint de parler le langage du business sous peine d’être réduit au rang d’exécutant chargé de "mettre de la couleur".
S’adapter ou périr, déjà à l’époque… mais était-ce vraiment la seule issue ?
## Un héritage invisible
On pourrait croire que le design a simplement évolué, qu’il s’est enrichi de nouvelles pratiques et industries, qu’il s’est "professionnalisé" en se structurant. Après tout, rien ne reste figé.
Mais ce changement ne s’est pas fait au hasard. Le design ne se développe pas en dehors du monde : il est le reflet d’un contexte, façonné par les idéologies dominantes. Et celles qui l’ont influencé sont profondément ancrées dans la pensée occidentale, fondée sur la rationalisation, l’efficience et la course au progrès.
Les prémisses du design moderne émergent au XIXe siècle, en pleine industrialisation. C’est une époque où l’ingénierie et le capitalisme règnent en maîtres, où l’obsession de l’ordre et du contrôle façonne notre vision du monde.
Dans cette logique, l’urbanisme hygiéniste a transformé le design. Assainir les villes, créer des égouts, des espaces verts, améliorer la santé publique : tout devait être ordonné et standardisé. Le design a suivi ce mouvement, imposant des normes d’usage dites "optimales" : ergonomie stricte, interfaces épurées, absence de complexité superflue. Résultat ? Une homogénéisation des espaces et des objets, tous pensés pour répondre aux impératifs d’hygiène, d’efficacité et de contrôle. Dans un même état d'esprit, comme le montre Alexandra Midal dans son livre "Design, introduction à l'histoire d'une discipline", le design émerge dans les travaux de Catharine Beecher en 1840 sur la rationalisation de l'espace domestique.
Le taylorisme, initié par Frederick Taylor à la fin du XIXe siècle, a rationalisé le travail en le découpant en tâches simples et répétitives pour maximiser la productivité. Cette approche a profondément influencé la structuration des processus de design. Plus tard, dans les années 50, le design thinking reprend cette vision méthodique : identifier un problème, générer des idées, tester, itérer. Bien que centré sur la créativité, il reste ancré dans une logique d’efficacité et d’optimisation, héritée de l’industrialisation.
Le modernisme, incarné par des mouvements comme le Bauhaus en Allemagne et des figures emblématiques comme Le Corbusier, a poursuivi cette quête d'ordre et de rationalité. En réaction aux excès décoratifs des périodes précédentes, le modernisme prônait la simplification des formes, la fonctionnalité avant tout (idée que l'on peut rapprocher des intentions hygiénistes), et un rejet systématique de l'ornementation superflue. Cette influence s’est traduite par des créations où la fonction prime sur l'esthétique pure. Le fameux adage "form follows function" (la forme suit la fonction) résume cette philosophie : chaque élément d'un objet ou d'une interface doit avoir une utilité précise. Cette approche a conduit à des designs épurés, minimalistes, où la clarté et l'efficacité priment sur l'émotion ou l'expression artistique libre.
On peut aussi évoquer le paternalisme industriel, qui caractérisait les relations entre employeurs et ouvriers au XIXe et début du XXe siècle, a également laissé son empreinte sur le design. Les industriels prenaient en charge le bien-être de leurs employés en leur fournissant logement, éducation et services, tout en dictant ce qui était "bon" pour eux. Cette attitude, bien que parfois bienveillante, reposait sur une relation de contrôle et de normalisation.
L’objectif est toujours le même : structurer, optimiser, domestiquer.
Même le design centré utilisateur, présenté comme un progrès, s’inscrit dans cette dynamique. Sous couvert d’"amélioration" de l’expérience, il impose des normes d’usage standardisées, dictées par une vision occidentale du confort et de l’efficacité. Il ne s’agit plus de créer pour l’humain, mais d’adapter l’humain à des systèmes pensés pour être rentables et rationnels.
Il ne s’agit pas ici de dire que le design thinking ou l’UX research sont, en tant que pratiques, fondamentalement nuisibles. Mais leur ontologie est profondément marquée par l’idéologie dominante : celle d’un capitalisme qui se construit sur l’optimisation, la rentabilité et la prédictibilité des comportements humains.
Ces méthodologies, bien qu’utilisées parfois avec des intentions vertueuses (inclusion, accessibilité, design social), restent structurées autour d’un cadre qui privilégie la maximisation de l’efficacité. Elles ne remettent pas en question les logiques sous-jacentes de contrôle, d’extraction de valeur et d’adaptation des individus aux systèmes existants. Elles ne sont pas conçues pour permettre une véritable remise en question des paradigmes, mais pour améliorer ce qui est déjà en place, en le rendant plus acceptable, plus fluide, plus désirable.
De cette manière, elles fonctionnent comme des outils d’absorption du changement, intégrant les critiques et ajustant légèrement les paramètres sans jamais remettre en cause l’ensemble du système.
Peu à peu, le design s’est éloigné de son essence créatrice pour devenir une ingénierie de l’expérience, un outil au service d’une hégémonie capitaliste qui s’impose insidieusement. Aujourd’hui, il n’est plus un moyen d’expression ou d’expérimentation, mais une mécanique d’optimisation au service du marché.
Plus encore, cette vision s'est imposée et est devenue le leitmotiv de la grande majorité des designers. Dès la formation, les designers sont de plus en plus conditionnés à justifier chaque choix par des données et des frameworks méthodologiques, assimilant l’efficacité à la légitimité. Ainsi, un bon designer est perçu non comme un créateur, mais comme un résolveur de problèmes efficace, un rouage dans un système, car le design est présenté comme une discipline qui "améliore l’expérience utilisateur", alors qu’en réalité, ce n'est qu'un moyen au service de logiques commerciales (rétention, engagement, rentabilité).
Ces schémas deviennent alors des évidences parce qu’ils sont inculqués dès l’apprentissage, renforcés par un marché qui exige conformité et prédictibilité. En entreprise, la pression des KPI et des cycles rapides de production empêche toute approche expérimentale. Même les réseaux professionnels, où la reconnaissance passe par l’adhésion aux tendances dominantes, verrouillent toute tentative de déviation. Les designers finissent ainsi par intérioriser ces normes comme la seule voie possible, sans voir qu’ils participent eux-mêmes à leur propre enfermement.
Les designers d’aujourd’hui n’ont pas seulement adopté des méthodologies productivistes : ils les perçoivent comme une condition de leur propre légitimité professionnelle.
Et c'est là, la clé de voûte de cette manière d'aborder le design : la toute puissance capitaliste qui cherche à organiser le monde dans son sens. Toutes ces idéologies n'ont de sens que dans un monde capitaliste qui est organisé autour de la compétition et de l'efficience. Ces idées se nourrissent et renforcent cette organisation sociale avec un but simple : contrôler les masses pour l'enrichissement de quelques-uns. Peu importe qu'ils soient des pays, des entreprises ou des individus.
## L’empreinte du design
Mais le design est tout sauf neutre. Il façonne aussi nos sociétés, influence nos comportements et transforme notre rapport au monde. Pourtant, beaucoup de designers n’en mesurent pas l’impact.
Chaque objet, service ou interface modifie et formate notre quotidien et nos perceptions. La voiture, d’abord marginale, a fini par restructurer nos villes : rues élargies, commerces relégués en périphérie, dépendance à l’automobile. Le smartphone, devenu une extension de nous-mêmes, a changé nos interactions sociales : concerts filmés plutôt que vécus, échanges dématérialisés, regards rivés sur les écrans.
Mais le design joue aussi un rôle dans des crises majeures de par ses externalités négatives. L’urgence écologique est exacerbée par des objets conçus pour être éphémères, par la surconsommation et l’obsolescence programmée. Même le numérique participe à cette dynamique : interfaces addictives, temps d’écran optimisé pour la rétention, explosion de la consommation énergétique des infrastructures.
Autre effet pervers : la standardisation des cultures. En imposant des "meilleures pratiques" globales, le design efface peu à peu les spécificités locales. Partout, les centres-villes se ressemblent, les interfaces sont interchangeables, la diversité s’efface au profit d’une efficacité universelle.
Enfin, le capitalisme de surveillance qui exploite le design pour capter l’attention et monétiser nos comportements. Les interfaces ne sont plus au service de l’utilisateur, mais de modèles économiques basés sur la collecte de données et la manipulation comportementale. Ce design, pensé pour maximiser l’engagement, ne façonne plus seulement nos interactions, mais influence nos libertés et nos démocraties.
Le design a, inévitablement, une dimension politique dont chaque designer devrait se saisir.
## Une critique à compléter
Cette critique du design n'est pas nouvelle. Dès le XIXe siècle, le mouvement Arts & Crafts de William Morris s’opposait aux effets déshumanisants de l’industrialisation, prônant un retour à l’artisanat et à des objets durables. Dans les années 1960-70, l’antidesign italien, avec Ettore Sottsass et le groupe Memphis, remettait en question la standardisation imposée par le modernisme.
Victor Papanek, dès les années 1970, dénonçait le rôle du design dans la surconsommation et la création d’objets inutiles, motivés par le profit plutôt que par de réels besoins. Il résumait cette critique avec une phrase devenue célèbre :
> "Peu de professions sont plus pernicieuses que le design industriel. Il n'y a peut-être qu'une seule autre profession qui soit plus factice : le design publicitaire, qui persuade les gens d'acheter des objets dont ils n'ont pas besoin, avec de l'argent qu'ils n'ont pas, afin d'impressionner d'autres gens qui s'en moquent."
Des auteurs plus récents comme Ruben Pater et Mike Monteiro ont poursuivi cette critique, démontrant comment le design sert souvent les puissants, renforçant contrôle et exploitation, et rappelant que les choix des designers – ou leur absence de choix – ont des conséquences directes sur les minorités et la société en général.
Tous pointent du doigt, plus ou moins consciemment, la même impasse : le design moderne est enfermé dans l’idéologie qui l’a façonné. Peu importe les bonnes intentions, les méthodes et l’approche scientifique du design, elles restent ancrées dans un cadre qui ne mène qu’à l’accélération de la crise actuelle.
L’accessibilité numérique en est un bon exemple. Plutôt que de concevoir des solutions adaptées dès le départ, on tente d’ajouter des correctifs à des systèmes pensés pour les valides, avec des résultats frustrants. Pourquoi ne pas imaginer un web navigable sans clavier ni écran, basé sur le son, conçu dès l’origine pour être inclusif pour les malvoyants ou les non voyants ? Parce que cette approche nécessiterait de sortir du moule actuel, ce que ni les contraintes économiques ni les habitudes ancrées ne permettent.
Le design moderne se fragilise aussi par sa propre surspécialisation. Des experts ultra-pointus, mais incapables d’une vision d’ensemble, créent un monde où la technique prime sur l’éthique, où l’efficacité occulte les implications politiques et sociales. À force de perfectionner l’outil, on en oublie la finalité. Comme les physiciens du Projet Manhattan, fascinés par leur avancée technique sans voir la catastrophe qu’ils préparaient.
L’essor des intelligences artificielles génératives accentue encore cette crise. Si la machine fait tout à la place du designer, quelle est encore sa place ? Que se passera-t-il lorsque l’IA pourra produire du contenu créatif avec une qualité suffisante ? Que deviendront les nouvelles générations si leur seule compétence se limite au prompt engineering ? Et que dire des ravages écologiques d’un numérique toujours plus vorace en ressources ?
Pourtant, peu de designers s’interrogent. Dans l’ensemble, le design est pris dans une course en avant qu’il ne peut pas suivre. Sous pression, les designers n’ont ni le temps ni l’espace pour anticiper l’avenir. Pire, beaucoup adhèrent pleinement au design capitaliste, en tête de cette fuite en avant.
"S’adapter ou périr", entend-on encore et encore.
Si cette tendance continue, le design tel qu’on le connaît n’a probablement pas d’avenir. Il risque de disparaître en se fondant dans d’autres métiers – comme l’UX déjà absorbé par les Product Managers – ou d’être remplacé purement et simplement par l’IA.
À moins que l’effondrement écologique ou sociétal ne tranche la question avant.
## Révolution
Il faut donc changer de voie. Encore une fois, citons Victor Papanek :
> "Le design, s’il veut assumer ses responsabilités écologiques et sociales, doit être révolutionnaire et radical."
Et j’ajouterais : à plus forte raison s’il veut assurer sa propre survie.
Il est impératif d'abandonner la logique du design moderne et de construire un nouveau modèle. Un modèle qui s'éloigne de ce design de l'optimisation et du paternalisme. Mais à quoi ressemblerait ce design affranchi ? Après le constat, il serait malhonnête de ne pas proposer d’alternative.
La première étape est un renoncement.
Il faut se délester du poids idéologique qui réduit le design à une simple méthodologie fonctionnelle. Cette vision, héritée du rationalisme et du paternalisme industriel, est une distorsion récente.
Jusqu’aux années 90, le design était défini autrement. Traces que l'on peut encore retrouver aujourd'hui. Le Robert définit encore aujourd'hui le design d’"esthétique industrielle appliquée à la recherche de formes nouvelles", tandis que le Larousse évoque une "harmonisation de l’environnement humain". Ces définitions, centrées sur l’innovation formelle et le bien-vivre, sont bien plus proches des critiques du design consumériste que du design thinking façonné par des ingénieurs et ergonomes qui ont projeté leurs biais méthodologiques sur la discipline et qui ne voit dans le design qu'une méthode de résolution de problème.
Or, résoudre des problèmes n’est pas propre au design. Tous les métiers le font : le médecin résout des problèmes de santé, le garagiste résout des problèmes mécaniques et le boulanger résout le problème de trouver de la nourriture. Chacun suit des protocoles, apprend des techniques, accumule de l’expérience mais personne ne fait de la résolution de problème le socle de sa pratique. Réduire le design à cela, c’est nier sa singularité et l’enfermer dans un cadre rigide, dicté par des logiques qui ne lui appartiennent pas.
Mais si ce n'est pas le cœur de la pratique du design, alors a quoi sert-il ? C'est la deuxième étape : celle de la définition
Le design n’est pas une simple méthode d’optimisation. Il est avant tout une pratique créative mais surtout créatrice, un acte de conception qui ne peut être réduit à des processus rigides. Il ne se confond ni avec la gestion de projet, ni avec l’ergonomie, ni avec le marketing. C’est un jeu entre la matière et l’idée, un travail d’exploration et d’expérimentation. En tentant d’en faire une science exacte, on a oublié qu’il sert avant tout à imaginer, interroger et inventer de nouvelles manières d’exister dans le monde.
Le design ne se limite pas à la création d’objets ou de services. Il est aussi une mise en récit, un langage qui donne du sens, propose un point de vue et façonne notre rapport au réel. Chaque choix visuel, fonctionnel ou expérientiel véhicule une vision du monde et influence nos comportements. Un designer est un narrateur, un auteur qui orchestre des expériences et guide notre façon d’interagir avec notre environnement. Il crée du lien, suscite une résonance, il touche et interpelle. Trop souvent, on a cru que rendre un produit simple à utiliser suffisait à le rendre bon. En réalité, ce qui nous marque, ce qui transforme notre rapport aux objets et aux espaces, c’est ce qui nous émeut.
Au-delà de l’usage immédiat, le design structure des expériences et des comportements. Il ne se limite pas à perfectionner des interfaces : il imagine des mondes possibles, des formes alternatives d’interaction et de relation. Il est une porte ouverte sur l’inconnu, un outil de projection et d’exploration qui ne devrait jamais se réduire à une adaptation aux exigences du marché.
Le design est donc un outil pour penser l’avenir. Il n'a pas pour but d'accompagner les tendances, mais de proposer des alternatives radicales, oser des visions nouvelles et concrétiser des utopies. Trop souvent, il s’est contenté de suivre les attentes d’un système qui ne laisse place qu’à l’optimisation et à la rentabilité. Pourtant, c’est lorsqu’il s’affranchit de cette logique qu’il devient un véritable moteur de transformation et qu’il réveille son essence profonde.
Ainsi, le design ne peut plus être un simple rouage du consumérisme. Il doit redevenir un espace de création, d’expérimentation et de liberté. Un designer n’est pas un exécutant qui applique des méthodes : il est un conteur d’expériences, un sculpteur d’imaginaires, un artisan du sensible. Sa véritable mission ne se limite pas à rendre le monde plus efficace : il doit le rendre plus riche, plus inspirant et plus humain. En somme, le design est un utopisme concret. Une pratique qui cherche à produire des "déjà-là utopistes", des objets qui sont des fragments d'utopie accessibles dans le présent.
La troisième étape est l'ouverture à un nouveau paradigme.
L'idée est d’abandonner l’approche paternaliste du design, où le designer décide pour les autres. Contrairement aux apparences, le design centré utilisateur n’échappe pas à cette logique. Son but n’est pas de répondre à des besoins, mais d’adapter le produit pour qu’il soit plus désirable et vendable, quitte à manipuler l’utilisateur pour qu’il l’adopte. Une véritable approche centrée utilisateur remettrait en question l’existence même de nombreux projets, car la majorité des productions de design sont, en réalité, superflues.
Une alternative serait un design de la multitude, où chaque designer, seul ou en collectif, développe sa propre vision et met ses créations à disposition, sans chercher à en forcer la consommation. Ce modèle, proche d’un genius design en libre service, favoriserait la diversité des usages, des esthétiques et des concepts. Plutôt qu’un design standardisé et imposé, il s’agirait d’un design par l’adhésion, où l’utilisateur choisit ce qui lui convient. Un design plus libre, paradoxalement bien plus libéral que le capitalisme consumériste actuel.
Mais pour éviter que cette approche ne reproduise les mêmes travers, elle doit s’appuyer sur un cadre éthique fort.
### **Autonomiser les individus**
Le design doit permettre à chacun de reprendre le contrôle sur sa vie, en développant son autonomie. Il ne s’agit plus de conditionner, mais d’éduquer, éveiller et donner des outils d’émancipation.
### **Sublimer le monde**
Chaque création doit renforcer la beauté, l’identité et la singularité des lieux et des communautés. Sublimer, c’est faire du design un acte politique, un refus d’un monde standardisé et sans âme.
### **Ouvrir au vivant**
Le design ne doit pas seulement limiter son impact environnemental, mais participer activement à la régénération du vivant. Concevoir pour l’humain, mais aussi pour la nature et les écosystèmes.
### **Explorer les utopies**
Le design ne doit plus être un simple outil de résolution de problèmes, mais une invitation à imaginer et concrétiser d’autres futurs. Il doit oser remettre en question l’existant pour proposer des alternatives radicales.
Il ne s’agit pas seulement de faire autrement, mais de penser autrement. De renverser les logiques dominantes pour réinventer une discipline libérée du poids du capitalisme et de la standardisation.
Enfin vient la quatrième et dernière étape : celle de la responsabilité.
Le design, s’il veut s’émanciper des logiques court-termistes et du consumérisme, doit être un espace de liberté, un lieu où les créateurs peuvent concevoir sans être enfermés dans des impératifs de rentabilité immédiate ou des contraintes dictées par le marché. Mais cette liberté ne se décrète pas : elle se construit.
Nous avons le pouvoir et la responsabilité de nous organiser, de créer des espaces de réflexion et d’action collectifs, où nous pouvons réinventer nos pratiques, expérimenter et construire un design affranchi des logiques oppressives qui l’ont enfermé dans une simple fonction d’optimisation.
Il ne s’agit pas seulement de résister aux pressions du marché, mais d’inventer des structures capables de soutenir un design éthique et indépendant. Cela passe par la mise en place de communautés de designers engagés, qui partagent des ressources, échangent des savoirs et se soutiennent mutuellement. Il nous faut également développer des modèles économiques alternatifs, capables d’assurer notre autonomie et de préserver l’intégrité de notre démarche créative.
Mais cette liberté ne doit pas être un prétexte à l’isolement ou au chaos. Nous devons aussi nous doter de garde-fous, de règles claires pour éviter les dérives et garantir que notre travail reste aligné avec nos valeurs. Un design qui se veut libre ne peut pas être irresponsable : il doit être pensé dans une logique d’émancipation et de justice, avec une vigilance constante pour éviter qu’il ne reproduise, malgré lui, les schémas qu’il cherche à dépasser.
Se donner le pouvoir de réussir, c’est se réapproprier notre métier, refuser la soumission aux logiques dominantes et bâtir ensemble les conditions d’un design véritablement libre, créatif et engagé. C’est en unissant nos forces, en partageant nos expériences et en construisant des alternatives viables que nous pourrons réellement peser sur l’avenir du design et lui redonner son rôle de force transformatrice du monde.
Car si une réinvention totale du design ne peut se faire en un jour, il est possible d’insuffler des changements progressifs, en réintroduisant toujours plus de marges de liberté dans le cadre existant jusqu’à le briser pour de bon. L’important est d’ouvrir des brèches, de multiplier les initiatives, et d’encourager un changement de mentalité plutôt que d’attendre un bouleversement total. Certains designers ont déjà tenté de s’extraire de ce modèle, avec des approches comme le slow design ou le design éthique. D’autres explorent des voies collectives, privilégiant le partage des connaissances et la mutualisation des ressources. Ces tentatives, bien que minoritaires, montrent qu’une autre voie est possible.
## Vers une Renaissance du design
Le design est à la croisée des chemins. Pris dans une logique d’optimisation et de standardisation, il a perdu son essence créatrice pour devenir un rouage du marché, un outil d’efficience davantage tourné vers la rentabilité que vers l’innovation culturelle ou sociale. Pourtant, cette trajectoire n’est pas une fatalité.
L’histoire du design montre qu’il n’a jamais été figé. Il est le reflet des idéologies dominantes et peut être réinventé en fonction des besoins d’une époque. À l’image de la Renaissance, qui a été une période de foisonnement intellectuel, d’expérimentation et de remise en question des cadres établis, nous devons aujourd’hui impulser une Renaissance du design. Une réinvention qui ne se contente pas de s’adapter aux crises écologiques, sociales et technologiques, mais qui en fait le terreau d’une pensée nouvelle, libérée des injonctions productivistes et porteuse d’une vision alternative du monde.
Pour cela, nous devons abandonner l’idée d’un design soumis aux impératifs économiques et managériaux. Comme les penseurs et les artistes de la Renaissance, qui ont exploré de nouvelles formes d’expression et de compréhension du monde en s’affranchissant des modèles dominants, nous devons redonner au design sa dimension narrative, exploratoire et politique. Un design qui ne se contente pas d’améliorer l’existant, mais qui interroge, bouscule et propose d’autres manières d’interagir avec notre environnement.
Réinventer le design, c’est refuser la résignation. C’est renouer avec l’expérimentation, cultiver l’audace et restaurer un rapport sensible et intellectuel à la création. C’est refuser la tyrannie du fonctionnalisme et affirmer une nouvelle manière de concevoir : plus libre, plus radicale, plus humaine. Ce n’est qu’en réaffirmant son rôle de force transformatrice que le design pourra survivre et retrouver son véritable sens.
L’injonction à s’adapter ou périr a été façonnée par un design soumis aux logiques productivistes. Il est temps d’amorcer une Renaissance du design : une ère où le designer ne se contente plus d’accompagner le monde tel qu’il est, mais ose en imaginer d’autres. Où l’on ne se contente plus d’optimiser, mais de rêver, d’explorer et de sublimer. Où l’on ne suit plus le mouvement, mais où l’on façonne de nouveaux possibles.
---
## Written by **Rémi Garcia**.
Product Designer for 15 years. French and utopia-driven.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/remigarciagarcia](https://www.linkedin.com/in/remigarciagarcia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Rémi Garcia - Ed Tech et autres | LinkedInJe suis un designer engagé qui croit en la capacité de transformer le monde pour le… · Experience: Ed Tech et autres · Education: NextFormation · Location: Greater Paris Metropolitan Region · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View Rémi Garcia’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.LinkedInRémi Garcia](https://www.linkedin.com/in/remigarciagarcia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### State of design 2025 begins + Join us for a special event
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/state-of-design-2025-begins-join-us-for-a-special-event/
Last updated: 2025-02-24T11:30:50.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
We are finally at this much anticipated week of 2025, the State of Design (or *SoD25* for short). This year's contributions are incredible in their richness, diversity and originality [in approaching the themes and topics](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design-2025/).
As a reminder, here they are:
1. **Topographical understanding of designerly narratives ⛰️**
1. How do collective narratives shape perceptions of the designer's role in their downfall?
2. Are design challenges rooted in external systemic issues rather than internal faults?
3. How can we redefine the meaning and purpose of design in liminal, transitional spaces?
2. **United like sand. Defined by differences 🏝️**
1. What defines a designer in the face of diverse practices and perspectives?
2. Can differences and repetitions, as proposed by Deleuze, help reshape our understanding of design?
3. How can humour and irony offer counter-culture and autonomy in design?
3. **Catharsis and Hope 🔥**
1. What practices or approaches enable designers to "burn it all" and start anew?
2. How do hope and catharsis contribute to evolving and transforming design paradigms?
3. What new desires and anticipations can guide us in uncertain futures?
So stay tuned because we will be posting contributions every day of the week!
## State of Design 2025
Exploring the Future of Design Together
[Register](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/305720714/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from the Design & Critical Thinking community*.
### Call for participation: State of design 2025
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design-2025/
Last updated: 2025-01-23T09:24:14.000Z
Hi everyone, and a (late) happy new year!
Let's start 2025 by opening up our State of Design, once again. If last year saw the rise of the fear of becoming irrelevant, being replaced, and even working ourselves out of relevancy, this year marks another turning point in our grand narrative: accept *change* or *leave the space* altogether.
[The State of UX in 2025From design tools, to our design process, to the user behaviors that will change the way we design — a list of what to expect for User Experience (UX) Design in the next year.UX TrendsFabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This new form of *escapism* is different from the blind techno-optimism we've seen in 2024, the likes of *“AI is great; we must learn to work with it to stay relevant; etc.”*, which was not *true* in that the current market conditions have little to do with AI itself (rather, AI is a consequence) and much with an overall economic slowdown, inflation and the end of *“free money”*, less government subventions (or lack thereof), geopolitical tensions, political instabilities, etc.
[Why is the UX Job Market Such a Mess Right Now? — A Comprehensive Explanation - UX Articles by Center CentreEvery day, I talk with people struggling to find a UX design, research, or content job. The UX job market has never been this difficult to navigate. Even seasoned, talented UX professionals are struggling to land their next job. Many report applying to hundreds of positions without getting invited to a single interview. For some, months \[…\]UX Articles by Center CentreJared M. Spool](https://articles.centercentre.com/why-is-the-ux-job-market-such-a-mess-right-now-a-comprehensive-explanation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## The themes for the State of Design 2025
👋
**We are looking for members and designers alike to participate in this collection.**
Through the following exploration, I'll lay out several themes that I will sum up at the end in a series of questions, along with the conditions and rules of participation.
[Last year](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/) we had *17 members* who joined the call and *8 submitted contributions* which went through review and made to final publication.
If you're interested, don't hesitate to contribute and bring your own perspective!
[Register & contribute](https://forms.gle/2vfKq1ozLGeqrkdB6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 1/ A topographical understanding of our narratives
The topography of our narratives shows the distribution of the terrain and its reliefs
Generally speaking, there is one main internal fallacy to our designerly narratives, a pattern of *“seemingly automated collective reasoning”* which is applied in two ways:
1. On one hand, design itself and/or designers themselves are the cause of their own predicament; reducing causality to a single or narrow set of internal factors.
2. Which helps justify, on the other hand, that design and/or designers *can* and *must* focus on X, Y, Z narrow set of internal factors to escape or solve their dire situation.
If the narratives change, they tend to gravitate around similar patterns, like strange attractors or gravity wells. *Tools* and *frameworks*, *skills* and *crafts*, predefined *ways of thinking* and sometimes even *personality traits*. *“If design is fading away, you see, this is because such and such designers are missing one of these \[insert arbitrary factor\]”* –or so it goes. And I can't help but see a rather toxic feedback loop.
This unfortunately compounds with other toxic dynamics, which I call [*the apex predators of our design ecologies*](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-apex-predators-of-design-state-of-design-2025-next-community-event/)and permitted by the *techno-capitalist space* in which (most) of us find ourselves bounded to –and soon to be *techno-feudalist* perhaps?
But I wonder: when will the realization comes that design and designers aren't causing their downfall, the ***space*** (and ***rules***) we are working in do? When will the realization comes that design isn't fading away, but the very ***meaning*** we attach to it does?
> Design, like many cultural object, is composed of many intertwined formal and informal elements, be it codes and norms, practices, ways of doing, language, etc. Over time, because it is bound to a broader context that evolves, some of its informal meaning evaporates and only the formal remains.
Perhaps because the world looks like a liminal-space (now more than ever), a place we weirdly recognize but feel strange at the same time.
[The Apex Predators of Design • State of Design 2025 • Next community eventHi everyone, Kevin here. Here’s a somewhat spicy update to the community. I assembled some thoughts and discussions happening in our space and other adjacent spaces. Hope you find this interesting! The Apex Predators of our Design Ecologies The end of the year always calls for generosity and sharing, right?Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-apex-predators-of-design-state-of-design-2025-next-community-event/)
### 2/ United like sand. Defined by differences
Photo by [Keith Hardy](https://unsplash.com/@keithhardy2001?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/two-people-standing-in-desert-field-during-daytime-UVyavSwslOg?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash)
I'd like to present this metaphor:
> Design is like *sand*; from afar, it seems coherent and homogenous enough to hold itself together, but once you try to hold it in your hands it elusively slips away in tiny individual heterogenous grains.
It is a counter-intuitive reality. Once dive into the many expressions of design, there appears to be no true unity between designers. What makes us *“designers”* and not *“engineers”* or *anything else*? What characterises us? Is it just our flimsy, inconsistent (and sometimes meaningless) job titles? Our uneven (and sometimes shaky) education? Our preconditioned behaviours? Is it the space we are working in –the tech world we find inadvertently intertwined to? Why are some reluctant to even call themselves *“designer”* or use *“design”* to describe what they do?
Most probably, these are unanswerable questions simply because they lead to costly claims about the world that can never truly encompass the very diversity design necessitates at a meta-level, a *meta-diversity* if you will. And I would be fine with that.
Borrowing from, Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, who rejected identity as commonly accepted as an object and proposed instead that the *self* forms through [differences and repetitions](https://archive.org/details/differencerepeti0000dele), thus constantly evolving and mutating as an ever-forming concept.
> "I make, remake and unmake my concepts along a moving horizon, from an always decentered centre, from an always displaced periphery which repeats and differentiates them" – G. Deleuze
For Deleuze, repetition is inherently transgressive for humans. He identifies *humour* and *irony* as lines to avoid the *“generalities of society”* because they create distance from laws and norms even while re-enacting them.
We, as designers, are indeed very too often a bit too serious. We are professionals, you see. But is it all we are? Where is the alternative culture, or even counter-culture, offered by humour and irony? Where are the small *rebellious acts* that give back a sense of autonomy through *differences and unique repetitions*, rather than through *escapism* and *delusional optimism*?
### 3/ Sometimes, all you need is to burn it all
Photo by [Mohamed Nohassi](https://unsplash.com/@coopery?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/person-standing-in-front-of-fire-during-night-time-UKX%5FDwNKXSA?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash)
I find *hope* and *catharsis* to be very interesting things in this discussion. First, because they both exist in a continuum, and second, because they are active and loose processes rather than fixed objects. **Catharsis** helps us abandon certain things we hold dire, lifting an emotional burden so we can move forward. **Hope** helps build new desires and anticipation about that uncertain, changing future, allowing us to act on our own terms.
As you may know, I live in Switzerland, a small country full of contrasts and cultural diversity. Each year, during February, an interesting practice is held in my small town. The fanfare, called Guggenmusiks, beats the rhythm as the giant idol (resembling Perch fish) goes around the town. People, disguised, cheer, dance and party until, on the second day, the joyous procession reaches the fire place.
0:00
/0:19
1×
Carnaval d'Estavayer. [Source](https://www.carnavalestavayer.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The idol is brought through, and the fanfare plays one last time, perhaps even louder as if to say goodbye, as the fire is lit. Everyone cheers the burning idol, representing all the hopes and sorrows of last year, and welcomes the gentle renewal of everything, as springs is coming and with it, new hopes arise. As the fire dies out, the carnival ends, on a cold Sunday in February.
It is thought that if the perch fish burns well, this is a good omen for the rest of the year.
So to conclude this exploration, I like the idea that **we need a similar carnival for design, with a burning place.** What are the idols, which encapsulate our deepest hopes and sorrows, that needs to be burnt away? What should be the anthem of our joyous fanfare? What hopes should spring arise?
### Themes summary
1. **Topographical understanding of designerly narratives ⛰️**
1. How do collective narratives shape perceptions of the designer's role in their downfall?
2. Are design challenges rooted in external systemic issues rather than internal faults?
3. How can we redefine the meaning and purpose of design in liminal, transitional spaces?
2. **United like sand. Defined by differences 🏝️**
1. What defines a designer in the face of diverse practices and perspectives?
2. Can differences and repetitions, as proposed by Deleuze, help reshape our understanding of design?
3. How can humour and irony offer counter-culture and autonomy in design?
3. **Catharsis and Hope 🔥**
1. What practices or approaches enable designers to "burn it all" and start anew?
2. How do hope and catharsis contribute to evolving and transforming design paradigms?
3. What new desires and anticipations can guide us in uncertain futures?
## How to participate?
### Format 📝
You can write something as long in length as you want (no format restrictions), but we ask that add links to sources and references whenever possible.
Your name will be displayed in the title of your section and your profile details/links (at your discretion) at the end.
### Process 📆
You have from **January 21st**, 12 pm CET, to **February 21st**, to submit your piece through a dedicated form, shared upon registration.
Each essay will be reviewed before publication, then posted separately on our website under the [*State of design*](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/state-of-design/)tag, between *February 24th and 28th*. All essays will then be put together in a final post, as a collection, which will conclude this year's collaboration.
👉 As a major contributor, you'll also be invited to our “State of Design 2025” event, [on the March 4th, 6 pm CET](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/305720714/?utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=share-btn%5Fsavedevents%5Fshare%5Fmodal&utm%5Fsource=link), to speak about your contribution, share your thoughts and discuss with other contributors and members of the community.
## State of Design 2025
Bring your voice, register to this collaborative project
[Register & contribute](https://forms.gle/2vfKq1ozLGeqrkdB6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[State of Design 2025: Exploring the Future of Design Together, Tue, Mar 4, 2025, 6:00 PM | MeetupJoin us for the \*\*State of Design 2025\*\*, a dynamic gathering of thinkers, creators, and practitioners passionate about exploring the evolving landscape of design. This eveMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/305720714/?utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=share-btn%5Fsavedevents%5Fshare%5Fmodal&utm%5Fsource=link)
---
Thanks for supporting our community projects by reading and contributing!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking community.*
### The Apex Predators of Design • State of Design 2025 • Next community event
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-apex-predators-of-design-state-of-design-2025-next-community-event/
Last updated: 2024-12-16T08:12:56.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Here's a somewhat *spicy* update to the community. I assembled some thoughts and discussions happening in our space and other adjacent spaces.
Hope you find this interesting!
---
## The Apex Predators of our Design Ecologies
Photo by [Mathew Schwartz](https://unsplash.com/@cadop?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-green-spider-in-a-web-AofSmP3Bm94?utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fsource=unsplash)
The end of the year always calls for generosity and sharing, right? As sharing Christmas cookies is *de rigueur* –here, in Switzerland, we love some “Milanais” and “Petits croissants à la vanille”, and I usually make them myself– let me share with you a very sweet, sweet thought:
> Nielsen Norman Group is the apex predator of UX.
Harsh? Ok. Not just NN/g. But they are one of the visible symptoms of toxic underlying dynamics in the design landscape –and really, of most unregulated professional fields, especially those that happen to be pulled by the incredible Tech's “gravity well” of (illusory) infinite hype and growth.
Companies make their own standards, for better or for worst (usually the later), or at the very least are complaisant in accepting any external loose marker of credibility as equivalent to “true regulations”. Even when it's a private company, a consulting agency, with heavy conflict of interests. And perhaps it's a feature, not a bug.
Anyway, like many things in Tech, NN/g is a tautological product-as-a-service in disguise –that is to say, a self-referencing machine– using any ounce of credibility to make money on the back of their willing victims, usually aspiring to be (better) designers, like, for instance, through certifications. It's like fake money (that you bought with real money), but more like *borrowed credibility*. Perhaps fungible tokens? *Oh, wait...*
Let's be fair, Google and others are doing exactly the same thing, but at least with Google, the Ponzi-scheme is way more obvious. Invent a standard, then impose it to everyone (because you have an almost absolute monopoly), and finally make them pay to get certified to use your standard. This is an *apex predator* move: you've altered the ecosystem in a way it has become co-dependent to your very existence. *No one can imagine a world without you any more,* even when what you do or say smells like 💩*.*
The only thing is, although in nature the ecosystem is actually bounded by physical laws and other ecological regulating mechanisms, this cannot be said of our professional and economic landscapes –and mostly because it is not believed to be.
But I'm sure there are other forms of apex predators in design. What are your thoughts?
## A much needed and anticipated State of Design 2025
Is design limited to these?! UX DESIGN. FIGMA. DESIGN SYSTEMS.
Doesn't the latest UX Collective's [*State of UX 2025*](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) sound a bit hypocritical? It does to me.
[The State of UX in 2025From design tools, to our design process, to the user behaviors that will change the way we design — a list of what to expect for User Experience (UX) Design in the next year.UX TrendsFabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*“The only constant is change”* sounds like blind and semi-thoughtless *optimism*: when “change” is justified at a landscape level (professions, societies, history) but is implied at a personal level. Really, if your job disappears, then you should become this mystical beast, a “meta-designer” (why not? we already have unicorns, after all), or perhaps you should double-down on your craft (get another certificate)? “All-in” either way, right?
I think this moral jump, from environment to individuals, is in many ways problematic.
[In our previous update](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/misty-experiences-a-secret-project-designing-for-hope/#reflections-on-recent-turbulences), I made a distinction between *optimism* and *hope* which, I think, is highly relevant here:
1. To be optimistic is to expect certain results despite all odds.
2. To be hopeful is to look for signals of better potential outcomes, given all odds.
[Misty Experiences + Designing for HopeExploring the ever-evolving mist of the world is a creative endeavour; Facts need narratives and principles; the next community event; and some interesting links and food for thoughts.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/misty-experiences-a-secret-project-designing-for-hope/#reflections-on-recent-turbulences)
The “evolution” proposed in the “State of UX” is linear and iterative. But evolution is not necessarily a slow, repetitive, linear process, locked in its own *path dependence* (see *figure 1*). It can happen as prototype-like changes which can generate transformative adaptations, through a process of *radical repurposing* (of existing functions or features) called *“*[*exaptation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”.*
Figure 1\. The three stage model of path dependence (Sydow, Schreyögg & Koch, 2009)
What *path dependence theory* and *evolutionary algorithms* tell is that diversity (of options, genes, groups, etc.) needs to be re-introduced to avoid a collapse (within a landscape or a population). In this case, I would argue the signals, the diversity, must come from outside the UX and tech *hyperreality* to actually make any sort of deep significant changes. **Not just a linear iteration, something more *radical*.**
👉 So, I propose we open up a new “State of Design” collection for 2025, with topics like:
- The need for *radical* (re)imagination
- Fostering *decomposition* and *recombination, a radical design repurposing process*
- *Rebelling*, not *Reblanding!*
💡
I would love to hear, for you, what should be other topics for discussion! [Join the community on Slack and share your thoughts!](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-rfm2qaj7-OT~R%5F65LiVohvBorSH4AmQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The State of Design 2025 will probably be opened for submissions early next year. So, stay tuned for a dedicated update!
In the meantime, read all the contributions to our “State of Design 2024” here:
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
## Our next community event
## Virtual Chalet meetup
Tuesday, December 17, 2024 – 6:00 PM CET
[Register now](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/304666272/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## A parting gift 🎁
Okay, this was a spicy one. But I hope you take this as both a sanity check and a little critical thinking exercise. You don't have to agree. I actually hope you don't fully.
Close your eyes, hold that thought a bit longer, and try to articulate it better. Then open your eyes. Good.
Now, here's a parting gift for you👇
Product and UX designers on social media be like.
🤣
---
**Thanks for reading!**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Misty Experiences + Designing for Hope
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/misty-experiences-a-secret-project-designing-for-hope/
Last updated: 2024-11-18T11:45:04.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
It's been some time since the last post and update, sorry for that. I hope you're all doing well despite these turbulent few months.
I've been a bit busy on other projects. First, a long essay on Design Sociology, New Materialism, and a proposed approach coined *Social Experience Design*:
[Design Sociology and New Materialism philosophyDesign has a granularity issue and why we need to move towards a new design philosophy & practice.Kevin Richard – Island of thoughtsKevin Richard](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/design-sociology-and-new-materialism-philosophy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Second, some experiments with Speculative Design:
[Mindful and Emotional Interfaces: Imagining a future of human-machine interactionsThis speculative design project envisions a future where careful use of Brain-Computer Interfaces and AI redefines human-machine interaction within sustainable urban environments. This narrative offers a strategic lens for UX design and business development.Kevin Richard – Island of thoughtsKevin Richard](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/mindful-and-emotional-interfaces-imagining-the-future-of-human-machine-interactions/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[The future of Swiss health insurance in an uncertain worldA speculative design exploration to generate strategic opportunities based on literature and world-building.Kevin Richard – Island of thoughtsKevin Richard](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-future-of-swiss-health-insurance-in-an-uncertain-world/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Misty experiences
The view from my small Swiss town, coated in thick mist as of late, a typical occurrence in autumn, seems impassible and serene. The not-so-angular-line of the Jura mountains are no more visible in the reflection of lake Neuchâtel, but the peaceful giants remain a natural and immutable protective presence in people's minds.
**The mist blurs the lines between spaces, objects, distances and dimensions.** It creates a weird sensation of depth filled with mysteries in its enveloping nature. *Mist* always stimulated the imagination, sometimes described as a gate to new worlds and other dimensions, sometimes it accompanies the presence of mysterious and mythological creatures, and it is thought to hide many dangers and wonders for those who dares to explore it.
It is a *liminal-space* that often marks the beginning of a journey or a rite of passage, a transition between the present and the extraordinary, foreshadowing the challenges the protagonists will have to face along the way.
> What's lurking in the silent mist? It can be adventure, wisdom, friendship, and more.
**Narratively speaking, it can be seen as a metaphorical structure,** as the mist dissipates the more the protagonists advance, fail, and grow from their experiences, and as such, making the dangers more manageable and the wonders more conquerable.
> Counter intuitively, this means, as a narrative device, **the mist reveals hidden-in-plain-sight truths**. Sometimes subtle, sometimes crude, sometimes contradictory, but always coherent.
The world is engulfed in an always-evolving-mist that [call for explorers](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to reveal its monsters and dangers but also its treasures and wonders. [Some might call this the true expression of *“progress”,* as opposed to *“innovation”*](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/is--innovation--what-we-think-it-is-/).
**Design**, as a form and substance that goes beyond “tools”, is both about **exploration*,* **creation** and **evaluation**. **Creation** as an act of *catalysing possibilities* into *mediums for interactions*. **Evaluation** is not about the medium, the object itself, but about the possibilities it enables through its interactiveness. Let's call this loose process *“Creative Exploration”*.
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### Creative Explorations
At Design & Critical Thinking, we believe that **most designers are not (always) well-equipped for this kind of *creative exploration***. Creative exploration is not only about tools, but first and foremost about *body* and *mind* preparation.
> What the best pair of shoes can do if you never climbed a mountain ever in your life? To start with the \[object\], the shoe, tells nothing about the path you'll be taking.
You need training to drill some good muscle memory: *you need physical reflexes*. You need to understand the terrain, its topography and the geometry of relationships, and you need to understand how you can act and affect this space: *you need mental reflexes*. **But more on that in a future post.**
## Reflections on recent turbulences
## Designing for Hope
Facts + Narratives + Principles
**Sometimes, the mist is scary.** The undistinguishable shapes that emerge from it are reminiscent of ugly monsters –really, who could tell. And the ugliest are not always the most obvious to discern: we all heard the stories of monsters taking the form of familiar faces, playing with our imperfect memories and most reactive emotions to get us lost in the mist for an eternity, in an indiscernible simulacrum of reality.
I was recently thinking about the concept of *“hope”,* as different from the concept of *“optimism”,* from a non-religious perspective.
> To be optimistic is to expect certain results despite all odds.
> To be hopeful is to look for signals of better potential outcomes, given all odds.
*Note: they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.*
In my parable, ***optimism*** would make us double-down on this simulacrum, a skewed illusion of reality, and expect something positive to come out of it anyway. ***Hopefulness,*** on the other hand, would be to acknowledge the situation as a simulacrum, and then to look for different signals for better outcomes, sidestepping the illusion.
Something I've seen a lot during the recent political events in the USA is this opposition between ***facts*** and ***narratives***, as if they were ***immiscible***, like water and oil ([miscibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscibility?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is the property of two substances to mix to form a homogeneous mixture).
This is a false dichotomy.
**Facts alone don't tell anything.** Don't get me wrong, facts are very important. But they are like individual pebbles on the shore of a lake. Like droplets of water in the morning mist. They compose the scene, they are not the scene.
See the metaphors used here? Would it sound the same if I had said: **“They are like individual bullets in the guns. They tell you nothing about the war.”* A different story.
Opposing *facts* to *narratives* is meaningless to those who don't understand what landscape these facts are supposed to represent. Worse, facts becomes *nonsensical* if they are used to contradicting pre-existing “maps” of the landscape –regardless how wrong they might be.
**To build *hope* requires *facts*, but it also needs *narratives*.** *Narratives that are based on purposeful principles.* Narratives that draw people into seeing that the possibilities for positive outcomes exist and can be enacted in practical and experiential ways, not just in opposition to another antagonistic narrative.
Although narratives are blurry and porous by nature, allowing other narratives to coexist in a coherent way, **some things are plain wrong** and *facts* provide a sound ground to critique and carefully dismiss them.
This concept of *hope* proposed here is not to be thought as an *object*, because focusing on hope as a self-evident object only deepens a threefold gap between: 1) a harsh reality; 2) the barrier to act; and 3) a proposed future concept; making it ever more unrealistic. **Rather, this idea of “hope” is akin to a scaffolding structure, emergent by nature.**
## Join our next community event
## Virtual Chalet Meetup (online)
Tuesday, November 19 – From 6 pm to 7 pm CET
[Register now](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/304289251/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Shared in the community
Here are some interesting links & thoughts shared in the community.
### On hope, societies and narratives
**Human Nature, Hope & Ice Cream**
### Futures
**Futures design and distortion**
**The Four Types of Dystopia**
**School of Possibilities**
> "an interactive experience conceived of and designed alongside youth in Romania to imagine a more humane and impactful education system"
[School of PossibilitiesA youth-centered effort to reimagine educationSoP0](https://www.schoolofpossibilities.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Solarpunk
**More-than-human governance experiments in Europe**
[More-than-human governance experiments in EuropeOur new paper on more-than-human governance experiments in Europe, co-published with Arising Quo.DemocracyNext](https://www.demnext.org/projects/paper-more-than-human-governance?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Philosophy
**The Reality Ouroboros** \- An interesting take on the connections between all fields
[Nautilus: The Reality OuroborosWhat is reality? And is there just one reality or many, perhaps infinitely many? In this essay first published in Nautilus magazine, SFI researchers David Krakauer and David Wolpert explore how scientists tend to think about reality. Santa Fe Institute](https://santafe.edu/news-center/news/nautilus-reality-ouroboros?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Why I'm not a Bayesian**](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TyusAoBMjYzGN3eZS/why-i-m-not-a-bayesian?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> A better approach is to view Bayesianism as describing a special case of epistemology, which applies in contexts simple enough that we’ve already constructed all relevant models or hypotheses, exactly one of which is exactly true, and we just need to decide between them.
[**The hostile telepaths problem**](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5FAnfAStc7birapMx/the-hostile-telepaths-problem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> This is a template for what I've come to call "the hostile telepaths problem". I think it's a common feature of social problems. The hostile telepaths problem is when you're dealing with a being (a) who can kind of read your internal experiences and (b) whom you don't trust won't make your situation worse due to what they find in you.
### Tech
**The Cult of Microsoft**
> At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how your on-the-job performance is judged.
[The Cult of MicrosoftSoundtrack: EL-P - Flyentology At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called ’The Growth Mindset” that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how your on-the-job performance is judged. I amEd Zitron's Where's Your Ed AtEdward Zitron](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-cult-of-microsoft/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Financialisation of Social Networks**
> One of the things that becomes apparent when you study the nature of social networks is that incumbents are not disrupted by a better alternative. Instead, they are taken over by a vastly different product that serves the same function…The future of Web3 social networks will not look like a better Twitter. Instead, it would look closer to the attributes that the industry does well today. Those of speculation, verifiable rank (clout), and ownership.
[Financialisation of Social NetworksTurning eyeballs to dollars.Decentralised.coJoel John](https://www.decentralised.co/p/financialisation-of-social-networks?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**Thanks for reading!**
👏
And huge thanks to Vinish for always being active in our Slack channels, sharing thoughts and interesting links, and to Marc, Daiana and Lee for their investment in the many community projects.
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Join community's August Virtual Chalet session
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Last updated: 2024-08-11T10:00:08.000Z
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### Join community's July Virtual Chalet session
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-communitys-july-virtual-chalet-session/
Last updated: 2024-07-07T10:00:20.000Z
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### Join community's June Virtual Chalet session
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-communitys-june-virtual-chalet-session/
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### The State of Design 2024 – All contributions
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/
Last updated: 2024-11-15T11:08:54.000Z
## *A collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer.*
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design” through our [call for participation](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design/).
**This post ends the series** and provides an overview of all the contributions. I hope you enjoyed this project as much as I did! It was intense, both for you in terms of rhythm –about one post a day, hope I did not clutter your inbox too much– and for our members. All is not over yet, and [you are invited to join us for online discussion on April 26th, 5 pm CET](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/300266496/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Happy to report that, overall, *17 members* joined the call and *8 submitted contributions*, which given the short deadline for submission, is a very good ratio. **But beyond that, I can't thank our contributors enough for their enthusiasm, commitment, generosity and the quality of their contributions! This project exists because of you. Thank you.**
Note: The question is now open on the community's side to make this an official annual exercise, offering an interesting “time capsule” of sort on the evolution of the field of Design, as practised and seen by its practitioners.
As a reminder, the themes that were proposed for discussion were the following:
- **The state of UX or “late-stage UX”**
- The “decline of design”, the “downfall of designers”
- The commodification of the design process and/or activities
- The lay-offs; shrinking market; no more free money; low entry level / inadequate skills; etc
- The replacement of design roles by \[AI\]
- **Beyond the hype, beyond the clutter**
- The future of design and designers’ role
- Where should design be next? What should design do next?
- What does that mean for organisations, services, products, human experiences;
- **Critical thinking**
- What are we missing?
- What are the misdirections?
- What are the false promises/apocalypses?
- What are the weak signals?
---
## A collection of perspectives on the state of design, 2024
In the **worlds within worlds* of Design, there are **monsters* and **dragons* that might deceive our senses; but also **angels* and **spirits* to bring lights on opportunities hidden before our eyes.
Here are all the contributions from our amazing members. Enjoy!
1. [Of Permacrisis and Peak Design, *by Marc Baumgartner*](#of-permacrisis-and-peak-design-by-marc-baumgartner)
2. [The Evolving Landscape of Design in 2024, *by Linh Nguyen*](#the-evolving-landscape-of-design-in-2024-by-linh-nguyen)
3. [Web Designing, Architecting, AI-ing, *by Matt Ji*](#web-designing-architecting-ai-ing-by-matt-ji)
4. [The State of Design: An Unnecessary Topic to Write About, *by Vinish Garg*](#the-state-of-design-an-unnecessary-topic-to-write-about-by-vinish-garg)
5. [Ask the Right Question, *by Jennifer Fraser and Scott Plewes*](#ask-the-right-question-by-jennifer-fraser-and-scott-plewes)
6. [A no-bullshit policy for Design, *by Daiana Zavate*](#a-no-bullshit-policy-for-design-by-daiana-zavate)
7. [De designer à ambassadeur de la culture design, quand le designer devient un catalyseur de transformations, *par Fabrice Liut*](#de-designer-%C3%A0-ambassadeur-de-la-culture-design-quand-le-designer-devient-un-catalyseur-de-transformations-par-fabrice-liut)
8. [Here Be Angels, *by Julian Bleecker*](#here-be-angels-by-julian-bleecker)
9. [On the Vanishing UX Industry, Design Positioning and Trends, *Kevin Richard and Vy Alechnavicius*](#on-the-vanishing-ux-industry-design-positioning-and-trends-kevin-richard-and-vy-alechnavicius)
Check-out what was captured during the discussion:
---
### Of Permacrisis and Peak Design, by Marc Baumgartner
Land of perpetual crisis. (Generated in Adobe Firefly)
Design seems to be in a neverending crisis, especially when it comes to proving its value. The challenges caused by the emergence of AI and the current economic downturn make the devaluation of design even more problematic. Have we hit “peak design”? If so, what that might mean for design practice? What can design do to reclaim its relevance and address complex problems? The essay questions whether design should revamp its business models to be able to focus on solving tough problems and to prove its worth and impact and if that will be enough to ensure its future relevance.
[Read Marc's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/752388c5-6b86-4cb2-a80b-cf2c92263176/)
---
### The Evolving Landscape of Design in 2024, by Linh Nguyen
The evolving role of UX designers in 2024 and beyond – Generated with DALL·E
In 2024, there will be both possibilities and difficulties in UX design. While affordable and flexible, online education programmes might not give us enough real-world experience. UX designers are in high demand in both the tech and non-tech sectors, but competition for jobs is fierce, particularly in the wake of pandemic-related layoffs that have favoured seasoned designers with experience in specific domain. The reality of UX practice includes complicated collaborations, quick changes, meeting deadlines, and striking a balance between user wants and company objectives. The business is changing as a result of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) as well, which streamlines procedures while posing questions about the possible replacement of human designers. Nevertheless, creativity and emotional intelligence are still crucial.
[Read Linh's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/0efe5df4-9da5-4c47-8243-966ba736f3dd/)
---
### Web Designing, Architecting, AI-ing, by Matt Ji
“don't replace me, I'm a designer"
Web can be viewed from many angles: Old and new, big and small, uniform and diverse. It's hard to pick along a continuum because the tribes like to territorialize. This poses a problem and an opportunity for planeswalkers to take advantage of three key evolving themes of the web: javascript vs all the other languages, corporate monopoly of backend data, AI's role at completing the trilogy of the semantic cybernetic future of intelligence.
[Read Matt's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/1965b0fc-15cd-4738-b982-80bd1211de9a/)
---
### The State of Design: An Unnecessary Topic to Write About, by Vinish Garg
The State of Design 2024—a post in the series by Design and Critical Thinking
Design has been part of our systems since ages and across the generations—in manual tools for use by our hands, in the machines, in print and media, and now in technology. We had design engineers designing our cars one hundred years ago. We always had textile designers, and cutlery designers.
Do we need to question the state of something that has been a default ever since we can imagine? Do we talk about the state of chair design—for the chair that we use for our work, or the state of cutlery design while having food?
Think of a small business anywhere in the world who makes water bottles—can they manufacture bottles without thinking of its usability for the users? Can an architect plan designing a school or park, without thinking like a designer?
When you talk about the modern cities and the streets where kids cannot play—this is not only an administration failure or policy failure—this is a design failure.
It sounds funny that the organizations seek design maturity in the design systems or in design operations whereas the design fails them in the sign up forms and in the dashboards. We see it all the time. Every single day.
We need to position our design judgment better. For being a part of the design food chain—as producers and as consumers. We just need to design with common sense—our collective common sense.
[Read Vinish's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/fff1ce0f-3e2c-4e78-b130-2595498ee0de/)
---
### Ask the Right Question, by Jennifer Fraser and Scott Plewes
Ask the Right Question
What is the right way to evaluate the current “state” of UX? In a world where business stakeholders are focused on numbers and metrics to ascertain value, how does UX play a role in this STEM-obsessed world? We can start by asking the right questions and instead of looking within, look at how well we are adapting to our ecosystem at this moment in time.
[Read Jennifer and Scott's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/8f36b79e-09be-4ae2-b4aa-ec274061f204/)
---
### A no-bullshit policy for Design, by Daiana Zavate
Art or problem-solving? What are we trying to do moving forward- Unsplash
Moving forward towards an intended future and not one plagued by complications and impractical means to increase the quality of life where it's most needed, Strategic Design needs to lead a way that emphasizes on practicality and clear communication. Putting the right conditions in place for businesses to solve their own problems first before they attempt to leave a mark on their customers and the environment is something that Strategic Design can do well, but the task shouldn't be underestimated. For far too long, too much has been said and too little implemented. Reasons vary from systemic clashes, roadblocks in collaboration and poor understanding of problems. But if anyone is better equipped to act as a bridge between design and the world, that's Strategic Designers.
[Read Daiana's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/c2dccb74-3eb6-4baa-b83a-82fd405bbda3/)
---
### De designer à ambassadeur de la culture design, quand le designer devient un catalyseur de transformations, par Fabrice Liut
Aventuriers de futures transformations
Designer depuis 15 ans, Fabrice a évolué vers un rôle de "designer systémique & régénératif" intégrant diverses pratiques connexes telles que la bio-inspiration, la facilitation et l'anthropologie, affirmant que le designer est un caméléon capable de s'adapter à des univers variés pour concevoir de façon sensée et sensible.
Malgré la valorisation croissante du design dans certaines organisations, notamment en tant que ressource essentielle, le poste de “Chief Design Officer” reste peu répandu, ce qui soulève des questions sur la perception du design et la nécessité, ou pas, d'éduquer les dirigeants pour intégrer pleinement la pensée design dans la culture d'entreprise.
Fabrice a choisi de ne presque plus parler de design et de se positionner comme “chief of staff”, un rôle mieux compris aujourd’hui et qui sera essentiel demain au sein des organisations.
[Lire la contribution de Fabrice](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/0ee27239-1590-41f6-b44e-c440ff4232f3/)
---
### Here Be Angels, by Julian Bleecker
Why so glum?
I’m going to say some mean sounding things. They sound mean, but I don’t mean you ill. I’m not trying to shame anyone, even as I point out shame-worthy behavior. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I don’t mean to inflict pain or kick you when you’re feeling glum or angry or confused.
I want to help.
I’m going to be plain.
I’m going to be direct.
\[...\]
You were born into a world in which Art and Money are meant to be in conflict, opposed forever.
Let me say that again with some new idioms: You were born into a world in which Imagination and Structure are set against each other and, really — do you know why?
\[...\]
That’s all a set-up concocted at some point — maybe we can blame modernity — to imagine that there can never be rich, meaningful, mutually beneficial collaboration amongst art and money, between creativity and rationality, between Imagination and Structure. It’s a set-up that it’s a zero-sum game, and one party will always lose — and by lose I mean, give up on its value by giving up on its values.
\[...\]
Wait. Is this what design has become?
Is this the table setting we wanted? The one where the creative consciousness can sit down and indulge itself? Make its nut and get the “underpriced” $1.3MM 2 bed, 1 bath, single-story bungalow I just heard about over in Los Feliz?
\[...\]
For many, the lure of prominence, pay, a Head of.. title,andpridefulgloatingwas just beneath the surface of earnestly claiming that you were ‘creating products with love’ (or however we expressed our contribution as a well-functioning, well-disciplined unit of economic value creation.)
Whereas once there was an ascendency of design in the C-Suite because the creative consciousness — wait..I mean “design” — got a seat at the table, now there’s a crisis, because the creative consciousness — sorry, I meant to write “design” — got a seat at the table.
Really, what did you expect when you were invited to a seat at that particular table?
[Read Julian's contribution](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/p/d1bc0850-f5df-4bdd-b898-179122b33ba7/)
---
### On the Vanishing UX Industry, Design Positioning and Trends, Kevin Richard and Vy Alechnavicius
Vanishing UX Industry, Design Positioning and Trends with Kevin Richard – Experience Designed Podcast
[Watch/listen to Vy's podcast](https://blog.vaexperience.com/ux-resources/experience-designed-podcast/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**Thanks for reading, and a very special thank you to all our amazing contributors: Linh, Vinish, Marc, Jennifer, Scott, Matt, Daiana, Fabrice, Julian.**
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
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### Here Be Angels, by Julian Bleecker
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/here-be-angels-by-julian-bleecker/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:15:45.000Z
1. Sure. Design is in crisis. The current mood says as much. Even as it’s unsettling and anxiety-inducing, it’s not so surprising.
2. Not really.
3. I’m going to say some mean sounding things. They sound mean, but I don’t mean you ill. I’m not trying to shame anyone, even as I point out shame-worthy behavior. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I don’t mean to inflict pain or kick you when you’re feeling glum or angry or confused.
4. I want to help. Also, I’m not going to be your coddling friend for the 13 minutes it will take you to read this.
5. I’m going to be plain.
6. I’m going to be direct.
7. I’m not concerned about making you upset, or making you resentful, or being an asshole for the day.
8. Everyone is someone’s asshole some of the time. Just ask that guy who honked his horn at me just now.
1. You were born into a world in which Art and Money are meant to be in conflict, opposed forever.
2. Let me say that again with some new idioms: You were born into a world in which Imagination and Structure are set against each other and, really — do you know why?
3. I don’t. It just has been. There’s certainly a story there, somewhere, for another time.
4. The challenge in trying to describe this conflict is that, allegorically, it precedes us and our ways of being.
5. What is the architecture of this opposition? Is there something to be learned from within this forever always opposition in which we have never known a world otherwise?
6. Maybe, but I see as a more critical concern, or objective, or goal which is this: for the sake of existential survival, we need Imagination and Structure to be in deep, rich, collaboration.
7. For most of us, we have an opportunity early on to have a nurtured creative consciousness — until we’re told to stop doing ‘that’ and get serious. Stop playing with crayons, or the equivalent. You know the sentiment: “No one ever made a living as a novelist, are you kidding me? Get real..”
8. This primal fracture splits the creative consciousness and we may carry that early sense of the potential and beauty and feeling of Imagination with us for our entire lives, sorrowfully.
1. What I am going to say, well — it will sound mean, but that’s just because you’re not thinking straight. You’re feeling broken and beaten and you were just trying to save me, and my family — and the whole world and now look at you.
2. You’ve got two black eyes, one of your feet is missing a shoe \*and a sock, and the back pocket where you wallet is meant to be has been torn straight off your $600 jeans.
1. If this were a 1950s film noir I’d toss a glass of water in your face, slap you quick two or three times across your face and tell you to pull yourself together.
2. But this is 2024 and that’ll get everyone in trouble.
3. What happened?
4. You had a plan, you and your creative spirit.
5. You had a plan, and like the great pugilist philosopher Mike Tyson said about people with plans “…”
6. Well, if you don’t know what Mike said about having a plan, that’s the start of it all.
7. Read on.
1. Have you ever seen that one scene?
2. The one from “[Hannah and Her Sisters](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091167?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)” — a film from the middle-period of Woody Allen. It lays out the structure of the relationship between the creative consciousness and the rational consciousness, between Imagination and Structure.
3. No? Oh, man..well..
4. It’s a telling albeit flat architecture that you will be familiar with: art is feeling and cannot be bought; money is utility and can buy whatever it desires. The one to the other are in intense opposition.
5. It’s an architecture of association and meaning that we could do without because it only shows the conflict and not the outcomes of rich meaningful collaboration between Imagination and Structure.
6. It shows us, unhelpfully, that you can only be an artist if you struggle to exist in a world in which the only form of value exchange is this filthy lucre — folding money.
7. You can only “be money” if you incessantly buy what you can’t create, and you always and forever buy more.
8. That’s all a set-up concocted at some point — maybe we can blame modernity — to imagine that there can never be rich, meaningful, mutually beneficial collaboration amongst art and money, between creativity and rationality, between Imagination and Structure. It’s a set-up that it’s a zero-sum game, and one party will always lose — and by lose I mean, give up on its value by giving up on its values.
9. It’s a juvenile set-up, if you think about it. It leads to moments like that one scene which I’ll now describe.
10. In this scene we see an allegorical sketch of the relationship between Imagination/Creative Consciousness and Structure/Rational Consciousness.
11. Dusty, played by Daniel Stern, and who’s fantastically wealthy, has a very rational problem: he has a huge house, with huge walls, and he therefore needs some huge art to occupy those walls.
12. Frederick, played pitch-perfect by Max Von Sydow, is the classic brooding artist archetype, who pursues his dreams by expressing them on canvas: he’s a painter, philosopher, scornful of the worlds of commerce outside. (In another scene, he confidently states that, were Jesus to come back to earth and see what was going on, he’d never stop throwing up.)
13. We see the typical Woody Allen “title card” appear as the scene commences: Dusty has bought a huge house in Southampton.
1. This is Dusty. He’s the one with the huge house in Southampton that is in need of some art to occupy its enormity.
1. He’s been brought here to meet Fredrick, here in his brooding artists’ artist loft in old-school Bowery / Chinatown New York City, the New York City Bowery of cheap, dirty lofts, well-occupied by all manner of rodentia. Books. Lots of books.
2. Already we get a sense that these two parties, despite being at the table together, are in conflict. Fredrick, the creative consciousness, cannot even look directly at Dusty, the rational consciousness. Dusty does an awkward hand-shake in attempt at representing that he’s ‘down for the cause’ of art and creativity: just look at the way Dusty is dressed, sporting a streetwear-like designer sweater, popped-collar, hair-styled to reflect a sense of hipness. I’m sure he has red sneakers on, somewhere below the frame.
*The Stella? The Warhol? They're big and weird!*
1. Dusty represents his appreciation of art — by telling everyone about the art he has acquired, and signals that he really knows nothing about the ‘Stella’ and the ‘Warhol’ he’s bought beyond that they are ‘big and weird.’
2. When Dusty is encouraged to consider some small drawings, carefully put on display for just this meeting, he reminds everyone that he has a really big wall, and needs something really big.
*“I do not sell my work by the yard”*
1. And here the creative consciousness is at the edge of becoming dysregulated: — Fredrick barks out, ‘I do not sell my work by the yard’
*“All I asked is if you had anything with a little puce in it!”*
1. Dusty continues to parameterize his rational needs: do you have something with a little puce in it to better match my ottoman? I need to consult with my interior decorator first.
*“This is degrading!” Look! I'm taking all my art and you can have nothing!*
*“Forget it, this guy is crazy..let's get outta here.”*
1. Fredrick finds this whole enterprise degrading to where he is now going to blow everything up by ceremoniously taking all of his drawings out of view and putting them away, as if to say — you can have \*nothing, and you’ll see..you’ll see..you shall suffer for the lack.
1. Dusty determines that his time has been wasted and prefers to take all his money and disappear into his chauffeured limousine, confident that he has lost nothing at all because, well — look at how long this limo is that’s been idling here waiting for my return.
2. And here is the conflict between Imagination and Structure, the one and the other not able to see the value they have to offer each other. They both leave the room with nothing more than confusion, conflict, rage and are well-dug in now as to their general scorn for the other.
3. This is the predicament. This is the way of being in the world we are born into.
4. Imagination \*contends with Structure. Structure \*contends with Imagination.
5. This is the association we have to undo and reimagine.
6. It’s been a set-up of ontological arrangements that, effectively, situate the MFA from the MBA in different rooms, altering and constraining the possible ways of associating and mingling, and conversing. And the association makes the one to the other somewhat alien to the degree that it is easy to react with confusion that can turn to fear and thence to anger.
7. How do we rearrange this ontological conflict?
8. How do we ignite a renaissance of collaboration between Imagination and Structure?
### Three Years Ago This Month
1. Three years ago to this month, I was in very cursory and preliminary conversations about a senior role in a design organization for a company that, basically and very literally, made cheap, plastic, phone, like..handles?
2. They were angling for an IPO.
3. Can you believe that? An IPO on volume sales of plastic handles for telephones.
4. Of course you can. It makes good, rational sense.
5. They come in party colors, and trippy swirls, too. So..there’s that on top of them making rational sense.
6. Anyway. This is the world we’re in. One where a CEO of a plastic handles company was going to go to the public capital markets for, well..more.
7. The CEO said to me out loud that he was looking for ‘his Alastair’.
8. If you’re in and around commercial product design, you’ll know what he was looking for — someone who could do for him what Alastair Curtis did for Logitech.
9. However you might laud, debase, or otherwise characterize what a CEO understands a Chief Design Officer to do, it most many cases it basically comes down to someone who can do an Alastair: “more beautiful computer keyboards; more faster gaming mice”.
10. Substitute keyboard and computer mouse for whatever you care to: lip gloss, analgesic ointments, shippable mattresses, air fryers, self-heating coffee mugs, toaster ovens, smart cities, mobility solutions, data aggregators.
11. Etcetera.
12. This is what design has become.
13. Wait. Is this what design has become?
14. Is this the table setting we wanted? The one where the creative consciousness can sit down and indulge itself? Make its nut and get the “underpriced” $1.3MM 2 bed, 1 bath, single-story bungalow I just heard about over in Los Feliz?
15. We sure hoped it was, didn’t we?
16. Didn’t we?
17. *“You mean, I can be creative and be valued for this gift I have developed or this skill I’ve been certified at (certified!) and the mechanics of the value exchange can be..*
18. *“Folding money!?*
19. *“Awesome!”*
20. For many, the lure of prominence, pay, a *Head of..* title, and prideful gloating was just beneath the surface of earnestly claiming that you were ‘creating products with love’ (or however we expressed our contribution as a well-functioning, well-disciplined unit of economic value creation.)
21. Whereas once there was an ascendency of design in the C-Suite because the creative consciousness — wait..I mean “design” — got a seat at the table, now there’s a crisis, because the creative consciousness — sorry, I meant to write “design” — got a seat at the table.
22. Really, what did you expect when you were invited to a seat at that particular table?
23. It sucks to realize that you were the evening’s entertainment and cajoled into playing boar on the floor.
24. As soon as you ceased to be enthralling or entertaining, as soon as the tone in the room changed and the boozy host’s mood festered as it considered the declining year-on-year numbers, and the musicians were dismissed, and the kombucha stopped flowing; as soon as that dark, drunk, 2AM slightly sinister and suspicious glower from the CEO appeared, McKinsey came over from the shadowed corner of the room and hands you your $9000 Tom Ford overcoat and $190 Paul Smith scarf, and gestures to the service door with a curt, “that’ll be enough of that.”
25. Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face, yeah?
26. And when you get punched in the face, do you sulk or get kinetic and rage, looking for someone to blame and yell at?
27. We know why we’re in crisis, and it probably has less to do with layoffs and that Design Thinking thing than we realize.
### What The Heck Happened?
1. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve seen what I would categorize as the most creative people I’ve had the pleasure to associate amongst find themselves in service to some exceptionally successful entrepreneurial people.
2. These genuinely creative folks were amply rewarded with mounds of filthy lucre and gobs of accumulated pride for creating everything from yet another faster computer mouse, self-inflating mattresses, beautiful design systems destined for use on trade show banners, better soda pop branding, self-heating coffee mugs, slogans that helped sell little geegaws that changed the music ecosystem such that flows of value shifted \*away from actual musicians, etcetera.
3. And these genuinely creative folks made us feel that this was the high watermark of creative practice because, well — look at me and my overland Sprinter van I can use to drive over land, rocks, and, you know.. — nature — and check out the buildout of this interior with this Design Within Reach chaise (or whatever).
4. These beautiful creative minds created cinematic and awe-inspiring campaigns with A-list celebrities behind the wheel of $90,000 sports cars encouraging us to consider that we probably \*do need another car to replace the perfectly good one in the driveway.
5. They’ve turned their immense gift for imagining and dreaming other worlds towards the task of slinging vacation rentals, dubious self-driving car gambits, e-mobility solutions, and prettifying SAAS music download data aggregator websites. They’ve given themselves preposterous awards for doing these things, and crowned themselves victorious for their efforts because, well — filthy lucre.
6. I’ve sat across from them as they seriously wondered whether $500,000 a year package would enable them to retire now, or in another few years.
7. Unhinged from the values associated with the creative consciousness, these truly exceptionally imaginative individuals have accounted for the lurking sense of their own internal conflict by doing a bit of adjunct teaching, or giving each other awards, or doing cancer charity work, somehow ignoring that the manufacturing processes, rare earth materials, consumptive liquids extracted at ecological peril, behavioral patterns encouraged or enforced by the 9x16 screens they design for — and pretty much everything else directly or indirectly associated by their massively affective creative work — is in fact primarily a causal factor \*for cancer, delusional behavior, violence — or worse.
### The Crisis
1. What is this ‘crisis’?
2. Could it be that the feeling values of imagination, renewal, dreaming new possibilities that lurk within the creative consciousness are in intense conflict with what design has become known as — a utility function, easily harnessed and just as easily dismissed.
3. “But – I thought Structure — I mean, “Google" — loved me?”
4. (“Google” never loved you.)
5. (At best, it lusted. Structure — the rational consciousness — will do that, with a sense of envy, just as Imagination — the creative consciousness — is susceptible to lusting after what Structure has of value: money, fame, attention, business class accommodations, restricted stock options, etcetera.)
6. “Google” wondered about Imagination with awe. You could feel it, couldn’t you?
7. Google would say:
8. “How do you do that thing? How do you know that the kerning should be \*that rather than \*that?
9. “Wait, you think those colors go together? How do you know?
10. “What a mystery you are… I need some of that mysterious creativity you have that I don’t have. Gimmie.
11. “Wait. Sit for a moment. I’ll show you I know you, and I believe in you, and I want you.
12. “I’ll integrate you into myself.
13. “Look! I’ve started wearing red sneakers, too. Here are some punch colors about the office. No office? Open plan? Kombucha? What’s that, but okay?
14. “Now we’re together, right? Here. Have some fun bean bags and a vegan lunch and six different options for a hot lunch. Dry cleaning, no problemo — that’s easy.
15. “You just wait and see. We’ll change the world, you and I. I can’t do it without you! J’adore!
16. “Here’s how much I love you, I’m going to give you what I value if you give me this imagination of yours. I need that. Wait. Here are some more of these restricted stock options.
17. “Can you feel how much I love you now?
18. “More? Okay, sure. No problem.
19. “When we’re done, there’ll be more on the dresser, I promise. Just don’t get *how you get*, okay? And please close the door on your way out.”
20. I could be wrong. But when the creative consciousness accepts to measure its success by things like revenue generated, users onboarded, month-on-month growth in active users, something is wrong.
21. When the creative consciousness makes decisions about what job to take based on what funding round the company has done (C is too late, evidently), something is wrong.
22. Is this a crisis?
23. Or is it a fit of confusion followed by rage at having been rug pulled.
24. Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m immune from the despondent feelings associated with being within the crisis.
25. I’ve had my fair share of rug pulls, I’ll tell you what.
26. After I founded, built, grew, and sold my product company OMATA — a success to a degree I can’t even begin to completely express, with every start-up horror story plot fully realized, and not just the one where the one other partner quits right when the work actually gets too hard to suffer while taking half the equity with him — I figured there was nothing I could *not* do. I mean — I had faced intense adversity and, through will more than anything, brought enough value to the company to make it something someone else wanted to buy.
27. I figured I’d be an enviable hire to lead a team in a tier one product company.
28. I was told, though, that I could do \*too much too well, which these days is about as useful as not being able to do anything at all.
29. I became grateful for that assessment, not from the implication that my experience and skills made me as useful as a lamplighter or ice cutter, but from the realization that the world right now is one of highly specialized compartments of work, what we once referred to as ‘the cubicle’ — and I’d lose my mind in a world in which human creative potential was organized in such a way.
30. So what are the other ways of organizing human creative potential?
### Is this another creativity versus capitalism polemic?
1. That was all pretty mean, I’ll admit.
2. Harsh words hit hard when one is sitting on a filthy curb, one eye blackened, missing a shoe and a mysteriously sore nether region.
3. That came from somewhere though, and I’m sitting next to you on that curb, to be certain. But, I’ve figured a few things out that I’d like to offer as palliatives.
4. I’m not here to make enemies. I’m here to create associations.
5. I’ll be even more direct to say, I’m not an anti-capitalist. I believe in value creation.
6. I’m not anti-capitalist because I was raised the child of a serial entrepreneur — my mother, a black woman, starting and growing multiple thriving businesses in a bucolic, small, very white town in New Jersey. That put food on our happy humble little table.
7. That’s the kind of capitalist I am. Create something others value, something genuine — like a haircut or a bit of local art, or some unique clothing from western Africa — and offer them a chance to exchange value for it.
8. I was raised the grandchild of a rich hearted poor black man who raised a family in the very rural tobacco country of Virginia and farmed tobacco and helped me feel, even as a young child, what it meant to build something beautiful. He taught me that whatever you create, make sure you own it.
9. And don’t forget, I built and sold a product company in true capitalist mode: get investment, create a thing, clarify its value to the marketplace, offer it at an increment of the cost of goods sold, and trust that if the value is there, people will exchange folding money for it. (And they did.)
### Well, so...now what?
1. Here’s what I suggest to reignite the vitality of the creative consciousness.
2. Do what Imagination and Creativity does well — but do it \*with Structure: imagine and build the kinds of organizations of human potential you’d prefer to inhabit.
3. This is what we’re doing at this 3rd evolution of the Near Future Laboratory.
4. We are actively experimenting with new modes of collaboration between Imagination and Structure, between creativity and the rational ordering of ideas and knowledge.
5. We have an imperfect and entirely unsettled mode of collaboration with projects organized internally borrowing little bits from other practice domains like open source collaboratives, and Hollywood — project initiators are Showrunners — and profits from projects are distributed amongst all contributors at the Showrunners discretion.
6. We associate actively with others experimenting with new modes of organizing human potential, from open source ontologies to earnest evolutions of the crowd funding idiom, like Metalabel.
7. And on and on.
8. A constant experiment to discover what lies at the vanguard of possibility for bringing Imagination and Structure into deep, rich, meaningful collaboration.
9. This is not for the feint of heart. My experience suggests that most people will give up on anything without a clear, immediate, tangible, and fungible incentive in about the time it takes for them to shrug, flop on the sofa, and pull a cork on a bottle of chilled rosé.
10. Can you name three designer-y friends who’d give up a salary to build a new kind of organization that will surely struggle for the fact that its way of operating in the world is so foreign that it’s hard to explain? And do so for a year or more?
11. Let me ask you that this way:
12. When you see a map of unknown, unexplored terrain do you see potential for exploration or would you rather shrug, flop, and pull a cork?
13. Do you see the edges of the map of human potential labeled “Here be Dragons”?
14. Or do you see that it actually says “Here be Angels”?
15. What do you think?
16. Time to Imagine Harder?
---
Written by **Julian Bleecker**.
**About the author**
Julian Bleecker is the founder of Near Future Laboratory, a creative studio, and OMATA, an actual design and engineering-led product company he founded on the last day of 2014\. At OMATA he grew the company and brand that built a product that reoriented a category with a strong sense that values precede scale. He successfully represented his dream for the future of the company, which means he was able to sell OMATA in 2021\. He considers himself a generalist with a burdensome range of skills, interests, and imagination: he has both bachelor’s and master’s degree in EE/CS and HCI, and a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board of Studies at UC Santa Cruz. At UCSC, he studied with Jim Clifford, Hayden White and Angela Y. Davis. His 2004 dissertation, ‘The Reality Effect of Technoscience’ was supervised by his mentor, Donna J. Haraway. His most recent book is “It’s Time To Imagine Harder”, and “Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, both independently designed, manufactured and sold in another experiment in new modes of creativity at the edges of the map. He sees Angels in the unknown/unexplored.
**Links**
- Website: [https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/](https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Podcast: [https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nearfuturelaboratory](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nearfuturelaboratory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Linktree: [https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj](https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Near Future LaboratoryNear Future Laboratory originated the practice of Design Fiction in 2008, and wrote the book The Manual of Design Fiction, now in its second printing and full of examples. Design Fiction helps translate intangible ideas and concepts into tangible artifacts that align teams around a vision, providingNear Future Laboratory](https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
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### De designer à ambassadeur de la culture design, quand le designer devient un catalyseur de transformations, par Fabrice Liut
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/de-designer-a-ambassadeur-de-la-culture-design-quand-le-designer-devient-un-catalyseur-de-transformations/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:15:07.000Z
English version below
## Résumé
Designer depuis 15 ans, Fabrice a évolué vers un rôle de "designer systémique & régénératif" intégrant diverses pratiques connexes telles que la bio-inspiration, la facilitation et l'anthropologie, affirmant que le designer est un caméléon capable de s'adapter à des univers variés pour concevoir de façon sensée et sensible.
Malgré la valorisation croissante du design dans certaines organisations, notamment en tant que ressource essentielle, le poste de “Chief Design Officer” reste peu répandu, ce qui soulève des questions sur la perception du design et la nécessité, ou pas, d'éduquer les dirigeants pour intégrer pleinement la pensée design dans la culture d'entreprise.
Fabrice a choisi de ne presque plus parler de design et de se positionner comme “chief of staff”, un rôle mieux compris aujourd’hui et qui sera essentiel demain au sein des organisations.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## De designer à ambassadeur de la culture design, quand le designer devient un catalyseur de transformations.
pour commencer par du contexte, je suis designer depuis plus de 15 ans. j'ai évolué de graphique designer à "designer systémique & régénératif", en passant par l'UX design et en intégrant de plus en plus de pratiques connexes au design comme la systémique, la bio-inspiration, la facilitation, l'anthropologie etc...
j'ai évolué avec le design et je me suis transformé avec lui. ce que je suis aujourd'hui est il me semble sur la droite ligne de l'évolution du design lui-même.
le designer est un caméléon : il doit être capable de se fondre dans des univers, des langages, des cultures et d'en comprendre les codes pour composer et "concevoir".
c'est ainsi qu'il va allier sa capacité de "mettre au monde" des concepts avec une conception "sensée et sensible".
Il fait partie des garants d'un "créer utile et adapté à des besoins".
il va travailler "avec" toujours, et c'est dans ce contexte transdisciplinaire et en intelligence collective que sa casquette de facilitateur va lui être nécessaire.
**il va permettre à des profiles et des modèles mentaux très différents de coopérer en bonne intelligence et de manière sensible : c’est aussi un traducteur, un catalyseur.**
nous somme dans cette description bien loin de ce qu'était un designer il y a encore 30 ans : très proche du marketing, du produit et du business, dans l'industrie, puis l'entreprise, en posture d'exécution.
bien plus dans le "dessin" que le "dessein".
désormais le designer est bien identifié comme une ressource nécessaire de l'écosystème projet, que ce soit produit, service, expérience, stratégique ou même pour travailler sur la vision
- cf le design fiction par exemple
paradoxalement, dans la plupart des entreprises et des institutions, les postes de designers ne sont pas encore systématiques et encore moins intégrés dans la direction générale ou dans les C-levels.
pas de CDO (chief design officer) systématique dans les boards et les comex, au même titre qu'un CMO par exemple (chief marketing officer).
c'est parce qu'il est encore difficile, et surtout en france, de bien comprendre ce qu'est "le design" et de passer au-delà des clichés et héritages culturels à la "Philippe Starck" et la référence au designer produit qui crée du mobilier très esthétique.
il me parait évident qu'il devrait y avoir des CDO dans toutes les organisations : mais c'est parce que je suis designer depuis trop longtemps et que mon regard est biaisé.
si j'applique la pensée design, il faut me mettre à la place de l'autre, du dirigeant d'entreprise par exemple : le design n'est pas nécessairement dans sa culture d'entrepreneur et business.
est-ce que alors je dois l'éduquer, sensibiliser et défendre "le design" pour qu'un jour il passe le plafond de verre culturel, encore très actuel, et que ce CDO symbolique s'installe plus naturellement?
**j'ai fais le choix d'une stratégie différente : jouer le caméléon jusqu'au bout et arrêter d'afficher que je suis designer ou même d’en parler de trop.**
j'accompagne des directions d'entreprises : plus simplement.. consultant, pourquoi pas... si ça permet de porter une casquette qui parle, qui rassure et qui me facilite l’ouverture de la première porte me permettre ensuite d'appliquer, sans le nommer, l'approche design avec les directions.
j'ouvre alors un "et si" qui m'est venu comme un déclic lors de la dernière colloque de recherche design à strate : **et si demain le design n'était plus un poste ou un métier**?
et si le design était plutôt une approche, un modèle de penser, du même ordre que la facilitation que chaque métier peut porter et intégrer en plus de sa spécialité ou expertise?
et si le design était le moyen "d"interfacer" les personnes, les métiers, les idées, les concepts et les créations?
la pensée design permet de faire émerger de liens nouveaux, de connecter des idées et connaissances éloignées en apparences et de faire exister des concepts concrètement et dans l'expérience du réel et de la matière.
les designers actuels sont les ambassadeurs de cette nouvelle ère du design, beaucoup plus infusée, partagée et appropriée par tous.
c'est eux qui peuvent diffuser cette pensée, ses méthodes et outils dans les organisations, en démontrer l'intérêt et l'efficacité pour ensuite transmettre à tous les collaborateurs, petit à petit.
désormais je me présente comme "chief of staff externe". Ce c-level existe, je ne réinvente plus la roue et je peux parler le même langage que les directions.
c'est le poste pour moi le plus proche de la place que peux prendre un designer dans une organisation : il travaille avec le CEO et le COO autant sur des sujets de vision, que de stratégie pour redescendre dans les opérations et pratiquer sur le terrain avec les équipes.
il est facilitateur, sparring partner, garant de l'amélioration continue du travail interne avec la culture du feedback, des essais/erreurs, des itérations continues etc...
pour aller un cran plus loin, je crois que le design va atteindre une couche culturelle : le design est une culture.
on a déjà bon nombres d'entreprises "by design" pour ne citer que Airbnb ou Notion par exemple et ça fait la différence!
un dernier cran plus loin : je crois que la culture design à tout intérêt à se marier et à être animée par les acteurs de la sustainability, de la durabilité, de la transition et transformation écologique, du régénératif, RSE, ESG, CSRD etc...
parce que le sujet principal, global et commun sur lequel il faut travailler est de prendre soin des humains et des non-humains rapidement.
et pour agir vite, efficacement, en bonne "intelligence collective", avec des outils et méthodes adaptées aux questionnements justes, à la coopération et à la co-conception, quoi de mieux que le "design"?
je crois que tous les designers ont nécessairement un engagement fort à porter vis à vis des enjeux écologiques et sociétaux actuels : parce que c'est eux qui facilitent la "concrétisation" et qui font exister les produits, services & expériences de demain.
tous les designers doivent nécessairement intégrer une approche systémique parce que l'engagement de "répondre à des besoins" doit prendre en compte non pas seulement les besoins du "client" mais les besoins de tout ce qui est vivant et qui est en lien avec l'organisation dans laquelle ou avec laquelle le designer est en action.
pour tenter de conclure, je crois que si nous intégrons en tant que "communauté du design" tout ce dont je parle, il nous est possible de considérer cette communauté comme un réel écosystème d'agents des transformations en cours qui peuvent agir dès aujourd'hui en coopération dans le sens d'une intention commune : produire de bons "designs", aboutis, complets, conscients.. et "tous en lien" participer à une transformation systémique de la société en se fondant "avec" les autres spécialités permettant de faire émerger de réelles et profondes innovations utiles, joyeuses et belles!
---
## Abstract
As a designer for 15 years, Fabrice has transitioned into a role as a "systemic and regenerative designer," incorporating various related practices such as bio-inspiration, facilitation, and anthropology. He asserts that a designer is a chameleon capable of adapting to diverse environments to design in a meaningful and sensitive manner.
Despite the increasing recognition of design in certain organizations, particularly as an essential resource, the position of "Chief Design Officer" remains uncommon. This raises questions about the perception of design and the necessity, or lack thereof, to educate leaders to fully integrate design thinking into company culture.
Fabrice has chosen to speak less about design and instead position himself as a "chief of staff," a role better understood today and which will be essential in organizations tomorrow.
## From designer to design culture ambassador, when the designer becomes a catalyst for transformation.
To start with some context, I have been a designer for over 15 years. I have evolved from graphic designer to "**systemic & regenerative designer**", incorporating UX design and integrating additional design-related practices such as systems thinking, bio-inspiration, facilitation, anthropology, etc. I have evolved alongside design and transformed with it. What I am today seems to be directly in line with the evolution of design itself.
**A designer is like a chameleon**: they must be able to blend into different environments, languages, cultures, and understand their codes in order to compose and "design". In doing so, they combine their ability to "give birth" to concepts with a thoughtful and sensitive design approach. They are part of ensuring the creation of something useful and tailored to specific needs.
A designer always works "with" others, and within this transdisciplinary and collective intelligence context, their role as a facilitator becomes crucial. They enable individuals with different backgrounds and mental models to collaborate effectively and sensitively – **acting as translators and catalysts**.
This description is far from what a designer was like 30 years ago: focused mainly on marketing, product, and business in industries and businesses, taking an execution-oriented approach, more concerned with “drawing” than “purpose”.
Nowadays, designers are recognized as essential resources in project ecosystems, whether it's product, service, experience, strategy, or even vision-related. However, in many companies and institutions, designer positions are not yet standardized, let alone integrated into top management or C-level roles. There is no systematic Chief Design Officer (CDO) in boards and executive committees, akin to a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), for example.
This lack of systematic recognition may stem from the difficulty – especially in France – of understanding the essence of "design" beyond stereotypes and cultural influences like references to iconic designers such as Philippe Starck, known for creating aesthetically pleasing furniture.
It seems clear to me that there should be CDOs in all organizations, but perhaps my perspective is biased due to my extensive experience as a designer. **If I apply design thinking, I should put myself in the shoes of others, such as business leaders, who may not inherently appreciate the value of design in entrepreneurship and business**.
Should I educate, sensitize, and advocate for design to break through the existing cultural limits, allowing for the more natural integration of a symbolic CDO role over time? Instead of overtly positioning myself as a designer, I have chosen a different strategy: **embodying the role of an external Chief of Staff**. This C-level position allows me to speak the language of top management and **to facilitate opening doors that lead to applying a design approach without necessarily labeling it as such**.
I now introduce myself as an "external chief of staff." This role closely aligns with the impact a designer can have within an organization: **partnering with the CEO and COO on vision and strategy while implementing operations and engaging with teams on the ground**. **The role involves facilitation, serving as a sparring partner, and ensuring continuous improvement through a culture of feedback, trial and error, and ongoing iterations.**
**Taking it a step further**, I believe that design is evolving into a cultural layer: **design is a culture**. Many companies are already adopting a "by design" approach, such as Airbnb or Notion, making a tangible difference. Additionally, I see the potential for design culture to intersect and be driven by sustainability, durability, ecological transition and transformation, corporate social responsibility, and environmental, social, and governance initiatives. **The primary, global challenge we must address is caring for both humans and non-humans promptly.**
Acting swiftly and effectively in a collective intelligence framework, with tools and methods that align with ethical inquiries, cooperation, and co-creation, design emerges as the ideal conduit for integrating individuals, professions, ideas, concepts, and creations.
**Current designers act as ambassadors of this new era of design, one that is more pervasive, shared, and embraced by all.**
They can disseminate this mindset, its methodologies, and tools within organizations, showcasing their relevance and effectiveness before eventually imparting these principles to all employees, gradually transforming workplace practices. **I believe that all designers must be strongly committed to addressing current ecological and societal challenges – as they are the ones who materialize and bring to life the products, services, and experiences of tomorrow.**
**Designers must adopt a systemic approach, ensuring that meeting needs extends beyond just clients to encompass all living beings connected to the organization they engage with**.
**In summary, I believe that if the design community embraces the concepts discussed here, we can envision it as a genuine ecosystem of transformation agents who can collaborate today towards a common purpose: delivering thoughtful, comprehensive, conscious, and interconnected designs that contribute to a systemic societal transformation together with other disciplines, yielding meaningful, joyful, and beautiful innovations.**
---
Écrit par **Fabrice Liut**.
**À propos de l'auteur**
Je soutiens les dirigeants d'entreprise, en tant que Chief of Staff externe, dans l'organisation, le développement et l'adaptation de leurs entreprises aux nouveaux défis qui se présentent.
Nous collaborons étroitement pour gérer les changements organisationnels, améliorer l'efficacité ou développer de nouvelles compétences, et j'accompagne chaque étape du processus en adoptant une approche pragmatique pour résoudre les problèmes actuels et atteindre les objectifs futurs.
J'ai récemment travaillé avec des dirigeants de Verkor, Hello Asso, CERA, Valorem, EDF R, Saint Gobain, Décathlon, groupe Adeo, Bosch Rexroth, Villette Makerz, Playgnrd, DS Ltd, Neoz…
**Liens**
- Site web : [https://liut.me/fabrice-liut](https://liut.me/fabrice-liut?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Newsletter :
- YouTube : [https://www.youtube.com/@FabriceLiut/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@FabriceLiut/videos?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[About meI am a regenerative Chief of Staff, but what does that mean? As much as possible, I work to take care of myself, the collectives, and the rest of living things. This is my current life mission: I…Liut](https://liut.me/fabrice-liut?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### A no-bullshit policy for Design, by Daiana Zavate
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-no-bullshit-policy-for-design-by-daiana-zavate/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:14:42.000Z
## **Abstract**
Moving forward towards an intended future and not one plagued by complications and impractical means to increase the quality of life where it's most needed, Strategic Design needs to lead a way that emphasizes on practicality and clear communication. Putting the right conditions in place for businesses to solve their own problems first before they attempt to leave a mark on their customers and the environment is something that Strategic Design can do well, but the task shouldn't be underestimated. For far too long, too much has been said and too little implemented. Reasons vary from systemic clashes, roadblocks in collaboration and poor understanding of problems. But if anyone is better equipped to act as a bridge between design and the world, that's Strategic Designers.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## **Bullshit is no bullseye.**
Hopefully, this optimistic account will at least inspire those who call themselves Strategic Designers to free themselves from the overload of impractical tools and the tendency to standardize processes when the opposite approach would be required.
I am guilty of using jargon, and terms like "value ecosystem", "co-creation in cross-functional teams," "long-term value." Frankly, it's hard to communicate without them but if your intention is to truly act on these promises then your solutions should clearly reflect them. But let me say this. Strategic Design is hard work, exhausting and confusing.
## **What's your design-jam?**
Strategic Design in VUCA quadrant
I'm beginning now to use the terms Strategic Designer and Design Generalist as interchangeable because of two main reasons:
1. The spectrum of their activities is becoming incredibly broad and versatile.
2. Solving problems is by far a straightforward path, especially with undefined solutions.
So, whether you explain your role using one or the other, I think it's fair to say that sometimes you are put in front of a seemingly impossible task.
Other design roles are able to do wonderful and tangible work that can be experienced and measured directly. But such is the task of the Strategic Designer to struggle and remove problems that hinder wonderful work from happening. We are dealing with systemic rigidity and contexts plagued by VUCA. Sure, all that can be ignored, we can adopt a linear process, and move things in some direction or another, but that doesn't really remove the elephant in the room. It just paints it in a colour that blends with the environment. So, when the problem arises again it's even harder to spot (I know something is wrong, but, gosh, what is it?!)
## **Humble insights from experience**
The insight for me working with a broad sphere of companies and cultures was that businesses don't efficiently. The bigger they are the slower and the more rigid they stay. They are full of blind spots that hinder problem understanding and even when the problem has been identified correctly, someone who's not in the loop but may be a crucial decision-maker, will simply overlook its value. To my astonishment, I thought the world would "crash" because things are impeded from happening, customers not getting the quality of service they expect and desperately pay for anyway.
In fact, mediocrity, poor results and drainages in a system, are not the end of the world as we know it. These may very well be the things that keep it all together. But that's a debate for another time.
So, why are we trying so hard to improve things? Is our innovation led now only by the prospect of profit? Perhaps, the common sensical say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" holds some practical truth to it and we should start thinking about the absurdity of incremental innovation that has ruined half of my personal experience as a user.
But here's a hopeless ambition I have and can't seem to get rid of: an aggressive increase in quality over quantity.
As a Strategic Designer with far too little experience I cannot help but wonder naively at the landscape of Design: why are we using design skills in such a limited way? We have the opportunity to create meaningful improvements, but instead their role is reduced or simplified to fit in a framework of control.
Take digital design par example:
For the past couple of years, web and app design have been pushed in a direction of oversaturation. The current push into a market that is dawning, is disappointing. We are not reinventing the role of design to become fresh and useful again in areas where talented people can transfer and learn new skills. The landscape of digital design needs to change and is not slick design with intuitive UI that I would, personally, look for as the way to do it. Patch work is not quality work.
From a user perspective and not so much as a designer, I must admit that I've become lazier and more in the search of minimalism thanks to AI. I dread looking at any website just for open browsing, ads and offers that tire me. All I need is a tiny search button where I can type what I'm looking for. A well-executed design is the one that removes all of the noise for me and let me find very easily what I'm looking for. Add a good chatbot and I might as well interact with it, instead of scrolling around. Of course, I barely have a say in this, since users are consumers, and the more they consume, the better. Sure, if you are a talented designer, get creative, impress me, but if the result is average and I've probably seen the same layout 1000 time, paired with poor content - it's a disappointing state for that area of design.
And the problem doesn't even end there.
The amount of courses and bootcamps that have surfaced lately is overwhelming. Everyone is teaching about web/ui/ux/app/graphic design etc. "Become a freelancer, the layoffs in these companies won't affect you. They are an opportunity for you who are more versatile, as the designers who worked in those companies where not very good. But you can definitely out best them. This is a fairly ridiculous response I got from someone teaching one of these courses. This reminded me of a short fable I once read on a university wall: "Shi Tzu (don't remember the name exactly) spent his entire life to master the skill of hunting dragons, but by the time he became a master, there were no more dragons to hunt. So, instead, he decided to teach others to become dragon hunters." The hard truth is, it will be very difficult to get hired just by doing a course. Taking design seriously, means you have to build a proper and extensive design education, one 3 or 6 months course won’t cut it. *(Why designers quit – Medium & Why getting hired soon after UX training is so hard? – Medium)*
I cannot judge, since everyone is trying to hold on to what they know and can do. Change is not easy to spot because it's not evenly distributed. But the clock is ticking, and that change might as well sweep away all of the digital design into a storm.
But Strategic Design is equally problematic and at risk. A lot of things are really inconsistent in our interconnected world. The rich well of useless things promoted as catering to excitement "needs" and experiences requires a critical eye to discern the purpose of design where it's hardly obvious. How many apps can take care of my needs? When will I value the contribution of service design in the public sector and when will my say really count?
Maximizing value of things that don't provide any real value is more of a mind game rather than creative problem solving in product innovation, for instance. Everyone wants to design meaningful things that also return profit, but at some point on the roadmap there has to be a compromise. When this happens, you bring a distorted picture of the reality of your users and have to invest resources in maintaining it.
"The two prime currencies for business leaders today are commercial sense and execution (or “viability and feasibility” in design thinking speak). None of the toolkits, methods and artifacts of the Strategic Design toolkit take this seriously enough. They are afterthoughts or chapter headings, often seen through the lens of “desirability”." *(*[*Class35*](https://class35.medium.com/?source=post%5Fpage-----d480e1703403--------------------------------)*, Medium)*
Done right, Strategic Design is an extremely valuable asset. Threading superficially, dealing with symptoms show only a weak form of Strategic Design that doesn't really solve relevant problems, but handles patchwork since it leads to quicker results. So now, more than ever, it has to prove itself.
My ambition as a Strategic Designer is that at some point, I'll become so good at what I do that when I propose a solution to a problem it will be impossible to ignore or refute. All the relevant stakeholders will be weaved in, the conditions for action to be taken will be in place and no one will try to downplay or replace it with a "simpler" or quicker fix. Sure, a good solution can be costly, but even if it was done for free, the cost of change (even though it may be just a mindset change really) is perceived as higher. But strike with clarity of idea and action in a messy world and you might get a chance to actually contribute to projects that lead effective solutions.
## **Oh, and one more thing...It may sound obvious to some but...**
Strategic Designers don't pull solutions out of thin air. But because the role is so versatile, most people don't know they need SD at the table. Their effort and attention is a mix of strategic groundwork, coming prepared, equipped with tools relevant to collaboration and handling the complexity where the problem needs to be (re)framed, (re)thought, (re)defined. Working with Strategic Designers can be a challenge for siloed and large-size organizations because the nature of collaboration and the solutions that usually arise from this engagement tend to be systemic and transformative which would require tearing down extra walls you didn't account for initially.
## **Framework design**
So, the toolkits and the artifacts Strategic Designers create are really hard to measure, just by taking a glance at them. You see their power when they move the work and the people involved. I personally found framework design as a super-exciting niche (misleading, since requires such extensive knowledge to pull off). It's something that aligns to change, it boosts my experience and the quality of my work. The downside is, some of my frameworks might not be used without me or if I move from one different problem to another, I will have to reinvent the wheel if the context deems the two incompatible. A lot of toolkits will catch dust, some may even be dropped along the journey. But that's the change I see for Strategic Design:
1\. You have to constantly redefine and present yourself as with each cycle of transformation the State of Design goes through
2\. You have to make hard decisions and be very clear about why others have to make them too
3\. You have to build stamina to engage with complex challenges that require expert knowledge you may not have but will be worth it just to know who can be brought at the table to
## **To put it shortly:**
Strategic Design needs to be bolder and closer to the problems rather than the toolkits. We are humans, constantly learning, most of the time not knowing what to do, but it's the resilience and the perseverance that makes the difference on how problems are approached. You push for what is possible when you don't know it's possible. You learn as much as you can and focus on sharing that knowledge with anyone involved. Insights and breakthroughs are not available for those who hope that a solution arises from their minds. It's the temporary collective mind that surfaces from good collaboration. At the end of the day, for quality outputs, you need quality inputs. Never fall short of that.
I’d love to know the perspectives of other Strategic Designers out there So give me a shout 😉 I’m more than happy to share and humbly learn from you.
## References
- [https://class35.medium.com/sorry-folks-the-strategic-design-gold-rush-is-over-d480e1703403](https://class35.medium.com/sorry-folks-the-strategic-design-gold-rush-is-over-d480e1703403?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://medium.com/design-bridges/junior-designers-915c493f83b1](https://medium.com/design-bridges/junior-designers-915c493f83b1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/why-designers-quit-2023-report-24dae87d7896](https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/why-designers-quit-2023-report-24dae87d7896?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Written by **Daiana Zavate**.
**About the author**
Strategic Designer on a journey to get crazy better at developing practical approaches to problem framing and perspective shifts. Top playground: Framework Design.
Links
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### Ask the Right Question, by Jennifer Fraser and Scott Plewes
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ask-the-right-question-by-jennifer-fraser-and-scott-plewes/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:12:44.000Z
## Abstract
What is the right way to evaluate the current “state” of UX? In a world where business stakeholders are focused on numbers and metrics to ascertain value, how does UX play a role in this STEM-obsessed world? We can start by asking the right questions and instead of looking within, look at how well we are adapting to our ecosystem at this moment in time.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## Ask the Right Question
> *Ask the Right Question*
> *– Jody Foster (as Detective Liz Danvers,* [*True Detective - Season 4*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True%5FDetective%5Fseason%5F4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*)*
### **What is the “right” way to evaluate the state of UX?**
In the TV Series “True Detective”, the protagonist (Detective Liz Danvers) is trying to make sense of puzzling observations. These observations seem contradictory, or may be dismissed as irrelevant by others, but the detective persists so that she can, eventually, understand what really happened in the system. A system where people, technologies, and institutions interacted in a complex yet explainable manner. It is a lot of work and takes patience, as well as highly developed skills of observation, analysis and deduction.
In situations like this, there is often an antagonist who wants a quick resolution. A resolution that sounds “good enough”, ie: people will “buy it”, if they don’t look too closely at the data, worry about what data is relevant, or whether you are asking the right questions. The antagonist’s approach may be better adapted, in some ways, to the needs of the other stakeholders in the system. They might also want a quick resolution, something that matches their preconceived notions, and lets them make decisions and move forward. The more predisposed stakeholders are to these appealing characteristics the less they want to listen to the “true” detective.
UX is, at least partially, in a type of crisis because ***mimicking*** “true UX” is, in many cases, better adapted to success in business than doing “true UX”.
This adaptation consideration is important because a limited way to talk about the state of something is by describing, or measuring, its attributes i.e.: the particular condition that something is in at a specific time. For example, a person is so tall at a certain age, or a ball is being thrown so fast. Therefore, to talk about the state of UX in this way we would look at its internal attributes. This could be, for example, what it does, what it offers, or how many people have been hired into UX positions in the last year.
But, another way to think about the state of something is how well adapted it is to its current ecosystem at this moment in time. If we instead use this definition, then the state of UX would be defined by both what the UX community does and offers, but also its relationship within its broader ecosystem; in particular to what degree it is thriving within this ecosystem. This means that the state of UX would need to take into account the relationship between UX practices, their value to business, and how UX is influenced - and at times in competition with - other elements in the ecosystem. This would include competition that comes from data science, LLM’s, and practices “mimicking” UX, but not following its rigor. If, for the moment, we think of these elements as UX’s competition, then UX is not doing great.
The relationship between UX and its value to business is highly influenced by an increasing desire for quantitative-based insights and metrics, and an amplified misunderstanding of UX.
Quantitative UX is important, and has a critical role to play, but not to the exclusion of Qualitative UX. Quantitative data can “feel” better because it seems more rigorous, more scientific, and therefore more certain. The fact that the data, or the data analysis, may be irrelevant to the problem or goal at hand is often overlooked. This is exacerbated by the wide-scale availability of data and the outputs of various LLMs feeding this desire, unfortunately it is not accompanied by a clear understanding of the data itself, its provenance, and its implicit bias.
Instead, we see people pushing the data to give an answer without considering whether or not it is the "right" answer, or whether that answer might be obfuscating a more important insight. For example, it may seem insightful to know your customers are going to abandon your product, on average, after a certain number of calls to customer support. But, does that really help if you don’t know why and therefore how to intervene effectively to keep them?
But in spite of this, social science-based UX is losing out to math and algorithms, because it's not adapted to what business stakeholders perceive as valuable. In a STEM obsessed world, numbers rule.
In order to successfully intervene in a complex system, we need to understand the interplay between humans, technologies, and institutions, and that understanding should not only be based on numbers. This is because the elements that define the state within a human system do not share characteristics that are often true in physical systems. In physical systems we have: absolute laws; identically behaving particles; finite and manageable variables; well understood boundary conditions; emergent variables and relationships that are mathematically connected to smaller scale aggregate behaviours; easier extension of experimental internal to external validity; and more apparent causal relationships. These characteristics of physical systems make them amenable to almost exclusively mathematically based analysis.
Math will continue to work fantastic for physics until electrons start having emotional responses, and be somewhat limited in human endeavors until people start acting like electrons.
Traditional social science-based UX plays a critical role in the understanding of human systems, but it is being replaced by numerical models of understanding that are limited, and/or biased, and these limitations are not being recognized as people are often not taking into account the broader system and its inherent complexity.
So, is UX in a losing competition with equations and algorithms? Only if we choose to be. The competition isn’t inherent in the ecosystem, it’s a choice people make. And we can choose to combine our quantitative and qualitative approaches.
The rich data we have access to, and the math and computing we can apply to it, can provide us with unprecedented understanding and innovative solutions. Added to a broader understanding of the ecosystem and the interplay between the elements in the ecosystem to contextualize it, the opportunities for a new approach to UX are almost boundless. This is not just about mixed methods. It is about connecting multiple approaches - qualitative and quantitative - to understanding business ecosystems and the people within them.
We need to ask the right question, and by doing so, we would stop defining the state of UX by looking within, but instead, by looking at the health of its interaction with the other elements in its ecosystem.
We postulate that the state of UX is at an inflection point, and inflections can go in two directions, they can take off upward, or plummet downward.
Partnering with math and computing is the path upwards.
---
Written by **Jennifer Fraser** and **Scott Plewes**.
**About Jennifer Fraser**
*Jennifer Fraser* is an accomplished executive with deep experience in the field of Experience Strategy and Design. She has designed products for many different target markets, including: healthcare; security, aviation; and finance. As a consultant, she builds teams and leads experience strategy and design across the spectrum of Customer, Employee, Product and User, as they are all intertwined. She worked as an architect in her former life, which relates to her interest in systems design and finding connections between things.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferfraser/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferfraser/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Website: [https://jfxd.ca/](https://jfxd.ca/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[jfXD – Experience. Strategy. Design.JFXD logo](https://jfxd.ca/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**About Scott Plewes**
Over the past thirty years, *Scott Plewes* has worked in the areas of business strategy, product design and development in the high tech sector with a specialization in experience design. He has extensive cross-sector expertise and experience working with clients in complex regulated industries such as aviation, telecom, health, and finance. His primary area of focus over the last several years has been in product and service strategy and the integration of multi-disciplinary teams and methods. Scott has a master's degree in Theoretical Physics from Queen's University.
**Links**
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-plewes/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-plewes/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Website: [https://www.akendi.com/blog/author/scott/](https://www.akendi.com/blog/author/scott/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Scott PlewesUX Reflections on Experience ThinkingAkendi UX BlogAbout Us](https://www.akendi.com/blog/author/scott/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### The State of Design: An Unnecessary Topic to Write About, by Vinish Garg
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-an-unnecessary-topic-to-write-about-by-vinish-garg/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:12:22.000Z
## Abstract
Design has been part of our systems since ages and across the generations—in manual tools for use by our hands, in the machines, in print and media, and now in technology. We had design engineers designing our cars one hundred years ago. We always had textile designers, and cutlery designers.
Do we need to question the state of something that has been a default ever since we can imagine? Do we talk about the state of chair design—for the chair that we use for our work, or the state of cutlery design while having food?
Think of a small business anywhere in the world who makes water bottles—can they manufacture bottles without thinking of its usability for the users? Can an architect plan designing a school or park, without thinking like a designer?
When you talk about the modern cities and the streets where kids cannot play—this is not only an administration failure or policy failure—this is a design failure.
It sounds funny that the organizations seek design maturity in the design systems or in design operations whereas the design fails them in the sign up forms and in the dashboards. We see it all the time. Every single day.
We need to position our design judgment better. For being a part of the design food chain—as producers and as consumers. We just need to design with common sense—our collective common sense.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## The State of Design: An Unnecessary Topic to Write About
To begin with, I find it unnecessary to talk about the state of design. I will use this article as an opportunity to share why I feel so.
Design has been a part of our systems since ages and across the generations—in manual tools for use by our hands, machines, in print, and now in technology. We had design engineers designing our cars one hundred years ago. We always had textile designers, and cutlery designers.
**Do we need to question the state of something that has been a default ever since we can imagine?** Do we talk about the state of chair design—for the chair that we use for our work, or the state of cutlery design while having food?
Whenever we saw a significant shift in how we design or use technology whether it was for responsive design, accessibility, voice, or for feeding the modern training models, we were excited to ring the bell for the state of design for the design maturity and design ROI methods and frameworks. We must remember that for the consumers, the Winamp players and the MS SharePoint 2003 too were *an experience to remember*.
Design was always around.
We tend to see the state of design in the technology lens—AI, future-friendly content, unknown devices, voice interactions, intelligence in personalization, and for more context in the user experience.
The design principles, practices and its applications change with the changing consumer behavior and for the evolving ergonomics.
Design guides the architecture—the information architecture practice makes these two support each other.
Design facilitates thinking (*Oh not design thinking, please*). Design builds confidence (*and shatters it equally effectively*). Design enables wayfinding (*provided we want to navigate*). Design fosters research and it helps in studying humans and human behavior.
Design answers. When design questions, it is prepared to discuss.
Design builds conversations and these conversations build communities.
How does it matter whether the app user is a college student in Mexico, or an astronaut in New Zealand, or a chef in Durban, or a doctor in Paris, or a farmer in Vienna? How does it matter whether they want to use an app to pay college fees, or to cancel a doctor appointment, or to buy a new yoga mat? **We cannot take common sense and human judgment out of the design equations**.
Far too many modern digital products are poorly designed—we see it all the time. Every single day.
It surprises me that even in the year 2024, a majority of technology leaders worldwide have a poor understanding of the role of design ([tweet](https://x.com/alexkehr/status/1777737086902362245?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
> The biggest trap many consumer app founders are falling into right now is endless obsession over tiny design details. It paralyzes your product from progressing.
>
> No user cares how beautiful your app is.
>
> — Alex Kehr (@alexkehr) [April 9, 2024](https://twitter.com/alexkehr/status/1777737086902362245?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
And they set wrong examples for their network and the community. Just as a child notices something when their parents throw the plastic bottle in the lake.
Think of a small business anywhere in the world who makes water bottles—can they manufacture bottles without thinking of its usability for the users? Can an architect plan designing a school or park, without thinking like a designer?
> **If I cannot increase the volume of my device while I am in an online call, this is first a design failure and then an engineering failure.**
> **If I hurt my thumb while using a Jaguar tap, it is first a design failure and then a manufacturing failure (**[**related tweet**](https://x.com/vingar/status/1584401694732955648?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**).**
Even war is a design failure in many ways—when we think of complex systems that may have led to the war whether these are in the historical context, politics, internal administration, international relations, segmentation of societies and humankind—these point to a breakdown in the communication systems somewhere and which is not disconnected from how those broken systems were designed and how these could have designed.
When you talk about the modern cities and [**the streets where kids cannot play**](https://aeon.co/essays/why-boring-streets-make-pedestrians-stressed-and-unhappy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)—this is not only an administration failure or policy failure—this is a design failure.
Every individual in my in-person network who is going out for a haircut, or for buying fruits just needs a phone to make the payment. Hundreds of micro-interactions via QR codes by a single vendor in a day might help us rank higher in the digital maturity but they do not care to know how it feeds and fuels hundreds of algorithms worldwide and how [**a cashless society**](https://aeon.co/essays/going-cashless-is-a-bad-idea-but-its-not-a-conspiracy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a step backwards for our goals towards an inclusive and diverse social system. If technology cannot build this education—this is a design failure.
When the carpenters were designing chairs for a family at home or in their garden, they were also building the capacity to design the chairs for the unknown use cases. When they saw the possible demand for office chairs in their town, they built on their experience and it shows in the[ **evolution of chair design**](https://www.archdaily.com/901164/see-how-the-design-of-chairs-beds-and-sofas-have-evolved-through-history?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). When we use forks while having food, do we question the state of cutlery design because the dishes are evolving, the dining experience is changing, and even our[ **fingers' ergonomics**](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/abb/2018/8567648/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) are also changing?
To see how design can make better and a more positive contribution to our collective life for the collective well-being, inclusively, we need design at the meta-systems level first. We need to build bridges to set up the historical context to how we have been evolving as makers and as consumers and how *how everything is designed and how it evolved* have been a default.
Design is like *3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197*...—a constant. The difference is that it sits on the rational side of Pi. So that we can see. We can see around and learn how people live their life—in what constraints—we are designing a lot of things that we can actually see in their life.
For a minute, just observe the device and the app that you are using to read this article now. Have we not laughed at these browsers for shattering our confidence? Have we not laughed at those printers if you are reading this article on a physical paper?
**The talks on design maturity, design ROI, design systems, design operations, design leadership—these serve merely as a salad on the table**. The main course is lost somewhere in Figma, overhyped stakeholders, discovery synthesis that is shelved now, and in the underrated and dusted micro-systems that rarely get a chance to see the design light in real sense. *And this salad shows in our digestion system*—*we consume what we cultivate*.
> It sounds ridiculous when teams talk about *adopting* design thinking. Is the absence of design thinking possible? **For example in a fine dining restaurant kitchen, do the chefs and the staff talk about butter thinking, or dough thinking, or olives thinking?**
There is a silver lining designed in a mild yellow color shadow that passes through the vision of a few organizations including [**Polycene**](https://polycene.design/Core-Design-Principles?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**AndEnd**](https://www.andend.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Stewarding Loss**](https://www.stewardingloss.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Dark Matter Labs**](https://darkmatterlabs.org/Projects?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Helsinki Design Lab**](https://www.helsinkidesignlab.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (closed now but their work is a forever great reference) [**Slow Design**](https://slowlivingldn.com/journal/interiors/slow-design-principles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Demos Helsinki**](https://demoshelsinki.fi/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Hugh Dubberly**](https://www.helsinkidesignlab.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and a few more. There have been a few amazing conferences and communities worldwide who serve to take the practice forward. But these are too few. We do not have enough references to build our bets. We lack the confidence to admit that we lack confidence.
We have been too slow.
We spoke about collaboration and alignment in 2014, in 2019, and we talk about these in 2024 too.
If we say that design is complicated now, my question is—"compared to what?".
We think that we are learning but we are losing our capacity faster than the speed of our learning—we work like the capacitor of an ageing fan—responding positively to the action on its switch but it does not help the occupants.
All the [**teams reporting to UX Research**](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7176321604681904128/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) will not help. Sorry. Hiring content designers will not help. Sorry. Positioning ourselves investing in evidence-based design have not helped many—we see tons of examples of design failure in all such organizations.
As long as there is a struggle of versus—production vs maintenance, or profits vs people, or sales vs systems, our [**investments in innovation**](https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) will continue to be part of the misplaced hype.
We feel this **struggle of feeling high versus feeling a dent in our confidence.**
**Design has designed us to deny this struggle.**
Meanwhile I have just moved from my desk chair to the terrace chair while writing this article, and I am looking at the dessert fork in my plate on the table. A plate and my set of UNO cards—Skip, Reverse, Wild—a lot like our work. *Any guesses for what could be in my plate*?
We need to position our design judgment better. For being a part of the design food chain—[**as producers and as consumers**](https://medium.com/@vingar/design-in-the-design-food-chain-for-the-design-food-chain-672ac0ed0ce6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Design has been the default. It will be. We just need to design with common sense.
(Thanks to **Dene Gabaldon** ([their LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/denegabaldon/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and **Cyd Harrell** ([their LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cydharrell/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) for their quick review of my post.)
---
Written by **Independent, Vinish Garg**.
**About the author**
Vinish Garg is an independent consultant who works with technology teams worldwide on the intersection of product management, UX and design leadership, content and positioning leadership, and system thinking. Vinish enjoys working with teams to establish the standards and principles of how we work, and how our standards translate into customer onboarding design, the organization growth levers, the product and brand positioning, and how our collective intelligence builds sustainable systems.
Vinish owns an international UX conference in Chandigarh since 2018—[https://www.outcomeconf.com/](https://www.outcomeconf.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). He is a lecturer in Graz University, Austria teaching content design (and content's intersection with UX, products, and customer experience) in their masters program.
[Home - Products UX Content Design Strategy ConferenceOutcome conference is for product minded UX and design practitioners, content strategists, content designers, and product leaders. Welcome to Chandigarh, India.Products UX Content Design Strategy ConferenceOutcome Conference](https://www.outcomeconf.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Links**
- Website: [https://www.vinishgarg.com/](https://www.vinishgarg.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Substack:
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinishgarg/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinishgarg/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Twitter: [https://twitter.com/vingar](https://twitter.com/vingar?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Mastadon: [https://mastodon.social/@vingar](https://mastodon.social/@vingar?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Conference: [https://www.outcomeconf.com/](https://www.outcomeconf.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Vinish Garg - Vinish GargVinish Garg works with product teams for product strategy, product positioning, onboarding and UX, product content strategy, content design, UX writing.Vinish GargVinish Garg](https://www.vinishgarg.com/ ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### Web Designing, Architecting, AI-ing, by Matt Ji
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/web-designing-architecting-ai-ing-by-matt-ji/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:11:53.000Z
## Abstract
Web can be viewed from many angles: Old and new, big and small, uniform and diverse. It's hard to pick along a continuum because the tribes like to territorialize. This poses a problem and an opportunity for planeswalkers to take advantage of three key evolving themes of the web: javascript vs all the other languages, corporate monopoly of backend data, AI's role at completing the trilogy of the semantic cybernetic future of intelligence.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## Web Designing, Architecting, AI-ing
Consider carefully what UX means in a market system environment and what that entails for designers and their roles. First and foremost, let's deconstruct that term, market system environment, before this article becomes an exponential word salad. A market is where buyers and sellers engage in negotiation and transactional behavior. A system is a framework for analyzing the traces, feedback loops and connections between individual nodes of buyers and sellers. Are you with me so far? Because now we're talking about the environment, which is all of the ignored relationships that has never needed analysis because it was never measured or even imagined. It is this third sphere where the creativity and adaptability of designers shine the most but is also at the highest risk to exposure to be percieved by others to have a sort of irrelevant thinking.
## Simple case: QWERTY
The oft-mentioned QWERTTY keyboard layout is an artifact of design. It was first introduced to slow down typing speed so the old-fashioned typewriters didn't jam. It was a design-implementation success because it served the intended purpose of making sure the device interfaces robustly with users. Unbeknownst to the original designers, the design was so successful that it hijacked the market system environment upon further commercial adoption and ingrained feedback loops to make QWERTY the successful standard that it is today.:
qwerty keylayout
However, a designer who is looking to solve a different "higher-level" problem might take a look at ergonomics a little more seriously. The very intent of the QWERTY design was to slow on the pain of wrist discomfort. Today, that constraint of keys jamming might be gone but the standard remains. That designer might introduce something like the Dvorak key-layout below after indoctrinating new party members to its cult.:
dvorak key layout
Depending on your design politik worldview on keyboards, you either: (1) believe that once something becomes a standard, it is an "already-"solved problem and attention should be directed elsewhere or (2) aim to radically tear-down outdated standards in favor of typing nirvana for both yourself, others and future generations. Clearly, there is a "secret third thing" betwixt these views but it is hard to consider where to even begin without the dialectic placeholders of conservative and liberal political stances especially when it comes to design. And who knows? Maybe the highest-level of keyboard layout design is no keyboard, because why would ergonomics be a thing when health/pain is solved in the future?
## The Dao of Web Design
> *The Dao creates one.*
> *One creates two.*
> *Two creates three.*
> *And three creates the ten thousand things.*
> – Dao De Jing - Lao Tzu - chapter 42
The intended objectives of a designer isn't to one-shot a solution but play with the apparatuses that works. Works is also a fuzzy term which is why I re-introduced the key-layout example in the context of standards and feedback loops. In other words, you kind of have to create a cult if you want to trigger mass adoption of your particular way of doing things, whether it be a new programming language or an AI tool. And within this playground of frameworks, a designer will often be met with this panlogic conundrum of chapter 42 of the Dao De Jing or Schelling's Hegelian Dialectic.
So what does this mean for webdesign and UX. The current state of the design is heavily favored in the javascript frameworks that prioritize beautification elements and components that engage a user through the browser with glowing and flashy buttons. It really is a sensory overload dark design pattern that is meant to serve the purpose of a unitary CTA, or Call to Action in web design parlance of getting a user to click "I Agree" or "Buy Now" without being subversive. This is a pattern that, once again, makes a recursive look-back at the market system environment feedback loops that reinforce this practice.
Attention is a valuable scarce resource to the user; but to the provider, it is a commodity that serves as the platform to alienate, isolate and rectify an individual and transmute it into a unit of exchange
This is the sad current state of UX today. Users are delighted by the inane overstimulation and their attention is trapped. Is there a way out of this trap? You betcha'. Every 'QWERTY' has its 'Dvorak'. Indeed, web developers have manifestos written like [Resilient Web Design](https://resilientwebdesign.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) which sets up an accessibility awareness mindset. Those who know study and know these concepts deeply wield unimaginable Jedi-like powers. But for those developers, mindlessly droning away to create red and blue buttons serving as soul-less puppets to their big tech employers, what can be done to serve, enrich and empower them to re-invigorate the web with a new slant towards transparency?
This is where the focus turns toward DX, or developer/designer experience. As anybody who has touched business applications knows, things are ugly or broken on the back-end but flavorful and colorful on the front-end. Why? Now you have a better inkling of this phenomenon to answer this question yourself.
To follow the formula that has worked in the past: we need a dialectic, auto-generator, one that culture intrinsically provides, serves and replicates for eons in our memetic universe.
## HTMX vs Javascript Frameworks
There is a story of a funny guy out of Montana who works as an assistant professor at Montana tech. He has been larping as a twitter troll and in the past year became a little bit of a viral hit among web developers. [HTMX](https://htmx.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is the new buzzword floating around and it is centered around making HTML cool again while being hyper-ironic in a very gen-Z-esque meme-ing fashion. Quite a juxtaposition!
### What does this mean for web developers?
He has already written 3000 lines of javascript code so you dont have to. All you have to do is add this one snippet of code to your html (approx. 14 kB) and now your webpages can bypass the complex javascript libraries that ceaselessly render and hijack hardware memory and your system's energy (an actual state improvement when we consider environment-writ-large):
```HTML
```
Not so fast! For the past two decades of front-end web development, roles have been separated so that front-end cannot mess or touch the server components. For good reasons because you dont want that one button guy to accidentally take down your website because he/she introduced an infinite for loop animation. In order for HTMX to work, web devs have to have full access to server components which means having to write the logic of balancing server load of a webpage, which ultimately amounts to Jedi-powers.
In many ways, htmx has become a sort of silent revolution on its own amassing a cult following in [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/htmx/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) sharing tips and tricks of implementing server call functions and taking webpages away from SPA frameworks, single-page-applications and back to statically rendered pages with clever modernized features such as serving partial html without embeddings, iframes limitations, and page reloads. This leaves a web designer with more capabilities of rendering the website without having to make compromises to the UX of shifting through full-reloads making an html library of files work seamlessly like one single page application without having to deal with any javascript.
One of the biggest issues of introducing htmx to newbies is that it is virtually impossible to share an example via a plain blogging or article format because none of today's modern web architecture allows server side calls placed directly on HTML due to the distrustful nature of the two-ends. Which is why HATEOS, hypermedia as the engine of state, is a breath of fresh air as an old-new web design philosophy.
### Web Design and AI Apex
In many ways, this undercurrent of htmx bubbling to the surface is a godsend moment in web development because the camps of programming language have been divided for a decade. A lot of the front-end has been in javascript while other programming languages like python haven't had much time in the sun when the competitive nature of attention has been more about dynamically rendered pages. But at the same time, python has become a language of choice for data science and machine learning. Extensive libraries are written in python so a clever designer has a treasure trove of content to dig and highlight from that are categorically different from more javascript UI/UX focused libraries and functions offering a paradigmatic dialectic Jihad in web development today.
There is an opportunity with explosive potential of combining the feel of modern web apps infused with AI powered content to really shine and lead this new era. Javascript has never really been allowed to handle server components until recently. This means databases and backend architecture that are known for speed and performance like the search engine Google can now be democratized so long as the right policies are enabled like filtering fact from fiction. Everything is now up for grabs.
### Jedi Power #1: Queries per second
If you sign up for a [Google Gemini Developer API key](https://makersuite.google.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), you will see that your super power is listed as 60 queries per second. How do you maximize the use of this feature to your users? With traditional chat bots, it might take a few seconds for the user to type in a question. But what if for each key stroke, you have an auto-fill populate several 'hypothetical prompts' and generate answers and displaying those to the user even before they can click send? It seems like magic but it's not. A very basic implementation of this leads to a very buttery UX that makes chat-modules seem antiquated.
- [Minimalistic Demo of Chat App using Python:Flask:HTMX](https://replit.com/@jisifu/TemplateCIchat?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Jedi Power #2: Instant data-sharing architecture
This is one of those privacy, security paradigms that can be flipped now that we are dealing with synthetic data. In the current perspective of looking at data privacy, a consumer doesn't want trackers and data stored in websites because it is intrusive and terrifying at a future time after the engagement with the webpages are over. But what if all user inputs are default anonymized and all AI outputs are displayed for seamless collaborative work? Databases cleverly have this as a default mode, but it is perhaps our paradigm to blame for authentication, login pages, the password manager privacy industrial complex that sells you VPNs. Corporations, in my opinion, have collectively ignored or misinterpreted what consumers want when they say they want customization and privacy. They read that the need to make very data-rich tagged profiles with extensive security and multi-factor authentication apps. The Ockham's razor is anonymize and give users the dashboard controls for the customization.
### Jedi Power #3: Offline AI
This strays away from web development but is a massive hot topic. One reason not to use online web chat AIs could be that the user inputs can be used to train future models and might have key private information or proprietary stuff that companies don't want to share. This means no ChatGPT in the work place. But can you imagine if a company says no google? The incessant need to protect proprietary stuff while also requiring the speed and flexibility of new tools offers designers a platform to create and build offline AIs. A simple one to get started like [Ollama](https://ollama.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) can help get you started. Furthermore, you can add vector embeddings to the offline model so that you can ask questions about your schedules and appointments and files on your folder without it being shared. It is up to the designer to make choices about the amount of interactivity it has with other online AI models but that will be probably a more advanced topic.
## Engineering the Ocean
> No one ever designs the ocean.
>
> The ocean is there and it moves and is governed by Navier-Stokes.
>
> But the ocean does collect plastic garbage islands.
>
> You probably need to design boats and tools to collect those. You don't need to micro-manage the fishes. Everything is just part of that vast ocean.
I want to wrap this long article up with a simple and optimistic message to meditate on. Clearly, there's a lot of fear-mongering in every industry and communities about the threat of AI taking designer jobs. But this brief intro to this interesting play in web design trends hopefully garners some curiosity and insights to how designers can think and do jobs better than the employers by using new tools and abstractions. Basically, a few key tech stacks are needed and you are off to the races ready to conquer the multi-trillion dollar industries of big tech AI. Designers are planeswalkers and timetravelers in the market system environement and with the right mindset, the universe is yours to conquer.
---
Written by **Matt Ji**.
**About the author**
Born in Shanghai, China. Grew up in Texas.
Studied Petroleum Engineering in Colorado. Worked as a Frack Engineer.
Studied Renewable Energy in Germany. Worked as an Asset Manager.
Traded Stocks during made a lot then and lost everything.
Built web apps to become an full-stack engineer tinkering with AI tools, htmx, and 'Excel'...
Opposites, dialectic, lived and breathed.
**Links**
- Website: [https://bountystash.com/](https://bountystash.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattji/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattji/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[CV - Shaoyan (Matt) JiShaoyan (Matt) Ji](https://bountystash.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### The Evolving Landscape of Design in 2024, by Linh Nguyen
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-evolving-landscape-of-design-in-2024-by-linh-nguyen/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:11:35.000Z
## **Abstract**
In 2024, there will be both possibilities and difficulties in UX design. While affordable and flexible, online education programmes might not give us enough real-world experience. UX designers are in high demand in both the tech and non-tech sectors, but competition for jobs is fierce, particularly in the wake of pandemic-related layoffs that have favoured seasoned designers with experience in specific domain. The reality of UX practice includes complicated collaborations, quick changes, meeting deadlines, and striking a balance between user wants and company objectives. The business is changing as a result of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) as well, which streamlines procedures while posing questions about the possible replacement of human designers. Nevertheless, creativity and emotional intelligence are still crucial.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## The hype is over or not! How to prepare for ux practical scenarios?
As an UX designer, the state of design in 2024 presents both exciting opportunities and challenges. With education becoming more accessible and the tech industry heavily promoting UX design as a hot career path, it's crucial to strike a balance between the promising programs and the realities of practice. However, how newcomers could navigate around the pool of information and how to break into the industry is still a vague path to many. Some stops due to the life burden, some quit after so many failed attempts.
## **The Rise of Online Education**
One of the most significant developments in 2024 is the proliferation of online UX design courses and programs. Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and edX offer a wide range of UX design courses, from introductory levels to advanced specializations. These online programs provide a flexible and cost-effective way for aspiring designers to gain theoretical knowledge and practical skills.
UX design courses available on various online platforms
However, it's important to note that while online courses can be valuable resources, they may not fully prepare you for the complexities of real-world UX design challenges. Hands-on experience and mentorship from seasoned professionals are still essential for developing a well-rounded skillset. That’s why many experienced designers use social media, such as Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok to build their personal brand in order to create business with their talent and experience as well.
This give us a wide range of getting design education. However the question is the practicality of these courses, and the credibility also a big issue as well. Of course, word of mouth is a good method to know the quality of the courses from other designers but the big part of success lie on us.
### The Demand for UX Designers in Tech
The tech industry has been actively promoting UX design as a highly sought-after career path, fueling the perception that it's a hot job market. Companies recognize the importance of delivering exceptional user experiences, and they are willing to invest in talented UX designers who can create intuitive and engaging digital products.
While the demand for UX designers is indeed high, it's crucial to understand that the job market is also becoming increasingly competitive. As more individuals pursue UX design education, the pool of candidates grows larger, making it more challenging to stand out and secure desirable positions.
Especially, when the tech sector has experienced a slowdown in UX job growth after pandemic, with companies implementing cost-cutting measures and layoffs. This has led to a surplus of experienced UX designers seeking employment, making it more challenging for newcomers to secure entry-level positions. Companies hiring in 2024 are likely to favor seasoned designers with AI knowledge and practical experience over junior candidates. The perception of market saturation has intensified, with the supply of designers outweighing the demand in certain regions or sectors.
Everything changed rapidly during and after the pandemic, the urge to expand design team in the market increased which lead to the explosion of demanding for design role. However, it created a knowledge and experience gap when the workforce tried to fill it with fresh batch of designers pretend to be experienced one.
Acceleration of digitalization following the COVID-19 crisis – Source: [McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
However, since 2022 the downfall started for tech industries, mass layoff happened overnight and continue till 2024.
What happened? Why interest in expand the design or product team and then cut them off? Is it because of the hype of having design team to create value that stakeholders cannot foreseen yet?
Tech layoffs in 2022 to 2023\. Source: Layoffs.fyi
UX job openings 2022-2023 – Source: [Indeed](https://indeed.design/article/ux-job-listings-plunged-in-2023/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Looking back, as a UX designer myself and UX design instructor at different bootcamp and short training courses, quite a significant number of designer wannabe just take courses because of appealing message about the promising future career. Graduate with few capstone projects does not promise a place in a team anymore. I have experienced first hand the mass layoff in tech around here, business is smarter in hiring an individual nut just because you have some things that might work for them but you have to prove that you bring in a certain value. Years of experience also does not promise that you’re a value member, they have way more ideas about what to look into when hiring a designer now.
## The Reality of Practice in Tech
While the tech industry presents exciting opportunities for UX designers, it's important to understand the realities of practice in 2024\. The field of UX design is constantly evolving, with new technologies, methodologies, and user behaviors emerging at a rapid pace. Successful UX designers must be adaptable, continuously learning, and able to navigate complex cross-functional collaborations. Ego is something we have to check frequently. Setting too high might lead to overpraise yourself but cannot allow others to undermine your importance within the team as well.
Furthermore, the tech industry often operates under tight deadlines and high-pressure environments, requiring UX designers to balance user needs with business objectives and technical constraints. Effective communication, problem-solving, and stakeholder management skills are essential for navigating these challenges. Easier said than done in CEO driven company or any driven environment but Product/User driven approach.
The unstoppable rise of AI and automation technologies is reshaping the UX industry as well. While AI can streamline many aspects of the design process, such as user research, prototyping, and trend analysis, it also presents new challenges and ethical considerations. Companies are increasingly adopting AI-powered design tools and leveraging generative AI to identify user needs, draft technical documents, and create product designs. This trend raises concerns about the potential replacement of human designers by AI, although experts argue that AI cannot fully replicate the emotional intelligence, creativity, and human connection required for effective UX design, but who knows what might happen. Nobody had believe that we could travel further than the Earth until the scientists proved us wrong.
Despite the advancements in AI and automation, the core principles of human-centered design remain essential. UX design is not solely about aesthetics or web design; it is about creating intuitive, accessible, and convenient experiences tailored to specific user needs and behaviors.As consumers become more discerning and demand high-quality digital products, the human touch and expertise of UX designers will be crucial in maintaining consumer trust and delivering exceptional user experiences. Companies cannot rely solely on AI-generated solutions and must prioritize usability, accessibility, and convenience to remain competitive. Hence, we are still have to room to growth with a solid foundation and the advancement when using AI to help us create value for the business.
## **Diversification of UX Opportunities**
Despite the challenges in the tech sector, the demand for UX designers is growing in non-traditional industries such as finance, government, and healthcare. These sectors are undergoing rapid digitization and actively seeking talented individuals to contribute to user-centric design and improve customer experiences.The diversification of UX opportunities presents a promising avenue for aspiring designers, as these industries may offer more entry-level positions and growth potential.
Global Consumer Healthcare Market – Source: [Verified Market Research](https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/product/consumer-healthcare-market/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
However, in order to get into these sectors require specialized knowledge or industry-specific skills which even senior designers find it difficult. In addition to, most employers prefer people who have worked in those sectors to non-experience one no matter how well their process and mindset could be.
## Conclusion
As a UX designer in 2024, it's crucial to approach the promising programs and industry promotions with a balanced perspective. While online education and the tech industry's demand for UX designers present exciting opportunities, it's important to recognize the realities of practice and the competitive job market.
Successful UX designers in 2024 will be those who combine theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience, continuously develop their skills, and cultivate essential soft skills like communication, problem-solving, and adaptability. By striking a balance between the promises and realities, aspiring UX designers can navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities that the field presents in 2024 and beyond.
---
Written by **Linh Nguyen**.
**About the author**
Linh Nguyen is a UX Designer.
**Links**
- Substack:
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### Of Permacrisis and Peak Design, by Marc Baumgartner
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/of-permacrisis-and-peak-design-by-marc-baumgartner/
Last updated: 2024-04-29T17:11:17.000Z
## Abstract
Design seems to be in a neverending crisis, especially when it comes to proving its value. The challenges caused by the emergence of AI and the current economic downturn make the devaluation of design even more problematic. Have we hit “peak design”? If so, what that might mean for design practice? What can design do to reclaim its relevance and address complex problems? The essay questions whether design should revamp its business models to be able to focus on solving tough problems and to prove its worth and impact and if that will be enough to ensure its future relevance.
[The State of Design 2024 – All contributionsA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Readers and members of the Design & Critical Thinking community might already know, but some weeks ago we opened-up contributions to an ongoing discussion on the “state of design”Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-state-of-design-2024-all-contributions/)
---
## Of Permacrisis and Peak Design
I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that design as a discipline lives in a state of perpetual crisis. This is due, at least in part, to its intentional framing by practitioners as a heterogeneous, vague and boundaryless non-discipline. This deliberate resistance to formal definition needs to be so that it remains open to all comers. In other words: a state of crisis is a feature and not a bug.
However, this resistance to definition also presents significant challenges. It becomes difficult for design to articulate its value in a world that often demands clear, quantifiable outcomes. Critically the lack of a unified identity or a clear set of objectives leaves design vulnerable to constant misinterpretation and undervaluation. Designers live with this inability of design as a discipline to clearly articulate its value, forced to re-articulate what value they bring to clients on a case by case basis.
As comfortable as designers have become with that turmoil, there seems to be a couple of new flavours of panic on the menu.
### Peak Design
The advent of artificial intelligence and recent economic turbulence, marked by widespread layoffs across industries, has brought design's crisis of value into sharp relief.
AI poses existential questions to the design community. It challenges the very notion of creativity and originality that many designers hold dear. Add to that the economic downturn that has led businesses to scrutinise every investment, including design, demanding more tangible returns than ever before.
It’s uncertain when, or if, the waters of this crisis will recede. Regardless I somehow doubt we've seen the worst of it. It’s possible we have hit “peak design” — the point at which the world will do less and less with design, and the humans that practise it.
One thing I’m pretty sure of is that getting back a foothold is going to take more than just standing on the shore yelling “Design Matters!” to anyone who might listen. The only way out of this might be to design our way out.
### “It’s an alien life form.”
That was David Bowie's response to Jeremy Paxman [during a 1999 interview on the BBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLf6KZmJyrA&ab%5Fchannel=BBCArchive&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [(1)](#notes-references), when Paxman described the internet as “just a tool.” Bowie countered with a vision that was nothing short of prophetic, highlighting the potential impacts—both exhilarating and terrifying—of the internet on society, impacts we had yet to fully realise. His insights, even at that time, were astoundingly prescient.
Bowie’s alien has evolved into, or merged with, a more advanced being: a relentless, prolific generator of “content.” While this new being is currently over-hyped, prone to hallucinations, and marked by a seemingly insatiable appetite for the mundane, it's important to remember that such beings—and their tastes—likely continue to evolve.
Without naming specifically what was being lost Bowie hints at the fact that as some things emerge others will be left behind. I’ve always been intrigued by this facet of obsolescence; how, in the face of revolutionary change, existing paradigms or technologies continue on unaware of their impending irrelevance. That is, until they dissolve and fade away. It’s a process that becomes obvious only in retrospect.
Obsolescence is about shifting values—where value drains from one entity and flows to another. Bowie's alien becomes a vampire.
Of course, that’s not the only sucking noise you’ve been hearing.
### The Patagonia Vest Recession
That’s the name Scott Galloway has given to the post pandemic market reset that has led to current blood-letting in tech companies across the board [(2)](#notes-references). This is of course partly fueled by AI. But it is also a logical outcome of the devaluation of content and the looming consolidation of the losers of the streaming wars.
By the middle of 2023 the number of UX and UX Research jobs dipped to 75% and 65% of 2021 levels respectively [(3)](#notes-references) and was trending downward. Since the culling seems to have hit design positions harder than other parts of the sector as a whole we can sense that this is also the market sending signals about the value of those positions.
For years the market, driven by demand, has responded by quickly training and deploying an army of UX designers. Short courses and access to tools for everyone to quickly ramp up has accelerated, and now clearly outstripped demand. Sure that’s a narrow definition of “designer”, but it’s a big slice.
Paired with our vampire-alien it feels like more than a “correction”.
### Self-Inflicted Wounds
The seeds for design's current predicament are admittedly self-inflicted. Over the past decades, design has allowed itself to be commodified and simplified for mass consumption and corporate use.
From early in the twentieth century design was relegated within the logic of commerce to aesthetic improvements—making things look 'pretty'. This perspective constraining design to the superficial, obscuring its potential to impact more significant societal and cultural dimensions is not new. And neither is the critique:
> *“Design has too often been deployed at the low value end of the product spectrum, putting the lipstick on the pig. In doing this, design has failed to make the case for its core value, which is addressing genuinely meaningful, genuinely knotty problems by convincingly articulating and delivering alternative ways of being. Rethinking the pig altogether, rather than worrying about the shade of lipstick it’s wearing."* – Dan Hill, Dark Matter and Trojan Horses
Design itself has *“failed to make the case for its core value”.* Any effort to reposition design as something deeper seems to have failed. It continues to primarily focus on surface style, and on training an army of technicians with software skills, skills that are now so easily automated, rather than training designers.
That said nothing has done more to devalue design than its horniest tryst with capitalism: Design Thinking.
This particular infiltration of design into boardrooms and corporate language was bound to be sub-optimal, to speak in the vernacular. It was perpetuated for the most part by opportunists and marketers rather than designers.
We needn’t go down the details of why it’s problematic and potentially ineffective, [Natasha Jen has the most eloquent takedown](https://99u.adobe.com/videos/55967/natasha-jen-design-thinking-is-bullshit?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). But it is worth taking a moment to savour Joe Alterio’s direct analysis of just how insidious it has been:
> *“A momentary reality check: the process of large corporate organizations adopting Design Thinking is in and of itself basically meaningless, and hence, harmless — it is a problem solving framework that could potentially have been pulled from any number of industries.*
>
> *However, I do think it is intentional that Design (or, more broadly, the creative arts) is what has been usurped to create these frameworks. The reality is, it’s not just the visual arts realm that has been so repurposed. Perhaps if I was an actor, the predilection of corporations to adopt Improv notions would irk me. If I was a dancer, “movement icebreakers” might give me fits.*
>
> *By objectifying creative arts practices as “fun” ways to solve serious problems, the creative arts are infantilized. *By infantilizing and packaging these practices, one renders the true practitioners of this field worse than obsolete — you render them beneath value*. Ask a mime how they feel about their market worth these days.” –* Joe Alterio - Drunk on Design Thinking
Infantilization. Beneath value. Oof.
### Design as a Record of Human Imagination
Well-practised design in its broadest sense of course has the potential to be consequential. In some sense the total dissolution of design would be equally consequential.
All making is a record of the human imagination. The kinds of problems we choose to solve, the cities we build, the programs we fund, the apps we make, these are all artificial things and they reflect more than just the technological possibility of the moment. They are the results of design decisions, and they all reflect the values of the context in which they are created.
We know that designers aren’t, and shouldn’t be, making all of those decisions. But regardless of who is making the decisions, the things that we choose to make, and the way we make them are either an expression of our desire for continuity of the way things are, or they reflect a desire for something different. Seen in that way, design is an argument for or against the current condition.
The cultural imagination is a struggle between the materialisation of ideas that express - either purposefully or passively - a desire for continuity, plotted against those that work to upset the current condition. Unwittingly most of design, and most of what designers are trained for, is an argument for the status quo.
Good design — design that hasn’t been commodified, templated or infantilized — has a crucial role. If not in overtly interrogating the status quo or then at least offering up honest alternatives.
### Redefining Relationship with Making
I’m not arguing that design should extricate itself from capitalism to navigate its crisis of value. I prefer to entertain the “judo move” possibility: learning how to manipulate the levers of our economic and cultural system to its advantage. This involves members of the design community being honest with themselves about the power dynamics between designers and the system within which they operate and using the talents at their disposal to explore opportunities. In fact, downturns have historically been a good time to do so.
What if designers could evolve from just pleading for someone in a boardroom to notice the value of design, to becoming initiators of projects that demonstrate design's impact? What if designers were equipped with the skills to launch and fund initiatives that not only prove design's economic value but also its societal benefits? That is, what happens when design manages to bypass the boardroom and the bean counters?
The reality is that many of the most pressing problems today do not have ready markets or clients. Issues like climate change, social inequality, and public health are just a few areas where design can have (or claims to have) a potentially profound impact. If we really think design can address these intractable problems and redefine its value proposition it needs to, in sports terms, “get after it”.
Instead of waiting for business leaders or benefactors to recognize a need, designers should equip themselves to take the initiative to address issues directly. In short, prove that design is in fact capable of tackling complex problems from environmental sustainability to social equity. That includes the design of business models that enable proactive engagement with important challenges.
### Making Better Things & Making Things Better
The future of design hinges on an ability to get things made. Designers have to be more than theorists or solvers of received problems.
> *“As the designer Jack Schulze, principal at the design consultancy BERG, has pointed out, dentists solve problems too. Schulze prefers instead to think of design as “cultural invention”, a phrase with a lot more leeway and agency. It suggests a much wider remit in terms of uncovering, shaping and conveying alternate trajectories.”* –Dan Hill, Dark Matter and Trojan Horses
I like this idea of *“the cultural invention” of “alternate trajectories”*.
Invention implies not just an act of imagination but the wherewithal to make it happen. It bears repeating: we have to do more than imagine alternative trajectories, we have to materialise them, we have to sell them and we have to fund them. As we move forward, it is clear that design must not just tell the world about its value—it must demonstrate it.
Until then it will be hard to get down to the business of making *better* things, and making *things* better.
# Notes & references
1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLf6KZmJyrA&ab\_channel=BBCArchive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLf6KZmJyrA&ab%5Fchannel=BBCArchive&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2. [https://www.profgalloway.com/2023-predictions/](https://www.profgalloway.com/2023-predictions/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
3. [https://medium.com/indeed-design/ux-job-listings-have-plunged-in-2023-fb3c95581d40](https://medium.com/indeed-design/ux-job-listings-have-plunged-in-2023-fb3c95581d40?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Written by **Marc Baumgartner**.
**About the author**
Marc is the founder and Design Director at [Codename Design](https://codename.design/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**Links**
- LinkedIn:[https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaumgartner/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaumgartner/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Marc Baumgartner - Codename Design Inc. | LinkedInOver the past 30 years Marc has designed and lead projects ranging from the design of… · Experience: Codename Design Inc. · Location: Vancouver · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View Marc Baumgartner’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaumgartner/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
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### The State of Design, join the discussion on 26 April
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-of-design-an-open-discussion/
Last updated: 2024-04-25T05:32:31.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
As you may already know, [we recently invited members of the community to collaborate on a piece about “the state of design”](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design/) –the many whispers of doom and crisis– to open up the discussion to a diversity of voices and perspectives.
The contributions are now being released at the rate of one per day. Follow the series and [read all the contributions here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/state-of-design/).
[State of Design - Design & Critical ThinkingA collection of essays reflecting on the current landscape of design and of the role of the designer.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/state-of-design/)
In the meantime, please join us for an online event to continue the discussion! We invite the broader design community, practitioners and professionals alike to come and discuss with us the state of design, its strengths and limitations, its present and future.
## The State of Design 2024, an open discussion
Friday 26 April, 5 pm to 6:30 pm CET
[Register to the online event](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/300266496/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Good stuff incoming!
Stay tuned and be prepared to read very interesting takes on the state of design in the coming days.
You know when it's good.
I have to say I am very impressed by the amount of effort and quality each of the contributors have put in their work despite the short deadline!
So, the initial idea was to publish all contributions into one single long-form article, but after consideration, we changed plans given the length of most contributions. This would have been otherwise barely digestible and therefore would have diluted the quality work of our members.
So the current plan is for each contribution to be published as a standalone post, so expect your inbox to be filled in with very good quality content in the coming days –courtesy of our generous contributors. This will ensure you have the opportunity to read each contribution at your convenience and get a chance to understand different perspectives.
Indeed, you know.
---
Thanks for reading, and thanks to all of you, dear members of this community, without whom this would have been possible!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
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### Call for participation: State of Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/call-for-participation-state-of-design/
Last updated: 2024-03-27T16:27:46.000Z
Hi everyone, dear community,
I am starting to work on a piece about “the state of design” –the many whispers of doom and crisis– and thought the best way to discuss such a “polymorphic issue” is to open up the discussion to other voices and perspectives.
👉
**We are looking for members to participate in the article.**
[Register to participate](https://forms.gle/zHnp9pSDnuwaN9ze8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## 📝 Format
You can write something as long as you want (no format restrictions) —with links and references whenever possible.
Your name will be displayed in the title of your section and profile details/link (at your discretion) at the end.
## 📚 Topics & themes
### 1️⃣ The state of UX or “late-stage UX”
- The “decline of design”, the “downfall of designers”
- The commodification of the design process and/or activities
- The layoffs; shrinking market; no more free money; low entry level / inadequate skills; etc
- The replacement of design roles by \[AI\]
### 2️⃣ Beyond the hype, beyond the clutter
- The future of design and designers’ role
- Where should design be next? What should design do next?
- What does that mean for organisations, services, products, human experiences;
### 3️⃣ Bonus: Critical thinking
- What are we missing?
- What are the misdirections?
- What are the false promises/apocalypses?
- What are the weak signals?
📆
****Proposed deadline: April 12 2024**
[Register to participate](https://forms.gle/zHnp9pSDnuwaN9ze8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## 📚 Resources to help you get started
### a) The whispers of doom & crisis
There are whispers (\* cough \*) of a major identity crisis in (corporate) design along with huge economic uncertainty and anticipated job market disruption –be it “because of AI”, but mostly, because the previously mentioned economic factor works as a coupling effect, truly indifferent to whom is impacted and how we interpret it.
**⏩ Whisper 1: *The state of UX in 2024* – We have entered the "late-stage UX"**
[The State of UX in 2024From design tools, to our design process, to the user behaviors that will change the way we design — a list of what to expect for User Experience (UX) Design in the next year.UX TrendsFabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga](https://trends.uxdesign.cc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**⏩ Whisper 2: *The Vanishing Designer* – It's our fault; but not entirely; but still, you should do something about it.**
[DOC • The vanishing designerChuánqí Sun](https://www.doc.cc/articles/the-vanishing-designer?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**⏩ Whisper 3:** [***The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future***](https://www.fastcompany.com/91027996/the-big-design-freak-out-a-generation-of-design-leaders-grapple-with-their-future?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### b) **A critical response: Bubbles of logic, *Alternate to Fast Company “Freak-Out”***
[NextD JournalPeer Review February 2024Welcome back NextD Journal readers. February winds down here in New York City and with it hopefully comes the vibes of a not too distant spring!With orienting and making sense of the arriving future on the minds of many readers we thought it might be helpful to ask some diverse, thoughtful, seasoned community folks to take a look at and comment on a recent article published in Fast Company, provocatively entitled: Big Design Freak-Out: A Generation of Design Leaders GraNextD JournalAdmin](https://www.nextd.org/post/nextd-journal-3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
It points out (especially in [VanPatter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gkvanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’s and [Pascal Wicht](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wichtpascal/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’s reviews) how the “freak-out” and insecurity of the *“rapidly formed design workforce”* (as I put it) is predicated on a shallow understanding of design and its ecology, and a narrow application of practice *–factors that probably enabled its rapid adoption and now disruption–* trapping designers in a path dependency of growingly limited/bounded options and preventing the questioning of structural patterns at play and its consequences.
### c) Measuring the experience of AI
[Measuring the experience of AIFinding emergent relevance during interactionUX CollectiveAmmar Halabi](https://uxdesign.cc/measuring-the-experience-of-ai-c1afc4d5df0e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This is a very good and detailed piece from a fellow Swiss-based designer, with proper methodology, resources, and interesting thoughts on the UX of AI, and furthermore, the evolution of the relationship between humans and machines.
> Hal Wuertz’s recent article came close to this notion by highlighting that o**ur relationship with AI differs from traditional applications in that the purpose and content are not fixed, but in flux. Both the AI and the user change as they interact.** Adrian Zumbrunnen comes close to this when he talks about the need for intelligent interaction to match the context of use. I’d add: at any given moment, we would be asking: **is this interaction or content relevant to the user, does it match expectations, hopes, problems and desires?**This may seem elementary, and it is. It really is a fundamental question of usefulness. **But the catch is that in our current UX paradigm, we’re used to solving the usefulness question early in the product lifecycle.** We’re used to figuring out usefulness in early product discovery, market research, exploratory research, and product-market fit.**What we’re not used to, and here’s the kicker, is that relevance is (increasingly) something that an AI application would strive to achieve dynamically, during the course of its use.**
> Finally, I’ve admittedly framed all of this within the current paradigm where humans are users and machines are responsive servants. \[...\]\[what\] if AI changes the rules of the game, shifting the locus of power, with different modes of interaction that may even be hidden? We already know how automating A/B testing of political campaigns with psychometric profiling was able to influence politics in the UK, effectively making humans components of computational politics, so imagine what can be achieved with even higher levels of automation. The whole pipeline can now be automated \[...\] in a wild game of survival of the fittest to extract value, whether financial, political or attentional. The question is not if it’s happening, but to what extent. What does experience mean in this world?
### d) AI Can Build a Brighter Urban Future — If We Let People Have a Say
AI as a social mediation tool for urban design.
[AI Can Build a Brighter Urban Future — If We Let People Have a SayTools powered by artificial intelligence could improve city life and bring down barriers to community participation in urban planning. But big risks await.BloombergAnthony Townsend and Hubert Beroche](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-13/ai-powered-urban-innovations-bring-promise-risk-to-future-cities?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### e) Turbulences and AI
Last year I wrote a series of posts on Design and AI, the perceived downfall (or death) and commodification of design. I think many points I make are still valid today.
[Turbulences, loss of senses and disillusionHi, Kevin here. In my recent readings, I noticed an interesting theme in relation to the recent layoffs in Tech, the disillusion of some in the design communities, and the criticisms of our tools as instruments of “our own downfall”. The many deaths of UX designHow UX was proclaimed deadDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/)
[Turbulences and AI: from a third perspective to design principlesHi everyone, Kevin again. I recently wrote about our loss of senses and disillusion in face of recent turbulences: the recent layoffs, the rise of AI, and the rapid commoditization of design all seem to indicate we are gently running along the edge of a precipice only covered by fog,Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/)
[Turbulences and AI: clarifications and more principlesIntelligence & expectations Please note that I will simplify some complex subjects here. What we call “Artificial Intelligence” should be called “algorithms” or “Large Language Models” (LLMs for short) because they have nothing close to “intelligent”. They do what algorithms do, even though in a “smarter” way, by connecting things togetherDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-clarifications-and-more-principles/)
---
Thanks for reading,
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework: Designing impactful strategies – RSD12
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/multi-ocean-strategy-framework-designing-impactful-strategies-for-multi-actor-engagement-in-the-ecosystem-economy-2/
Last updated: 2024-03-18T16:30:12.000Z
Hi everyone,
Each year, the [Systemic Design Association](https://rsdsymposium.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) organises the Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD) Symposia.
In 2023, [Krasi Bozhinkova](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Daiana Zavate](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and I had the opportunity to present a new framework to [RSD12 Entangled in Emergence](https://rsdsymposium.org/rsd12/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), after our paper titled *“*[*Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework: Designing impactful strategies for multi-actor engagement in the ecosystem economy*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/complexity/mosf-designing-impactful-strategies-for-multi-actor-engagement-in-the-ecosystem-economy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* had been selected in the “Innovation papers” category.
By the way, t[he publication process is still ongoing](https://rsdsymposium.org/rsd12-innovation-papers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and I'll share an update once the final revision is published.
[Here you can watch the full 2 parts Innovation papers session.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X37OIPr5lY8&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) There were very interesting presentations and discussions. Each presentation is time-coded using YouTube chapters.
And here is the part in which we present our paper.
#### RSD12 Entangled in Emergence: Innovation papers 2nd session – Multi-Ocean Strategy presentation+Q&A
Session recorded during RSD12 Online event on 14 October and edited to play only the second group' paper presentations.
This grouping consists of papers concerned with innovation. Authors make a 10 to 15-minute presentation, and approximately 15 minutes are dedicated to discussing each paper. Authors have the opportunity to incorporate revisions based on the session into the final version of their article, published in Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD12, in March 2024.
Moderators: JR Osborn
GROUP 2
Paper #151 Krasimira Bozhinkova, Kevin Richard and Andreea-Daiana Zavate
Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework: Designing impactful strategies for multi-actor engagement in the ecosystem economy
Paper #209 Emile Mazerant and Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer
The Social Dynamics of Frame Acceptance in Organizational Innovation Settings
Paper #254 Elisabeth Tschavgova, Elise Talgorn, Charlotte Kobus, Jo van Engelen, Conny Bakker and Sonja van Dam
From Systemic Insights to Sustainable Business Actions—A case study on GenZ Parents in the DACH Market
---
Thanks for reading,
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### [Replay] What can designers learn from Solarpunk?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/replay-what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk/
Last updated: 2024-03-13T16:30:23.000Z
Hi everyone,
Sorry for not publishing anything since the beginning of 2024, this has been a hectic few months and difficult to find time to focus and organise.
Anyway, the end of last year was all about Solarpunk and I recently managed to (finally) publish the recording of our last 2023 session to our YouTube channel.
#### What can designers learn from Solarpunk? – Description
SolarPunk is relevant to designers for its optimistic hybridisation and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning”. Let’s understand how.
This is a recording of the Design & Critical Thinking community's end-of-year event, "A Solar(punk) End of Year" on 19 December 2023\.
**"It is snowing outside. the bio-generator fireplace warms and lightens up the room. Our cosy virtual chalet, on the outskirts of the greenhouse town and built around the magnificent pine tree, is dressed for the celebrations and your host, Kevin, is preparing the Swiss raclette with the solar-powered hoven. Let's celebrate this end of the year together!"*
[A Solar(punk) End of Year](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-solar-punk-end-of-year/)
The presentation is adapted from [a series of posts on the community's website](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/).
And combined into [one article published on UX Collective](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
Thanks for reading,
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### A Solar(punk) End of Year
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-solar-punk-end-of-year/
Last updated: 2024-03-27T16:27:35.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
2023 is coming to an end and that's a great opportunity to close it properly. As discussed during our last virtual chalet session, I didn't have the opportunity to present Solarpunk, the design principles and to open a space for a discussion.
So here you are served with two upcoming events 😉👇
Let's celebrate together! 🎉
### 1\. What can designers learn from Solarpunk? 🌱
What can designers learn from Solarpunk? From narratives to principles
#### Event details
- Date: Friday 15 December, 6 PM to 7:30 PM CET
- Location: Online
- Duration: 1.5 hours
SolarPunk is relevant to designers for its optimistic hybridisation and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning”.
In this talk, we will dive into Solarpunk narratives, what they are made of and where they come from. We will come to a set of principles derived from these narratives that designers can harness in their process.
[Attend this event](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/297879020/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 2\. Virtual Chalet: A Solar(punk) End of Year ❄️
Solarpunk greenhouse city winter artwork – [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/wrvjzg/more%5Fsolarpunk%5Fartwork%5Fsince%5Fyou%5Fall%5Floved%5Fthe/?rdt=60266&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
#### Event details
- Date: Tuesday 19 December, 6 PM to 7:30 PM CET
- Location: Online
- Duration: 1.5 hours
It is snowing outside. the bio-generator fireplace warms and lightens up the room. Our cosy virtual chalet, on the outskirts of the greenhouse town and built around the magnificent pine tree, is dressed for the celebrations and your host, Kevin, is preparing the [Swiss raclette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) with the solar-powered hoven. Let's celebrate this end of the year together!
Under the tree, we've got some special treats:
- Summary of [Solarpunk and design principles](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SPa9HnbPGXIck7dhn1abr7S7ku6t90yB9bTJZfbU4TU/edit?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Island mapping exercise
- Raclette discussion ;)
- 2024 on the horizon
[Attend this event](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/297659361/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### \[Edit\] Watch the recording of this session here:
[\[Replay\] What can designers learn from Solarpunk?Hi everyone, Sorry for not publishing anything since the beginning of 2024, this has been a hectic few months and difficult to find time to focus and organise. Anyway, the end of last year was all about Solarpunk and I recently managed to (finally) publish the recording of our lastDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/replay-what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk/)
[What can designers learn from SolarPunk?SolarPunk is relevant to designers for its optimistic hybridisation and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning”. Let’s understand how.This is…YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzsLQFVPfJc&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### Two opportunities to engage in conversations next week
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/two-opportunities-to-engage-in-conversations-virtual-chalet-and/
Last updated: 2023-11-18T19:49:53.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Next week we will have two events you can join to engage in conversations with me and the community.
## Virtual Chalet Meetup, Tuesday 21 November
Our virtual chalet sessions are informal discussions which run once a month. Join the community on Tuesday 21 November at 6 PM CET 👇
[Virtual Chalet Meetup, Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 6:00 PM | MeetupHi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every month) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share iMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/297092963/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## What can designers learn from SolarPunk, Thursday 23 November
This event will be hosted in Lausanne. If you're close to Switzerland, join me, the IxDA and Design & Critical Thinking communities for an exploration of SolarPunk narratives and some principles to include in your practice.
[What can designers learn from SolarPunk?, Thu, Nov 23, 2023, 6:30 PM | Meetup\*\*What can designers learn from SolarPunk?\*\* Kevin Richard, Customer Experience Manager @Groupe Mutuel. \*\*SolarPunk narratives, cultural weak signals, and the need for altMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/ixdaromandie/events/296933941/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Recent posts
I consolidated the series of posts on [Solarpunk](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/) into one article:
[What can designers learn from SolarPunk?SolarPunk is relevant to designers for its optimistic hybridisation and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning”. Let’s…UX CollectiveKevin Richard](https://uxdesign.cc/what-can-designers-learn-from-solarpunk-c5109a802ab3?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I've written a short critical response to a questionable (bad) promotion of *Systems Thinking* to designers:
[Systems Thinking in design is (sometimes) Systems-washingA short critical analysis of “What’s the Point of AI without Design and Systems Thinking? ”MediumKevin Richard](https://kvrichard.medium.com/systems-thinking-in-design-is-sometimes-systems-washing-9a904930edef?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Are designers a threatened species by ~~climate change~~ capitalism, who lost all agency in the face of its diversity collapse? *I know this analogy sounds bad and that's why we need to take a critical look into it:*
[A critical look at “The vanishing designer”The article says more about the state of the profession than it intended to do.MediumKevin Richard](https://kvrichard.medium.com/a-critical-look-at-the-vanishing-designer-6f0fb8cc182b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Interesting stuff
### AI as a belief system
Ian Chipchase:
> *“\[...\] I’m not convinced that accuracy or “consistently telling the truth” matters for sustained mass-market adoption \[...\] humans are already adept at functioning with a baseline of inaccurate information because it is hardwired into how we remember, recollect and communicate \[...\] our current discomfort lies with the shift to AIs (and the people in organisations that develop them) becoming the primary source of that inaccuracy, instead of people or sources they have acclimatised to being the initiator. When enough people believe in an inaccurate version of events, for all intent it becomes the new reality.”*
[Considering AI as belief systemConsidering AIs as a foundation for a belief system, akin to religious texts today.Studio DJan Chipchase](https://studiodradiodurans.com/blogs/radar/ai-as-belief-system-ai-as-a-foundational-belief?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Solarpunk rizhomatic network
Soft mobility enabled by Intermediate Vehicles is an interesting growing theme (at least in Europe) and a “low-tech” response to the all-mighty electric car. Today represented by strong communities of makers, some countries are subsidising development for larger audiences, for mixed contexts, in-between city and rural areas.
\[Video in French that presents various Intermediate Vehicles\] 👇
Corrolarry to this post: Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts. 👇
[Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughtsElectric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We can’t let them crowd out car-free transit options.VoxDavid Zipper](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The ecology of tech innovation
[Foxes of the Tech World: Adapting and Thriving in Specialized EnvironmentsFoxes, of which many species have attuned to almost any ecosystem on the planet have varied reputations across cultures; in some, like Chinese and Japanese folklore, they are mystical and intelligent, while in European traditions, they are often associated with cunning and trickery. While they are dMichaela Emch 🌱](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/foxes-tech-world-adapting-thriving-specialized-michaela-emch--kmw5e/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Thanks for reading and looking forward to meeting you!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### SolarPunk-inspired design principles – Part 4
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/solarpunk-inspired-design-principles/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:06:58.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
In preamble, this article is supposed to conclude our exploration of SolarPunk, and this has been, on my side at least, a journey over several months. Honestly, I'm not sure the topic can be really closed, at least not for me, and I won't make that decision for you –but who am I to say?
Far from a closure, let's call this post a culmination, a tipping point, at which point I might come back in the near future, and to which you are free to decide what it means for yourself.
In this series of articles, I explore what are Solarpunk narratives, a way to make sense of them, and how Solarpunk could be transferred to the design practice through design principles. [Find all the articles here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/).
As we saw in the previous articles, SolarPunk narratives and therefore the ontologies that support them are nuanced and diverse. In their various expressions, technology isn't the main focus and isn’t necessarily futuristic, but supports some shared concepts.
Here I will synthesise the concepts that make more sense to me (so please, be critical about them) and subsequently propose to translate those into design principles that could be enacted in our today's (non-solarpunk) world.
Here is my selection of SolarPunk concepts:
1. Optimistic hybridization between technology and nature: technology as scaffolding (not control) for “organic growth”
2. Scale down (and slow down) to human and community-size experience
3. Cities for more-than-human stories: the need for blending nature and other species in our social landscape
4. Dissent innovation and regaining autonomy in the world
5. “Worlds within worlds” and the need for multi-ontological approaches
I develop them further below, along with design principles.
### 1/ Optimistic hybridization between technology and nature
SolarPunk stories are indeed, largely optimistic about our capacity to deal with our present and coming societal challenges. It puts emphasis on the bodily nature of our interactions with the world and acknowledges the need for a certain degree (some more than others) of autonomy of individuals and groups to enact in it in a meaningful manner.
Furthermore, SolarPunk narratives make visible the apparent "ordered messiness" of nature and put it in contrast to our desire for control ("nature" here should be understood as not separated from us and our objects). Negating the unpredictable usefulness of "organic growth and decay" of things, and their [rhizomatic nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), in favour of an illusion of control is, indeed, as SolarPunk criticise, both delusional and detrimental.
I will come back to the "autonomy" aspect separately in this piece, but we can already draw an interesting principle here:
🌱
****Design principle #1: Design scaffolding for growth and diversity**
As explained in a previous, unrelated, article:
> A scaffolding is a structure that is not meant to last and serves as a support to grow, build, or repair \[something\], usually the end-structure meant to last.
>
> The obvious example of scaffolding that comes to mind is in architecture and construction, but such structures can also be found in nature as part of plants ecosystem for instance, and are used in medical application research. In other words, a scaffolding is an enabler. **Furthermore, we should be able to remove the scaffold or let it decay and whatever we helped grow should sustain itself.**
[Scaffolding for changeChange, which ultimately underlies any form of design and innovation, is something that resembles not a recipe –rather its antithesis. It requires navigating the unknown seas we discussed here. Indeed, in unknown contexts, change is unpredictable, but that does not mean you should navigate blindly.…Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/scaffolding-for-change/)
What this means here is that instead of focusing on the objects as the end product, design should focus on designing the constraints which lead to desirable changes. The objects then become *directions* not just *destinations*.
### 2/ Scale down to human and community-size experience
SolarPunk narratives, for the most part, are about post-capitalist, post-growth (post-economic-obesity), and post-consumerist societies. Although I doubt any call to design for such context is yet a reasonable proposition, we can reframe these into what being in such societies tends to display: **a change in rhythm**.
Devising a direct principle then depends on the level of granularity at which we can enact change: you don't change the composition (because you cannot change the system), you change the nature of the relationships between the parts, introducing "useful frictions" –not my preferred term as it is predicated on the notion that seamlessness is absolutely good, but you get the idea.
👀
****Design principle #2: Design affordances for local shared experiences**
Affordances are, from a contextualist/[enactivist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) perspective (see J. Gibson, Maturana & Varela), clues within the context that drive behaviours, increasing the likelihood of certain outcomes. It's about potential, vectors, energy, and (again) direction.
### 3/ Cities for more-than-human stories
In the anthologies of SolarPunk stories shared with you in [“A topology of SolarPunk stories and resources”](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/topology-of-solarpunk-stories/), some stories focus on the importance of diversity in our designed spaces.
Moreover, the stories in the anthology [“Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures”](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme-resources/book-multispecies-cities-solarpunk-urban-futures?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) present cities as “habitats part of nature” rather than separated from it; revisit the "animal as a human companion" trope to "human as an animal companion"; and challenge the notion of human-centred technology by exploring "technologies for interspecies communication" that would serve equally both sides. Finally, they question our societal relationship to food, to life and death, to prey and predator. These are thematised under the notion of "multispecies kinship".
This is difficult to capture everything in one coherent principle, but I do feel like a good first step in this direction needs to challenge our over-prioritisation of human needs, especially short-term ones, as paramount in all circumstances. It is not to say these are not important, but, they cannot be the only metric of success. When we see how "satisfaction" alone has become a vapid proxy metric to success, this can surely serve as a cautionary tale.
Aligning with [Samuel Huber](https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelphuber/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)'s work on Planetary views (formerly Planet-Centric Design), the third principle is quite self-evident:
🌍
****Design principle #3: Design for more-than-human experiences**
### 4/ Dissent innovation and the need to regain autonomy in the world
An interesting quality of punk narratives is their rebellious position –but very far from being necessarily violent– against a current system or widely adopted view. The rebellious nature of SolarPunk narratives serves a purpose, one of capacitating groups and individuals' autonomy to enact in the world from their own understanding, within their own constraints.
As said before, these narratives put an “emphasis on the bodily nature of our interactions with the world and acknowledge the need for a certain degree of autonomy of individuals and groups to enact in it in a meaningful manner.” The creation of meaning here is therefore emergent of an active autopoietic process [\[1\] \[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), not merely just an end goal.
✊
****Design principle #4: Design for human and non-human autonomy**
As explored in an unrelated series of articles about Design and AI [\[1\]](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/) [\[2\]](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/) [\[3\]](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-clarifications-and-more-principles/), I describe designing for human autonomy as such:
> In \[this series\], I discuss the importance of **the *autonomy of individuals* as a strong design principle**: *“AIs (LLMs, Algorithms) should not replace human knowledge but rather sustain its autonomy”*. I present the case for the necessity of working with LLMs (AI, algorithms) using small groups of humans that create a localised context for discussions, interactions, and interpretations.
>
> Context is key, it is what allows us to attribute meaning and expectations to things. **As a group, we define what is relevant and appropriate given what we understand of the context in which we operate.** This means interacting with LLMs in such a way allows us to reinterpret whatever algorithm's output in a meaningful way and discard what is not relevant, then allowing the group to intervene in their context on their own terms: this guarantees autonomy to the group.
>
> **This also removes another burden put \[on the solution,\]** on LLMs algorithms, **which is to deal with moral aspects of our social realities. Keeping this burden on a group is better because this lies in our way of dealing with such questions** (i.e. we already know how to make other humans accountable for their behaviours). We do NOT have to algorithmically solve moral issues at scale (at the algorithm level), we simply let them unfold in context (at the human/society level).
### 5/ “Worlds within worlds” and the need for multi-ontological approaches
Finally, SolarPunk narratives highlight the importance of diversity: not just in species and nature, but even in minds, approaches and solutions. All prior principles *–having autonomy to innovate at a group or individual level; bringing non-human perspectives; designing affordances and scaffolding, not just objects;–* means we have to face a diversity of (possibly contradictory) views, constraints and needs in a variety of contexts.
The temptation to reconcile them into a cohesive way, something we are trained to do, is surely high but also ethically questionable. Most modern design practices, even those aligned with inclusivity and [pluriversality](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/designs-for-the-pluriverse-radical-interdependence-autonomy-and-the-making-of-worlds?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ideals, have an inherent (procedural) issue when dealing with multiple world views at the same time: namely, at which granular level the interpretation is performed (see epistemic injustice).
*“World within worlds”* is a reference to the Zapatistas movement, which highlights this issue of interpretation and of epistemic injustice, and the need for an optimistic rebellion:
> “This is a happy army. In this revolution dancing is de rigueur. \[...\]
>
> I want to go down and be with them, but I am worried that I might distract and/or hider them so I remain a vicarious observer of this circle of beating drummers and methodical dancers, mediators of dreams and sorrows that pass through this gateway to **worlds within worlds**.
>
> Today has become tomorrow. The sun will soon rise over the mountains directly into my east-facing window. I should be up to greet it properly, and then head down to the street to join the rebellion…” –source: [The Zapatour Arrives in Mexico City](https://schoolsforchiapas.org/zapatour-arrives-mexico-city/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This leads to our last principle:
✨
****Design principle #5: Design within multi-worldviews**
Designing within multi-worldviews works with the prior principles, designing for autonomy and designing affordances and scaffolding, as you provide others with the means to interpret and design what is relevant in their context. You become a “mediator of dreams and sorrows”, a facilitator of perspectives, you don't design the objects but provide affordances for a diversity of solutions to emerge and potentially recombine.
[Organisation-wide design as systems practiceEnterprise Design: building an ecosystem. A path towards a distributed and integrative design practice. This article proposes to approach Design in the face of organisational complexity (complex adaptive human systems) as a transdisciplinary integrative practice more than a narrow, domain or ski…Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/organisation-wide-design-as-systems-practice/)
---
Well, that's a wrap for now, but I will attempt to come back to these principles in a not-so-distant future.
In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on these principles.
---
Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### A topology of SolarPunk stories and resources – Part 3
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/topology-of-solarpunk-stories/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:06:47.000Z
The landscape of SolarPunk narratives is interesting to observe. The categorisation that follows is my understanding through my own research and, [as explained before](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/evolution-of-punk-narratives-from-uchronia-to-solarpunk), this landscape is an active process subjected to changes.
In this series of articles, I explore what are Solarpunk narratives, a way to make sense of them, and how Solarpunk could be transferred to the design practice through design principles. [Find all the articles here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/).
Interestingly enough, there are geographical differences between a Western tradition of sci-fi novels and writing genre, and what we could call the “global south” perspectives. These differences address first different social and environmental challenges and second, different understanding of our relationship to them.
I would argue these are useful and beneficial to the scaffolding process required for a societal shift (from fringe to mainstream) of ideas linked to transition and sustainability, such as Transition Design, Regenerative Design, and Planet-Centric Design.
I invite you to look further into [a collection of resources I prepared for this article here](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), but the stories gathered in the anthologies try to redefine our relationship to nature, technology, other species and living organisms, food, etc.
[SolarPunk theme: resources - Design & Critical Thinking LibraryDesign & Critical Thinking Library](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Food, consumption and our relationship to other species
Excerpt from the introduction chapter of [the anthology *“Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures”*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme-resources/book-multispecies-cities-solarpunk-urban-futures?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> “The delightfully disturbing \[story\] “A Life With Cibi” by Natsumi Tanaka demonstrates how our need to consume can conflict with any universalist notions of bodily autonomy and individual freedom. Through a world where food called “cibis” walk around and talk to you as you carve off their flesh, Tanaka gives voice and shape to the close relationship between how we eat and how we could be eaten, destabilising any ideas of innocence or ability to separate ourselves from the world of predator-prey relationships.
>
> \[In the story,\] the protagonist’s distaste for eating a cibus that she shares her house with backfires, as the creatures need to be consumed regularly to prolong their life. The cibus withers and dies, reminding us multispecies justice does not simply mean straightforward notions of care, guardianship, and “living and letting live”, but rather acting both responsively and responsibly in both life and death.”
### Optimistic realism
Excerpt from the preface, by Sarena Ulibarri, of [the anthology *“Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World”*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme-resources/book-solarpunk-ecological-and-fantastical-stories-in-a-sustainable-world?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> “While it is part of the larger movement of “climate fiction,” the “solar” in solarpunk has come to represent not only the ecological aspect of this budding subgenre, but also the idea of brightness and hope. \[...\]
>
> The limited cannon of self-proclaimed solarpunk fiction was one reason I thought it was so important for this anthology to be translated into English.
>
> When I negotiated the deal with Editora Draco, I didn’t know if the stories would even fit what was being defined as solarpunk in the English-speaking realm \[but\] I knew it was essential that these early examples not be erased from the conversation simply because they were written in a different language.
>
> The stories in this anthology are far less utopian and pastoral, \[there\] is quite a lot of death and violence \[and\] several of the stories show that just because a corporation or government is “green” doesn’t mean it’s free of corruption.”
From the story “Soylent Green is People!” by Carlos Orsi (*Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World*):
> “Now, I suppose some eyebrows have risen when the word “disabled” appeared in the paragraph above.
>
> In fact, **it is hard to imagine a condition,** short of death pure and simple, **that can’t be greatly mitigated by some combination of gene therapy and cybernetics** \[…\]
>
> The reader probably already has the answer: Albertina Gonçalves was a member of the Church of the Puritans. **Her faith** allowed her to accept external aid to overcome physical weaknesses—glasses and a wheelchair, for example—but **no more direct interference in the Inviolable Temple of the Holy Spirit that was her body**.
> \[…\]
>
> The kitchen was just a kitchen, albeit on a large scale: built-in cupboards, a solitary glass in the center of the sink with an inch of juice in it, **a huge fridge-cellar-freezer complex connected to a hybrid solar/wind system on the roof**.
>
> The stove, a thing of brushed steel and synthetic ivory, **connected to a biodigestor tank in the service area, a cylinder the size of an adult Labrador dog where patented bacteria turned potato and banana peels plus used soybean oil into fuel**.
> \[…\]
>
> “**Your secretary said I could come in.”**
> My silence had probably made her uncertain. I shook my head a little to get back on the ground, smiled and pointed to one of the two empty seats I reserved for clients.
>
> **“My secretary” was a mediocre system of commercial automation** that basically scanned visitors for hidden weapons or **incompatible biological material (some types of mouthwash don’t interact well with the bacteria I use to prevent oily skin, and dribbling splutters during the conversation is kind of boring)**, also making an anthropometric survey of the visitor in the social networks and in the Military Police and Federal Police files. \[…\]”
### Not just stories
In Europe (at least), some of the asperities that compose SolarPunk narratives are interestingly visible in the ongoing need for more systemic change and inclusivity in our social landscape. This becomes relevant to designers because a similar trend can be seen both in the academic and professional worlds of design practices.
[Dark Matter Labs](https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’ recent article has a notably SolarPunk-ish tone to it:
> *“We are facing multiple, interconnected crises of the climate, ecosystem, economic inequality, and democracy. These crises are not a crisis of the world, but of our relationship with the world, and how we understand ourselves. We are facing a deep code problem. \[…\]*
>
> *Industrialisation, capitalism, and consumerism have further abstracted humans from being human and remade us into “bad robots” through our alienated labour and that of others. \[…\] This centuries-long ontological division between human-nature and production-reproduction has been hardwired into our regulatory, financial, and built infrastructures. \[…\]*
>
> **What we need is to reconceptualise ourselves as inalienably interconnected and relational beings, as a knot of flows.*We need a relational worldview that sees our lives, our cities, our societies, as complex organisms comprising socio-ecological systems and webs of relationships \[...\]*
>
> *With the financial and strategic support of Partners for A New Economy, Scottish Land Commission, and Opus Independents \[...\] we have sowed the seeds for new civic infrastructures through a number of ‘proofs of possibilities’: visceral experiences and situated experiments that embody a new logic for how we can relate to each other and our environment, how we can recognize value beyond markets and money, and how we can nurture a deeper democratic agency. They are akin to what Erik Olin Wright has called “real utopias” or what Giorgos Kallis refers to as “incubators of counter-hegemony”: not distant fantasies but concrete and contextual manifestations of alternative futures that help render new paradigms part of our ‘everyday’”.* — Dark Matter Labs, [Radicle Civics — Building Proofs of Possibilities for a Civic Economy and Society | by Dark Matter | Aug, 2023](https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/radicle-civics-building-proofs-of-possibilities-for-a-civic-economy-and-society-ee28baeeec70?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[Radicle Civics — Building Proofs of Possibilities for a Civic Economy and Society“Like an operating system, the medium of infrastructure space makes certain things possible and other things impossible. It is not the…Dark Matter LaboratoriesDark Matter](https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/radicle-civics-building-proofs-of-possibilities-for-a-civic-economy-and-society-ee28baeeec70?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Watch also this interesting discussion between Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs) and Jordan Hall about transition:
Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs) and Jordan Hall: a discussion about transition
Finally, it is also interesting to connect the counter-intuitive concepts of *“Beyond Growth”, “Degrowth”* and *“Post-growth”* more concretely with the movement of SolarPunk and its themes, either through the lens of criticism of our current socio-economic models, either through the lens of a necessary transition to enable the kind of changes we want to see.
The subject is seriously discussed amongst economists and at the European Parliament. You can find here the EPRS report on *“Beyond growth: Pathways towards sustainable prosperity in the EU”*:
[Beyond growth: Pathways towards sustainable prosperity in the EU - Design & Critical Thinking LibraryDesign & Critical Thinking Library](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/solarpunk-theme-resources/beyond-growth-pathways-towards-sustainable-prosperity-in-the-eu?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
On the topic of Degrowth (which is often misunderstood), I invite you to watch the case made by [Timothée Parrique](https://timotheeparrique.com/about/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) during [The Beyond Growth 2023 Conference](https://www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth | Timothée Parrique at The Beyond Growth 2023 Conference
---
Next week, we will close our exploration of Solarpunk by devising some *design principles.*
---
Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*
### Evolution of Punk Narratives: From Uchronia to SolarPunk – Part 2
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/evolution-of-punk-narratives-from-uchronia-to-solarpunk/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:06:34.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
We continue our exploration of Solarpunk and its relevancy to design (and designers).
In this series of articles, I explore what are Solarpunk narratives, a way to make sense of them, and how Solarpunk could be transferred to the design practice through design principles. [Find all the articles here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/).
## From Uchronia to Dystopia, to Utopia
SteamPunk and DieselPunk are subgenres that are generally set in alternative historical timelines in which a certain technological aspect has been emphasised to the point of a foundational constraint which leads to various changes in society. These are called “uchronia”, a neologism for “alternate history” in the speculative fiction genre, to describe a story set in "no time" by analogy to a utopia, a story set in "no place" (Wikipedia, 2023).
From “Arcane” the animated series – Netflix
They tend to display an anachronism in their aesthetics, playing with the notion of retro-futurism or “a future informed by past technology”. This is particularly evident with SteamPunk, which often set itself in an alternative future informed by the Victorian era aesthetic, technology of the late 18th and early 20th century and the advent of early industrialisation and automation of work through the mechanical power enabled by steam engines. SteamPunk is often presented as “optimistic retro-futurism”.
Left: “Paris” by an unknown artist | Right: “Lyonesse City” by flaviobolla
DieselPunk is often set in an alternative 20th-century era (the 1920s-1950s), or sometimes during the “interwar period” (between World War I - WWII), which therefore call for an “early modern war” aesthetic and Nazi imperialism imaginary: *dark uniforms with tints of red, machine guns, gas masks, mass production of death and early signs of atomic weaponry.* Because of that, DieselPunk is often presented as “pessimistic retro-futurism” compared to Steampunk.
Left: “Karl Ruprecht Kroenen” in Hellboy (2004) | Right: Sucker Punch poster (2011)
Importantly, they are objects of nostalgia and of idealisation of a past and a future (that never existed), which allows us to tell stories of the “now” through its distorting lens. A retro-future in which we would be bolder and the world bigger. A retro-future in which technology enabled through industrialisation is extremely capacitating and comforting (almost magical), and allows us to “tame the monsters and dragons of the world” as a metaphor of the uncertainties and unintended consequences we face today, subjugating them to our control through the power of \[technology\].
Two visuals from “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” (2004)
Interestingly, the two genres are bound to similar Western narrative points that are linked to the industrialisation of Europe, the advent of mass production and, with it, the reinforcement of certain ideologies and values about growth, energy and technology [as a direct proxy for societal progress](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/is--innovation--what-we-think-it-is-/).
[Is ‘Innovation’ What We Think It Is?How our narrative around innovation echoes our perception of time and the way we act towards complex challengesDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/is--innovation--what-we-think-it-is-/)
A DieselPunk city landscape
Although not directly connected in a linear fashion, CyberPunk emerges as a continuation of these narrative points: electricity, robotics, digital technologies, networks, artificial intelligence, hyper-connectivity, hyper-capitalism, globalisation and mega-corporations —and with these, a form of cultural homogenisation.
> *“The Matrix is a system, \[and\] that system is our enemy. But when you're inside, \[what\] do you see? \[...\] The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”* –Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)
Punk narratives –at least the good ones, some would say– have this interesting quality to question our relationship to the world, to nature, to others, and, ultimately, to ourselves. As a CyberPunk narrative, The Matrix (1999) is notably influenced by the work of Jean Baudrillard, a French post-modernist and post-structuralist philosopher, and his notion of “hyperreality”, a form of shared delusion which manifested through our means of control and power over the world: as technology becomes the desired way to interact with \[reality\] we become unable to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.
> *“The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It's meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness.” –* Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations"
A CyberPunk city landscape
If CyberPunk narratives are often seen as dark (neon-style), depressing, dehumanised, and full of mega-structures and [Archologies](https://www.organism.earth/library/document/arcology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (Paolo Soleri, 1969) urban jungle visions of the future, they question what it means to be a human in an ever-connected, ever-amplified and ever-improved version of ourselves –to quote a well-known cyberpunk-inspired music group: “[Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjR4%5FCbPpQ&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”.
These narratives echo certain ideas that humans (and their cognitive abilities) and subsequently consciousness and life are analogues to computers. And these narratives are today almost ubiquitous and permeate the societal discourses about what technology, humans, and the future are about. This transition from “punk” to “mainstream” could be seen both as a loss and recombination of meaning, as it traverses various layers and boundaries of society: as Gilles Deleuze proposes, a process of “de-territorialisation” and “re-territorialisation”.
[Why Public Intellectuals Promote an Overly Simplistic Future - FarsightForesight expert Alex Fergnani argues that public intellectuals should be more aware of their biases when envisioning the future.FarsightAugust Liljenberg](https://farsight.cifs.dk/the-overly-simplistic-future-of-public-intellectuals/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In many ways, because of that, the current techno-solutionist (and colonialist) culture mainly led by US-based companies (and figures), is stuck in paradigms from the 80s and 90s. In that respect, the kind of ideas very rich and powerful people are pushing forward, the likes of E. Musk and M. Zuckerberg or even Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), are still bounded and therefore limited to these paradigms —paradigms now deprived of their original meaning and reduced only to a certain form and appeal, used to sell exactly what CyberPunk was criticising.
Gilles Deleuze, another French post-modernist philosopher contemporary of Baudrillard and who shared some of his concepts, provides an interesting lens to view this narrative landscape. Deleuze, responding to the work of Michel Foucault –yet another French philosopher– explains back in the 90s that we shifted from what Foucault called “disciplinary societies” to what Deleuze call “societies of control”.
“What are societies of control?”, Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy on YouTube
**Disciplinary societies** are defined by physical spaces and the rules we are expected to follow within them. Disciplinary spaces are enclosures of time or space by some authorities or regulating bodies acting on behalf of a community or a group for instance –e.g. the role of a state. Being at work, in the street or at home means different expectations and rules constraining social behaviours. The workplace defines what “being a worker” means simply because it literally shapes and regulates behaviours. Following the rules bound to a given place guarantees social cohesion and order, hence “discipline” is an implicit social expectation of disciplinary spaces.
**Societies of control**, on the other hand, means that “you are no longer an individual or a member of a mass of individuals in a space that needs to be disciplined, now instead you're a dividual, which means you're a different source of information depending on which system you're interacting with. To a bank, you are your credit score; to a university, you are an SAT score; to your health insurer, you are your genetic risk factors; to YouTube, you are your watch history” (PlasticPills, 2020).
“Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism”, PlasticPills on YouTube
In other words, Deleuze talks about control as a notion of “control checkpoints” and the removal of individuals’ autonomy through the deconstruction of their utility into neatly defined categories, with expected results and therefore expected value –from *individuals* to *dividuals*. The regulatory systems of societies of control, unlike disciplinary spaces, appear to provide more freedom and even over-abundance of choice and behaviours (i.e. individualism, personalisation, etc.), but this freedom is subjected and reduced to purely explicit and transactional interactions, mined for data extraction, reducing even further their utility and amplifying the loss of autonomy. Here the notion of control is not an end in itself but allows the fulfilment of the desire of the assemblages that we inhabit (products, services, groups, communities, etc.).
“Deleuze, Societies of Control“, Overthink Podcast on YouTube
Through this lens, we can see why the need for new utopias is palpable in many fields and spaces. SolarPunk seems to coherently blend many new and related narratives that arise in sub-cultures and fields that push for more sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and systemic changes. This is, in the light of Deleuze’s philosophy, an assemblage. Also, please note that there are other punk narratives emerging or recombining, like FusionPunk ([see this Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fusionpunk/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for more FusionPunk). In most cases, they are about post-capitalist, post-growth, post-globalisation and post-cyberpunk societies.
[Reddit - Dive into anythingLog In](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fusionpunk/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Solarpunk narratives are a response (but not an answer) to the commodification of Cyberpunk tropes, to societies of control, to their explicit transactional nature, to our loss of autonomy, and to our environmental and societal challenges (and crisis)
### Non-monolithic and proto-utopias
Solarpunk is a form of utopia as it is rather optimistic about some varying aspects of the future. But as with many punk narratives, it mainly offers a criticism of today's society, allowing us to reflect, nurture our collective imagination with new imagery, and pass the all-too-often cynical constatation of the shortcomings of our modern world.
In her recent interview, [Monika Bielskyte](https://linktr.ee/monikabielskyte?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a Futurist and researcher, assert that utopias are by nature inherently exclusionary of minorities and marginalized peoples:
> “Almost without exception, marginalized people are outright erased from all but the most recent utopian visions. Pretty much the only place where marginalized peoples exist in sci-fi and futurist visions have been in dystopias (and their presence is often perceived as a signifier of dystopia), because there's literally no place made for them in utopia, given the eugenic and exclusionary nature of utopianism.” – Bielskyte 2023, *“*[*Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe*](https://www.salon.com/2023/07/29/visions-how-the-quest-for-utopia-could-lead-to/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*.
But Solarpunk narratives are not simplistic or purely idealistic, but rather complex in their diversity. Borrowing from Deleuze, Solarpunk is an assemblage, not a monolithic utopia. I would argue here this is the reason why SolarPunk escapes (at least for now) Bielskyte’s categorisation. Moreover, I would be inclined to define SolarPunk as a “theme towards utopia” or even a “theme towards a better tomorrow” –in other words, an active unfolding process of decomposition and recomposition, not a static object/image.
---
Next week, we will investigate a topology of Solarpunk stories.
Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*
### Hybrid Worker – The turn of the tide with generative AI with the Miro Community
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/hybrid-worker-the-turn-of-the-tide-with-generative-ai/
Last updated: 2023-09-25T15:47:08.000Z
Together with Owtcome we ran a workshop using our Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework for the wonderful Miro community.
---
### Event description
What comes to mind when you think of a strategy framework? A canvas, possibly, a huge whiteboard filled with sticky notes, where the most serious meeting of the year is taking place? Let's challenge this!
Strategy tools can enable a rich world of possibilities to help you connect with complex terms, explore connections, and make sense of new patterns to get to unique insights.
To help you navigate the unknown, we created a new tool, Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework, that makes see the business context from a completely new lens. How? You will:
- Be immersed in multiple oceans to explore opportunities
- Take on different roles as a player to see where is your strength
- Face risks in the face of monsters to make better decisions
In doubt that you can make sense of your strategic response? We've got it covered.
### Facilitators
[**Kevin Richard**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is the founder of the Design & Critical Thinking community and Customer Experience Manager in the Swiss Health Insurance industry. [Owtcome](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) collaborated with Kevin Richard from DCT on this ambitious project to solve complex challenges more effectively and design the Multi-Ocean Strategy Framework. His unique insights and skills for handling complexity bring balance, diversity and Sensemaking into collaboration.
[**Krasi Bozhinkova**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Strategic Director and Founder of [Owtcome](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). She focuses on the agency service portfolio and client relationships. She has many years of experience in strategy, product development, and sales leadership positions. Krasi likes to tackle challenging projects and discuss new approaches to delivering value and making transformation efforts worth the time and investment.
[**Daiana Zavate**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is the Design Lead and Co-founder at [Owtcome](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and is responsible for developing proprietary strategic frameworks and methods to strengthen the differentiated approach to product value at Owtcome. She advocates for strategic design as a unique platform for outcomes to elevate the role of design in business and unlock the value of digitization and innovation.
[Hybrid Worker – the turn of the tide with generative AI, Wed, 6 Sep. 2023 at 18:00, Europe/AmsterdamMiro - Hybrid Worker – the turn of the tide with generative AI - Wednesday 6 September 2023Back to top](https://community.miro.com/events/hybrid-worker-the-turn-of-the-tide-with-generative-ai-172?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*
### Exploring SolarPunk: Origins and Counter Narratives – Part 1
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/exploring-solarpunk-origins-and-counter-mainstream-narratives/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:06:11.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
A few months ago, I started to dive into SolarPunk narratives by mere (happy) accident. SolarPunk as a genre is not really new, as it has existed for more than a decade, but, as the term "punk" suggests, it is a sub-culture and, to some extent, it offers counter-mainstream-narratives if not criticisms of our current societies.
In this series of articles, I explore what are Solarpunk narratives, a way to make sense of them, and how Solarpunk could be transferred to the design practice through design principles. [Find all the articles here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/solarpunk/).
---
## Introduction to Solarpunk
SolarPunk is deeply interesting to designers as it proposes an optimistic hybridisation of technology, nature, diversity, and a sense of “finding back a form of purpose and meaning” and a form of “harmony between individuals, societies and nature” by regaining autonomy against eco-socio-technical challenges we are facing. In other words, it offers to think beyond the current ecological, societal and economic constraints and struggles by providing [liminal spaces](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1043170/full?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for opportunities and [adjacent possibles](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5%5F100-1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), not necessarily through futuristic narratives but, counter-intuitively, by being grounded in a form of present, of "now".
Before we dive deeper, it has to be said that SolarPunk (Solarpunk) isn’t a cohesive single-narrative, object, or proposition. It is a coherent yet diversified and possibly contradictory assemblage of ideas, ideologies, concepts, movements, arts, etc. It is often associated with a sci-fi writing genre that emerged in the 2010s, but it is important to clarify that it is not bounded or limited to it. So, in this series, **I will refer to SolarPunk as an umbrella term** for all those things unless specified or stated otherwise.
Art by Olivia Louise – [source](https://missolivialouise.tumblr.com/post/94374063675/heres-a-thing-ive-had-around-in-my-head-for-a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Origins
It is assumed that “the term was coined in 2008 in a blog post titled ‘From Steampunk to Solarpunk’ in which the anonymous author \[...\] conceptualises a new speculative fiction subgenre with steampunk's focal point on specific technologies but guided by practicality and modern economics” (Wikipedia, 2023), but as with many emergent and constantly evolving movements, SolarPunk has multiple origin points in time and space, and interestingly, from authors, artists and thinkers from the “global south”, notably South America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.
What’s important to understand is that SolarPunk is not a thing, but an [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[assemblage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of themes and narratives that are inherited from different movements, in particular, the larger movement of “climate fiction”, and find a form of coherence (what’s called “pattern of coherence”), which means it is not consistent or homogeneous but rather it might contain some contradictory elements and principles when looked in details due to its heterogeneous. This is perfectly fine, these are the necessary conditions and the diversity required for a “movement” to ultimately evolve into something which will enable it to become “mainstream” and much more obvious to many.
### Finding back autonomy against the mundanity of the end of the world
In many ways, SolarPunk is an answer to what one could call “the mundanity of the many ends of the world” and other post-apocalyptic narratives depicted in many media to the point of ubiquity.
These narratives depict the loss of agency/autonomy of humanity in such circumstances, where most of what remains of it is forced to “come back to nature”, to a “primal survival state”, which is a reduction following the dichotomic paradigm of separation between humans and their objects (cities, societies), and the rest of nature. And “nature” should not only be understood as the animal, vegetal, and non-human living organisms but rather a shapeless concept manifested through natural events.
Here, nature either “gets revenge” or “takes back”, placing nature as “an unavoidable external force” and “as something else entirely from us”, not without reminiscence of, 1) some Christian biblical narratives; and 2) the modern industrialised, urbanised, energy-craving, car-centric, growth-centric and techno-solutionist narratives.
Both have in common a notion of “de facto ownership and exploitation of what surrounding us”, of the “degenerative nature of the passage of time” which motivates interventionism, an active “interventionism” (or “innovation”) which is inherently good as it moves us towards a form of “salvation”, and finally the need for “a great saviour”.
Note that in theology, [apocalypticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypticism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a movement that sees the “end of the world” not as a bad thing, but rather as the “revelation of God to all mankind”, the ultimate absolution of our sins (and especially the original one) and the renewal of heaven and earth with God and “the elected ones” as its ruler.
This is interesting to see the connection between our modern techno-solutionism discourse (the likes of Silicon Valley and primarily US Startup mentality) and what SolarPunk evolved from namely SteamPunk, DieselPunk and CyberPunk. Interesting because these shape how we approach design and technology as proxies of our social worlds, their challenges and their intertwined relationship to the climate and (more broadly) environmental crisis we are facing.
---
**Next week, we will navigate the evolution of *punk* narratives towards Solarpunk.**
---
Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*
### Community 3rd anniversary
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/community-3rd-anniversary/
Last updated: 2023-09-20T16:00:39.000Z
The community was created in the midst of the pandemic with the idea that we needed a place to bring people from different horizons together to discuss *design, innovation, systemic change,* *etc.* with a diversity of perspectives, practices, and experiences. Back then, the realisation was staggering: Communities were sharing and discussing the same limited tools, in the same way. Design & Critical Thinking was a humble answer.
Fast forward 3 years later, the community brought together amazing people; we covered so many various topics: *ethics+design, politics+design, design+evaluation, systems thinking+complexity, sense-making, design+philosophy, etc.;* we developed the [*Explorer framework*](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com); and we also had creative workshops and games, like the island mapping, and many more.
**Now is the time to gather and celebrate everything that happened and what comes ahead of us! [Register now](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/296096984/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and join us on Friday, October 6, at 6 PM CET.**
[🎂 Community 3rd anniversary, Fri, Oct 6, 2023, 6:00 PM | MeetupJoin us to celebrate our 3rd anniversary! The community was created in the midst of the pandemic with the idea that we needed a place to bring people from different horizoMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/296096984/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Looking forward to seeing you!!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking.*
### [Replay] Strategic Design Framework to navigate complex ecosystems
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/strategic-design-framework-to-navigate-complex-ecosystems/
Last updated: 2023-04-07T13:30:43.000Z
During this webinar, we presented and played out the beta version of a new framework to navigate complex environments.
The framework uses metaphors which interconnect and help draw a map of realities & possibilities, and highlight relationships to foster new narratives.
This is a tool to help organisations do either diagnosis or prospective work about a current situation and/or a potential challenge/problem. The aim is to enable organisations to find direction, develop a portfolio of strategies, or simply make better decisions in a playful way.
It is built around 4 main concepts:
1. Oceans – The type of environment(s) the organisation is navigating in (eg. market);
2. Archetypes – The type of organisational behaviours and related heuristics;
3. Landscape – The type of contextual structures that exist within/around the organisation and provide capabilities and constraints;
4. Monsters – The type of challenges and obstacles.
## Event resources
Find the Miro board used during this event here:
[Ocean20 Framework - view onlymiro.com](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMVQ4Iak=/?share%5Flink%5Fid=294540629040&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks
A big thank you to all the participants for joining and playing with us! Your energy was incredible and helped create an amazing experience! And an even bigger thanks to my partners in crime in this adventure, Daiana and Krasi, our collaboration has created something truly unique! Can't wait to see where we will go next with this original framework. 🙏
- About [Daiana Zavate Design Lead at Owtcome, Netherlands](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- About [Krasi Bozhinkova Strategic Designer at Owtcome, Netherlands](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- About [Kevin Richard](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) Founder of the Design & Critical Thinking community and Customer Experience Manager in the Swiss Health Insurance industry.
Special thanks to [Daniele Catalanotto](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielecatalanotto/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the SDN community!
This event has been possible through the collaboration of members from multiple design and innovation communities around the world:
- [Swiss Service Design Network (SDN) Chapter](https://www.service-design-network.org/chapters/switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Owtcome](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Design & Critical Thinking](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/)
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Design Fiction on AI in everyday things, A Framework to Navigate Complexity
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-fiction-on-ai-in-everyday-things/
Last updated: 2023-03-05T07:15:00.000Z
## Making sense together, navigating uncertainty
Here are two upcoming events for the community to collaborate on making sense of what's before us.
### Design Fictions: exploring possibilities and shared meaning of integrated AI
Join us on Thursday, March 23 for a Design Fiction workshop to explore the possible meaning of the integration of AI in our everyday lives.
[Design Fictions: exploring possibilities and shared meaning of integrated AI · LumaThis online event organised by the Design & Critical Thinking community is a workshop to work together on a future where AI will be everywhere, even in the most common things of our everyday…Register](https://lu.ma/9ca8j6bz?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Strategic Design framework to navigate complex ecosystems
Join us on Thursday, April 6 for this webinar during which [Daiana Zavate](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) & **[Krasi Bozhinkova](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)** from [Owtcome](https://owtcome.substack.com/) and I will present a new framework we are working on to navigate complexity.
[Strategic Design framework to navigate complex ecosystems · LumaJoin us for this webinar on the beta version of a new framework to navigate complex environments.The framework uses metaphors which interconnect and help draw a map of realities &…Register](https://lu.ma/trcts0qq?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks for reading!
*Kevin from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Turbulences and AI: clarifications and more principles
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-clarifications-and-more-principles/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:11:22.000Z
### Intelligence & expectations
Please note that I will simplify some complex subjects here.
What we call "Artificial Intelligence" should be called "algorithms" or "Large Language Models" (LLMs for short) because they have nothing close to "intelligent". They do what algorithms do, even though in a "smarter" way, by connecting things together depending on probabilities extracted from the original data set on which they have been trained. I'm not going through defining what "intelligence" is because, first I'm not competent to do so and secondly, even experts in various fields closely related to the subject do NOT agree on a common definition. This should be a first good evidence that we shouldn't be quick at calling things "intelligent". But even on a colloquial use of the term, this does not work very well.
[Wikiwand - IntelligenceIntelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information…Wikiwand](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Intelligence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I'm not been picky on words for the fun of it. As much as an "Autopilot" that is not "auto-piloting" anything is disingenuous and harmful by creating false expectations and narratives, so "Artificial Intelligence" creates in the public narrative misplaced expectations –although clearly less intentional.
## Hallucination
We know current LLMs (Large Language Models) have an unreliable relationship with facts and transparency, only because they are not designed for that. Their job is to create believable narratives. In human terms, they are basically "liars" and they are averagely good at that.
Treating any conversation with LLMs as a huge *"shared hallucination"* (between you and the algorithm) removes the burden of defacto "trust" we instinctively put on any human social interactions. It also means we create an intentional space for weirdness and messy connections, which has the potential to bring interesting outcomes.
### Suspension of disbelief
On a similar note, we can take a principle from another space to approach LLMs interactions. The concept of *"suspension of disbelief"* comes from *storytelling* and the *entertainment* space, especially in movies, TV shows and Games, and stands for the fact that we approach such media knowing these are stories with (potentially) loose connections to reality.
For instance, we don't take [*The Lord of the Rings*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The%5FLord%5Fof%5Fthe%5FRings?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for an accurate historical depiction, nor are we taking [*Star Wars*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Star%5FWars?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [*Mass Effect*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mass%5FEffect%5F%28video%5Fgame%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for a factually *true* representation of space exploration. Instead, we set aside reasoning and allow ourselves to accept extraordinary elements, only because they have the potential to benefit the story as a whole –and such media know how to play with this principle.
Extending such principle to LLMs interactions makes a lot of sense too. Reliability and trust are not issues or bugs anymore but they are features in service of a temporary shared hallucination/story we are co-creating with the algorithm.
*Note: I'm not saying LLMs don't have to improve on such aspects either.*
[Subscribe to the newsletter](#/portal/signup/free)
### Autonomy and context
In my two previous articles (see [here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/) and [here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/)), I discuss the importance of the *autonomy of individuals* as a strong design principle: *“AIs (LLMs, Algorithms) should not replace human knowledge but rather sustain its autonomy”*. I present the case for the necessity of working with LLMs (AI, algorithms) using small groups of humans that create a localised context for discussions, interactions, and interpretations.
Context is key, it is what allows us to attribute meaning and expectations to things. As a group, we define what is relevant and appropriate given what we understand of the context in which we operate. This means interacting with LLMs in such a way allows us to reinterpret whatever algorithm's output in a meaningful way and discard what is not relevant, then allowing the group to intervene in their context on their own terms: this guarantees autonomy to the group.
This also removes another burden put on LLMs algorithms, which is to deal with moral aspects of our social realities. Keeping this burden on a group is better because this lies in our way of dealing with such questions (i.e. we already know how to make other humans accountable for their behaviours). We do NOT have to algorithmically solve moral issues at scale (at the algorithm level), we simply let them unfold in context (at the human/society level).
This has perhaps the potential to allow space for genuine debates and discussions in the public sphere rather than automatized harmful incompetence.
[Turbulences, loss of senses and disillusionHi, Kevin here. In my recent readings, I noticed an interesting theme in relation to the recent layoffs in Tech, the disillusion of some in the design communities, and the criticisms of our tools as instruments of “our own downfall”. The many deaths of UX designHow UX was proclaimed deadDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/)
[Turbulences and AI: from a third perspective to design principlesHi everyone, Kevin again. I recently wrote about our loss of senses and disillusion in face of recent turbulences: the recent layoffs, the rise of AI, and the rapid commoditization of design all seem to indicate we are gently running along the edge of a precipice only covered by fog,Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/)
## Thanks for reading!
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Turbulences and AI: from a third perspective to design principles
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:11:08.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin again.
I recently wrote about our [loss of senses and disillusion in face of recent turbulences](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/): the recent layoffs, the rise of AI, and the rapid commoditization of design all seem to indicate we are gently running along the edge of a precipice only covered by fog, waiting for us to misstep along the way.
While some see it this way, some are jumping off the cliff as the only way to embrace what seems unavoidable. Perhaps the scary precipice isn't that deep? Maybe the fog hides an ocean of opportunities? What to believe when what is at stake is the thing we know for certain? A dilemma, that is, one imbued by strong feelings either way.
## The third perspective
The dilemma is unsolvable given both perspectives: on one side, the threats to our current ways of doing and living far outweigh any benefits that it might bring; on the other side, the opportunities for meaningful changes are here to be explored and, eventually, conquered.
This is not but a rather fragile landscape, asymmetric in terms of investments, left open for polarization. In this increasing tension space, some ran along the edge and accidentally looked into the precipice and its apparent depth, the “disillusioned" I talked about [in my previous article](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/).
But the precipice isn't what it seems, it is a yet-undecided amorphic space, more than limited to two opposing states. We need to go beyond simplistic dualism. We need to increase diversity. We need a third perspective.
> “The world is in fact cursed.
> What the world being cursed does mean is that you can't just blame one side, \[...\] you can't just idealize the other because even the victimizer is a victim and even the victim is a victimizer.
>
> The world is cursed \[and we should be\] on a quest of seeing the world with eyes uncluttered by hate”. – [Avatar vs Princess Mononoke: How to have a message](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsNrjTfIGIE&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The world *is* cursed –it is bounded to change, with unforeseeable consequences. The precipice has always been there. The dilemma is not one to be solved, but one to be *sidestepped* and, eventually, *dissolved*.
How? The *third perspective* is not necessarily a space of *reconciliation* and *peace* –convergence between two sides– but first and foremost one of *liminality*. [Liminal spaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7wSwQtkts&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) can hold several, possibly contradicting, truths. In my previous article, I discussed Deleuze's philosophy and his work with Guattari on *Schizoanalysis*. Similarly, the third perspective is a process of navigating different territories and making novel connections.
[Turbulences, loss of senses and disillusionHi, Kevin here. In my recent readings, I noticed an interesting theme in relation to the recent layoffs in Tech, the disillusion of some in the design communities, and the criticisms of our tools as instruments of “our own downfall”. The many deaths of UX designHow UX was proclaimed deadDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/)
## Embracing the unavoidable
Previously, I discussed the sentiment that we (as designers) paved the way for our own downfall and why, while the sentiment is understandable, it is also overly simplistic and says little to the whole story.
Similarly, embracing fully the opposite view isn't exempt from issues. Very much like the wave of criticisms against some of our tools for being a doorstep to our replacement by AI tools imposes us to look at the kind of patterns at play, so embracing AI thoughtlessly because it is "unavoidable" is overly reductive. Allow me to bring an example as a case for discussion.
I recently stumbled upon a post in this [LinkedIn group](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/37821/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about using AI in our design process. The post is only visible to the group members (but in case, [here is the link](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7032273157411532800/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) but links a Medium article titled *“*[*Design Sprints are dead, long live the AI Sprints?*](https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/design-sprints-are-dead-long-live-the-ai-sprints-2f6e9d561449?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”.*
[Design Sprints are dead, long live the AI Sprints ?What I am about to show you is a potential application of GenAI to replace the current Design Sprint process. You’ll see the full process…BootcampBenjamin Dehant](https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/design-sprints-are-dead-long-live-the-ai-sprints-2f6e9d561449?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The author describes how he used ChatGPT to perform a Design Sprint by himself (emphasis mine):
> What I am about to show you is a potential application of GenAI to replace the current Design Sprint process. You’ll see the full process and results so you can judge the quality ( or not ) of it by yourself.
>
> I had to trick the bot once or twice to get it to perform what I wanted but overall it was quite a smooth flow I would say. **I could go from an initial problem to a ready-to-show prototype in under 4 hours!**
Of course, this is kinda absurd at first. Indeed, if the point is ***speed towards an output***, then why even bother performing a simulacrum of Design Sprint? If the point is ***quality of the solution***, then using ChatGPT to replace key actors' knowledge is problematic.
As I replied under LinkedIn comments:
> Well, I know some people will find amazing what AI can do. It certainly is. But this misses the point on so many levels (misplaced admiration).
>
> Design Sprint is not that great of a method for what it claims to do. This is even stupider.
AI isn't the problem. The subversion of one form of knowledge by another without taking into account the context is the issue –that is, human knowledge and experience by AI. That's the pattern at play.
As I develop in my reply to the author:
> Just to be clear, I'm playing a lot with AI myself recently, so I'm not blaming you for trying. But you need to understand the type of \*knowledge space\* you're playing with before even considering which tool to use. Every tool comes with \*bounded applicability\*. \[ChatGPT\] uses Large Language Models' existing data to generate predictive patterns of \*believable answers\*.
>
> When dealing with \*unknown unknowns\*, like in design, you have an issue of \*epistemological knowledge\*, \[of coming to know the context and its relationships\]. This is what makes things unclear, uncertain, etc. \*Relationships in context are what provide meaning\*. Replacing any amount of epistemological knowledge by AI in the context of "solving" a problem for social complex adaptive systems comes with a high cost in terms of assumptions, diversity, meaning, etc.
>
> However, feeding knowledge/meaning to AI to then using it to play with themes in a conversational fashion will likely bring interesting connections/inspirations because this is exactly what they are good at doing. We should use this kind of tool not to replace human experience & knowledge, but to sustain its autonomy –that's an ethical design principle.
I think I will never advocate this enough, but understanding the advantages and limitations of our tools, combined with an understanding of the context is key. This can open new opportunities for using them (constraints and affordances). AI tools are no different.
## Coming to design principles
A third perspective here is to recognize the constraints and opportunities on both sides. Human knowledge is situated, context-sensitive (see [contextualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextualism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and tacit, [even in “expert domains“](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/complexity/contextual-knowledge-and-proceduralized-context?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Algorithms with Large Language Models like ChatGPT have limited access to context, no access to human experience, and unreliable relationship to expert knowledge and facts –although the latter can improve, context and experience won't. AI can be used to extract summary, highlights elements and show relationships based on probabilistic inference. The relevancy therefore highly depends on the original input which must convey the necessary context for it to perform "efficiently".
So, here are some principles (as proposal) to approach AI within a design process:
- **Define context:** Seek situated (human and non-human) knowledge and experiences to highlight relationships (narrative research);
- **Foster collaboration:** through small groups around said knowledge, experiences and relationships to generate themes and new relationships;
- **Support theme generation with AI:** each group act as located context with their knowledge and understanding to feed the AI but incentivise reinterpretation and re-contextualisation by the group upon the output;
- **Design interventions:** use the generated themes and relationships to design interventions (portfolio of strategies) back into the context.
## Thanks for reading!
*Kevin from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Turbulences, loss of senses and disillusion
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-loss-of-senses-and-disillusion/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T18:10:53.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
In my recent readings, I noticed an interesting theme in relation to the recent layoffs in Tech, the disillusion of some in the design communities, and the criticisms of our tools as instruments of “our own downfall”.
[The many deaths of UX designHow UX was proclaimed dead (again), what do AI and Elon Musk have to do with it, and what poses a real treat to the discipline of design.UX CollectiveKristian Mikhel](https://uxdesign.cc/the-many-deaths-of-ux-design-85a255e3676f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[DOWN WITH THE (design) SYSTEM!Once upon a time, UX was a steaming pile of artisanal crap. Design Systems saved us, but now they need to die.Radical UXAntoine Valot](https://medium.com/radical-ux/down-with-the-design-system-f0d3c6a74649?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[“Everyone Used to Be a Designer”While it may seem counterintuitive at first, designers are at least partially responsible for always being included in layoff waves.UX PlanetCorneliux](https://uxplanet.org/everyone-used-to-be-a-designer-530aa762e415?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## The (great) disillusion
For instance, in the article *“*[*Everyone Used to Be a Designer*](https://uxplanet.org/everyone-used-to-be-a-designer-530aa762e415?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, the [author](https://twitter.com/corneliux?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) proposes a review of the state of the (UX) industry, with its fair share of criticisms which admittedly holds on some asperities and seems (incidentally) to be part of a recent wave of "critiques against design tools" in this early 2023.
**Disillusion?** As the underlying argument goes, some realise what was believed to be good for us (designers) is what ends up participating in our downfall. We all actively participated in commoditizing design to a point where designer X or designer Y or tool Z has no distinguishable differentiation value and companies will simply pick the cheapest (i.e. the tool).
Sounds relevant given the recent events, right? Well, we can agree (at least partially) with this argument, and still disagree with the conclusion. First, we should mind the simplistic reduction to direct causality between what we are seeing and our tools. Yes, some occurrences surely participate in the rapid commoditization of some domains of Design. But the recent layoffs didn't affect only designers, nor are limited to a specific industry. Secondly, it does not necessarily imply “a downfall” or some kind of linear progression towards an “end”. Design and the many different contexts in which it finds itself are in constant (co)evolution.
In other words, there is more to the story.
## A Deleuzian perspective
I have recently [posted on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kvrichard%5Fwhat-are-societies-of-control-activity-7027893706959527937-1ggZ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about Deleuze's philosophy of society. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B%5Fi8%5FWuyqAY&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) summarizes [Michel Foucault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel%5FFoucault?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Gilles Deleuze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles%5FDeleuze?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)'s work on understanding the evolving philosophy of societies and the emergence of what Deleuze call *“societies of control”*.
[What are societies of control?Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cuck Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilosophyCuckI will get a better microphone sometime this summer, don’t worry. Working on…YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B%5Fi8%5FWuyqAY&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> “\[To Deleuze\] the world is not one of striated spaces, it's a flow, energies, vectors. Everything's always on its way to something else, and control is no different.
>
> You're no longer an individual or a member of a mass of individuals in a space that needs to be disciplined, now instead you are a dividual which means you're a different source of information depending on which system you're interacting with. \[...\] To a bank, you are your credit score; to a university you are an sat score; to your health insurer you are your genetic risk factors; to \[YouTube\] you are your watch history \[...\]” –
[Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic PosthumanismDeleuze contrasts his “Society of Control” with Foucault’s “Disciplinary Society” in a short essay. I focus on Deleuze’s posthumanist vision of the future, a…YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq%5F-bLlY&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
From a Deleuzian perspective, we can understand that the issue isn’t in the tools themselves but the kind of outcomes they help achieve (Deleuze would talk about “desire” here).
From a complex adaptive systems perspective, the relationships in context matter more than the objects themselves. If, say, “Design Systems” (as a tool) can be used as replacements for Designers, they can also be enablers for creativity –this is a context-sensitive property.
Deleuze talks about control as *the removal of individuals’ autonomy* through the deconstruction of their utility into neatly defined categories, with expected results and therefore expected value –from *“individuals”* to *“dividuals”*. The system (society, corporations) appears to provide freedom of choice (and even over-abundance of choice) but this freedom is subjected and reduced to explicit and transactional interactions, mined for data extraction and therefore even more reduction of utility through categorisation. Here the notion of *control* is not an end in itself but allows the fulfilment of the *desire* of the *assamblages* that we inhabit.
Hence, the problem IS NOT that we have “Lego pieces” (i.e. Design Systems) to play with in the first place, the problem is the removal of autonomy in exchange for *utility-trough-value-extraction over time* as the only metric. In other words, the game is not played at the level of the tools here but, rather, they serve the desire of the specific assemblage in which they exist.
The “specialisation” rhetoric in our profession (one which has become more and more common these days) is nonetheless a form of continuation of this isolation of utility. The useful tension lies in increasing diversity, not its reduction (see *de-territorialisation* and *re-territorialisation*).
I wonder, however, how “new” the movement from UI to strategic/business consulting really is –it does not seem like so. Indeed, commodification comes with some form of (hyper)specialisation. But fortunately enough, the "landscape" isn’t homogeneous or fixated but in constant change.
## The End? (No)
Deleuze and Guattari in their work on Schizoanalysis propose the concept of territories. To simplify, assemblages co-exist within territories through which certain heuristics emerges, heuristics that fulfil the assemblage's desire. Change occurs through processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, from which new assemblages can emerge. Deleuze and Guattari propose through schizoanalysis ways to purposefully navigate and connect different territories (de-territorialisation) to create new boundaries (re-territorialisation).
Commoditization happens in very well-defined territories, with low porosity and very high coherence. But this also means we are not doomed, that there is no “downfall”.
To me, it is a matter of narratives, sense-making and adjacent possibles.
---
By the way, here’s a critique I wrote 3 years ago. In light of the criticisms we can read these days, it’s safe to say it holds pretty well.
[The Ethics Of Design SprintAn endeavor you are passively subscribing to.Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Read the full series
[Turbulences and AI: from a third perspective to design principlesHi everyone, Kevin again. I recently wrote about our loss of senses and disillusion in face of recent turbulences: the recent layoffs, the rise of AI, and the rapid commoditization of design all seem to indicate we are gently running along the edge of a precipice only covered by fog,Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-from-a-third-perspective-to-design-principles/)
[Turbulences and AI: clarifications and more principlesIntelligence & expectations Please note that I will simplify some complex subjects here. What we call “Artificial Intelligence” should be called “algorithms” or “Large Language Models” (LLMs for short) because they have nothing close to “intelligent”. They do what algorithms do, even though in a ”…Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/turbulences-and-ai-clarifications-and-more-principles/)
## Thanks for reading!
*Kevin from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### AI and meaning; Duality in context and the third perspective as a design tool
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ai-and-meaning-duality-in-context-and-the-third-perspective-as-a-design-tool/
Last updated: 2023-01-21T07:00:10.000Z
In this session, we discuss the relationship between AI, the potential for hyper-intelligence, and meaning through abstraction.
We also discuss the notions of duality and how duality with context creates useful contrast that adds meaning and generates new perspectives, which can be used as a design tool. This links to the concept of "negative space" in Semiotics, and "Early Heaven" and "Later Heaven" from ancient Chinese Ba Gua. This brings the notion of "the third perspective" and the ability to subvert expectations through the breaking of patterns.
*\*\*Sorry for the sound quality\*\**
### Watch on YouTube
### Find this session on Spotify
[Join the community](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/#/portal/signup/free)
## References
1\. Here's a simple yet interesting explanation of "the third perspective" through the analysis of the narrative of the movie AVATAR in contrast to Princess Mononoke.
[Avatar vs Princess Mononoke: How to have a messageBoth Avatar and Princess Mononoke have stories that revolve around their messages. But both have two very different results and it’s because of the differenc...YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsNrjTfIGIE&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2\. Introduction to Bayesian Thinking by Julia Galef
[Thinking like a Bayesian - Julia Galef (Strata + Hadoop World 2016)Julia Galef outlines the most important principles of thinking like a Bayesian.Subscribe to O’Reilly on YouTube: http://goo.gl/n3QSYiFollow O’Reilly on Twitt...YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpdBOUnynps&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
3\. Bruno Latour's The Sociology of Science
[Sociology of Science | bruno-latour.frbruno-latour.fr](http://www.bruno-latour.fr/taxonomy/term/39.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
4\. On narrative research
[Notes on narrative researchSensing patterns in the community through the stories of the people who live its lifeRettig’s NotesMarc Rettig](https://medium.com/rettigs-notes/notes-on-narrative-research-6eca7c226891?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks for reading!
*And thanks to Matt, Daiana and the community.*
[Join our next discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Artwork generated using DALLE, Prompt: *“strange attractor, gravity field, beautiful landscape, digital art”*
*Kevin from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Affordances in context drive experiences beyond intentionality
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/affordances-in-context-drive-experiences-beyond-intentionality/
Last updated: 2023-01-02T06:00:41.000Z
## What’s missing when focusing on transactional products & services
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
🌟
First and foremost I want to wish you all the best for 2023! May you find what you seek, may that be success, happiness, health, creativity, etc. Thanks for being part of this community by reading this [newsletter](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/#/portal/), being part of [our Slack server](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/), perhaps engaging in conversation and/or participating in our [events](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Thank you so much!
I was recently visiting my family in France for the holidays, in a small town on the shore of lake Geneva.
The side funny story about this lake, which is known on international maps as “lake Geneva” is called “lake Léman” here, a more “neutral name” used on both sides of a lake shared by France and Switzerland, and the Lemanic region encompassing several Swiss cantons and the french department of Haute-Savoie. Swiss people love consensus! But Geneva being the place of most international organisations, I guess this makes sense that the name remained on international maps –although this somewhat defeats the legendary “neutrality” of Switzerland. That being said, most other French-speaking Swiss cantons jokingly criticize Geneva, or “the bigmouths at the end of the lake” as they are kindly nicknamed, for being a bit too “French” (for context, this kind of “friendly tensions” between Swiss cantons is an interesting cultural aspect of such a small country yet full of contrasts and often considered as the Japan of Europe). Anyway, sorry for the long tangent.
Source: [ESA earth](https://earth.esa.int/web/earth-watching/image-of-the-week/content/-/article/lake-geneva/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
So, we went to Evian with the kids to visit the Flottins’ village, an ephemeral village of huge sculptures made of driftwood (from the lake) built within the city. The name *“Flottins”* comes from the French *“bois flotté”* which literally means *“driftwood”* (*“bois”* meaning *“wood”* and *“flotté”* meaning *“having drifted in water”*). The attraction is meant to be an alternative to a Christmas village.
Some of the huge sculptures, made of driftwood.
Aside from the main sculptures, there are the Flottin’s people –musicians and artists alike– animating the place: my kids were in absolute awe after a Flottin’s magician made a small piece of wood disappear and reappear, and I took several minutes listening to a solo of piano on a theme that was both worrying and enchanting.
0:00
/
1×
One of the Flottins' people playing a piano theme.
And, in all the small alleys and streets adjacent to the main place where the sculptures are displayed, there are intriguing, playful objects people can interact with, made of driftwood, recycled wood and metal parts. These can be games like weird pinball machines, animated sculptures, or puppets you can interact with using pulleys that reverse the movements and deceive the senses. Some can be played by one person, and some require the participation & coordination of several people.
A glimpse at some of the interactive objects.
### Great affordances beat malformed products
One could say, in many respects, these objects are for the most part bizarre and malformed. They are not always working well, and sometimes they are overly complicated or simple for what they do. Some are closer to pieces of art than workable interactive objects. In other words, their individual experience is not optimal and even not that great. But as a whole, their experiences are coherent and their interfaces afford discoverability. Kids and adults are driven towards these objects and their uncanny yet distinguishable interfaces, willing to see what will happen or what is the goal of the game. Their uncanniness certainly plays a big part in the overall experience.
_This post is for subscribers only._
### On framing & exploring problems; using assemblage theory to understand & design for network effects
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-framing-exploring-problems-using-assemblage-theory-to-understand-design-for-network-effects/
Last updated: 2022-12-05T21:47:40.000Z
During this community workshop session, we discuss how to frame problems to explore them and the critical need for diversity (of minds, perspectives, etc) in these early design activities.
We discuss why we need to bring back imagination as many organizations (and practitioners) often jump from problem definition to solution. We then touch upon the concept of *"useful frictions"* in digital and virtual spaces.
Finally, we talk about Assemblage Theory as a way to understand coupling effects in networks and the notions of territorialization & deterritorialization through a fictional challenge: *"what if we had to design a temporary cult"*.
[Join our next event on Tuesday](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Thanks for watching!
Join the community on Slack 👉
Thanks to Tamika for sharing your thoughts!
*Artwork generated using DALLE, prompt: “a group of explorers discover a new island world full of wonders, futuristic digital art”.*
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Betterment of today's education through dynamic financialization?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/betterment-of-todays-education-through-dynamic-financialization/
Last updated: 2022-11-16T18:02:55.000Z
The "virtual chalet" is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.
We discuss the issue of the current north American education system and its repercussions on the global financing of education, with a focus on Europe. One of our community members, Matt, shares an approach/opportunity to tackle some of it through a dynamic financialization model. This led the group to an interesting, honest, and stimulating design critique form of discussion.
- Join our next session 👉 https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/
- Join the community on Slack 👉 https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/
- About the community 👉 https://designcriticalthinking.com
Thanks to [Matt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattji?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Marc](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaumgartner/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Jonathan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-edwards-b4b34a47/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and Steven for sharing their thoughts!
### Thanks for reading, watching, and listening!
Kevin from *The Design & Critical Thinking community.*
### Scaffolding for change
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/scaffolding-for-change/
Last updated: 2022-11-14T18:29:41.000Z
Change, which ultimately underlies any form of design and innovation, is something that resembles not a recipe –rather its antithesis. It requires navigating the unknown seas we [discussed here](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/chapters/navigation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Indeed, in unknown contexts, change is unpredictable, but that does not mean you should navigate blindly.
Change is about *potentials*, *energy allocation*, and *adjacent possibles*, that increases the *likelihood* of certain outcomes. Unintended consequences are the default. As explorers, we want to grow the type of changes we want to see and this requires creating and maintaining the necessary structure that would support its growth, a scaffolding structure.
## Processes as scaffolding
Here I propose that our design and innovation processes are, or at least should be, in fact, scaffolding to the very change we aim to generate.
A scaffolding is a structure that is not meant to last, and serves as a support to grow, build, or repair \[something\], usually the end-structure meant to last. The obvious example that comes to mind is in architecture & construction, but such structures can also be found in nature, as part of plants ecosystem for instance, and are used in medical application research. In other words, a scaffolding is an enabler. Furthermore, we should be able to remove the scaffold (or let it decay) and whatever we helped grow should sustain itself.
**However, not all processes are equal in terms of their ability to sustain a scaffolding approach.**
### Layering vs. Funnelling processes
Many innovation and design processes exist as means to reduce options to a few that are the most suited to a certain problem. This engineering approach to innovation & design as “problem-solving” assumes that for a defined problem there is a set number of solutions, amongst which there is the best solution. Indeed, this works in rather clear, unambiguous, and static situations but not in a complex, ambiguous, and ever-evolving context.
The problem is not always “defined” nor is it “a problem”, rather it is an entanglement of patterns, processes, systems, (etc.) from which what is identified as “problematic” emerges. Here “root cause analysis” does not work because nothing is specifically the cause but the entangled interactions and any changes to one of these intertwined patterns will necessarily have unpredictable consequences. This ambiguity is what defines a complex context.
From [“For Impact: Generate Snowballs, Don’t Select Snowflakes! – Funnelling vs Layering”, AXILO 2019](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iZvzweYqY1IJOqYa6HanKGTOQ4zJVGRT&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
_This post is for subscribers only._
### 🦊 Being foxes & tigers: a discussion about economics, politics, and design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/being-foxes-tigers-a-discussion-about-economics-politics-and-design/
Last updated: 2022-11-01T16:00:45.000Z
During our last community event, we engaged in an unplanned and unmanaged informal discussion like we love to hold in the community.
A discussion about foxes and tigers, about making sense of a complex world through metaphors, about philosophies of being and understanding their underlying systems. We also discussed how "design" activities today are made for "transactional" and "value extraction" systems and how this limits their applicability (or can be detrimental) to social and political systems.
### Thanks for reading, watching, and listening!
Thanks to all our community members, and a special thank you to Daiana & Matt 🙏
Kevin *from Design & Critical Thinking*
### Politics is a design, which designs
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/politics-is-a-design-which-designs/
Last updated: 2022-10-06T11:24:09.000Z
> Design is relational, not isolated.
Hi, Kevin here.
Today I wanted to share some thoughts on an interesting topic that popped up in my feeds, a “speculative design workshop” on the topic of *“Imagine a world where design has replaced politics”.*
Mind the necessary assumptions I have to make in order to explore what the prompt elicits in my mind. I cannot avoid wondering why the prompt seems so weird in its framing, which plays an almost forced opposition, a potential false dilemma if you ask me.
Indeed, the whole question lies in the definitions given to the terms ***design*** and ***politics***.
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Workshop: Exploring the empathy gap
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/exploring-the-empathy-gap/
Last updated: 2022-10-05T16:56:43.000Z
Join us for our next community workshop to bridge the empathy map.
[Community workshop: Exploring The Empathy Gap, Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupHi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, This is our monthly community workshop where we build & discuss the future of the community, try out new ideas, and more. \*\*This seMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/288330469/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Empathy in design
In Design, the quality of empathy sets the tone of key product decisions and what essentially makes a product life-centric. However, empathizing is not something that can be activated directly by simply asking someone to "be empathic." Tools can be very powerful activators, and that's what we want to share with the community.
This will be an interactive workshop that will introduce a special empathy tool called the "Empathy Gap." The tool is designed to help teams with a practical and effective set of activities for empathic insights and demonstrate the new approach to embedding empathy better in product development.
The topic of the session will probe the ongoing tensions between different work formats (in-person/online/hybrid) and the issues raised by the virtual format when it comes to engagement and empathic connection.
Join us and learn more about the empathy gap and how we can bridge it together!
[Join this event](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/288330469/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### Thanks for reading!
Daiana, Krasi, and Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Design & Philosophy: full series
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-philosophy-full-series/
Last updated: 2022-09-07T09:12:45.000Z
On 21 July 2022, the community started a series of discussions on the marriage between design and philosophy. Over the course of 5 conversations, we covered various topics and made some new friends.
How it all started:
[❤️ Design Loves Philosophy, Article Review, A Designer’s Belief Of Value, And More...Dear fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, What’s up in this update? Well, this a special twenty-height week ahead coming for the community, plus some little surprises prepared by yours truly. Follow the white rabbit 🐇👇 1\. Replay: virtual chalet & curious exploration of July 5th 2022\. 2\. Event: T…Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-loves-philosophy-article-review/)
[Join our next discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
_This post is for subscribers only._
### A pragmatic design philosophy: exploring a useful tension between pragmatism and creativity
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-pragamtic-design-philosophy-exploring-a-useful-tension-between-pragmatism-and-creativity/
Last updated: 2022-09-07T08:59:14.000Z
Hi everyone,
Our series of discussions on the theme of *[marrying design and philosophy](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tag/philosophy/)* comes to an end with a [third and final round on Tuesday 23 August at 6 PM CET](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/287878929/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
This time, we want to explore two aspects:
- First, is the importance of **coming to a form of pragmatism**, which one might call *“pragmatic design philosophy”*. That is, design relates to the ability to act in the *“now and here”* with realism toward the capabilities we have at our disposal in context – not only ours but others too.
- Second, is the (equal) importance of **connecting to a form of abstractive and poetic conceptualisation**, which one might call *creativity.* This is best expressed by the idea of "connecting the dots", here not in a purely logical sense but in a potentially *odd* and *unexpected* way. This is the place of metaphors and nonlinear-yet-serendipitous thinking.
The goal of this session is to **explore this tension that underly many aspects of the design practice**. Join us here 👇
[The marriage of design & philosophy #3, Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:00 PM | Meetup\*\*3rd and final round of this series of discussions.\*\* Themes for exploration:\*How can we link back design practice and philosophy?\*\*What are the possible pain points ofMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/287878929/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking.*
### Week #33 – The forms of power & privileges, and practical design philosophy
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-forms-of-power-privileges-and-practical-design-philosophy/
Last updated: 2022-08-17T20:34:23.000Z
Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well & safe!
Here's what happened on the thirty-third week of 2022.
**📆 On Tuesday 16 August,** we discussed the different forms of power, how they influence decision-making, and how they relate (or not) to design. We discussed how power can be reciprocal, and why it is best described in context.
We also discussed the notion that platforms like Amazon & Youtube give a form of power to their users, but this power is asymmetrical because it is structurally lent, to the extent of what the platforms are willing to go.
[Join our next discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Recordings
## Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
Become a member, expand your thoughts, and engage in deep conversations about design, innovation, ethics, systems, change, etc. It's free, only brain juice is accepted! 👇
[Become a member](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/#/portal/signup/free)
### Past recordings and Virtual Chalet session on August 16th
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-philosophy-recordings-and-august-16-virtual-chalet-session/
Last updated: 2022-08-15T16:16:57.000Z
Hi everyone, hope you're doing all well & safe!
Here is this week's quick update and upcoming session.
### Recordings: Marrying Design & Philosophy
Find here parts #1 and #2 of a series of discussions on design and philosophy. Part 3 is soon to be announced, [so stay tuned to our Meetup page](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)! 😉
**Part 1 – The marriage of design & philosophy**
**Part 2 – Design & Philosophy: Decision-making & enacting the world as designers**
In addition, find a short introduction here: *Design, people, and the social – From philosophy to cognition, to society.*
[Design, people, and the socialHi everyone, Kevin here. I try to find back some inspiration and rhythm for writing during this summer break, as I’m reaching the end of a trip to southern France with my spouse and kids. Before the trip, I had several things in mind that I left aside andDesign & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-people-and-the-social/)
### Virtual Chalet, Thursday 16 August at 6 PM CET
Join us on Thursday for an informal community discussion during which we will also discuss the next Design & Philosophy event's theme/topic.
[Virtual Chalet Meetup, Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupTue, Aug 16, 6:00 PM CEST: Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, shareMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/twggssydclbvb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks for reading!
### Design, people, and the social
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-people-and-the-social/
Last updated: 2022-09-16T05:34:10.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I try to find back some inspiration and rhythm for writing during this summer break, as I’m reaching the end of a trip to southern France with my spouse and kids. Before the trip, I had several things in mind that I left aside and had time to digest while visiting some historical and traditional Mediterranean cities & villages, under unprecedented (but certainly not the last) heat waves, even for a region used to high temperatures during summer. Anyways, the kids are in the swimming pool and here I am writing these lines.
## Design & Philosophy
As said, I had several things in mind and in action before the trip. First, we were (and still are) discussing the marriage between design and philosophy with the [Design & Critical Thinking community](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/) through a series of [online group discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). As we developed so far, design and philosophy relate in many ways but have been somehow dissociated from one another. Something we didn’t really do with the community is understanding why.
One reason that comes to mind is the necessary (although not limited) utility of design has been pushed to its paroxysm to serve other motives (industrialisation, urbanisation, digitalisation, etc.), slowly eroding the obviousness of certain connections with certain fields (philosophy, arts) and reinforcing those of others (business, engineering, tech), following the natural mutation of the design disciplines. I’m sure it happened several times and to different degrees, each time with unforeseeable *fractal effects*. Nonetheless, the connections are still here for those willing to unbury & revive them.
What’s interesting to me is that all the possible connections are there (and most likely always been) but their disposition and what they allow totally dependent on our ever-evolving contexts. What philosophy can do to design (and vice-versa) today is not what was, and is certainly not a linear progression from what has been. In other words, it’s not a dead body we are trying to reanimate.
Furthermore, doing so helps us move beyond the “design ethics” dead-end that design seems stuck in for a while now. First, and it is important to say, philosophy is not only about ethics, and when it is, surely not the kind of ethics we have been reduced to discussing in design. And second, I argue that deontological principles are of little-to-no use when dealing with novel situations, and ethical frameworks that prerequisite an “explicitation” of everything (that is: goals, intents, outcomes, social contract, first-second-third order consequences) by *necessity* or *virtue* in order to act are misleading & unhelpful at best and harmful for design at worse (yes, you hear me well). Uncertainty & ambiguity cannot be tamed through plain ignorance or even more control, but rather through balance and acknowledgement of the limits of what we are truly in control of. Design is as much in doing as it is in thinking; there is no paradox nor “essential dualism” here, but rather *praxis*.
Similarly, I’d argue that thinking and discussing the *praxis of design* is an act of philosophy in itself. Beyond the crude (and rather uninteresting) superficialities discussed in the field (i.e. so-called *“trend”*), it is a regenerative process of collective understanding and sharing, of re-enactment and re-appropriation, a process of renewed meaning-creation. Regenerative because it allows a local increase of diversity (minds, thoughts, practices, contexts, etc.), something needed in some spaces saturated and (sometimes) suffocating under the same, limited, reduced-yet-overly-generalised and thus unavoidable ideas, tools, and topics.
> *Perhaps, design is to philosophy what experimental philosophy is to traditional philosophy? Empirical in nature, gravitating around action?*
Anyways, the focus of our next discussion will be on *“decision-making”* and *“enacting the world”* as designers, and the relationship between the context, the objects (physical, virtual, social) we design, and our actions. So please, join us:
[The marriage of design & philosophy #2, Tue, Aug 9, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupTue, Aug 9, 6:00 PM CEST: \*\*2nd round of discussions.\*\* \*How can we link back design practice and philosophy?\*\*What are the possible pain points of doing so? And what are the benefits of such a maMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/287320993?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Embodied cognition and sense-making
The second thing I am diving (back) into are the concepts of *Embodied Cognition* and *Enactivism*. I’m currently reading *“[Embodying Design: An Applied Science of Radical Embodied Cognition](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/embodying-design?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”* by Christopher Baber, although I’m not new to the concept.
I first encountered both concepts (with a special focus on Francisco J. Varela's related work on organisms’ autonomy) back in 2015, without really understanding at that time how a shift this is from traditional cognitive sciences. It basically challenges the idea that the brain is the central and unique place of cognition, but rather posits that cognition emerges from the interaction between an organism and its environment, in a co-evolutionary, mutually reciprocal relationship. The affordance of the environment enables certain actions that the organism (i.e. humans) perceive and can act upon, thus changing the environment in return.
> *“This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment…”* – [A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain - Scientific American Blog Network](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/a-brief-guide-to-embodied-cognition-why-you-are-not-your-brain/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, Scientific American Blogs*, 4 November 2011
_This post is for subscribers only._
### ❤️ Design Loves Philosophy, Article Review, A Designer's Belief Of Value, And More...
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-loves-philosophy-article-review/
Last updated: 2022-08-15T16:18:43.000Z
Dear fellow Design & Critical Thinkers,
What's up in this update? Well, this a special twenty-height week ahead coming for the community, plus some little surprises prepared by yours truly. Follow the white rabbit 🐇👇
1. Replay: virtual chalet & curious exploration of July 5th 2022.
2. Event: The marriage between design and philosophy.
3. Review: Is designing against complexity even possible?
4. Critique: Design, status, and the belief in a hierarchy of value.
---
### 👀 \[Replay\] July 5th virtual chalet & curious exploration
We discussed philosophy and how the process of exploring certain topics affects your understanding of them, which lead us to talk about the nature of rabbit holes, and that behind an apparent endless network of things there is a tacit structure that acts as an attractor.
We discuss the relationship between our identity and our social tissue and the social dissonance that creates social media. Then we move on to the subject of how many discussions (in design) remain on surface-level things (tools, methods, etc.), and why we need to dive into the underlying concepts & models. We make some comparisons between the fact that you can't understand what causes a trend to happen by studying the trend itself (you need to side-step), like copying a certain style does not provide you with knowledge of the contextual reason for this style to exist.
And many more things about decision-making, handling difficult discussions, knowing how and when to debate, and *“steel manning”* an opposite position.
### 📆 \[Event\] The marriage between design and philosophy
Hey, we need to discuss. No seriously. Design and philosophy seem to be two different things, right? One is about thinking, and the other about doing... or are they?
> How can we link back design practice and philosophy?
> What are the possible pain points of doing so? And what are the benefits of such a marriage?
**Join us and participate in an informal discussion on Tuesday July 12th, at 6 PM CET 👇**
[The marriage of design & philosophy, Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupTue, Jul 12, 6:00 PM CEST: How can we link back design practice and philosophy?What are the possible pain points of doing so? And what are the benefits of such a marriage?Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/286868301/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[The marriage of design & philosophyHow can we link back design practice and philosophy? What are the possible pain points of doing so? And what are the benefits of such a marriage?Register](https://lu.ma/oe5d2g55?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 🧠 \[Review\] Is designing against complexity even possible?
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Mapping stories about "becoming designers"
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/mapping-stories-about-becoming-designers/
Last updated: 2022-07-01T06:00:28.000Z
### Take part in a micro-narratives research experiment
> Are you a novice in the field of design (UX or otherwise)? Are you an experienced designer? Or anything in between?
>
> How do you make sense of your experience of becoming a designer?
Many enter the field of design because of various factors, for a career change, by accident, or simply because it is the most obvious choice to them. This experience is unequal in its uniqueness to each individual but also, at the same time, shared in many ways through communities and groups. This is an interesting tension to investigate.
This survey’s purpose is to make sense of individual stories about “becoming a designer” and create a shared understanding of them.
[Sprockler Collector](https://collector.sprockler.com/inquiry/c3092b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🌍
Une version francophone du questionnaire est disponible : ouvrez le lien ci-dessus puis, en haut à droite, cliquez sur le menu déroulant "English".
Thanks in advance for your help!
### Week #25 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week-25-2022/
Last updated: 2022-07-11T17:53:37.000Z
### Virtual chalet & curious exploration – Community update
Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well & safe!
Here's what happened on the twenty-fifth week of 2022.
## Curious exploration
On Tuesday 21 June, we had a really interesting informal discussion (what Marc called *“improv session”* and Krasi called *“emergent discussion”*).
We discussed (available as chapters in the video):
- Good enough data for decision-making.
- how organisational dispositionalities can prevent innovation even when people are motivated.
- Past, future. Future, past.
- Anchoring the digital in physical to allow for repurposing.
*Thursday's session in French was cancelled.*
[Join our next discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Shared by the community
Here's what community members shared & discussed on our Slack server these past few days, sorted by channel.
[Subscribe & join our Slack](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/)
### Shared in #links
Shared by *[*Kevin*](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*:
> The Iceberg model
> “While this metaphor does help us sense that much of reality is invisible to us and does happen roughly in ways where we could talk about patterns at various scales — but it gets far too much wrong to be helpful.”
[Iain Kerr on LinkedIn: On Icebergs…The iceberg metaphor is a very popular one in parts of | 191 commentsOn Icebergs…The iceberg metaphor is a very popular one in parts of the Systems Thinking world and quite prevalent in general. The basic logic is that... 191 comments on LinkedInLinkedInIain Kerr](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/iainkerr01%5Fon-icebergs-the-iceberg-metaphor-is-a-very-activity-6944627464711151617-knTz?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Systems Thinking, Assemblage, scenario planning, and Ecological Rationality
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/systems-thinking-assemblage-scenario-planning-and-ecological-rationality/
Last updated: 2022-06-23T12:38:05.000Z
The community library is this ever-growing place of shared knowledge, that accompanies this website and our Slack discussions.
This month we have added 4 books to the library:
- *What Is Systems Thinking?* by Derek and Laura Cabrera.
- *Assemblage Theory and Method* by Ian Buchanan.
- *Transformative scenario planning* by Adam Kahane.
- *Ecological Rationality: Intelligence In The World* by Peter M. Todd and Gerd Gigerenzer.
You have to be a member to access the library. [Subscribe here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/signup/) or [login here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/signin/).
---
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Virtual chalet & curious exploration sessions, week 25 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/virtual-chalet-curious-exploration-sessions-week-23-of-2022/
Last updated: 2022-06-19T14:33:18.000Z
Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers,
Here are the sessions available in English and French for the 25th week of 2022.
## 📆 June 21, 6 PM CET: Virtual chalet (English)
Join us on our exploration journey of the theme “becoming better designers". Each session we pick a keyword following a letter in alphabetical order. We covered so far: *Actionable*, *Benefits*, *Crisis*, *Data*, *Expertise*, *Failure*, and *Goals* ([watch these sessions here](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLVJEIZXm-Hg9vI%5F1jv%5FRj65suqJg7e02&ref=designcriticalthinking.com))*.*
Register here:
[Virtual Chalet Meetup, Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupTue, Jun 21, 6:00 PM CEST: Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, shareMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/twggssydcjbcc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Virtual chalet & curious explorationRegister](https://lu.ma/d5a6624a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks and hope to see you there!
## 📆 23 Juin, 19h CET: Chalet virtuel (Français)
Rejoignez nous dans notre exploration des enjeux liés à complexité & systèmes complexes et ce que cela implique pour les designers & changemakers de tout horizons ([voir précédentes sessions ici](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLVJEIZXm-HjboLiveOOILTMg9VIBMe4p&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Inscrivez-vous ici:
[Chalet Virtuel (FR) 🇫🇷, Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:00 PM | MeetupThu, Jun 23, 7:00 PM CEST: Bonjour chers Design & Critical Thinkers, Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel « Virtual Chalet ». Ces rencontres récurrentes (une fois toutes les 2 seMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/nmxhvsydcjbfc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Chalet virtuel et curiosité exploratoireRegister](https://lu.ma/n9w7oztx?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Merci et en espérant vous voir dans cette session!
---
Become a member, expand your thoughts, and engage in deep conversations about design, innovation, ethics, systems, change, etc. It's free, only brain juice is accepted! 👇
[Become a member](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/signup/)
### Week #23 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week-23-2022/
Last updated: 2022-07-11T17:53:48.000Z
Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well & safe!
Here's what happened on the twenty-third week of 2022.
**📆 On Tuesday 7 June,** we had a great informal discussion on the concept of *Placement* developed by *Richard Buchanan* in his paper [*Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, JSTOR Design Issues, Vol. 8, 1992*](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EKnPPSO4Awy1zuaZTDLzVIxALiShuxoI/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.* The discussion originally started on our Slack server ([join us here](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/)), and we connected *Placement* with *constraints* and *direction* in complexity thinking:
> Placement is “direction with no predetermined destination”. \[Buchanan\] describes design as a probabilistic approach, defined by the relationship between context and practitioners (the boundary), unlike a scientific approach which works by isolation of cause & effect.
[Join our next discussions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**📆 Jeudi 9 juin**, nous avons discuté de la façon de concevoir dans des environnements spécialisés (domaines expert) tels que les cabinets d'avocats et de notaires, et comment apporter de la nouveauté et échapper au paradigme(s) dominant(s) en cartographiant le paysage actuel, en recherchant des patterns dans d'autres domaines et en trouvant des moyens de les transposer & recombiner pour changer les interactions dans le système.
[Rejoignez notre prochaine session](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Shared by the community
Here's what community members shared & discussed on our Slack server these past few days, sorted by channel.
[Subscribe & join our Slack](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/)
### #Links
[TBM 25/52: In Defense of Frameworks (and Process)In this post I am going to defend frameworks and processes. “That’s unlike you,” remarked a friend. “I thought you were all about flexibility and inventing your own frameworks!” Read on… You have a process—no matter what. It may be flexible. It may be implicit. It may involve a lot of spot-judgment.…The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-2552-in-defense-of-frameworks)
### #Topic Critical Thinking
Shared by [@Vinish](https://twitter.com/vingar?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> Perspective—**10 Iceberg Situations:** Sonder more to be less cranky
[10 Iceberg SituationsSonder more to be less cranky.This Week's Top TenJessica Hagy](https://jessicahagy.substack.com/p/10-iceberg-situations)
### #Topic Design
Shared by [@(Kevin)SkepticalDesign](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter):
> A response to McKinsey’s report *[“Redesigning the design department”](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/redesigning-the-design-department?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) by* GK VanPatter from humantific.
[5 Keys for Organizational LeadersHappy spring and welcome back Humantific Readers. This week we are sharing some reflections on the question of redesigning design departments.LinkedInGK VanPatter](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-keys-organizational-leaders-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> Interesting articles that bridges design and complexity theory, by [Kasey Klimes](https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[When to Design for EmergenceMarket applications on the long-tail of user needsrhizome r&dKasey Klimes](https://rhizomerd.substack.com/p/when-to-design-for-emergence)
[Design Needs Complexity TheoryDespite Christopher Alexander’s notable application of complexity theory in design during the 60’s and 70’s, the two fields have mysteriously grown apart.rhizome r&dKasey Klimes](https://rhizomerd.substack.com/p/design-needs-complexity-theory)
### #Topic Ethics
Shared by [@Vinish](https://twitter.com/vingar?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> Joint investigation into location tracking by the Tim Hortons App: [https://priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investigations/investigations-into-businesses/2022/pipeda-2022-001/#toc3-1](https://priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investigations/investigations-into-businesses/2022/pipeda-2022-001/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#toc3-1)
> The Tim Hortons app used location data to infer where users lived, worked, and whether they were travelling. It generated an “event” every time users entered and left their homes, entered and exited their office, or travelled. [https://t.co/ZvPJnTx8CT](https://t.co/ZvPJnTx8CT?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [pic.twitter.com/yx1q8dqQtH](https://t.co/yx1q8dqQtH?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
>
> — OPC (@PrivacyPrivee) [June 1, 2022](https://twitter.com/PrivacyPrivee/status/1532013804342624257?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### #Topic Innovation-change
Shared by [@(Kevin)SkepticalDesign](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter):
> **7 principles of sense-making in strategy:**
> 1\. Focusing on describing the evolutionary potential of the here and now.
> 2\. Mapping that space without making more assumptions than are necessary and with as much objectivity as possible.
> 3\. Using new language for new concepts, avoiding language that carries too many assumptions.
> 4\. Focusing change on multiple small projects, some of which contradict each other but which overall have coherence.
> 5\. Getting to the right metaphor is important.
> 6\. All voices need to be heard but not all voices should be tolerated.
> 7\. Any approach to strategy needs to be dynamic and non-linear in nature.
[Sense-making in strategy: opening - The Cynefin CoI’ve been much occupied of late, developing the methods and tools around Estuarine Mapping, the third sense-making framework along with Cynefin and Flexuous Curves. As a part of that, I’ve also been working on a range of typologies which includes enhancing constraint mapping from its very early day…The Cynefin CoDave Snowden](https://thecynefin.co/sense-making-in-strategy-opening-comments/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by @Jonathan:
> Analternative to causal/goal directed thinking?
[Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise (book by Sarasvathy)Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise Saras Sarasvathy Effectuation This book explores how entrepreneurs† think about business problems and how this style of thinking might differ from conventional business thinking. The book is written by an academic for academics, so includes many de…Innovation GardenEffectuation](https://innovationgarden.typepad.com/innovation-garden/2014/11/effectuation-elements-of-entrepreneurial-expertise-book-by-sarasvathy.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### #Topic Org-teams-governance
Governance for Resilience: How Can States Prepare for the Next Crisis?
> In contrast, a few governance “super-factors”—such as control of corruption, societal trust, and high quality political leadership—are exceptionally powerful in enabling a country to augment its resilience through multiple pathways.
[Governance for Resilience: How Can States Prepare for the Next Crisis?As policymakers look ahead, they must find a way to balance the need for inclusive resilience with the imperative for meaningful reform.Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceFrances Z. Brown](https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/05/23/governance-for-resilience-how-can-states-prepare-for-next-crisis-pub-87175?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thanks for reading!
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
Become a member, expand your thoughts, and engage in deep conversations about design, innovation, ethics, systems, change, etc. It's free, only brain juice is accepted! 👇
[Become a member](#/portal/signup/free)
### Virtual chalet & curious exploration sessions, week 23 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/virtual-chalet-session-week-23-2022/
Last updated: 2022-06-03T10:00:57.000Z
Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers,
Here are the sessions available in English and French for the 23rd week of 2022.
## June 7, 6 PM CET: Virtual chalet (English)
Join us on our exploration journey of the theme “becoming better designers". Each session we pick a keyword following a letter in alphabetical order. We covered so far: *Actionable*, *Benefits*, *Crisis*, *Data*, *Expertise*, *Failure*, and *Goals* ([watch these sessions here](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLVJEIZXm-Hg9vI%5F1jv%5FRj65suqJg7e02&ref=designcriticalthinking.com))*.*
Register here:
[Virtual Chalet Meetup, Tue, Jun 7, 2022, 6:00 PM | MeetupTue, Jun 7, 6:00 PM CEST: Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, shareMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/twggssydcjbkb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Virtual chalet & curious explorationRegister](https://lu.ma/d5a6624a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks and hope to see you there!
## 9 Juin, 19h CET: Chalet virtuel (Français)
Rejoignez nous dans notre exploration des enjeux liés à complexité & systèmes complexes et ce que cela implique pour les designers & changemakers de tout horizons ([voir précédentes sessions ici](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLVJEIZXm-HjboLiveOOILTMg9VIBMe4p&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Inscrivez-vous ici:
[Chalet Virtuel (FR) 🇫🇷, Thu, Jun 9, 2022, 7:00 PM | MeetupThu, Jun 9, 7:00 PM CEST: Bonjour chers Design & Critical Thinkers, Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel « Virtual Chalet ». Ces rencontres récurrentes (une fois toutes les 2 seMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/286036286/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[Chalet virtuel et curiosité exploratoireRegister](https://lu.ma/n9w7oztx?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Merci et en espérant vous voir dans cette session!
### The limits of our tools: Bounded applicability
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-limits-of-universality-bounded-applicability/
Last updated: 2024-09-16T08:17:04.000Z
Following a [recent discussion](https://krasi.substack.com/p/happy-accidents-tools-and-design) with Daiana Zavate on the [ODD Owtcomes podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/2j4QPZhGLoUfJ5Xv9DBq7D?si=12fdd5f1c6734fc6&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about creating and perfecting our tools, and the publication of the book *“*[*The Discovery Discipline*](https://www.discovery-discipline.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, I wanted to share some thoughts on an issue we encounter frequently in the design, product, service, innovation (you name it) spaces.
## A tale of misplaced faith
Photo by [Artem Sapegin](https://unsplash.com/@sapegin?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/tale?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
Back in 2016 when the book *“*[*Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days*](https://www.thesprintbook.com/book?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* was published and the hype around the Design Sprint rigid process started to heat up, we could then read this:
> Focusing on the surface allows you to move fast and answer big questions before you commit to execution, which is why any challenge, no matter how large, can benefit from a sprint. — Jake Knapp, [Sprint](http://amzn.to/1MBEqxa?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (p. 28).
3 years later, along those lines, the narrative grew amongst the design community and many early adopters, who called themselves *Sprint Masters*, were now praising the supremacy and universality of their newly discovered tool. The Design Sprint was *better, faster, stronger,* and could solve any problem or challenge, no matter what it was. In 2019, I [published a critique](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to investigate many of the bold claims promoted by both the book and the nascent design sprint community.
Complexity, Paradigms, Tools — [The CPT relationship](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Indeed, the problem was not the Design Sprint itself, but what people believed they could do with it: *a misplaced faith in their tool.***
As I explored [in this 2020 article](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), different contexts hold different intertwined states of complexity, and therefore there is a physical impossibility for any formalised tool or process to fit this inherent ambiguity/uncertainty without a high level of autonomy of the practitioners.
> Interestingly, practitioners from various horizons have developed over time **tools** and **paradigms** to help them *make sense* and *act* within their environment. By looking at them from a complexity perspective, we can observe that some practices are better fitted for certain types of contexts \[...\]
>
> This helps us understand the convergent and divergent aspects of the different paradigms and ideologies. We can now draw the interrelation between the **complexity of a context** (system), the **tools**, and the **paradigms** needed to tackle its challenges. – Kevin Richard, [Innovation By Design: A complexity-based understanding and provocation.](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Because of that, appropriation and adaptation to fit practitioners' local reality become a necessity. As I predicted [in this article](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the Design Sprint did indeed evolve until different flavours of it started to pop here and there: this is an unavoidable consequence of distribution within a network (see [Network effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Where are we today? Well, a fringe of OG “sprint masters” truly believes in the original Sprint "by the book" to be the only true Design Sprint. Others have loosely adopted a version of it. Many others don't care anymore and moved on.
## The false promise of universality through standardisation (fixation of rules)
Photo by [Austrian National Library](https://unsplash.com/@austriannationallibrary?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/assembly-line?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)
In their newly published book *“*[*The Discovery Discipline*](https://www.discovery-discipline.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, **Rémi Guyot** and **Tristan Charvillat** are quick to claim the necessity of imposing a systematic method, with clearly predefined deliverables, with the intent of *“reducing uncertainty”.* **They assert that this makes their approach universal, regardless of the size or type of challenge you're facing.**
[Introduction to discovery, Rémi Guyot.](https://youtu.be/%5FIHJ0Y9Orfs?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> **Some magical ingredients discovered in 15 years of practice:**
>
> A systematic method for all projects;
> An discovery effort that fit expected impact;
> More fine steps than the double diamond;
> Precise and predefined deliverables to help to converge.
[discovery-discipline.com](https://www.discovery-discipline.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Let's not ignore the fact that they use *apparent credibility* as a means to support their claim, making it clear from the start that they are both respectively Chief Product Officer and (former) Vice President of Design at BlaBla Car, one of the few (so-called) “french unicorn” startups. This surely means something, enough that the book was unavailable for several weeks because of high demand.
I can't avoid noticing a lot of similarities with the Design Sprint, both in the narrative and some superficial devices to display trust & credibility.
Although this isn't really the point here, at first, the packaging seems polished and simplified (to death), and when digging just a bit, we can clearly see repackaging of other tools and ideas without proper acknowledgement/attribution.
Whoever tells you that, universality through formalisation & standardisation of practice isn't a thing.
### Bounded applicability
> The basic concept of bounded applicability simply states that any method or tool has limits. You know you are reaching those limits as the cost/benefit ratio of handling new issues becomes adverse. At this point you should not carry on doing the established approach more furiously, but instead realise that you are approaching a boundary and gain perspective so you can look on the other side.
>
> When we hear anything about making inmprovements to processes, technology, people, or tools - test if those suggestions have been placed in a *bounded applicability. –* [*source*](https://herdingcats.typepad.com/my%5Fweblog/2014/05/bounded-applicability.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Furthermore, bonded applicability is the concept that *“different and contradictory things work in different bounded spaces”.*
In his article [*Bounded Applicability & Conditionality*](http://www.theillinoismodel.com/2019/04/bounded-applicability-conditionality.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Lou Hayes reminds us of the importance of context conditions.
> I've referred to this as **conditionality**. Conditions matter \[...\]
>
> I recall a conversation with my son after a teacher complained he pointed a "finger gun" on the pre-school playground. (pew pew!) It was the start of teaching conditionality. Finger guns, NERF guns, and all other toy guns are allowed at home. But NO toy guns at school. Not even finger guns. (He's kept his finger holstered ever since.)
>
> It makes sense to err on the side of safety and control. Safer to not touch anyone. Safer to not pet the dog. Safer to not climb the ladder. Especially since young kids might not comprehend the variables that go into the variety of "conditions" that can exist. So we come up with rules; sometimes ridiculous rules.
What *complex adaptive systems* (CAS) teach us is that those conditions are subject to changes (and sometimes, dramatic changes) over time, making the idea of a fixed, systematic, “universal” approach even more ridiculous.
[Path Dependence Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%5Fdependence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), critical judgement & the reduction of options — [source](https://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/forschung/pfadkolleg/downloads/organizational%5Fpaths.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In my article *“*[*Organisation-wide design as systems practice*](https://uxdesign.cc/organisation-wide-design-as-systems-practice-9b2959cbb3b7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* I explain why context conditions define opportunities (also called options) available to us at a given time. The path dependence theory describes how a convergent decision-making process leads to the reduction of opportunities over time.
> Systematically aiming for funnelling down “problems” to one solution (see [“Funnelling vs Layering”](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/for-impact-generate-snowballs-dont-select-snowflakes-funnelling-versus-layering?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) that is supposed to fit many diverse contexts, understandings, and motivations is likely to lead at best to *“premature convergence”* (see [here](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-48765-4%5F16?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/forschung/pfadkolleg/downloads/organizational%5Fpaths.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%5Fdependence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
In evolutionary algorithm, **premature convergence** means that a population (for an optimisation problem) converged too early, **resulting in being stuck into a local minima or maxima state.** This situation arise due to loss of diversity among individuals of the population. Techniques to avoid premature convergence is to maintain diversity among individuals of the population.
These concepts call for agility in our ability to sense, respond, and update our understanding of our context along the journey. More than a fixed, rigid, universal approach, **discovery requires a huge dose of genuine curiosity (intrinsic motivation) and autonomy in our decisions**, to derive from the set course because the destination (if it exists) isn't a fixed point on a map. More than discovery, [we probably need exploration](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
## Thanks for reading!
Join our next session, join our Meetup group:
[Design & Critical Thinking (Genève, Switzerland)Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community of professionals from different backgrounds and horizons (aka you).To deepen our uMeetup](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the latest discussion on Slack:
[Slack](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Help the community, make a donation:
[Contribute to Design & Critical Thinking - Open CollectiveWe are an online community aimed at building shared understanding, collective knowledge & sense-making at the intersection of design, innovation, tech, change, ethics, etc.Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/design-critical-thinking/donate?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### A new home for the community
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-new-home-for-the-community/
Last updated: 2022-05-30T05:48:08.000Z
## A new home, same location
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Since the community launch back in August 2020, we have grown timidly our online presence. Our [medium publication](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) was the first touchpoint and means of communication with you, dear members, but also with a much broader audience of practitioners and people interested in the various topics we tackle.
Because we know that everyone cannot invest the same amount of time in the community's events or discussions, but still want to stay up to date with what happened, our [newsletter hosted on Revue](http://newsletter.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) came not so long after that.
All of that was “glued” together with a basic static homepage that played the role of redirecting people to these different places, as well as our [Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and other social accounts.
This made the trick so far, but having these many touchpoints to maintain and update is not a small task and tends to diffuse the audience across many platforms, rendering them less effective and sometimes unclear which one to follow.
## A convergence of spaces
From now on, accessing [designcriticalthinking.com](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/) will bring you to our new website, hosted on [Ghost.org](https://ghost.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This will act as a central place to follow updates, read articles, newsletters, and event announcements.
**This means we won't use our Revue newsletter anymore**, but you can still access it to read previously published content. **We will continue to update our Medium publication**, but content will be prioritised & first published here.
Importantly, although our subscription model to [designcriticalthinking.com](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/) is and will remain free, **most posts will be partially accessible to non-subscribed readers** (unlike this one).
**This brings other changes:** newcomers will have to subscribe to get access to our [Slack](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/join-slack/) and to our [library](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/library/), both of them remain free whatsoever.
### Do you need to take action?
We have transferred all Revue active subscribers to this new platform, and if you receive this update by email, this means you're already subscribed! [You can log in to your account here and access all content now.](https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/#/portal/)
But if you desire to stop receiving emails from us, hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this message👇
## Thanks for reading and happy to have you on board!
Looking forward to meeting you on our Slack or [upcoming events](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and continuing this journey of mindful exploration together 🙏
Cheers,
Kevin
### Not confusing goals with intents
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/not-confusing-goals-with-intents/
Last updated: 2022-05-24T15:49:34.000Z
## “G” for “Goals” (and Jobs To Be Done)
### Virtual Chalet session, 10 May 2022
**The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.*
In this session, on our exploration of the theme of “becoming better designers”, we discuss “Goals” (and Jobs to be done) as a way to frame our understanding of a context, people’s intents, and how to create useful & valuable solutions for them.
Goals are utilitarian but tend to be confused with intents, and might hide the importance of the journey through discovery as tokens of apparent clarity.
We also discuss how sense-making practices could enhance the process of coming to a job, not by relying on one individual’s perspective.
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Going beyond success & failure
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/going-beyond-success-and-failure/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T20:17:11.000Z
### Virtual Chalet, 26 April 2022 — “F” for “Failure”
*The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.*
In this session, we continue our exploration of the theme of becoming better designers through the keyword “Failure”, and how it conditions our understanding of success (and vice-versa): i.e. a short-term success can be a long-term failure. Moreover, preparing for failure means measuring for it and indirectly creating a fail-safe space, enabling us to discover other opportunities. Therefore, failure is not the goal, it is a means to move beyond an otherwise limiting dichotomy.
Mapping the “Failure” island
🌟 Checkout our island map on Miro → [https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOMzFFoY=/?share\_link\_id=110023631018](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOMzFFoY=/?share%5Flink%5Fid=110023631018&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About the community 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Watch
### Listen
Thanks for reading, listening, and watching!
Kevin
### Being the expert that knows he doesn’t know
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/being-the-expert-that-knows-he-doesn-t-know/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T20:24:48.000Z
## Virtual Chalet, 12 April 2022 — “E” for “Expertise”
*The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.*
We continue our journey in exploring the theme of *becoming better designers,* and the role of designers & design in society, using a keyword as a medium for conversations. This week we’re at letter “E”, exploring the concept of “Expertise” from various perspectives. We used the island template, a (work in progress) collaborative mapping method that [uses topography as a categorisation metaphor to help make sense of a context](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Discover what we mapped out in full detail here :
[**Becoming better designers**](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOMzFFoY=/?share%5Flink%5Fid=481680795197&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Edit description*miro.com](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOMzFFoY=/?share%5Flink%5Fid=481680795197&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About the community 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks for reading and watching!
Kevin
### Week #13 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week--13-of-2022/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T20:27:14.000Z
## The Design & Critical Thinking Community update
Hi everyone,
It’s been some time since the last update! Here’s what happened on the thirteenth week of 2022.
[**On Tuesday 29 March**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/using-data-to-make-decisions-becomingbetterdesigners-dcecca4b3593?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we continued our exploration of the theme *“becoming better designers”* through the keyword **“data”**, and what it means (or not) to be *“data-driven”*. We clarified the different kinds of data (explicit, implicit, qualitative, quantitative) and the importance of the context to make sense of them. We also discussed the ethics of using data, how they are collected and to what end.
[**On Thursday 31 Mars**](https://youtu.be/Wwn3RxVjrFU?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we discussed perfectionism as a content creator and how to “leapfrog” into action. We also discussed systems thinking and design, and the knowledge economy related to design.
[**On Sunday 3 April**](https://kvrichard.medium.com/une-critique-du-design-syst%C3%A9mique-d88c915bf1cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), I published a critique of Systemic Design as a response to the event (in French) *“Discover the Systemic Design”* organised by Le Laptop.
Find below some links & resources shared in the community’s Slack.
- 📆 Participate in our next events 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)
- 🍻Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)
Wish you a wonderful day and see you next week! 👋
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
---
## 🌟 Links & resources shared by the community
Shared & written by [@SidneyDebaque](https://medium.com/@sidneydebaque?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 👏👇
[**Design is about facilitation, not creation**](https://uxdesign.cc/design-is-about-facilitation-not-creation-c268e76ce1fd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design is about facilitating interactions between systems, not creating artefacts*uxdesign.cc](https://uxdesign.cc/design-is-about-facilitation-not-creation-c268e76ce1fd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🎉Congrats to our friends at Field.so for their successful launch 🚀👇
[**Digital Headquarters for Product Leaders - Field**](https://field.so/en?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Field is a game-changer! Field gives us…*field.so](https://field.so/en?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by [@VinishGarg](https://twitter.com/vingar?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) with the following question:
> How will they draw a line between ‘AI generated’ and ‘AI corrected’, or ‘AI edited’, or ‘AI fetched’, or ‘AI enabled’? For example you can manually write this sentence — “AI generated content is \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ by Google”, and then an AI fills in ‘banned’ in the blank space. Is it AI-generated?
[**Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines**](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Google's Search Advocate John Mueller says content automatically generated with AI writing tools is considered spam…*www.searchenginejournal.com](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by [@CorinaLupu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lupucorina/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) with the following comment:
> Great article about the fallacy behind statistics. If you’re bothered by the length of the article, scan through the history and read carefully starting with here ” To get rid of the stain of eugenics, statistics needs to free itself from the ideal of being perfectly objective” One precision, the writer of the article has a PhD in Mathematics and teaches Philosophy of probability and statistics at University.
[**How Eugenics Shaped Statistics**](https://nautil.us/how-eugenics-shaped-statistics-9365/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Exposing the damned lies of three science pioneers. In early 2018, officials at University College London were shocked…*nautil.us](https://nautil.us/how-eugenics-shaped-statistics-9365/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by [@PascalWicht](https://www.whispersandgiants.com/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) with the following comment:
> Shenzhen is 17,5 million people.The degree of social coordination and engineering to manage such a scale.
> The ripple into global supply chains.
> The compounding effect on the reste of the permacrisis.
[**China locks down province of 24m as new Covid infections rise**](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/14/china-locks-down-province-of-24m-as-new-covid-infections-rise?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*China's government has ordered a province of 24 million people into lockdown as it tries to contain a Covid-19 outbreak…*www.theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/14/china-locks-down-province-of-24m-as-new-covid-infections-rise?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by [@(Kevin)SkepticalDesign](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)
[**Design Journeys - A Systemic Design Tourbook - Design Dialogues**](https://designdialogues.com/design-journeys/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Kristel Van Ael and I completed a year-long project for this special book, designing the first practitioner handbook…*designdialogues.com](https://designdialogues.com/design-journeys/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Making Things Better (With Enabling Constraints and POPCORN)**](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/making-things-better-with-enabling?s=r)
[*Most change efforts fail, even when experienced people are involved, and even when the environment is relatively…*cutlefish.substack.com](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/making-things-better-with-enabling?s=r)
🍻Join the community on Slack for more! [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks for your time & trust! 🙏
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
### Using data to make decisions #becomingbetterdesigners
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/using-data-to-make-decisions--becomingbetterdesigners/
Last updated: 2022-04-06T00:00:00.000Z
### Virtual Chalet, 29 March 2022
Unsplash
*The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.*
In this session, we continue our exploration of the theme of **becoming better designers**. through the keyword “data”, and what it means (or not) to be “data-driven”. We clarified the different kinds of data (explicit, implicit, qualitative, quantitative) and the importance of context to make sense of. them. We also discussed the ethics of using data, and how they. are collected and to what means.
Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About the community 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Une critique du Design Systémique
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/une-critique-du-design-systemique/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T20:29:07.000Z
### Critique de l’évènement “Découvrez le Design systémique” du Laptop
Ceci est une réponse critique à l’évènement “Découvrez le Design systémique avec Sylvie Daumal” organisé par LeLaptop mardi 29 mars 2022 et pour lequel je vous invite à visionner le replay ici → [https://app.livestorm.co/le-laptop/decouvrez-le-design-systemique-avec-sylvie-daumal/live?s=7c98cd9d-f898-4ffa-b7ad-92e56507e262#/chat](https://app.livestorm.co/le-laptop/decouvrez-le-design-systemique-avec-sylvie-daumal/live?s=7c98cd9d-f898-4ffa-b7ad-92e56507e262&ref=designcriticalthinking.com#/chat)
Cette critique se veut constructive et je tiens à répéter que Sylvie Daumal à fait une bonne présentation d’un sujet complexe, et que je sui en accord, globalement avec ce qui à été présenter au sujet des systèmes.
Le but ici n’est pas de caricaturer, ni de dénigrer, mais d’ouvrir une réflexion sur le repackaging d’outils, concepts, et pratiquent qui 1) n’ont pas attendu les designers; 2) ont énormément évolués depuis Donella Meadows & les Systems Dynamics (voir la carte des sciences de la complexité → [https://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map\_feb09.html](https://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map%5Ffeb09.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)); et 3) qui s’inscrivent aujourd’hui dans une narration aux prémisses questionables.
Ici j’essai d’adresser 3 éléments de réflexion autour de cette présentation:
1. **La distinction entre les différentes typologies de systèmes** au travers d’une approche basé sur les sciences de la complexité;
2. **La prémisse, la position narrative** (volontaire ou involontaire) du design systémique comme outil conçu pour adresser les enjeux climatique et sociaux;
3. **L’obligation morale imposé aux designers** et qui suit la prémisse énoncée: le designer qui utilise de tels outils se doit de résoudre ces problèmes.
A noter que le but n’est pas de dire que les enjeux climatiques ou sociaux ne sont pas important, ni que les designers ne devraient pas s’en occuper — les choses étant bien plus nuancés que cela.
Merci pour votre écoute !
Rejoignez la communauté [Design & Critical Thinking](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) pour plus de discussions sur le sujet.
---
## Liens utiles
Dave Snowden, Cynefin Framework → [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin\_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Article (en anglais) où je développe une approche inclusive, basé sur la complexité, du Design au niveau d’une organisation → [https://uxdesign.cc/organisation-wide-design-as-systems-practice-9b2959cbb3b7](https://uxdesign.cc/organisation-wide-design-as-systems-practice-9b2959cbb3b7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
La librairie ouverte de la communauté propose des outils, études, et livres sur différents sujets et notamment la systémie et la complexité appliqué au design et à l’innovation → [https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Chapitres
- 00:00 Introduction
- 01:10 Les 3 principaux sujets
- 06:00 La transposabilité des connaissances
- 07:17 Complexité: les différentes typologies de systèmes
- 10:15 Complexité: Le Cynefin Framework
- 18:43 Complexité: l’utilité des heurstiques pour catégoriser les systèmes
- 22:43 Le positionnement narratif du design systémique
- 24:19 Positionnement: le design systémique pour résoudre des enjeux climatique
- 26:09 Positionnement: ancrer la pratique avant l’idéologie
- 28:31 Les limites des outils du design systémique
- 32:11 L’obligation morale imposé aux designers
- 39:27 Humilité ≠ moralisation ≠ justice épistémique ?
- 42:40 Conclusion
### Perfectionnisme, pensée systémique, et économie de la connaissance
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/perfectionnisme-pensee-systemique-et-economie-de-la-connaissance/
Last updated: 2022-05-29T20:30:49.000Z
### Chalet Virtuel du 31 Mars 2022
*Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel « Virtual Chalet ». Ces rencontres récurrentes (une fois toutes les 2 semaines) existent afin que la communauté Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT) prenne le temps et l’espace pour discuter, faire du sense, partager des idées et des expériences, trouver du soutien, poser des questions, etc.*
Cette semaine nous discutons de comment “sauter le pas” et du perfectionnisme en tant que créateur de contenu, de pensée systémique (systems thinking) et de design, et de l’économie des connaissances liés aux design.
Participez au prochains évènements 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Rejoignez la communauté (en anglais & français) sur Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A propos de la communauté 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Legal design, blockchain, et gouvernance par le design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/legal-design--blockchain--et-gouvernance-par-le-design/
Last updated: 2022-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
### Chalet virtuel du 17 février 2022
Unsplash
Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel « Virtual Chalet ». Ces rencontres récurrentes (une fois toutes les 2 semaines) existent afin que la communauté Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT) prenne le temps et l’espace pour discuter, faire du sense, partager des idées et des expériences, trouver du soutien, poser des questions, etc.
Cette semaine nous discutons legal design et approcher le design dans le monde juridique, les problèmes et opportunités de la blockchain, et approcher l’humain et la gouvernance pour permettre la collaboration et la distribution de la prise de décision.
Participez au prochains évènements 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Rejoignez la communauté (en anglais & français) sur Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
[Regarder la session ici](https://youtu.be/rBi7mp6CBKY?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ou [écouter l’enregistrement audio là](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Legal-design--blockchain--et-gouvernance-par-le-design-e1ejet4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## Liens partagés pendant la session
### Le Legal design:
- [https://law.stanford.edu/organizations/pages/legal-design-lab/](https://law.stanford.edu/organizations/pages/legal-design-lab/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://lawbydesign.co/legal-design/](https://lawbydesign.co/legal-design/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://uxdesign.cc/legal-design-explained-e43129710cd9](https://uxdesign.cc/legal-design-explained-e43129710cd9?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Le Cynefin framework
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin\_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### La Total Experience
- [https://www.walkme.com/glossary/total-experience/](https://www.walkme.com/glossary/total-experience/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total\_Experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total%5FExperience?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Plus sur nos participants
### Christophe Coppin
- [https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-coppin-consulting/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-coppin-consulting/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://www.hubnot.io](https://www.hubnot.io/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Naji Bouchiba
- [https://www.linkedin.com/in/najibouchiba/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/najibouchiba/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://seweloafrica.com](https://seweloafrica.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Céline Grosjean
- [https://www.linkedin.com/in/celinegrosjean/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/celinegrosjean/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [https://www.celinegrosjean.com](https://www.celinegrosjean.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Actionable, knowledge, emotions, affordance
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/actionable--knowledge--emotions--affordance/
Last updated: 2022-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
### On to becoming better designers
Unsplash
The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.
In this session, we used a keyword as a catalyst to approach the broader topic of the role of designers in society, and the question *“how could we become better designers?”* which will be a running theme for the coming sessions & workshops. *#becomingbetterdesigners*
You can view our Miro board with the captured items here → [https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOLuUfQU=/?invite\_link\_id=251603547538](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOLuUfQU=/?invite%5Flink%5Fid=251603547538&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About the community 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
[Watch the session here](https://youtu.be/IJ5ZM3Byj00?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [listen to the audio recording here](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Actionable--knowledge--emotions--affordance-becomingbetterdesigners-e1ejaus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### Week #5 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week--5-of-2022/
Last updated: 2022-02-07T00:00:00.000Z
### The Design & Critical Thinking Community update
Unsplash
Hi everyone,
Here’s what happened in the community this fifth week of 2022.
[**On Tuesday**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/design-narratives-capitalism-social-contract-squid-game-as-a-catalyst-97ec3225b0a9?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we discuss design in regards to groups and social dynamics, the role of language as affordance & constraints, the Squid Game as a catalyst, medium for interactions, and an attractor for diverging narratives around personal debts & financial insecurity, and the different layers of design. We also discuss bayesian thinking and using a probabilistic approach to design & innovation.
No session on Thursday.
Find below some links & resources shared in the community’s Slack.
- 📆 Participate in our next events 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- 🍻Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Wish you a wonderful week and see you next week! 👋
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
---
## Design, narratives, capitalism & social contract, Squid Game as a catalyst
[Watch the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qgavyPlNDc&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [listen to the audio](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Virtual-Chalet-1-Feb-2022--Design--Narratives--Capitalism--Social-contract--Squid-Game-as-Catalyst-e1ds7hi?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) recording of this session.
## Links & resources
### [Reputation laundering as a service](https://restofworld.org/2022/documents-reputation-laundering-firm-eliminalia/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Exposed documents reveal how the powerful clean up their digital past using a reputation laundering firm.*
[**Exposed documents reveal how the powerful clean up their digital past using a reputation laundering…**](https://restofworld.org/2022/documents-reputation-laundering-firm-eliminalia/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*In February 2021, Qurium, an organization that provides secure web hosting services for human rights organizations and…*](https://restofworld.org/2022/documents-reputation-laundering-firm-eliminalia/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[restofworld.org](https://restofworld.org/2022/documents-reputation-laundering-firm-eliminalia/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [**Getting the Whole Story: Reconfiguring Usability Studies through Narrative Inquiry**](https://www.academia.edu/2812088/Getting%5Fthe%5FWhole%5FStory%5FReconfiguring%5FUsability%5FStudies%5Fthrough%5FNarrative%5FInquiry?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> \[This paper suggests\] that usability, as a qualitative methodology, presents the opportunity for an ideal collaboration of researcher and research participants — but it can only do so via a synthesis of methods that foreground context, narrative inquiry, and participatory design.
[**Getting the Whole Story: Reconfiguring Usability Studies through Narrative Inquiry**](https://www.academia.edu/2812088/Getting%5Fthe%5FWhole%5FStory%5FReconfiguring%5FUsability%5FStudies%5Fthrough%5FNarrative%5FInquiry?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Empirical research in the social sciences and the humanities has shifted from privileging a predominantly positivist…*](https://www.academia.edu/2812088/Getting%5Fthe%5FWhole%5FStory%5FReconfiguring%5FUsability%5FStudies%5Fthrough%5FNarrative%5FInquiry?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.academia.edu](https://www.academia.edu/2812088/Getting%5Fthe%5FWhole%5FStory%5FReconfiguring%5FUsability%5FStudies%5Fthrough%5FNarrative%5FInquiry?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [MIT Tech — How memes got weaponized: A short history](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132228/political-war-memes-disinformation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Memes come off as a joke, but some people are starting to see them as the serious threat they are.*
[**How memes got weaponized: A short history**](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132228/political-war-memes-disinformation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing…*](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132228/political-war-memes-disinformation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.technologyreview.com](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132228/political-war-memes-disinformation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [Innovation portfolios, a practical approach to navigate transformative innovation](https://transitionshub.climate-kic.org/multimedia/innovation-portfolios-a-practical-approach-to-navigate-transformative-innovation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Innovation portfolios, a practical approach to navigate transformative innovation - Transitions Hub**](https://transitionshub.climate-kic.org/multimedia/innovation-portfolios-a-practical-approach-to-navigate-transformative-innovation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Innovation portfolios, a practical approach to navigate transformative innovation from Climate-KIC on Vimeo. Tackling…*](https://transitionshub.climate-kic.org/multimedia/innovation-portfolios-a-practical-approach-to-navigate-transformative-innovation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[transitionshub.climate-kic.org](https://transitionshub.climate-kic.org/multimedia/innovation-portfolios-a-practical-approach-to-navigate-transformative-innovation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [The New Operating Manual for Fintech-Enabled Marketplaces](https://www.nfx.com/post/new-operating-manual-fintech-enabled-marketplaces/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> Ultimately, we see that for the next generation of marketplace startups, the money is in the money. This relentless drive towards a better experience and value capture will mean that the next set of billion dollar plus companies will be fintech-enabled marketplaces.
[**The New Operating Manual for Fintech-Enabled Marketplaces**](https://www.nfx.com/post/new-operating-manual-fintech-enabled-marketplaces/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Three years ago, we coined the term "Fintech-Enabled Marketplaces ." Since then it has expanded, and the idea of…*](https://www.nfx.com/post/new-operating-manual-fintech-enabled-marketplaces/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.nfx.com](https://www.nfx.com/post/new-operating-manual-fintech-enabled-marketplaces/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [**If everyone were vegan, only a quarter of current farmland would be needed**](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/28/if-everyone-were-vegan-only-a-quarter-of-current-farmland-would-be-needed?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> “If everyone went vegan, the estimated land required for agriculture would be 76% less.”
[**If everyone were vegan, only a quarter of current farmland would be needed**](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/28/if-everyone-were-vegan-only-a-quarter-of-current-farmland-would-be-needed?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*"V eganuary" might be considered an attempt to cut out the middle creatures. Many vegans-even those who dabble only…*](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/28/if-everyone-were-vegan-only-a-quarter-of-current-farmland-would-be-needed?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.economist.com](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/28/if-everyone-were-vegan-only-a-quarter-of-current-farmland-would-be-needed?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-87664-7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Shared by [Vinish Garg](https://medium.com/u/14c4e6947f95?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection**](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-87664-7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of studies dealing with the hot topic of digital face…*](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-87664-7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[link.springer.com](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-87664-7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### Vector theory of change — a theory of change for complex systems
> Key highlights:
> STEP 1: START FROM WHERE YOU ARE
> STEP 2: SETTING DIRECTION & FINDING STEPPING STONES
> — Setting Direction with Vectors
> — Adjacent Possibles
> STEP 3: DESIGNING INTERVENTIONS
> — Nudges: Start Small, Here and Now
> — Safe-to-Fail Probes
> STEP 4: CONTINUOUS FEEDBACK
> — Weak Signals
> — The Path of Least Resistance
[**Vector theory of change - a theory of change for complex systems - The Cynefin Co**](https://thecynefin.co/vector-theory-of-change-explainer/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*We're launching a short explainer on vector theory of change, which describes how approaches to theory of change thus…*](https://thecynefin.co/vector-theory-of-change-explainer/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[thecynefin.co](https://thecynefin.co/vector-theory-of-change-explainer/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design, narratives, capitalism & social contract, Squid Game as a catalyst
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design--narratives--capitalism---social-contract--squid-game-as-a-catalyst/
Last updated: 2022-02-03T00:00:00.000Z
### Virtual Chalet session, 1 February 2022
The virtual chalet, a place for serendipitous discussions. #chaletverse
*The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.*
This week we discuss design in regards to groups and social dynamics, the role of language as affordance & constraints, the Squid Game as a catalyst, medium for interactions, and an attractor for diverging narratives around personal debts & financial insecurity, and the different layers of design. We also discuss bayesian thinking and using a probabilistic approach to design & innovation.
Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About the community 👉 [https://designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
```
Sorry for the audio quality of this recording, my internet connection was very unstable.
```
### Listen
### Watch
---
### Learn more about the participants of today’s discussion
John Mortimer
[https://www.improconsult.co.uk/](https://www.improconsult.co.uk/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Cameron Norman
[https://www.cense.ca/](https://www.cense.ca/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Marc Baumgartner
[https://codename.design/](https://codename.design/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Daiana Zavate
[https://owtcome.com/](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Week #3 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week--3-of-2022/
Last updated: 2022-01-23T00:00:00.000Z
### The Design & Critical Thinking Community update
Unsplash
Hi everyone,
Here’s what happened in the community this third week of 2022.
**On Tuesday**, we discussed how cultures & languages shape our understanding of design, how English and a form of US colonialism exist through the profession & its related education. We also talk of UX Design and our relationship to consumerism & capitalism, and the shortcomings of the current forms of design education.
**On Thursday**, we discussed the shifts in demand around the practice of design during the pandemic, the need to make sense in order to make decisions, the problem of dashboards, the Design Sprint, and a problematic discourse on neuroscience & UX design.
- 📆 Participate in our next events 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- 🍻Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Wish you a wonderful week and see you next week! 👋
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
---
### Virtual Chalet, Tuesday 18 January 2022
Design, culture, education, and capitalism. [Watch here](https://youtu.be/Qd3V36HouRM?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [listen here](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Virtual-Chalet--18-Jan-2022--Design--culture--education--and-capitalism-e1dbgv7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
### Chalet Virtuel, Tuesday 20 January 2022
Design, incertitude, sense-making, et neurosciences. [Watch here](https://youtu.be/%5FElyWZNcQCc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [listen here](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Chalet-Virtuel-20-Jan-2022--Design--incertitude--sense-making--et-neurosciences-e1dbhf1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### Organisation-wide design as systems practice
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/organisation-wide-design-as-systems-practice/
Last updated: 2024-09-16T08:08:44.000Z
## Enterprise Design: building an ecosystem.
### ****A path towards a distributed and integrative design practice.**
**This article proposes to approach Design in the face of organisational complexity (*[**complex adaptive human systems*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**) as a transdisciplinary integrative practice more than a narrow, domain or skill-specific, exclusive, and centralised point in the organisation.*
Organising design (design management) is generally seen as an operationalization –and therefore compartmentation– of an organisational function. We isolate, rationalise, streamline, optimise, and measure for maximum efficiency. This works in a production paradigm.
But seeing Design for what outputs it produces in a linear fashion is narrow and limits its impact. Design can bring critical (re)thinking of what an organisation do; it can bring diversity and innovation in thinking & doing; it can create spaces for the emergence of unexpected ideas; and it can bring a new sense of agency, ownership, and responsibility to the people within an organisation. Design can fill a *“soft fluid space”* between functions, services, teams, people, for organisational regeneration & agility — and reframing the organisation as an intentional complex human system and giving it space to breathe and reflect.
Eidsvolls plass, Norway — A good example of constraints-induced interactions & flows.
## Beyond organising people, designing ‘spaces’ for interactions
Organising “the design people” (designers) and the “design work” can be seen both in a formal AND informal way:
- Tight relationship: People involved in specific activities (e.g. projects, products, etc.);
- Loose relationship: People that gravitate around those activities (e.g. researchers, ops, facilitators, etc.).
But beyond “people” and “roles” we should even more so think of design in an organisation in terms of **spaces** and **constraints** for **enabling different types of outcomes**: from specific space for activity-focused practices to informal/unbounded space for connecting ideas, people, and increasing serendipity; from synchronous to asynchronous; and anything in between.
**This allows us to shift our attention from *individuals* to *interactions*** (and more specifically, “the kind of interactions we want to see”), which is ethically preferable:
> Framing things from an individual’s perspective implies at some point, imposing them expectations (ours, the organisation’s), and when misalignment, expecting people to change (when we’re not asking them directly), whereas, shifting the perspective in terms of interactions within a space (be it physical, virtual, social, etc.) enable individual agency & autonomy within or given certain constraints which, depending on the context, allows divergence, diversity of thoughts, and heterogeneity.
These kinds of *soft spaces* can become the “dark energy” of an organisation, so to speak, imperceptible but actively influencing it through its indirect effects.
## Soft Spaces and enabling constraints
I use the term *“soft space”* here as a concept repurposing from *urban & policy planning*, therefore not [stricto sensu](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sensu%20stricto?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). The term arise from academic literature and was coined by *Graham Haughton* and *Philip Allmendinger* in their study of *spatial planning* and the evolution of governance practices in policymaking.
In their 2008 paper *“*[*The Soft Spaces of Local Economic Development*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/innovation/the-soft-spaces-of-local-economic-development?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* in which they examine the connections between soft spaces, soft outcomes and soft infrastructure in the UK’s sub-national economic development policy, they explain:
> Formal planning mechanisms with their legal responsibilities are primarily rooted in local and (to a lesser extent) regional government.
>
> These are the **hard spaces** of governance activity, involving statutory responsibilities, linked to legal obligations including democratic engagement and consultation, all of which take time, and come with a particular set of public and professional expectations around their choreography. This is fine and necessary — but for many politicians and their advisors, it also looks to be slow, bureaucratic and rigid. There is also a mismatch between the spatial scales at which such planning is undertaken and the more amorphous, fluid and functional requirements of development and cross-sectoral working.
>
> And this is where the emergent alternative administrative geographies, or the **soft spaces** of governance, have a role to play, providing a series of alternative institutional spaces in which to imagine possibilities for future place making. In a sense, we’ve had them for some years now — the Urban Development Corporations of old, followed by inner city Task Forces, City Challenge areas. More recently though we have seen a trend towards commissioning area ‘Masterplans’, plus all those pilots, prototypes and other brave new world experiments such as Employment Zones and New Deal for Communities. These new institutional forms and spaces are invariably mandated to ‘break free’ of past rigidities, to introduce innovative thinking and new practices that can be learned from and adopted elsewhere.
>
> We want to argue three things here in relation to soft spaces.
>
> **First, this is a deliberate attempt to insert new opportunities for creative thinking**, particularly in areas where public engagement and cross-sectoral consultation has seen entrenched oppositional forces either slowing down or freezing out most forms of new development.
>
> **Second, that the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ spaces of governance are mutually constitutive.** One cannot work without the other. The aim is not to remove ‘hard’ institutional spaces with new ‘softer’ ones, rather to create complementary and potentially competing opportunities for development activities to focus around, whether at some kind of ‘sub’ regional or ‘sub’ local government scale.
>
> Third, the soft spaces of governance are becoming more numerous and more important as part of the institutional landscape of regeneration.
Paraphrasing, *soft spaces* are defined as **informal opportunities and interactions** within a formal framework that connect people, ideas, levels of intervention, etc. and allow them to make a *coherent understanding* of the situations and prepare for the actions to be undertaken within the formal *“hard space”*, the framework under which they operate.
Informal collective *sense-making & change-making* is important because we share and elaborate (more than one might expect) more than what we can formalise, each individual being both *participant* and *interpreter* of the emergent construct. This process can’t be formalised and operationalised in the hard space, rather it is the necessary input that the system awaits. If you aim at increasing your organisation’s agility –meaning its capacity to sense and respond to change over time– one has to acknowledge that complexity (of informal interactions) cannot be reduced without losing information, and working with the inherent ambiguity of human interactions means that things happen outside of the formal system anyway.
Talking about complexity, I want to draw here a relevant link between **soft spaces** (from policy planning) and **constraints** in complexity thinking. This is relevant because this informs my usage of the term in the context of this discussion.
In the publication [*“Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis”*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/field-guide-managing-complexity-and-chaos-in-times-of-crisis?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a joint effort between the [Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, and the Cynefin® Centre](https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC123629?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the following types of constraints are described:
- **Governing/Enabling Constraints:** laws, rules, and codes create governing constraints. They give a sense of stability but are sensitive to change. Heuristics and principles, on the other side, provide guidance while allowing for distributed decision-making.
- **Internal/External Constraints:** insects have exo-skeletons which limit the size to which they can grow but provide a clearly visible structure; mammals have an endo-skeleton which makes them all self-similar but with a wider variety and fewer limitations on growth. Organisation design tends to focus on creating a skeleton, or scaffolding, and ‘points of coherence’ around which unities interact with each other and with the scaffolding itself. This is the case of ritualized meetings, performance evaluations, career assessments, etc. As far as external boundaries think markets, resources, social foundations, and environmental ceilings.
- **Connecting/Containing Constraints:** connections, like hashtags in knowledge management and links in networks, provide a flexible and adaptive structure but at the cost of visibility and control. Containers, like categories, spreadsheets cells, and departments, provide clear, reassuring boundary conditions. Changing connections between people and organisational units is less costly than trying to restructure or reorganize departments. As new connections start to provide new ways of dealing with issues, then the constraints can be tightened and eventually formalized into new units and departments.
- **Rigid/Flexible/Permeable Constraints:** deadlines are an example of constraints that are usually intended to be rigid. Flexi-time is a malleable way to manage attendance at work. Rigid structures resist until their design conditions are exceeded at which point they break catastrophically. In contrast, flexible structures adapt to stress and conditions of constant change. Rigid and flexible boundaries increase their resilience with permeability or special conditions that allow for exceptions, but permeability brings the possibility of clogs, i.e. too many people applying for or expecting exceptions.
- **Dark Constraints:** (a reference to dark energy or dark matter) we can see the effect of a constraint but we don’t know the cause. Dark constraints are like the several hidden meanings a term can assume for different people. When we mention a term and we see different reactions, we see dark constraints at work. Narratives are powerful antidotes against dark constraints. We can also get a sense of the risk going forward by modeling how much of the past we can explain by the constraints we are aware of. The more we can’t explain the less we can monitor, the more likely unexpected and potentially catastrophic surprise.
source
Constraints emphasise the need to think in terms of space and not just individuals, as the concept of *Soft spaces* does in its own way. Contexts embed inherent constraints (unintentional) to which we can design our own (intentional). Similarly, contexts come with inherent boundaries to which new boundaries can emerge (add, redefine, subtract).
## Scaffolding and attractors
Other useful metaphors for thinking in terms of “Design”, “Soft Spaces”, and “Constraints” are the concepts of ***scaffolding*** and ***strange attractors***.
An example of scaffolding in architecture.
**A scaffolding** is a structure, not meant to last, and that **serves as a support** to grow, build, or repair \[something\], usually the end-structure meant to last. The obvious example that comes to mind is in architecture & construction, but such structures can also be found in nature, as part of plants ecosystem for instance, and are used in medical application research.
In other words, **a scaffolding is an enabler**. Furthermore, we should be able to remove the scaffold (or let it decay) and whatever we helped grow should sustain itself. Funnily enough, **we sometimes build scaffoldings that we mistake for the end structure, like say, our dear design processes.**
> Designing soft spaces means supporting and growing something bigger.
Lorenz attractor, a form of strange attractor.
**Attractors** are defined as *“a set of states towards which a system tend to evolve, for a wide variety of starting conditions”*. In other words, an attractor exists by contrast or negative, as it is the mere result of the unexpected and unpredictable paths, of all possible paths, elements of a system tend to take. It displays a common pattern (despite the unpredictability of the system), although filled in with diversity. In an organisation, attractors happen to be “attractors” because of how information tends to revolve around –such as in narrative research, a trope is a form of attractor.
A form of attractor would be buzzwords, like say *“new ways of working”*, attracts a wide diversity of narratives, which taken in details might be contradicting each other and/or are informed by very different ideas & backgrounds, but taken as a whole is coherent. Another attractor could be in the form of cities, attracting a diversity of people, businesses, organisations, resources, infrastructures, etc. This diversity allows for divergence although revolving around the same point of coherence (the city), is thought to be a [key factor in what makes cities more likely to enable inclusive & responsible innovation](https://www.giid.org/the-global-institute-in-2021-harnessing-innovation-districts-to-build-back-better/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> Designing soft spaces and their constraints for creative and unexpected divergence.
Creating soft spaces can play as attractors for a diversity of people, minds, thoughts, ideas, practices, experiences, (etc.) and as a scaffolding for long-lasting changes and innovations.
.
## “Design excellence” as a distributed network, not a centralised point of reference
It happens that the very nature of a complex (wicked) problem is its state of entanglement with other problems/issues. When we look at an organisation (like say an enterprise and its context) as a [complex adaptive system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) we realise that most ill-defined challenges, whether inside and/or outside of it, are first and foremost within the informal network that composes it –where ambiguity lies– not in its formal structure & processes. This is not much a problem than a reality we experience more or less consciously.
Complexity comes with context-sensitive and context-dependent aspects, flow of information, understandings, narratives, and so forth, that might contradict each other (hence the ambiguity). This means a diversity of people, in a diversity of contexts, with a diversity of perspectives, and a diversity of motivations. Traditional approaches tend to entitle one person or a small group of individuals to “solve problems”, in other words to *interpret*, *extrapolate*, *generalise*, *strategise*, *plan*, and *act*, and they often do so by creating supposedly “higher goals/objectives” by reduction or removal of context and externalisation of motivations in an attempt to make overall consistent decisions –thus, they become consistent regardless the context while imposing their extensions/implications to people. This is a funnel towards an expected *single-point* and *optimal* solution. And this is (probably) fine in many cases, except when you work on complex challenges because they hold a certain level of ambiguity that cannot be resolved through analysis and reduction to one single “good” answer –instead, complex challenges allow several potential “good answers” to co-exist at the same time (here again, ambiguity).
source
Systematically aiming for funnelling down “problems” to one solution (see [“Funnelling vs Layering”](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/books/for-impact-generate-snowballs-dont-select-snowflakes-funnelling-versus-layering?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) that is supposed to fit many diverse contexts, understandings, and motivations is likely to lead at best to *“premature convergence”* (see [here](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-48765-4%5F16?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/forschung/pfadkolleg/downloads/organizational%5Fpaths.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%5Fdependence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
> “In evolutionary algorithm, **premature convergence** means that a population (for an optimisation problem) converged too early, **resulting in being stuck into a local minima or maxima state.** This situation arise due to loss of diversity among individuals of the population.Techniques to avoid premature convergence is to maintain diversity among individuals of the population; Using archive and designing efficient crossover operators.” — [source](https://www.researchgate.net/post/What%5Fis%5Fthe%5Fmeaning%5Fof%5Fpremature%5Fconvergence%5Fin%5Fevolutionary%5Falgorithms?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Understanding an organisation as first of all a human (socio-technical) complex system, being itself surrounded by other human systems, means we cannot subtract an inherent form of tacit ambiguity and complexity. A good example of that is the fact that although a company can be defined as a formal structure, say a hierarchy and/or some operationalisation processes, it is also defined by its informal structure (its network) at the same time.
Source
As I further develop in [The Explorer Framework](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), distribution is a necessary feature of a network. This means in an organisation:
> “Not everyone has knowledge of or is aware of the same things, at the same time, in the same way.” This is not (necessarily) a matter of hierarchy: consider instead how formal and informal networks work and influence the flow of information.Like an island might possess shores, forests, rivers, mountains, abrupt cliffs, (etc.) organisations’ complexity, activities, and processes are both informed by the larger context of the organisation itself as well as the local specificities that people are facing.” — The Explorer Guide, Design & Critical Thinking
Counterintuitively, research tells us that the “viral contagion” of ideas and thus individuals’ perception of change or novelty primarily works through the informal & tacit human network. At this point, it is interesting to note that many of our practices revolve around the formal structures/processes of an organisation (despite what we know). One good reason for this is that it certainly seems easier to do so because it gives a sense of certainty & predictability in a linear chain of actions (apparent causality).
### Building a local and contextual shared understanding
Having explained the role of informal networks in organisations and the importance of key concepts such as soft spaces, constraints, scaffolding, and attractors, we can now converge to application & practice. One aspect to understand is that there is a difference between knowing how a system works and acting upon this knowledge. It is already difficult enough for one person, let alone for a group or an organisation.
One thing is that although we can define boundaries, map out the system of interactions within those boundaries, devise a course of actions to intervene, etc. it is first rarely the case that one group of individuals is entitled to do that work; and secondly, we fall in the risk mentioned earlier of interpretation, removal of context, seeking consistency over coherency.
Another thing, as known in rationality, is that **there is a threshold for which the cost of knowing supersedes the cost of acting and vice-versa** (see [epistemic & instrumental rationality](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rationality?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). Acting without knowledge puts one at risk\* of misalignment with what should be done knowing the context’s conditions; Knowing without acting puts one at risk\* of running out of (or closing all) options when acting would have maintained/enabled more options in the long run;\*risk being defined by the context. Mastering where to put the threshold comes with praxis.
As shown earlier, different contexts imply different approaches, and going down the rabbit hole of systems mapping isn’t always the “good” (let alone “best”) way to approach complex challenges. In fact, the map as an artefact is not really important here, it is what it enables people to do that actually matters (sorry for this quasi [truism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) as this can be said to almost all design artefact) and a map is as good as what it describes –i.e. a map usually describes topographical & infrastructural elements because they are not likely to change drastically over time; and indirectly poses tangible constraints (again) to what is possible within a certain area.
Here “[coherence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence%5F%28physics%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)” is most often than not preferable over absolute accuracy and what matters is the process that enables a collective understanding of the challenge at hand and what we could possibly do about it rather than expandable & rigid artefact. And this collective understanding & shared meaning creation (sense-making) has to happen more than once, as our actions impact the context we are working in, changing its conditions –in other words, there is no optimal solution. Here, we want good enough knowledge for good enough actions, and soft spaces host the necessary conditions (enabling constraints) for this knowledge and meaning to happen.
We also want that knowledge to match field reality, the levels of the landscape in which we operate. As explained earlier, certain things make sense only to a certain point in the system and generalising this understanding (to other points in the system) won’t necessarily help make good decisions. This means we need to create knowledge and “bias toward action“ (intrinsic motivation) at a local level while keeping an overall coherency.
### Distributed design, ownership, and responsibility: a better ethical framework for complex & interconnected challenges and to build trust & autonomy within an organisation.
An interesting way to do so is to build a “[sensory network](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/chapters/energy-sensors-triangulation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”, an intentional network of people, that might grow/evolve over time as you navigate the challenge, that allows you to connect the different perspectives of the challenge (or organisation) and to sense & act at local points.
Source
This approach brings autonomy and a sense of ownership to people that face a local “reality“ of the challenge, enabling them to both inform the network and make decisions at their local level is a powerful and inclusive way to bring a diverse (yet coherent) set of actions, solutions, or what I would call ***mediums for interactions* to *catalyse changes***.
Here, we give them the autonomy to define what is the things they/we (both) want to see more often (the “good outcomes”) and those we want less (the “bad outcomes”) based on their experience. Furthermore, we give them responsibility as we ask the network to monitor changes over time given the actions undertaken: “are we heading in the right direction?”.
This approach keeps the ***burden of interpretation*** at a local level (not in the hand of a single individual), that is to say where the experience & context lies, while enabling the creation of shared understanding (at different levels and in between different groups) through informal soft spaces.
### Soft spaces as oscillations in the system
Seeing ***information as energy*** allows one to treat it with similar properties. Energy cannot be created nor deleted, only transformed. More so, energy can move through mediums (energy vectors), which are not all equal in terms of effectiveness & efficiency.
**Formal** and **informal** ways to gather and/or treat information *constrain information* in different ways, offering different losses & gains on the net output, affecting **scope* and *scale* of understanding*.
For instance, an **undirected, unbonded conversation** is an informal way to gather information communicating a lot of *depth* & *details*, allowing *context-blending* (people can relate to similar personal experiences) and providing *flexible enabling constraints* through *stories*. The downside is added *noise* in the information processing.
On the other side of the spectrum, **directed, motivated, goal-oriented methods** like, say, a survey or some forms of interviews and workshops formalise information through predetermined/anticipated inputs, filtering information and providing more *rigid constraints*.
> There is a relationship between how we are making sense of our context and what we can do about this understanding.
As explained earlier, soft spaces offer opportunities for informal, unguided/unbounded connections between people, ideas, practices, and thus flow of information. Soft spaces should not be seen with benefits on their own, but rather in combination with other approaches and more formal approaches & processes.
For instance, distributing design practices can be seen as a *network forming activity* that can be achieved with formal means (e.g. a chat tools, emails, etc.) mixed with informal spaces for discussions that can prompt directed and/or semi-guided spaces (e.g. workshops, hackathon, etc.) dedicated at tackling a specific issue.
Building such a network can be done through various means and mediums, but it is worth mentioning they will not all allow for the same type of interactions impacting the type of information that can be gathered, the effectiveness of the overall network response, and our perception of the information.
- **Synchronicity** allows for immediate, direct, prompted feedback which tends to be also very localised and context-specific. It is extremely useful contextually but also energy-intensive and, therefore, generally hard to sustain for a long period of time.
- **Asynchronicity** allows for delayed, indirect, unprompted feedback. More energy-effective but also less context-specific, it can be run over long periods of time. This tends to allow to build a much broader sense of the patterns at play.
- **Availability** (perceived instantaneity) will define the effort (friction) that the network will have to take in order to generate feedback. The more asynchronous, the greater we want perceived instantaneity because of delayed response from the feedback mechanism.
source
### Focus on practice & safe-to-fail spaces over generic certifications
For the most part of our day-to-day functioning, human knowledge is context-sensitive (see [contextualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextualism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and tacit, [even in “expert domains“](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/complexity/contextual-knowledge-and-proceduralized-context?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). As discussed earlier about the constraints of information, the formalisation of knowledge brings reduction in noise but also losses in context-specificity of the information (see [situational knowledge/awareness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation%5Fawareness?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Certifications, for instance, tend to condense knowledge in a highly digestible, formal, standardised, and linear way to cover so-called “basics” in the least amount of time in the attempt to produce rapidly an “operational workforce”, if I may formulate it this way. The criticism isn’t on the existence/validity of such “basics”, but the rather that for each individual thrown on the market with a certification, we rarely take into account the necessary time required to become truly “operational” –what we call experience– which even with variability between individuals is incompressible (meaning at least some is necessary) and should (probably) be seen as an investment, a trade-off, rather than a cost to a learning experience.
> In other words, experience is context-sensitive knowledge, and what we call “basics” in a discipline makes mainly sense in regard to their applicability, the context in which we act.
Experience comes with practice, and practice with opportunities –and with unequal accessibility, let’s face it. Formal spaces tend to have formal and predetermined expectations on results & outcomes (in a linear fashion), which raise expectations on individual experience & expertise (and increase inequality of access over time). Soft spaces offer learning capabilities and safe-to-fail environments, and by playing with constraints, can offer a fertile ground for meaningful training.
> There’s a military analogy here: small crews, training in the field, repetitive movements, situational heuristics, etc. to build trust, confidence, competency, and approach groups & individuals’ practice learning.
## Approaching the organisation as islands and archipelagos
We can use the metaphor of [exploring islands to derive an epistemological framework and some heuristics](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) as we are navigating complex challenges, together with this idea of soft spaces.
When encountering an island on the horizon, you don’t know how big it is, or what to find there. If you were to land on its shore, you wouldn’t know where you are because you don’t have any point of reference yet.
**An island is a context, a subject, something you can’t ignore, solve, or remove.** There are people, an ecosystem, infrastructures, a topography, a local weather system, things that are unique, and others that are generic. Beyond these, there are, not visible at first glance, relationships between them that determine values and meanings in this specific context. **This is your challenge, the context of the problem you are facing.** This is its physical (and virtual), yet often imperceptible, space. As for problems, from where you are, looking at the island, you can get a rough idea of some of its features, but you’re too far to understand all the relationships at play there: you’re still in a [*confused state*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0QjLnzaog&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (or [*aporatic*](https://cynefin.io/wiki/Cynefin%5FDomains?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) state).
Several contexts, challenges, or problems can be found close to each other, like an archipelago. An archipelago is a *coherent* group of islands — or a coherent group of contexts. Each island/context can be very different in size and ecosystem but are related to each other **in a fundamental way**.
> Adjacent possibles (see [here](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/complexity/adjacent-possible?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and aiming at indirect goals: What can be done here and now, that benefits people at a local level? (see also [here](https://medium.com/@SeloSlav/what-is-the-adjacent-possible-17680e4d1198?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://thecynefin.co/the-adjacent-possible/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [there](https://thecynefin.co/the-evolutionary-potential-of-the-present/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
---
## Thanks for reading!
*This article has been influenced by my work and study on Design, Complexity thinking, Systems practices, and the discussions & collaboration with the* [*Design & Critical Thinking Community*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*. Some of the ideas discussed here draw from the* [*Cynefin framework and concepts*](https://cynefin.io/wiki/Main%5FPage?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *(see also* [*here*](https://library.designcriticalthinking.com/library/studies-and-research-papers/complexity?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*).*
### Week #1 of 2022
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/week--1-of-2022/
Last updated: 2022-01-10T00:00:00.000Z
### The Design & Critical Thinking Community update
Hi everyone,
Here’s what happened in the community this first week of 2022.
[**On Tuesday**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/design-practice-theory-and-methods-systemic-design-systems-thinking-trends-23d210b21c78?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we discussed design practice (and practising design) and the misunderstanding around the importance of methods & the importance of context, the trend around Systemic Design and systems thinking, the Design Council’s report on Systemic Design, and many more… 🌟
[**On Thursday**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/design-syst%C3%A9mique-philosophies-pratiques-de-design-dinnovation-fc3f922fb9a5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we had our first session in french and we discussed the multiplicity of “Design” and the different disciplines & practices in this field, as well as the trend around Systemic Design and Systems Thinking. We talked about philosophy(ies), definitions, and concepts around Design and innovation, as well as critical thinking. We also discuss the importance of writing to help thinking and to create a medium for interactions.
- 📆 Participate in our next events 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- 🍻Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Wish you a wonderful week and see you next week! 👋
Kevin from *Design & Critical Thinking*.
---
### [Virtual Chalet, Tuesday 4 January 2022](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/design-practice-theory-and-methods-systemic-design-systems-thinking-trends-23d210b21c78?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Design Practice, Theory, Methods | Systemic Design & Systems Thinking. [Watch here](https://youtu.be/GMLHL3LYElI?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [listen here](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Virtual-Chalet--4-Jan-2022--Design-Practice--Theory--and-Methods--Systemic-Design--Systems-Thinking-Trends-e1cjhrp?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
### [Chalet Virtuel (en français), jeudi 6 janvier 2022](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/design-syst%C3%A9mique-philosophies-pratiques-de-design-dinnovation-fc3f922fb9a5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Design Systémique, Philosophies & Pratiques de Design & d’Innovation, Écriture, Collaboration et Émergence. À [regarder ici](https://youtu.be/iR92tzTpuB0?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ou [écouter ici](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking/episodes/Chalet-Virtuel-FR--6-jan-2022--Design-Systmique--Philosophies--Pratiques-de-Design--dInnovation-e1cnghj?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### Design Systémique, Philosophies & Pratiques de Design & d’Innovation
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-syst-mique--philosophies---pratiques-de-design---d-innovation/
Last updated: 2022-01-09T00:00:00.000Z
### Chalet Virtuel (FR), 6 janvier 2022
Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel « Virtual Chalet ». Ces rencontres récurrentes (une fois toutes les 2 semaines) existent afin que la [communauté Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT)](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) prenne le temps et l’espace pour discuter, faire du sense, partager des idées et des expériences, trouver du soutien, poser des questions, etc.
Cette semaine nous discutons de la multiplicité du “Design” et des différentes disciplines & pratiques de ce domaine, ainsi que du trend autour du Design Systémique et du Systems Thinking. Nous parlons de philosophie(s), de définitions, et de concepts autour du Design et de l’innovation, ainsi que d’esprit critique. Nous abordons aussi l’importance d’écrire pour aider à penser et pour créer un medium d’échange.
📆 Participez au prochains évènements 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🍻 Rejoignez la communauté (en anglais) sur Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Bonne année à tous! 🎉
## Écoutez la version audio
## Liens partagés pendant la session 👇
- Le podcast Design Québec: [https://open.spotify.com/show/3LTwLU37KyZ1l7jslmZljH?si=79f7f2bdb11f422c](https://open.spotify.com/show/3LTwLU37KyZ1l7jslmZljH?si=79f7f2bdb11f422c&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- La conférence Web à Quebec: [https://webaquebec.org](https://webaquebec.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Le framework Cynefin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin\_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Exaptation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Blog de la communauté D&CT: [https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Le blog de Kevin: [https://kevinrichard.ch](https://kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design Practice, Theory, and Methods | Systemic Design & Systems Thinking Trends
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-practice--theory--and-methods---systemic-design---systems-thinking-trends/
Last updated: 2022-01-06T00:00:00.000Z
### Virtual Chalet session, 4 January 2022
The virtual chalet, a place for serendipitous discussions.
The “virtual chalet” is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks) for the community to take the space & time to discuss, share ideas & experiences, find support, ask questions, etc.
This week we discuss design practice (and practising design) and the misunderstanding around the importance of methods, the importance of context, the trends around Systemic Design and Systems Thinking, the Design Council’s report on systemic design, and many more… 🌟
- Join our next session 👉 [https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Join the community on Slack 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Happy new year everyone! 🎉
## Listen to our audio version
## Links and resources shared during the session
For designers wanting to spread their own virus: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSat\_gLDXPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSat%5FgLDXPc&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The book *“Designing social systems in a changing world”* developing the double diagram: [https://vdoc.pub/documents/designing-social-systems-in-a-changing-world-6sne9v818r80](https://vdoc.pub/documents/designing-social-systems-in-a-changing-world-6sne9v818r80?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
About methods and applicability: [https://www.amazon.com/Against-Method-Paul-Feyerabend/dp/1844674428](https://www.amazon.com/Against-Method-Paul-Feyerabend/dp/1844674428?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
John Mortimer’s work on service design, systems thinking, and the double diamond: [https://www.improconsult.co.uk/systemic-triple-diamond.html](https://www.improconsult.co.uk/systemic-triple-diamond.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The Design Council report: [https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/resources/guide/beyond-net-zero-systemic-design-approach](https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/resources/guide/beyond-net-zero-systemic-design-approach?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Find out more about the community
Our website:
[**Welcome to Design & Critical Thinking**](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Our events page:
[**Design & Critical Thinking (Genève, Switzerland)**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join our Slack:
[**Slack**](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Edit description*](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### New Year, New Opportunities
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/new-year--new-opportunities/
Last updated: 2021-12-31T00:00:00.000Z
### Happy New Year Design & Critical Thinkers
Dear Design & Critical Thinking members and friends,
Thanks for your trust and participation throughout 2021 🙏
I’m glad to see how the community grew and took shape, what we made it and I can’t wait to see where we will go.
Anyway, I wish you all the best for 2022! 🎉
Sincerely,
Kevin
## 📆 Join us in 2022
[**Virtual Chalet Meetup | Meetup**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/qksjqsydccbgb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Details Hi, fellow Design & Critical Thinkers, The "virtual chalet" is a recurring informal event (once every 2 weeks)…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/qksjqsydccbgb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/qksjqsydccbgb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Chalet Virtuel (FR) 🇫🇷 | Meetup**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/pnqkrsydccbjb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Details Bonjour chers Design & Critical Thinkers, Ceci est la version francophone de nos sessions informel " Virtual…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/pnqkrsydccbjb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/pnqkrsydccbjb/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design & Critical Thinking’s Virtual End Of Year Party 🎉
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking-s-virtual-end-of-year-party---/
Last updated: 2021-12-14T00:00:00.000Z
### Join the community for an informal gathering to celebrate the end of 2021 and welcome 2022.
Our virtual space is nice, warm, and cosy –ready to welcome you all!
Dear D&CT members and friends,
2021 comes to an end really soon and we would love you to join us on Thursday 16th December to celebrate and have fun! 🎄🎉
Our (virtual) chalet in the snowy 🇨🇭 mountains is indeed all set up to welcome you with drinks, a fireplace, and some delicious Swiss chocolate –in other words, everything for interesting discussions and a nice time together! How could you possibly refuse? 😉
### ☃️ Want to join? Register now 👇
[**Virtual End Of Year Party 🎉 | Meetup**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/282653721/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Details Dear D&CT members and friends, Let's celebrate the end of 2021 and welcome 2022 together! Join us for this…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/282653721/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/282653721/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Looking forward to meeting you there,
Kevin from [Design & Critical Thinking](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Experiences, Perception, Expectations, and Meaning.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/experiences--perception--expectations--and-meaning-/
Last updated: 2021-11-26T00:00:00.000Z
### Looking at the interactions through the lens of the product tells a partial story. Same through the lens of 1 individual. Same through the lens of 1 context.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
For the purpose of a presentation, I’m currently revisiting this simple yet effective way to explain UX to non-designers (see picture 1) by [Jennifer Aldrich](https://twitter.com/jma245?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Picture 1 — Experience emerges from interactions between people & products/services.
Although I think this picture is good in its simplicity, I would also say it misses one other key aspect of what makes an experience and what makes design, UX, and research important: **context**.
Expanding on the original idea, here is my take:
- **Picture 1:** Experience emerges from interactions between people & products/services;
- **Picture 2:** Interactions are constrained by context and define perception, expectations, and meaning (what one can make sense of).
Picture 2 — Interactions are constrained by context and define meaning, perception, and expectations.
## What are your thoughts?
Thank for reading! 🙏
### Is ‘Innovation’ What We Think It Is?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/is--innovation--what-we-think-it-is-/
Last updated: 2021-11-16T00:00:00.000Z
### *How our narrative around innovation echoes our perception of time and the way we act towards complex challenges*
Unsplash
Hi, Kevin here.
I recently stubble upon a personal reflection that made me think about what I do and –ultimately– how we tell the story of our actions as a society. It’s not like a big revelation or something, but rather a subtle yet important underlying structure of our main narrative that I find interesting and wanted to share with you.
A few days ago, I was listening to [a conference](https://youtu.be/cNpks8-iS8Q?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (in french) in which [**Étienne Klein**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne%5FKlein?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a French physicist and science philosopher gave a very interesting lecture on the role and importance of sciences in society.
## From “Progress” to “Innovation”
Among all the very interesting points he makes and develops, E. Klein speaks about the rise and omnipresence of the term “innovation” not only in business but politics and society in general over the last 20 years, which replaced the notion of “progress”.
Here is a rather long –but worthwhile– excerpt of the video I translated in English for your convenience (emphasis mine) I invite you to read to the end:
> *\[The\] new technologies by the perspectives they bring to light, by the upheavals that they make possible, by the globality of the questions that they pose while bypassing the technical aspects,* **they end up being linked to the question of values and this is when the subject becomes political.** *Back in time, it was not \[political\], in a way, because* **the activity of the researcher** *–or of science in general–* **was embedded in the idea of “progress”** *. And therefore science being considered as the “engine of progress”, all the advances that it allows are interesting, must be exploited, even if it means going back if the effects they produce do not please us.*
> *But as you well know,* **the word “progress” has disappeared from public discourse** *. \[With a colleague,* [*Gérald Bronner*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rald%5FBronner?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*\] we looked in public speeches how the word “progress” has declined throughout history and what we see very clearly is that the word has disappeared. It has been used for three centuries with a capital letter “P”. It lost its capital letter after World War II, and it began to decline at the end of the 1980s, when a very old word –which was abandoned– reappeared in the French language: “innovation”.*
> *The curve of the term “progress” (which decreases) intersects the curve of the term “innovation” (which rises) in 2003, and the word “progress” will completely disappear during the* [*French presidential mandate of 2007–2012 (Nicolas Sarkozy)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas%5FSarkozy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *\[…\] There is something absolutely dizzying about this, as a word which has been so structuring to modernity for three centuries has been* erased*.*
> *So we could say “it’s okay, ‘innovation’ and ‘progress’ are two synonymous words so we simply modernized our progressive discourse by replacing the word ‘progress’ with the word ‘innovation’” \[… \] but if we look at history from that of the enlightenment, the rhetoric in which the word “progress” find its meaning and we compare it to the current rhetoric of “innovation”* **we realize very easily that our way to talk about innovation does not do justice to the idea of progress** *. One could even defend the idea that our discourse about innovation –not innovation itself– contradicts the very idea of progress.*
> *The idea of progress consists in* **accepting to sacrifice some personal present in the name of a collective future** *, as* [**Kant**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel%5FKant?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *explains in his book “*[*What Is Enlightenment?*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answering%5Fthe%5FQuestion:%5FWhat%5FIs%5FEnlightenment%3F?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”. This means that you have to* **configure the future in a credible and attractive way,** *long in advance, and then work to bring about this new world that you have envisioned.*
> *It must be credible because progress is not the belief in utopia. It’s not about inventing another world, it’s about thinking about a different but accessible world, with a path that will allow it to be built –and it is science that gives credibility to the futurist discourse. It must be attractive because “progress is not automatic” and therefore we must work to make it happen.*
> *Kant brilliantly said* “progress is a doubly consoling and sacrificial idea: it consoles us for the misfortunes of the present since our children will live better, and it consoles us for the sacrifices that it imposes on us because it gives them meaning.”**So the idea of progress is based exclusively on a concept of “passing time” which is constructive: time is our ally, it is the accomplice of our freedom and our will.**
> *Now take “innovation”, \[…\] the word appears in the 14th century as “low Latin” in legal vocabulary. What we called an “innovation” at the time is what we would now call an amendment to a contract: you have signed a contract, something changes in the periphery of the contract, so you make an amendment so the contract remains valid.* **That is to say that innovation, in this context, is what must be done so that nothing changes.**
> *Later, the word circulates in other disciplines, notably in politics: you find it in the prince of Machiavelli. Machiavelli explains that* “the prince must not innovate politically when he has power unless his power is threatened”*. Once again, innovation is legitimized by the fact that it must allow nothing to change. Then, for the first time the term is used in a technical context by the English philosopher* [*Francis Bacon*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis%5FBacon?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, who published in 1625 a book called “*[*Essays, or, Counsels civil and moral*](http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd%5F7914458%5F000/index.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*” in which there is a chapter called “innovation”.*
> *When I give it to my students to read without telling them who wrote it or when it was written,* **everyone thinks it was written last week, because in 2021 we are talking about innovation like Francis Bacon** *–which is a bad sign because Francis Bacon was not a philosopher of enlightenment.*
> *\[F. Bacon\] says that* “passing time is corrupting, time degrades situations. What to do to prevent the evil from winning? Innovate. Not too fast, because if the innovation is too fast it will be welcomed as an outsider by the population; not too slowly because if we innovate too slowly the damage produced by the passage of time will become irreparable; and therefore we must innovate at the pace of time”.
> *Interestingly, if you read the text written by the European Union in 2010, it was a question of making the European Union “the union of innovation”, replacing the Treaty of Lisbon which aimed to make the European Union “the society of knowledge”. We have moved from the “society of knowledge” to the “union of innovation”! So, here you have a 50-page document in which the word innovation is cited 300 time without being defined anywhere. \[Innovation\] has become a “totem word”.*
> *The first page of this text reads:* “Europe has understood that it is facing challenges whose severity increases with the passage of time \[…\] and Europe has understood that it will be able to meet these challenges only through innovation.” *This is a plagiarism of F. Bacon, that is to say that* **this is the critical state of the present which justifies the innovation and not a certain idea of the future that one would configure in advance in a credible and attractive way.** *And this upheaval certainly plays a role in how technology is discussed in society, and especially at the political level.*
> *New technologies are linked to the question of values, and no longer to the question of principles. Before, it was on principle that we carried out innovation -without naming it by the way- by principle of progress. Today, it is a question of “value”, but* **the value of a value is less universal than the value of a principle** *, since it depends on the evaluators: all values do not have the same values,* **everyone has their values** *. And so the discussions never converge* **because there is no transcendent principle** *that can lead to an authoritative decision.*
> *Technologies in public debates questions our idea of society, of what it should or should not become, and also our way of working, of spending our time, of being touch with others and with our environment, on the basis that it is up to citizens to examine the type of companionship they wish to build with new technologies.*
## Progress as a positive, desirable future-state
Although we can criticise this position as an appeal to a more traditional view of change, one that seems to appeal to traditional *planning* and [*command & control*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command%5Fand%5Fcontrol%5F%28management%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), I don’t think it is necessarily the case here. Moreover, I appreciate the historical evolution of innovation & progress and their relationship to our perception of time, and ultimately to our perception of our societies.
Personally, I tend to think that, more often than not and despite our good intentions, innovation is employed for the very reason described by E. Klein, that is to say, “to not change anything”. But whether we agree or not that innovation sees “time as corrupting” and therefore seeks status-quo or whether we should use the concept of “progress” instead, I think we can agree that whatever the word we use, we tend to seek positive changes through our actions.
Now, [as I mentioned in previous articles](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), there is a (non-causal) link between how we approach the world (our paradigms), the complexity we are facing (the context), and the tools we use. Thus, I think this is worth questioning and thinking about “how we do what we do”.
Context, Paradigms, and Tools relationship.
Coincidentally, my definition of “innovation” so far match pretty well with this idea of “progress”:
> *Innovation: “Significant positive impacts/changes in the context we are acting in.”*
Now, one might ask: *is innovation always positive, if it has negative outcomes for the wider community, can we still call it “innovation”?*
And I think this is a very good and valid question. Given E. Klein definition, **only progress is positive** because it implies working towards an achievable common ideal.
Given my definition, “s*ignificant positive impacts/changes in the context we are acting in*” –which is, to me, a “should” (prescriptive, not descriptive) as to *“what we (as a group) should see in order to categorise it as such”*– then by definition something that has significant negative impacts to a wider community *should not* be categorised as an innovation.
This definition also implies a “set of causes & effects” (or “interactions”) rather than a single-point solution (eg. not “the iPhone is an innovation”).
> So innovation is a process, right?
Yes, we can probably frame it this way.
Or perhaps, because of how it is used today and what we generally associate it with, there is value to take some distance between the process and the persons that perform it. *“Doing innovation”* and *“being innovators”* flatter our egos. Instead, I would say there is no *“innovation in the present”* but rather *“innovation is a realisation with the benefit of hindsight”.*
In other words, something that happened and that we can only observe now, something of the **past** that we benefit from in the **present** and that help shape our **future**.
---
### And you, what are you’re thoughts?
Anyway, thanks for reading!
### What Can Design Bring In Solving Complex Problems?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/what-can-design-bring-in-solving-complex-problems-/
Last updated: 2021-10-19T00:00:00.000Z
### What role for designers? Should we still call this design? Join us for an open discussion.
Hi everyone,
We are organising an open discussion for the broad design community & [Design & Critical Thinking](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) members to make sense together of this more and more (if not already very) relevant topic (more details below).
🔥 Join us on [Friday 22nd October at 6 PM CET / 12 PM ET / 9 AM PT](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 👇
[**What, if anything, can design bring to the solving of complex problems?**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This is an open discussion for the community, based on a response to a Fast Company article ( https://bit.ly/3lz8E9C)…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## What, if anything, can design bring to the solving of complex problems? What role for designers? Should we still call this design?
The discussion is based on a response to a [Fast Company’s article](https://www.fastcompany.com/90667677/where-design-can-make-the-biggest-impact-in-the-next-decade-according-to-over-30-experts?partner=rss&utm%5Fsource=facebook.com&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=rss+fastcompany&utm%5Fcontent=rss&fbclid=IwAR3mWiDaMsQXkocmwTTYr5IrHc8vcHIhT9O-JHAISzBIJURZ8J%5FWxvQafxM) and a [LinkedIn response thread](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/donnorman%5F32-experts-on-the-most-urgent-matters-facing-activity-6847311805224763392-Rkr3/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to which there are two main characters of note: **Don Norman** and **Charles L Mauro**.
On the one hand, Don Norman argues for a change to design education, as few designers *“are equipped to work in these problem spaces.”* He follows by stating that *“a combination of a deep understanding of people, technology, world history, and business are all required.”* Given that design “training” is moving away from proper degrees into a more atomized skills-based model (learn UX design in 4 weeks), there is no question that design education, already unequipped to provide a more complete liberal arts education, is moving further from being able to provide the deep pan-disciplinary understanding required to equip designers to solve complex problems.
On the other hand, Charles Mauro suggests *“DESIGN as a professional discipline will have almost no positive impact on actual complex problem resolution without a major rethink of where DESIGN expertise actually fits in the problem space.”* And that fit, as Mr Mauro sees it, is in effect that designers “*are there to solve intuitive and comparatively simple problems using unstructured and mostly intuitive methods. In the process things actually (mostly) end up looking better visually.”* to which he adds: *“Sorry, that is your role.”*
In the end, we have two ominously similar views:
- Norman: Designers are of no use in the solving of complex problems until education improves;
- Mauro: Designers are of no use in the solving of complex problems and should just stick to making things pretty.
**To summarize they agree: currently (most, if not all) designers are of no use in the solving of complex problems.**
## Exploring the tension through definitions
To begin to even address this I think it’s helpful if we define “design” temporarily between two poles. We won’t necessarily agree on the axes, or where on the axis we should be, but hopefully, we can avoid going too deep into that and simply allow this to frame our discussion.
### **A narrow definition**
If on the one hand, we define design narrowly, in the context of disciplines such as graphic design, user experience design, service design or interface design, then we define design at the level of execution (as opposed to strategy). While this compartmentalizes designers in a potentially unrealistic way what it allows (even given the current state of design education) is that we can expect some level of expertise if someone is trained in a given design discipline.
There is a clarity in that role, for example someone might say “I am a graphic designer”, which provides a fairly clear idea of where their competency lies or the kinds of tasks they undertake and are compensated for day to day. It does however miss the fact that there is arguably a meta-knowledge to design, a way of thinking that spans the different disciplines and give designers common skills and mental models.
### **A wider definition**
If on the other hand, we take a wide approach where, to quote Herbert Simon, “to design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” then anyone who devises such a course of action might be considered to be a designer. This wider definition is equally problematic as it allows for the possibility that “anyone” is a designer, which is a troubling position. I have a guitar, I can play a bit, but I am not a musician. Equally not everyone who “designs” by the definition above should be considered “a designer”. There is a fuzzy line that brings us so very close to the death of expertise.
Design lives without a framework of formal qualifications, and suffers for it. However proper qualifications mean little: there are bad designers with many qualifications, and good designers with fewer. Not to mention that we can debate whether there is objectively good and bad design and/or how one might classify it.
So either pole is problematic in and of itself. The first seems to more closely fit Mr Mauro’s position, the second more closely aligns to Mr Norman’s.
## Some questions for consideration (or not…):
### Is there a misplaced conceit in the design world about the role and usefulness of designers in addressing complex problems?
### If we think there is a role for designers in solving complex problems from which pole are we better to approach the question?
1. Do we establish the idea of a specific type of design discipline? For example do we need to create the role of “Strategic Designer” focused on systematic design particularly as applied to complex (social, political) processes. What does that education look like?
2. Should we promote one or more design meta-skills (such as systems thinking) within design education that is/are not discipline-based, which form the basis of all design education regardless of discipline? Or should design be taught as a generalist liberal arts education with discipline-based skills being learned elsewhere, say through apprenticeship or short courses?
### If a designer gains the knowledge that Norman is referring to and makes it into the boardroom are they still a designer, or are they instead an engineer or executive with a design background?
1. Should we be looking to design schools to be the place that we go to get that knowledge?
2. If not taught in design school where are they acquired?
### What current skills, knowledge set, mental models or processes that designers have are useful in the solving of complex problems?
1. What do we bring that engineers and pseudo-scientists don’t?
---
## Interested in the topic? Not sure what it means to you? Join us to make sense of it together.
Design is what we all make it to be. Don’t be shy and join the conversation.
[**What, if anything, can design bring to the solving of complex problems?**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This is an open discussion for the community, based on a response to a Fast Company article ( https://bit.ly/3lz8E9C)…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/281386549/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Huge thanks to [Marc Baumgartner](https://medium.com/u/94868adaa484?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for the introduction ([original document here](https://fuschia-chips-55b.notion.site/Designers-in-Boardrooms-e38c0b41815e49118ea97cf602f7efb9?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), for his role in supporting this discussion, and for his commitment to the [Design & Critical Thinking community](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 🙌
### The Explorer Framework: From Problems To Ecosystems
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-framework--from-problems-to-ecosystems/
Last updated: 2021-10-03T00:00:00.000Z
### Tackling complex problems through design
Hi, Kevin here.
As you might know if you follow this blog, I’ve been working with the community on an approach to tackle complex intertwined challenges. This translated in the form of a series of articles titled **“The explorer’s metaphor”** \[[1](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)\]\[[2](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)\]\[[3](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)\]\[[4](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)\]\[[5](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-5-b1c2c252541e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)\].
We have recently put them together in an online mini-book format, easier to navigate and use as a guide to your own exploration, as well as a presentation video of the framework.
Discover the mini-book here 👇
[**The Explorer’s Guide**](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*We tend to see design and innovation as problem-solving spaces. This engineering and sometimes mechanistic approach is…*](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[explorer.designcriticalthinking.com](https://explorer.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks for reading!
### Sensing The Present
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/sensing-the-present/
Last updated: 2021-08-19T00:00:00.000Z
### Reflecting on the past year and moving to the next one, one step after another
As designers, innovators, and change-makers, making sense of the “now” capacitates us to act, change, and orient the near future. But we only see what we are able to perceive. We hear what we are ready to listen to. We think about what we are able to process.
For the past year members of the [**Design & Critical Thinking community**](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) have gathered regularly to make sense of our “present”. We have deployed our curiosity, questioned our individual and collective experiences and enriched our understanding and potential for action.
*Sensing the Present* is an act of genuine curiosity. We let go of our preconceptions of the world to be able to reassess our understanding of reality from diverse points of view. It is both the recognition of our own unique experience(interpreted on our own, individual terms), **and** the ability to blend it into the collective understanding in a meaningful way. It forces us to remain humble towards what we know, critical towards what we learn, and challenge the“now” to rethink together how“tomorrow” could be. It is a critical practice, for individuals and groups, in today’s more than ever complex and uncertain world.
As we reach our first-anniversary mark, it is time to celebrate the year past and look at the year to come!
### 📆 Join us on the 11th of September👋
We invite you, members, friends, followers, and any of you who are interested in what we do, to celebrate with us in a unique “mini-festival” (covering many time zones), during which we will reflect on what we learned, play with some of the tools we used to make sense collectively, and open the stage for personal stories and informal discussions –see event program below 👇
🔥 Get your tickets 👉 [https://opencollective.com/design-critical-thinking/events/sensing-the-present-9641b737](https://opencollective.com/design-critical-thinking/events/sensing-the-present-9641b737?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🍻 Join our Slack to engage with the community 👉 [join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
👀 Learn more about the event and the program details 👉 [sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## ⭐️ Event program 👇
🎉 **04:00 PM CEST — Opening (30min introduction)**
For the past year, the community gathered together on regular occasions to make sense and collectively enrich our individual understanding of our present. What did we learn? How did we do that? Why all of this?
**🧠 04:30 PM CEST — Navigating complexity like explorers (60min discovery)**
Become a ‘curious explorer’ and navigate complexity through a set of challenging metaphors. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/navigating-complexity-like-explorers?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*This session runs in parallel to the “collective drawing” session.*
🤿 **04:30 PM CEST — Collaborative Drawing (60min deep dive)**
Making sense of the complex and generating the time & space to enable opportunities are exercises tightly linked to innovation and design. The collaborative drawing session creates a space of enabling constraints through conditional design. In other words, it’s a playground with limited rules, a medium for thinking and creativity. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/collaborative-drawing-and-writing?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🍻 **—** **15min break —**
👂 **5:45 PM CEST — Personal Story (15min listening)**
Members will be able to share a personal story, a story of failure to reflect on. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/personal-stories?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🗺 **06:00 PM CEST — Panel discussion (45min exploration)**
Open panel discussion with community members and/or participants. Theme to be defined. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/discussion-panels?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🍻 **—** **15min break —**
🧠 **07:00 PM CEST — Sense-Framing & Systems Thinking (60min discovery)**
Senseframing is a practical method to run decisions impacting systems. The goal is to cultivate Systems Thinking, so it becomes accessible to strategists, product managers, and designers. Together, we’ll run work on reframing a problem concerning the growth of a system. The initial frame (our starting point) will be: creativity is not a skill. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/sense-framing-and-systems-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*This session runs in parallel to the “collective writing” session.*
🤿 **07:00 PM CEST — Collaborative Writing (60min deep dive)**
The collaborative writing session is a variation of the collaborative drawing. It enables through a different set of means and rules to collectively explore themes and topics. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/collaborative-drawing-and-writing?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🍻 **— 30min break —**
👂 **08:30 PM CEST — Personal Story (15min listening)**
Members will be able to share a personal story, a story of failure to reflect on. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/personal-stories?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🗺 **08:45 PM CEST — Panel discussion (45min exploration)**
Open panel discussion with community members and/or participants. Theme to be defined. [More details →](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/program/discussion-panels?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🤔 **09:30 PM CEST — Collective sensemaking outcomes (30min reflection)**
Participants and members helped sense the present together during our two collective sessions. What did we learn during today’s festival? What are the insights for the year to come? Daiana & Krasi will present your collective learning.
👋 **10:00 PM CEST — Closure, open discussion | end of the event at 11 PM**
Ready for the year to come, one step after another!
---
**👀 Learn more about the event and the program details here 👉** [**sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com**](https://sensingthepresent.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## **About the community**
Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT) aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking at the intersection of design, innovation, change, ethics, critical thinking, etc. through a community of professionals from different backgrounds and horizons.
[designcriticalthinking.com](https://opencollective.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdesigncriticalthinking.com&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 5
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-s-metaphor---part-5/
Last updated: 2021-07-19T00:00:00.000Z
### Navigating unknown seas and finding direction
**The explorer’s metaphor is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, managers, and decision-makers. Read here** [**part 1**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**,** [**part 2**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**,** [**part 3**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), **and** [**part 4**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
Source
## Navigating complexity
An unknown sea is a place of [*unknown unknowns*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). The links between phenomenons in the landscape are not obvious, and this ambiguity can hardly be resolved as these flows are constantly changing.
This is a place where stories –even conflicting ones– strives because they allow coherence in our experiences: a place of monsters, wonders, and mysteries.
*Unknown seas* are a special type of complexity, one that remains full of uncertainty even when explored because they keep changing, evolving, and adapting. They allow contradictions to exist at the same time. There is no normal, no default. Uncertainty is the rule.
Navigating such flows requires us to *reframe* our approach:
- **There is no predefined “route”** – the path and its constraints unfold as we move.
- **There is no destination** – the map has no static points to target.
- **Risk is inherent** – every action (even doing nothing) is a decision with unforeseeable consequences.
- **Past actions become less relevant to present options** – as constraints evolve, causality slips away.
Instead of a destination, what explorers might better look at is gaining a **sense of direction**.
> If *destination* is a known fixed point in time/space, *direction* is the act of riding flows we have no control over with intent.
**Navigating complexity** requires both knowledge & practice ([praxis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis%5F%28process%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), reflection & action, slow & fast, etc. It requires also careful awareness of any predefined paradigms that might hinder our ability to know & act: *exploration* is an act of “letting go” (to paraphrase D. Snowden).
> Direction does not precedes but rather emerges from praxis.
## Sensemaking, meaning-finding, and the problem of interpretation
[**Epistemic injustice**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic%5Finjustice?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)relates to the distortion or misrepresentation of one’s meanings and occurs, for instance, when a group applies predefined filters and categorisation to field data. Interpretation is subtracted from individuals and externalised for the sake of an illusion of objectivity.
Predefined paradigms impact interpretation to fit internal coherence: we find what we are looking for, even though we might encounter information that contradicts our views.
Explorers might rather let meaning emerge from data, and be open to being surprised — exploration should be fueled by curiosity:
- **Self-categorisation** by participants during data collection allows for the emergence of large patterns.
- **Qualitative participatory collection** suits the informal gathering of data and allows for the emergence of localised patterns.
## Sensing brings you halfway, you need experimenting
Unsplash
Furthermore, finding direction is a combination of *making sense* and *acting* in the present. Navigating unknown seas is the art of [looking around for clues](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/maps-or-charts/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of wind or current changes, steering left, adjusting speed, and assessing the situation again.
Dave Snowden describes *“*[*\[Do\] The Next Right Thing*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FNext%5FRight%5FThing%5F%28Disney%5Fsong%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* song from *Frozen II* movie, [as a great metaphor for Complexity](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/cynefin-st-davids-day-2021-1-of-3/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**Cynefin St David's 2021 (1 of 3) - Cognitive Edge**](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/cynefin-st-davids-day-2021-1-of-3/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*As is now the tradition I am using St David's Day to provide the annual update on Cynefin. Last year in a five-part…*](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/cynefin-st-davids-day-2021-1-of-3/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.cognitive-edge.com](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/cynefin-st-davids-day-2021-1-of-3/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thanks for reading!
**This is part five of a series of articles** *that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, changemakers, managers, and decision-makers through metaphors & abstractions.*
### Making sense together: trends & social media algorithm constraints
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/making-sense-together--trends---social-media-algorithm-constraints/
Last updated: 2021-07-10T00:00:00.000Z
### A discussion with [Krasi Bozhinkova](https://medium.com/u/5662369017da?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**This discussion is part of our Design & Critical community’s #MakingSenseTogether events.**
In this session, we discuss with Krasi Bozhinkova what constitutes trends in social media and the bias of their algorithms.
[Krasi Bozhinkova](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Strategic Design at Owtcome.
[**Home - Owtcome - Design tools for better experiences**](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*We help you transform into a conscious business A new generation of companies builds open and diverse cultures that…*](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[owtcome.com](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### **Design & Critical Thinking**
[**Welcome to Design & Critical Thinking**](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Join the community here 👉 [https://join.designcriticalthinking.com](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Unsplash
### Planet Centric & The Evolution Of Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/planet-centric---the-evolution-of-design/
Last updated: 2021-07-03T00:00:00.000Z
### A discussion with [Samuel Huber](https://medium.com/u/fae62669803f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
In this episode, we discuss Planet Centric Design with Samuel Huber, Design Strategist at GoodPatch and who specialised in sustainable design approaches.
Samuel also pursues a Ph.D. in Systemic Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
We discuss:
- Who’s Samuel Huber?
- Who said Planet Centric Design?
- A definition for Planet Centric Design (PCD)
- The old becomes new again
- PCD simplifies access to complex topics
- On labels & the need to reframe our way of working
- Planet Centric, Circular Design, Systemic Design, etc.
- Maps, Models, the tree & the forest: the value & limits of reduction
- Our tools are biased towards humans
- Resolving contexts gap: how can we practice PCD?
- The limits & ethics of interpretation
- Mitigating our bias toward the problem-solution dichotomy
- Planet Centric Design in practice
**Samuel Huber**
[https://samuelhuber.medium.com](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video%5Fdescription&redir%5Ftoken=QUFFLUhqblQ4bjN6RmRkWjE4dXRDMW4tdUlucExZeDl3UXxBQ3Jtc0ttUVMxZWdsQ1BWVXIyR1E2UGwzM2h6RkllUjNEckxVS0tERXA1b3RFWTI2RkhfS0V5Rkl3bUpJQnQ3TE9KeHRHOWNWQU9ZQjQtQUpxU3ZMY1lIS1JxdEV0WVpLYW5EVTZnakRheXc2b2J6OHV5YjVKWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fsamuelhuber.medium.com&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[https://twitter.com/samphuber](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video%5Fdescription&redir%5Ftoken=QUFFLUhqbXJ4LU1Cb0JieU5VMndzdzNNaV9JNHJQNDlLZ3xBQ3Jtc0trQmlITVoyNk1ITnpNRUkwUGljQ0hMRFlSOHJ5dVk4WUUycGxnVnVBdEg3V21hYnI2VTNFVWVwTlh4c2lvbWxXMm5Qd2FoVjYtTmNFd2tpSnZwNGU2cS11aUNXTlJBYjBTWExZb0E4QkdtMDVPWEJDUQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fsamphuber&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**GoodPatch**
[https://global.goodpatch.com](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video%5Fdescription&redir%5Ftoken=QUFFLUhqa29vbFJ2cmZVUmozVWdjaTRNbGhnVDhOdHJNUXxBQ3Jtc0tsOWM4b0t5bU1wdUtLYkJZd19JVmNYZzBMM1Y0OUFqWWdKdVhYZFNROHVmUnNtZkdOQkxmdWl4T2s2T3pLZFZjM3BSaUVmQ0piY0x2Z2w3NVpRSjlDNWlrYWxtYndUWG9tLTMzeTB2emYzeHNJeGtZMA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fglobal.goodpatch.com&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[https://medium.com/goodpatch-global](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video%5Fdescription&redir%5Ftoken=QUFFLUhqbkFLbF9uQnQtOUo2QmtYSGNzaURaRFd2ZVFjZ3xBQ3Jtc0tuZElNZGNfYmhRRHIzdzJQWnVSam5VTUh2eHVNcVQ4UU5KSDd4TGQ2dE9hb0pTQzIyNEI0Qk92LWppSXFLQUhORjB0MEF1d0dMMDlTc0hKdkhKVUNZTjhlVmpLejA0Mkd4RVJWdWx3c3BEc3ZmY2FwOA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fgoodpatch-global&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**University of St. Gallen**
[https://ifb.unisg.ch/en/](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video%5Fdescription&redir%5Ftoken=QUFFLUhqa1VWUi1RMm84WS10TUlFNmk2M1RQajV0UGZmZ3xBQ3Jtc0tsLUVDYzVzeDR6RXpJQ0gwZ1lrQzZ6cDJEdHQ0aXN0M1p6SlVia1UwTmdpS1ZfcVdDbFFWdXZmeTA4SVU0MmF5QVE4bW9xcUdDVFV5bDJKUWpFbERCTjZkMEFCMHRaUzRGckNObFI1VEN0VEIwR2NISQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fifb.unisg.ch%2Fen%2F&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Exploring The Topic Of “Insight”
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/exploring-the-topic-of--insight-/
Last updated: 2021-05-19T00:00:00.000Z
### A collaborative drawing session turned into a podcast
This is a \*collaborative drawing session\* with the Design & Critical Thinking community turned into a podcast –drawing as a medium for exploration.
In this session, we explored the concept of “Insight” and our relationship with it by visualizing and building on each other’s ideas.
Our ability to see through the conditional interpretation of our experience helped us face the loopholes and blind spots of our perception. Insights are volatile and fleeting.
They can grow cold if not used at the right time. Our internal alignment can give us both richness of insights and momentum to build concretely on them. This is our shared story at the edge of the visible with the invisible.
Watch us drawing as we are making sense:
Or just listen to the audio-only version:
### 🌟 The Design & Critical Thinking community
[**Welcome to Design & Critical Thinking**](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[designcriticalthinking.com](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### 👏 Special thanks to our fantastic members! 👇
[**Krasi Bozhinkova**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [**Cameron Norman**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdnorman/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [**Daiana Zavate**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daiana-zavate-13036016a/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### Innovate By Making Sense Of Your Product Field
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/innovate-by-making-sense-of-your-product-field/
Last updated: 2021-05-11T00:00:00.000Z
### A sensemaking framework for product innovation
On Thursday, May 6 we had the pleasure to welcome [Klaus-Peter Frahm](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAAHEQBajCLFa6ZiJws0kEsW1lB-Fqz2-g?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Michael Schieben](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAC4YLUEBAj-teSKYyMltt4ICmaGJxMmMtYk?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad%5Fflagship3%5Fdetail%5Fbase%3BFhFVCidNTAGSUkOBVKKDpA%3D%3D&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), co-founders of [field.so](https://field.so/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
They presented to our fellow [Design & Critical Thinker](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) a sensemaking framework, [The Product Field](https://productfield.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), for organisations to navigate the complexity of their product and enable better decisions.
🔥 Discover below the full presentation by Michael Schieben and explore the different shapes of innovation👇
📆 Take a look at our [Meetup group](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to stay up to date on future events & workshops!
[**Design & Critical Thinking (Genève, Switzerland)**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### Thanks for reading!
[*Design & Critical Thinking*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *is a free, open, and non-commercial community of curious explorers. We aim to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community of professionals from different backgrounds and horizons, at the intersection of various topics like design, innovation, change, tech, ethics, etc.*
### The Product Field: Sensemaking & The Shapes Of Innovation
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-product-field--sensemaking---the-shapes-of-innovation/
Last updated: 2021-05-04T00:00:00.000Z
Product innovation is an essential part of most today’s business models. The pace of change led by the digital space makes it hard for teams to grasp and align all the different moving parts, both within and outside the organisation, required to improve or deliver a great product.
Meet Klaus-Peter Frahm and Michael Schieben, who will present [The Product Field](https://productfield.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a sense-making framework for teams and organizations that build products.
The Product Field helps you navigate the complexity of your product, align the perspectives of all stakeholders, find your focus, and make the right decisions to help you create positive impacts for everyone.
### 🔥 Join us for this free event👇
[**The Product Field: Sensemaking & The Shapes Of Innovation | Airmeet**](https://www.airmeet.com/e/1c2e26e0-ac06-11eb-8ea1-958128e97839?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Discover The Product Field, a framework that helps you navigate the complexity of your product, align the perspectives…*](https://www.airmeet.com/e/1c2e26e0-ac06-11eb-8ea1-958128e97839?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.airmeet.com](https://www.airmeet.com/e/1c2e26e0-ac06-11eb-8ea1-958128e97839?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### A Community Collaborative Drawing Session
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-community-collaborative-drawing-session/
Last updated: 2021-05-04T00:00:00.000Z
### Insights on deep collaboration about “Support”
allowed a very interactive & organic way to collaborate.
As part of the [Design & Critical Thinking community](http://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Krasi Bozhinkova](https://medium.com/u/5662369017da?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Daiana Zavate](https://medium.com/u/6271fd2b996f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) from [Owtcome](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) agency organised [a deep collaboration workshop](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/curious-exploration-through-deep-collaboration-a9e235f27207?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) for the community to reflect on the concept of “Support”. Here are the insights gathered through the session, during which two groups collaborated to create a shared understanding of the concept.
---
## The Workshop.
### Support
What does it take to recognize support? Often, our expectations often get in the way because the timing between our desires and needs is off.
Support is abundant to those who are open to receiving it.
### Intent
We decided to discuss the concept of support in a non-traditional way: *what happens when we bring to the surface our experiences and combine them together to tell a new story?*
### Drawing Collaboration
Using *conditional design*, two teams worked together to uncover different nuances of support.
### Outcome
In the absence of a given script, the teams naturally arrived at their own story of support.
---
## Story One.
Drawing Collaboration of Team 1.
### Support in a work context
**How** do we understand support in the work environment?
### Complexity of support
- The gap between the giving and receiving side can only be closed with trust and honesty.
- Complex problems don’t have logical solutions; support is a distributed network.
- Managing expectations, timing, and independence is a key part of responsible support.
---
## Story Two.
Drawing Collaboration of Team 2.
### Support on a personal level
**What** are our personal experiences with support?
### Experiences of support
- Support doesn’t always imply doing; being present is enough.
- To tap into the abundant flow of energy requires a selfless intention; support can’t be forced.
- Non-human support is a special medium through which we give ourselves permission to receive support.
---
## Outcome.
Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see. –Edgar Degas
**🔥** [**Join the Community to find out what else we are experimenting with!**](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Join Design & Critical Thinking on Slack**](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Slack is a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.*](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.designcriticalthinking.com](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks for reading!
*And special thanks to* [*Owtcome*](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *for organising such an interactive and interesting way to collaborate towards shared knowledge, inclusiveness and diversity in thinking styles.* 🙏
### Curious Exploration Through Deep Collaboration
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/curious-exploration-through-deep-collaboration/
Last updated: 2021-04-24T00:00:00.000Z
Dear readers and fellow Design & Critical thinkers,
I hope you are all well & safe! 🙏
Making sense of the complex and generating the time & space for opportunities are exercises tightly linked to innovation and design.
**Senseframing**, [as introduced here by Daiana Zavate](https://krasi.substack.com/p/sense-framing-sessions-the-untold), is an important aspect of how we approach what we do, impacting our *sensemaking* and the *type of opportunities* we’re able to foresee:
> Are we observing what truly emerges from the field or do we seek for anticipated patterns through the lense of some pre-determined paradigms?
Recently, following several discussions with the [Design & Critical Thinking community on Slack](https://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and during our [Virtual Chalet sessions](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), I extended the concept of [**humble, curious exploration**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) as a way to make sense of the world and discovering emerging patterns. [Curiosity can mitigate our own bias](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160907-how-curiosity-can-protect-the-mind-from-bias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
But this is not enough. We often see innovation and design as a solitary endeavour, lead by one individual and followed by many, despite themselves. This Eastern approach, as *Zavate* explains, is akin to the role undertaken in developing the “civilized world”: *change* or *be changed*.
Collaboration and co-creation through participatory design can bring the necessary diversity of minds, thinking styles, and perceptions of reality to generate a different space for opportunities.
### The community as a playground for experimenting together
[Next Tuesday, 27th April](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/slxxfsyccgbkc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) we will run our 2nd community workshop meetup. With **Daiana Zavate** and **Krasi Bozhinkova** from [**Owtcome**](https://owtcome.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), we will explore *deep collaboration* through **Collaborative Drawing** on the topic of “support”.
The number of seats is limited to 15 participants, [so don’t hesitate to register now!](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/slxxfsyccgbkc/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Making sense together through debates & discussions
Following our collaborative drawing session, [next week on Thursday 29th April](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking/events/277715957/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) we will be testing a new format, the Community Debates, to help make sense of specific, preselected topics.
Thanks for reading, following, participating, and simply being there!
Stay safe,
*Kevin*
---
## Discover The Explorer’s Metaphor Series
**The explorer’s metaphor** is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to *sensemaking* and *complexity management* to designers, innovators, and changemakers.
Get introduced to some key *concepts*, *ideas*, and *principles* through the use of metaphor that you can transpose to your context, allowing you to go beyond the shortcomings of problem-solving, transform your context and work towards new opportunities: *become a* **curious explorer!**
- [Part 1 — Sailing Complexity](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Part 2 — Discovering Islands](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Part 3 — Mapping islands: context topography](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Part 4 — Energy, Sensors, and Triangulation](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The Explorer’s Metaphore — Part 4
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-s-metaphore---part-4/
Last updated: 2021-04-14T00:00:00.000Z
### Energy, Sensors, and Triangulation
**The explorer’s metaphor is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, managers, and decision-makers. Read here** [**part 1**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**,** [**part 2**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**, and** [**part 3**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
E**xplorers should not be seen as lonely individuals.** As part of a larger system, they are components of the [network that represent their organisation](https://hbr.org/2015/06/what-makes-an-organization-networked?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and distribution is a necessary feature of the network.
Not everyone in an organization has *knowledge of* or is *aware of* the same *things,* at the same *time,* in the same *way*. This is not (necessarily) a matter of hierarchy: consider instead how *formal* and *informal* networks work and influence the flow of information.
Like an island might possess beaches, forests, rivers, mountains, abrupt cliffs, (etc.) organisations’ complexity, activities, and processes are both informed by the larger context of the organisation itself as well as the local specificities that people are facing.
## Information as energy ⚡️
Seeing **information as energy** allows one to treats it with similar properties. Energy cannot be created nor deleted, only transformed. More so, energy can move through mediums (energy vectors), which are not all equal in terms of effectiveness & efficiency.
**Formal** and **informal** ways to gather and/or treat information *constrain information* in different ways, offering different losses & gains on the net output, affecting **scope** *and* **scale** *of understanding*.
For instance, an **undirected, unbonded conversation** is an informal way to gather information communicating a lot of *depth* & *details*, allowing *context-blending* (people can relate to similar personal experiences) and providing *flexible enabling constraints* through *stories*. The downside might be added *noise* in the information processing.
On the other side of the spectrum, **directed, motivated, goal-oriented methods** like, say, a survey or some forms of interviews formalise information through predetermined/anticipated inputs, filtering information and providing more *rigid constraints*.
There is a relationship between how we are making sense of our context and what we can do about this understanding.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
## The human sensor network
As human beings, we rely on our senses to understand the world (at a personal level). Our senses are distributed over all the body. They help us *triangulate* very well distances, speed, sizes, danger, (etc.) of objects and events through a variety of input types: *sight*, *hearing*, *touch, etc*. They enable us to make sense, perceive, anticipate, act, and influence our environment.
[**Embodied cognition**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied%5Fcognition?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) relates to the concept that body and mind are inseparable and that they are both necessary features of our cognitive abilities. In other words, we cannot “think” how we think and “experience the world” how we experience it — aka be human — without the brain AND the body (and its senses) we have. Cognition is, therefore, distributed, not located [\[1\]](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/a-brief-guide-to-embodied-cognition-why-you-are-not-your-brain/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “This is not \[the\] claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment…” — George Lakoff and Rafeal Núñez
Our senses are **a network of sensors** through which we perceive the world.
S**imilarly, explorers can build a sensory network** at a challenge and/or organizational level, by connecting parts & people to help give shape to the [island’s or archipelago’s landscape & topography](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Doing so help triangulate information and give depth in terms of meaning & understanding, creating a new *“meta-sense of self”* for the organisation.
Building such a network can be done through various means and mediums, but it is worth mentioning they will not all allow for the same type of interactions impacting the type of information that can be gathered, the effectiveness of the overall network response, and our perception of the information.
- **Synchronicity** allows for immediate, direct, prompted feedback which tends to be also very localised and context-specific. It is extremely useful contextually but also energy-intensive and, therefore, generally hard to sustain for a long period of time.
- **Asynchronicity** allows for delayed, indirect, unprompted feedback. More energy-effective but also less context-specific, it can be run over long periods of time. This tends to allow to build a much broader sense of the patterns at play.
- **Availability** (perceived instantaneity) will define the effort (friction) that the network will have to take in order to generate feedback. The more asynchronous, the greater we want perceived instantaneity because of delayed response from the feedback mechanism.
All are needed at some points. Time and speed variations are important elements and patterns of synchronicity, asynchronicity, and availability are interesting ways to capture, process, and triangulate information from the network, by the network.
---
## Thanks for reading!
**This is part four of a series of articles** *that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, changemakers, managers, and decision-makers through metaphors & abstractions.*
*Special thanks to* [*Marc Baumgartner*](https://medium.com/u/94868adaa484?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Cameron Norman*](https://medium.com/u/c03c7a0bb7b1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Enrique Martínez*](https://medium.com/u/9ed45b9d2e00?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Daiana Zavate*](https://medium.com/u/6271fd2b996f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Lucien Langton*](https://medium.com/u/a1804e79594a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Corina Lupu*](https://medium.com/u/642d21ed43b6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [*Alexis Gerome*](https://medium.com/u/9c96775079d7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, and the* [*Design & Critical Thinking Community*](https://designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *for their help in improving this article and sharing thoughts & ideas.*
### The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 3
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-s-metaphor---part-3/
Last updated: 2021-03-22T00:00:00.000Z
### Mapping islands: context topography
**The explorer’s metaphor is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, managers, and decision-makers. Read here** [**part 1**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **and** [**part 2**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
[**Topography**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topography?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area could refer to the surface forms and features themselves, or a description (especially their depiction in maps).
## Territory mapping
**Sensemaking** is about creating a *coherent approximation* of the terrain. It is the act of creating an [understanding of an unclear situation or context](https://kvrichard.medium.com/977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**The territory** here is an abstract construction (not to be taken literally): this is the context you are evolving in, be it the organization in which you’re trying to make changes, a challenge you’re trying to address, etc.
**Coherency** **is what we look for.** Uncertain and complex contexts might display contradictory narratives and hypotheses, and the worse thing here would be to be unable to act or wait too long before it’s too late.
For coherent patterns to emerge, we need to understand the space of the context. Mapping the territory helps makes sense of it, understand interactions, relationships, influences, etc. A useful map in an unclear situation is not necessarily one that displays all possible details of reality, but one that gives **enough relevant information to find our marks, give direction, and make decisions.**
source
## Topography as a metaphor
The map is composed of a collection of different information, descriptions, characteristics, etc. that help describe (and share the understanding of) what we see on the terrain from different perspectives. As an actual terrain posses different elevations, mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, etc. These are structural elements, such as people, activities, processes, products, etc. Those are dispositional constraints.
Even more so, the terrain is what it is. Changing it by direct means is costly, effortful, and probably the last thing we would like to try when things are unpredictable. Think about floodplains for instance or tunnels.
Instead, what we see in nature is organisms adapt to the terrain. Information will always take the most cost-effective pathways. Locally, paths are sustained only if *value* is delivered to the network, otherwise, they simply atrophy.
The question, therefore, is: **how might we change the relationships between different elements, the components, that compose our terrain?**
Sometimes it requires making the *invisible visible* and enable discussions & collaboration to emerge around this understanding. Sometimes it requires a more direct medium, such as a product or change in processes. And sometimes it requires a parallelization of different strategies to increase the chances of positive impacts.
---
[**The Explorer’s Metaphore — Part 4**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Energy, Sensors, and Triangulation*](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks for reading!
**This is part three of a series of articles** *that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, changemakers, managers, and decision-makers through metaphors & abstractions.*
### The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 2
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-s-metaphor---part-2/
Last updated: 2021-03-15T00:00:00.000Z
### Discovering Islands
**The explorer’s metaphor is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, managers, and decision-makers.** [**Read part 1 here**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
[**You are** ](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[**explorers**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-1-a48eaf32a618?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). You are navigating on (more or less) calm seas and see on the horizon an island. You don’t know how big the island is, or what to find there. If you were to land on its shore, you wouldn’t know where you are because you don’t have any point of reference yet. You know, however, that a map would be useful for you to make better decisions, as to what seems important to understand and explore first.
**An island is a context, a subject, something you can’t ignore, solve, or remove.** There are people, an ecosystem, infrastructures, a topography, a local weather system, things that are unique, and others that are generic. Beyond these, there are, not visible at first glance, relationships between them that determine values and meanings in this specific context.
**This is your challenge, the context of the problem you are facing.** This is its physical (and virtual), yet often imperceptible, space.
As for problems, from where you are, looking at the island, you can get a rough idea of some of its features, but you’re too far to understand all the relationships at play there: you’re still in a [*confused state*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0QjLnzaog&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Concluding too quickly to anything by deduction or extrapolation, so far, would be a mistake (and in your case, a potentially life or death one).
## Islands and archipelagos
Several contexts, challenges, or problems can be found close to each other, like an archipelago.
An archipelago is a *coherent* group of islands — or a coherent group of contexts. Each island/context can be very different in size and ecosystem but are related to each other **in a fundamental way**.
---
[**The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 3**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Mapping islands: context topography*](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thanks for reading!
**This is part two of a series of articles** *that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, changemakers, managers, and decision-makers through metaphors & abstractions.*
### The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 1
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorer-s-metaphor---part-1/
Last updated: 2021-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
### Sailing Complexity: introduction to sensemaking & complexity for designers, managers, and decision-makers.
## An invitation to be explorers, not just problem-solvers
We tend to see design and innovation as problem-solving spaces. This engineering and sometimes mechanistic approach is not bad in itself but brings a lot of limitations, one major being to quickly frame whatever challenge into a narrow, finite, solution.
When facing uncertainty, designers, and changemakers might feel unempowered. We look for recipes and pre-packaged generalist solutions — “the answer”, that sells an illusion of certainty through the economy of speed — to help us **disambiguate our very specific contexts**.
> Problem-solvers look for answers. Explorers look for better questions.
Rather, challenges should elicit curiosity to bring diversity in perspectives because, in complex contexts, there is rarely one point of view or path to tackle an issue.
Exploration makes the invisible visible. This multi-layered understanding will add more potential to our *portfolio of possibilities*.
> Problem-solvers reduce options. Explorers enable possibilities.
New challenges are invitations to become *curious explorers*, in a world where everything is believed to be known, predictable, ordinary, and sometimes boring(?).
## Reclaim space for curious exploration
**The explorer’s metaphor** is a set of ideas for designers, innovators, changemakers, to help approach challenges and problems in ways that add layers (rather than subtract), enable possibilities (rather than reduce), diversify points of views, and enable a portfolio of strategies & actions to tackle (complex) challenges (rather than single-point solutions).
*Exploration* is not to be opposed to *conception* — it is a useful tension*.* Exploration should be pursued as a parallel, ongoing, journey with no clear end. It is the philosophy & ethics of the curious, humble, learner.
Source
## Start Exploring Now 👇
### Part 2 — Discovering Islands
[**The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 2**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Discovering Islands*](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-2-977d8e82488d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Part 3 — Mapping islands: context topography
[**The Explorer’s Metaphor — Part 3**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Mapping islands: context topography*](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphor-part-3-6e6888dc2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Part 4 — Energy, Sensors, and Triangulation
[**The Explorer’s Metaphore — Part 4**](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Energy, Sensors, and Triangulation*](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.designcriticalthinking.com](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-explorers-metaphore-part-4-60079b4e7a11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thanks for reading!
**This is part one of a series of articles** *that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management for designers, changemakers, managers, and decision-makers through metaphors & abstractions.*
### ‘The Design Sprint is a relevant research method’, really?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-the-design-sprint-is-a-relevant-research-method---really-/
Last updated: 2021-03-08T00:00:00.000Z
### Yet another lengthy reply to Design Sprint proponents’ claims.
Unsplash
## 🔥 TL;DR;
The main claim is that the *Design Sprint* ([Jake Knapp](https://www.thesprintbook.com/how?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Google](https://www.gv.com/sprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) is a great tool for gaining a deep understanding of the problem context and users' motivations, if well executed. I reply that this not a matter of *execution* but **goals** and that it was never the point for the Design Sprint to gain a deep understanding of anything.
The Design Sprints' main goal is *to move quickly* from idea to materialization, with *a minimum understanding of the problem*, to validate it (the metric is speed), which make (kinda) sense in the context it was invented in (Google Ventures).
---
## 📝 Long reply
I reply here, in English, to an exchange with French podcast producers about Design Sprint, for which you can find below the specific video that triggered the discussion. I don’t feel like YouTube comments are a really good medium for long exchanges that requires developing a proper, richer, argumentation.
If you read/understand French, **I invite you to watch the video and read the comments**, as fair retribution for the time & effort put by its creators, and their kindness to reply to my criticism (I know, I can be a pain).
Anyways, I will translate the discussion here to give proper context, and try my best to reply point by point to their answer.
## In preamble
Before going any further, here’s a short sidenote about the structure of this article, so you can navigate to what feels the most relevant to you. The article is divided into several main sections:
1. [**The original discussion**](#3542) provides context to the exchange. I try also to expose my personal understanding and (necessary) assumptions about what we’re discussing.
2. [**The rebuttal**](#bccb) will dive deeper into the arguments provided and will be also divided into smaller pieces as we break down the latest (at the time of writing) reply from the creators of the *Gommette — Design Sprint Podcast*.
3. [**Update after discussing**](#6bad) with the two authors behind the channel.
4. [**References**](#ba25) contain links to resources that support, consolidate, and deepen my arguments. They can be found annotated like this *\[number\]* within paragraphs (For example, in the sentence *“As explained in my article \[1\]”, “*1” being the first item listed in the references).
**Importantly**, I will try to answer in the most *respectful* and *intellectually honest* manner: I’m talking about observable facts, quality of the arguments, soundness of the ideas, the applicability of the concepts, etc., but never about the persons.
Lastly, I have also to state that I have no direct conflict of interests. I don’t run an agency (nor am I a freelance) selling services directly related to the Design Sprint. I don’t personally know the authors of the method or any of their supporters/detractors, to whom I don’t share convergent interests or obligations. I’m, as far as I can, an independent practitioner, learner, reader, writer, and thinker, offering free & open reflections and critics (most of my writings are under *Creative Commons*) to help question, grow, and make sense of what we do (as designers, innovators, and changemakers).
Now, without further due, let’s dive in! 👇
---
## Original discussion
For starters, and as often in such circumstances (namely, watching a video), I replied to something the guest of the show, Alexandre Koch, [said](https://youtu.be/I7wGG51kyqI?t=2532&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about the process they apply at [Servier](https://servier.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (an international pharmaceutical group, to which A. Koch is responsible for the UX & Design Thinking pole).
It also has to be said that during the conversation, the speakers seem to make no noticeable differences between product design and innovation. We can assume, as it is suggested in the video, that they refer to the design process (and specifically the Design Sprint) as a means to *“do innovation”*, as it is commonly accepted in the product community — what I think is flawed and narrow reasoning for [all the reasons explained here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
So, my comment addresses what A. Koch said at [42:12](https://youtu.be/I7wGG51kyqI?t=2532&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of the video, but reflect some contention points I have with the whole discussion here, namely the too often *conflation* and *equivocation* of many things as if equal or interchangeable.
> “starting with the field data” \[…\] “like Jake Knapp in his book”… Sorry but, even if we can agree with the first point (and yet, we rarely start from a blank slate), hard to see how it relates to what Jake proposes.It is rather the opposite, since he generally offers to skip the research phase (as explained here → [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7K3ubQw3XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7K3ubQw3XA&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ).
> Moreover, if we talk about “data-driven design”, the design sprint is neither a good starting point, nor a suitable framework (sampling bias, selection bias, group effect, etc.).
> Guys, I know your podcast is all about design sprint, but it would be nice if you invited more critical people on the topic. It’s been a while since I wanted to do an episode “Design Sprint: the good, the bad, the ugly” …
> Anyway, well done for this episode! 👏👍
Soon after I hit the “send” button, came a reply from the channel author(s):
> Hey Kevin, thanks for your comment and the link to the video! We agree with you, if you follow Jake (and others), the strength of the Design Sprint is to be able to work without field research, because they start from the assumption that if your sprint team selection is good, then each of the sprinters have some of the necessary and sufficient data to start a sprint.In addition, if you consider that the objective of the research is to properly know the context, the needs, the motivations, and the pains of the users, then a Design Sprint is an incredible research device in itself, since the learning curve is huge in 5 days (between user interviews on the first day, and user tests on the last day).
> The video you share reminded me of another article written by Jonathan Courtney in 2017 on the subject: User research is overrated → [https://medium.muz.li/user-research-is-overrated-6b0fe101d41](https://medium.muz.li/user-research-is-overrated-6b0fe101d41?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> This being said, it is clear, not without reason, that many Sprint Masters also like to secure their Sprints by carrying out a research phase upstream of the sprint in order to supply the team with solid inputs.
It appears to me that there was a misunderstanding in my remarks that lead the author to think I was giving credit to the affirmation that *“the Design Sprint allows you to skip research”* or *“is a good research tool”* itself. I tried to clarify my point as follow:
> Thank you for your answer [Gommette — Design Sprint Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3e7CJQApn4FKfdhRlMj-Nw?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 👍With all regards, the design sprint has undeniable values, but not that of doing research. The speeches made by people like J. Courtney are mainly to sell their services. To say that research is useless is simply to 1) make people talk about it; 2) to comfort those who find it tedious & complicated that, really, in fact, it’s not their fault.
> I wrote a fairly thorough review on the subject of design sprint and these “selling arguments” back in 2019 → [https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> BTW, my review is not a black & white argument. It’s about understanding the purpose of what you are doing. If we want to quickly move towards a digital product and therefore necessarily assume, from the outset, that we know how to respond to the problem (namely, a product), that we mindful on the fact that we will filter information on that basis, then the Design Sprint is perfectly suited.
> Anyways, looking forward to discussing this with you.
In the meantime, I contacted one of the creators of the channel through LinkedIn to explicitly propose a one-to-one video call to discuss it further, as I felt the conversation (already) limited by the medium (aka *the YouTube comments*).
As such, my answer is not particularly good at providing what I believe are the necessary arguments to support my point, and I clearly heavily relied on my article to give weight to it without putting much effort — lazy me!
Anyways, a few days later I have been notified by YouTube that someone at *Gommette — Design Sprint Podcast* (the YouTube channel) replied to my comment. The same day, I received confirmation for our video call.
> Kevin Richard, thanks for sharing your article that I already knew about. However, I am more mixed on the answer, and I would like to say: yes and no :)If the objective of user research is to better understand the contexts, the deep motivations and the difficulties of the users to guide the design process, then from experience I have no doubt that the Design Sprint, well executed, can be a relevant research method.
> In 4 years of practice, I have observed that the learning curve of my clients in knowing their users has exploded like never before the Design Sprint came along. In the worst case scenario, they’ve at least learned that they don’t know anything and now need to take user research seriously. And it’s not uncommon for clients to take on post-sprint research assignments.
> Why ? Because the Design Sprint is already simply a great opportunity to bring together the clients and their users. This causes, at the very least, an extremely strong awareness of the need to integrate users into the Design process, and it is an essential prerequisite.
> In addition, users are not necessarily invited only at the end of the Sprint. Depending on the needs and necessity, they can be invited from day 1 to be interviewed by the Sprinters, and they can, if it is relevant (as in the case of the design of business tools for example), be invited to join the Sprint team. In this case, over 5 days we have 3 methods of collecting user insights. It’s huge.
> This does not mean it is perfect, that it is sufficient on its own, and that it does not convey any bias (and on that I fully agree with you in what you say in your article), but NO data collection techniques (quantitative or qualitative) can pretend this neither.
> Observation, interview, focus groups, quantitative analyzes … all these techniques, without awareness and master of their advantages and their limitstions, can lead to erroneous learnings, leading to dramatic design decisions.
> It is the responsibility of Sprint Leads to make clients understand the advantages and limitations of this approach.
---
## Rebuttal
### 1\. 1 Scope, knowledge, and agency
> If the objective of user research is to better understand the contexts, the deep motivations and the difficulties of the users to guide the design process, then from experience I have no doubt that the Design Sprint, well executed, can be a relevant research method.
First, I’m wondering what would be the objective of user research except, precisely, a better understanding of anything user-related.
Anyways, this is not a matter of *“good execution”* but **goals:** a wrong method, well-executed, remains a wrong method. The goal of the Design Sprint is to *rapidly materialize an idea and test it* with a *minimum understanding of the problem*. **We test an idea against users' feedback**, to validate it, and through which we will retrieve data to improve/modify/refine the idea. The focus is on the **idea** and its materialization, and the instruments are centered around this goal (i.e. about 2/3rd of the sprint is about generating and selecting an idea).
The goal of the research varies depending on *how much we know about the context of a problem/challenge* or *how far we are in articulating ideas to act against this problem/challenge*.
What we generally mean by *“research”* is, to simplify, exploring the *problem-space,* as opposed to the *solution-space* (although, I find this formulation reductive), and for which we more commonly refer to *“testing”*.
At this stage, research is about learning *information*, *meaning*, *values*, etc. (what we can call *relationships*) about the users and their environment (not test ideas), generally by using a combination of methods to mitigate bias (because what people *say* isn’t enough) and gain different levels of understanding — something largely absent from the Design Sprint.
As explained in my article \[1\], research requires adaptability because, unlike the Design Sprint, we want to adapt to the context (the reality) rather than forcing reality into our process — and say, create *fake consensus* because of the group dynamics.
If you really want to formulate it this way (mental gymnastic), the Design Sprint might be a research method, but nothing is made to gain a *deep* understanding of anything — which is unfortunate for a research method. Because of the sheer time spent on gaining understanding and reflect it, it is surface-level research at best.
[**The Design Sprint process cannot solve "big problems" or lead...**](https://www.kialo.com/the-design-sprint-process-cannot-solve-big-problems-or-lead-to-real-innovation-itself-despite-the-mainstream-narrative-42229?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The Design Sprint (DS) is a 5-day process that promises to "answer any teams, companies, and organizations' challenges"…*](https://www.kialo.com/the-design-sprint-process-cannot-solve-big-problems-or-lead-to-real-innovation-itself-despite-the-mainstream-narrative-42229?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.kialo.com](https://www.kialo.com/the-design-sprint-process-cannot-solve-big-problems-or-lead-to-real-innovation-itself-despite-the-mainstream-narrative-42229?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
By the way, this surface-level and narrow focus fits well (in terms of thinking style) with what the design sprint is made for: single-point solution, digital products (see graph below).
Now, as stated in my article \[1\], this is not necessarily a big issue: all challenges don’t require tons of research beforehand. But it has to be acknowledged that a narrow understanding (few interviews on day one fit this description) leads to narrow outcomes. This is something well-accepted by a majority of experts in the fields of sensemaking and design for complex challenges \[2\]\[3\]\[4\]\[5\], and to some degree, even by people like Alex Osterwalder \[6\].
.
### 1.2 Design Sprint as a probing device? Not quite it.
Probing is about learning from the field, by the field. We create mediums to gather stories in context to gain a multi-layered understanding of the relationship between people & the context. It’s about facilitating for the *emergence of patterns of coherence* \[7\] and so using methods that fit well with unpredictability and adaptability.
### 1.3 Design Sprint as a safe-to-fail experiment? Not quite it neither.
*Safe-to-fail experiments* are characterized by:
1. Their continuous, on-going nature. Design Sprints are one-shot;
2. Their ability to demonstrates intended impacts (or lack of)\[8\], which requires parallelization (see hawthorn effect \[9\]) and triangulation (diversity of methods) \[8\]. Design Sprints are linear, out of context, and lack proper evaluation criteria (see below).
### 1.4 About goals & evaluation
None of the claimed values & goals of the Design Sprint (ya know: team alignment, team learning, increase likelihood of “product success”, etc.) are measured by the method anyway \[10\]. What the Design Sprint *“measure”* is the **usability** of the solution and what people **say** *they “like”* and what they **say** *they would do* (i.e. buy and/or use the solution) — all of these are spuriously correlated by Design Sprinters to the *“potential success”* of their so-called *“innovation”*.
### 1.5 A definition problem
Design Sprinters largely assumes that “product creation” is synonymous with innovation. This belief is heavily inferred by the Design Sprint creators and the philosophy they subscribe to \[11\]. This idea & reduction of “innovation” to a neatly defined “product” is indexed to (and limited by) the idea in economics that (societal) innovation & growth necessarily comes from products competing on a free market and the idea that “good products” succeed based on their sole inner qualities \[12\]. This is questionable and criticized because (to simplify) it assumes the objectivity & rationality of the agents \[13\], doesn’t take into account the dynamics of complex adaptive systems \[14\]\[15\]\[16\], and excludes other forms of innovation \[17\]\[18\]\[19\]\[20\]\[21\].
### 1.6 A framing problem
This goes hand & hand with the previous point. Design Sprint heavily predetermines the type of results you’ll get at the end (i.e. a digital product) — which makes sense in the context it originated from (Google Ventures) but doesn’t fit for any type of challenges (despite what the book suggests) \[1\].
This implies a lot of things upstream, amongst which the *framing* and *filtering* of the context (its reduction) to fit the process \[22\], regardless of what the context actually **is** and what it might **truly necessitate** in order to change (positively).
Research, especially *sensemaking methods,* is meant to prevent such context-response misalignment, which has the potential to create more problems.
### 2\. Levels of evidence & appeal to personal experience
> In 4 years of practice, I have observed that the learning curve of my clients in knowing their users has exploded like never before the Design Sprint came along. In the worst case scenario, they’ve at least learned that they don’t know anything and now need to take user research seriously. And it’s not uncommon for clients to take on post-sprint research assignments.
*Personal experience* seems to be used as an argument here, but this is not enough \[23\]\[24\]: it is easy to come to contradictory conclusions through personal experience, and I could argue against your position from my experience, it won’t help move the discussion further — this is a dead-end.
But let me ask some basic questions (looping back to evaluation criteria):
- The Design Sprint is good compared to what?
- Against what do you measure your clients’ learning curve? (see Survivorship bias \[25\])
- All of these are feelings and personal testimonies or do you actually have evidence to support your claim? Could there be other factors at play in what you observe?
- On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being I’m not confident at all, 10 I have no doubt at all), what’s your level of confidence?
Also, we can observe that Design Sprint proponents love to talk about “evidence” but often relies on the same *appeal to personal experience*, their clients’ satisfaction (which tells nothing about the DS qualities), and other spurious correlation to prove their point. \[34\]
The leading figures of the Design Sprint are keen to make “proofs” and “evidence” out of thin air using rhetoric, claiming all sorts of miracles, **but let's not forget where the burden of proof lies \[26\]**. Let’s not forget neither that these people have something to sell: design sprints (see motivated reasoning \[27\]).
Then we have [examples like this](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-roi-design-sprints-primary-research-findings-amr-khalifeh/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) \[28\], from one of these people well-served in selling Design Sprints \[29\], that demonstrates how far they are from understanding what “research” or “evidence” exactly are \[34\]👇
[**The Truth About the ROI of Design Sprints: Primary Research Findings**](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-roi-design-sprints-primary-research-findings-amr-khalifeh/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Ever since Jake Knapp released Sprint in 2016, the methodology has only been rising in popularity! Every day, more and…*](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-roi-design-sprints-primary-research-findings-amr-khalifeh/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-roi-design-sprints-primary-research-findings-amr-khalifeh/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
There is more than one issue with this so-called *“study”*, and I think this tells a lot about *the epistemological crisis* in which the Design profession is. Anyways.
Again, the Design Sprint is a heavy assumption-boxed paradigm: from the beginning, it assumes the solution must be a digital product. The process then forces reality (the people, the context) into a rigid, ultra-guided approach to producing the predetermined result. This frames everything and especially what type of understanding your clients have about their users and the types of outcomes/impacts they can generate (see path dependence \[30\]).
Talking about evidence, we can look at the numerous case studies published to notice a pattern: without modifications, a design sprint produces mainly narrow digital solutions \[31\]\[32\]\[33\].
### 3\. What works is not specific to the design sprint
> Why ? Because the Design Sprint is already simply a great opportunity to bring together the clients and their users. This causes, at the very least, an extremely strong awareness of the need to integrate users into the Design process, and it is an essential prerequisite.
Oftentimes, the advantages claimed by Design Sprint proponents are not specific to the approach \[35\].
Firstly, I can argue about the same thing with other approaches that present fewer environmental constraints and better integrates with most organizations. This does not make a particularly strong argument in support of the Design Sprint.
Secondly, things like convergent/divergent thinking practices, time constraints, putting everyone involved in solving a problem together, are not *magical* nor *new*. Practices like CPS (Creative Problem Solving), for instance, do that since the 30s \[36\]. Understanding when to use them, however, is important. Over-stressing *time constraints* and *convergent thinking* along the entire process is certainly far from being a *smart* move and certainly has an impact on the outcomes.
### 4\. Reduction by the lowest common denominator & equivocation fallacy
> This does not mean it is perfect, that it is sufficient on its own, and that it does not convey any bias (and on that I fully agree with you in what you say in your article), but NO data collection techniques (quantitative or qualitative) can pretend this neither.
What you’re implying is misleading. This is not because all methods are not totally absent of any bias that they are all equal in all circumstances.
As already discussed here, goals matter: a “bias” is relevant in terms of relationship to the context, our level of knowledge/understanding, etc.
Again, balancing methods & technics to mitigate bias is at the core of research: something the Design Sprint cannot pretend to because it is rigid in its conception.
### 5\. Responsibilities & consequences
> It is the responsibility of Sprint Leads to make clients understand the advantages and limitations of this approach.
Okay, but this poses an issue because Design Sprinters are often external to the organization, an organization that has to live with and remain accountable to what was released to the world.
This is also problematic because as a Design Sprinters who sells Design Sprints and who is potentially known for that (something clients expect from you), you don’t necessarily expose *all available options* to your clients (see availability bias \[37\]). Especially if you think that the Design Sprint is a relevant research tool.
---
## Update after discussion
Since I posted this article, I had the great opportunity to discuss with the two authors behind [**Gommette — Design Sprint Podcast**](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3e7CJQApn4FKfdhRlMj-Nw?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). It was interesting and allowed us to contextualize better the original discussion and clarify some misunderstandings.
First and foremost, I want to clarify that my criticism here is about the (limited) exchange we had in the comment of the video (not the video itself nor the position of their guest A. Koch) and specifically on the argument *“the design sprint is a relevant research method”*, with the context available to me at the time of writing. At no point, it was my intention to misrepresent or reduce the whole position of any of my interlocutors — although they had the feeling I polarized their position.
I stand for what I said here because my intention was not to demonize anyone but to articulate my thoughts and generate a discussion. It has indeed to be acknowledged that Gommette authors’ position should not be reduced to what is discussed here.
Thanks to their open-mindedness and positive attitude, and thanks for reading.
---
## References
1. [Kevin Richard, “A Critical Analysis Of The Design Sprint’s Argumentation”. Design & Critical Thinking medium publication, 2019.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
2. [GK VanPatter, Elizabeth Pastor, and Peter Jones Ph.D., “Rethinking Design Thinking”. Humantific, 2020](https://www.rethinkingdesignthinking.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
3. [David J. Snowden, Cynefin Framework. Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
4. Daniel Schmachtenberger, [“The War On Sensemaking”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Rebel Wisdom production, 2019\. [Find an article version here](https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/the-war-on-sensemaking-53710561afce?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
5. [Enterprise Design Pattern, Intersection Group 2020](https://enterprisedesignpatterns.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
6. [Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur & al., “Value Proposition Design”, Strategyzer 2015.](https://www.strategyzer.com/books/value-proposition-design?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
7. [David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, “A Leader’s Framework](https://emc-arts-org.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/27/docs/1462826572%5FSnowden%5Fand%5FBoone%5F%5FCynefin%5Fframework%5Fin%5FHBR%5F2007%5F1%5F.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[for Decision Making”. Harvard business review, 2007](https://emc-arts-org.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/27/docs/1462826572%5FSnowden%5Fand%5FBoone%5F%5FCynefin%5Fframework%5Fin%5FHBR%5F2007%5F1%5F.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
8. [Introduction to Safe to fail experiments, NHS ACT Academy.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1741JWcUCCr7EGELEd9H84P8LK1zpuVi5/view?usp=sharing&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
9. [Hawthorne effect, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
10. Cameron Norman, [Design’s Accessibility Problem](https://censemaking.com/2021/03/02/designs-accessibility-problem/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Censemaking, 2021.
11. Kevin Richard, [“The Ethics of Design Sprint”. Design & Critical Thinking publication, 2020.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
12. Kevin Richard, [“The Innovation Washing Machine”. Design & Critical Thinking publication, 2021.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-the-innovation-washing-machine-efficient-but-deceptive-565576945b07?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
13. [Homo economicus, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
14. [Complex Adaptive Systems, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
15. David J. Snowden, [“The Apex Predator Theory”](https://youtu.be/xF6qH8PnxAc?t=534&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (video). Find also this article [“Evolving Naval Safety: An Apex Predator Approach” AGLX, 2019.](https://www.aglx.consulting/post/evolving-naval-safety-an-apex-predator-approach?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
16. Greg Satell, [“It’s Ecosystems, Not Inventions That Truly Change the World” 2019.](https://greg-satell.medium.com/its-ecosystems-not-inventions-that-truly-change-the-world-b41090dfd727?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
17. Kevin Richard, [“Innovation by Design: A complexity-based understanding and provocation.”. Design & Critical Thinking publication, 2020.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
18. Sitra Lab, [“Orchestrating Innovation Ecosystems (and Portfolios) for Transformation”. Sitra the Finnish Innovation Fund, 2020.](https://www.slideshare.net/SitraFund/orchestrating-innovation-ecosystems-and-portfolios-for-transformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
19. [What is Systems Innovation?](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/about-us?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
20. [Social Innovation, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%5Finnovation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
21. [“Re-thinking Public Innovation, Beyond Innovation in Government”, Dubai Policy Review 2020.](https://dubaipolicyreview.ae/re-thinking-public-innovation-beyond-innovation-in-government/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
22. Enrique Martinez, [“16| Framing”. 750 max. publication, 2021.](https://medium.com/750-max/16-framing-a7eaa5b89cb2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
23. [Appeal to personal experience, YourLogicalFallacyIs.](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
24. [Anecdotal evidence, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal%5Fevidence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
25. [Survivorship bias, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
26. [The burden of proof, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
27. [Motivated reasoning, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated%5Freasoning?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
28. Amr Khalifeh, [“The Truth About the ROI of Design Sprints: Primary Research Findings”. Published on LinkedIn, February 2020.](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-roi-design-sprints-primary-research-findings-amr-khalifeh/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
29. [AJ&Smart's Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeB%5FOpLspKJGiKv1CYkWFFw?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) displays tons of videos praising the Design Sprint merits.
30. “**Path dependence** is when the decisions presented to people are dependent on previous decisions or experiences made in the past.” — [Path Dependence, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%5Fdependence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
31. [A list of Design Sprint case studies](https://sprintstories.com/tagged/case-study?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), published by [Design Sprint Stories](https://sprintstories.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
32. [“Rebuilding a fitness app after COVID with a Design Sprint”](https://sprintstories.com/rebuilding-a-fitness-app-after-covid-with-a-design-sprint-2937125939fd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Sprint Stories 2021.
33. [“Are Design Sprints Worth It? A case study on how the government leveraged Design Sprints for public safety”, published on UX Planet publication, 2020](https://uxplanet.org/are-design-sprints-worth-it-d67af5f528be?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). 👉 Yet another example of what the design sprint is good for: the [ordered domain of complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), where there are little-to-no unknowns (all of them being knowable with a bit of method anyway) and where you already have a pre-determined solution for a pre-determined result (simple causal relationship).
34. [A rough guide to the types of evidence](https://www.compoundchem.com/2015/04/09/scientific-evidence/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Compound Interest 2015.
35. Kevin Richard, [“Is Design Sprint A Necessity?”. Design & Critical Thinking, February 2020.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
36. GK VanPatter, Elizabeth Pastor, [“Innovation Methods Mapping: De-mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design”. Humantific, 2016.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34497966-innovation-methods-mapping?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
37. [Availability bias, Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability%5Fheuristic?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.
### ‘The design process is a lie’, really?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-the-design-process-is-a-lie---really-/
Last updated: 2021-02-15T00:00:00.000Z
### A reply to a Shopify UX Designer’s article.
Unsplash
## Source
[**The design process is a lie**](https://ux.shopify.com/the-design-process-is-a-lie-465a7064a733?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*10 things people don’t tell you about designing products*](https://ux.shopify.com/the-design-process-is-a-lie-465a7064a733?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ux.shopify.com](https://ux.shopify.com/the-design-process-is-a-lie-465a7064a733?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## 🔥 TL;DR;
The criticism made by the author here is that \[Design Thinking\] does not take “reality” (and its complexity) into account. My answer is that it has never been the point.
---
## 📝 Long answer
The main commentary on this article is both understandable and erroneous. What the author criticizes are the *‘ontological concepts’* that are supposed to represent *“The Design Process”*, not the design process itself.
Several points to note here:
1. These concepts (like the double-diamond, design thinking, etc.) were designed to communicate (mainly) to non-designers, so they have been extremely simplified;
2. These concepts are here to help do a *“situational assessment”* for decision making (and therefore, subjective). They are **idealistic (and ideological) simplifications** of reality;
3. These concepts are not models of reality; They are not predictive of any behaviour in a given situation –since they do not represent any particular context, and on the contrary, tend to (over)generalize;
These are, like the author’s *“skateboard metaphor”*, a means of communicating perspective and ideas. Likewise, I could criticize *“the skateboard metaphor”* and say it doesn’t exist. In a sense, I would be right, but it’s not really the point of this metaphor to be a true & accurate representation of reality: it’s enough to communicate an idea.
> “For a profession as young as ours, I don’t think anyone has fully understood it yet.”
🤔 There seems to be confusion between the *“job title”* (e.g. digital product designer) and the associated *knowledge* and *skills*?? However, [(digital) design has been around for quite a while now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)…
Finally, it has to be noted that the article seems to suggest that what it says is new or controversial. It seems to be a bias of ignorance:
- [It is not new](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com);
- [Models have long existed about the emergence of possibilities depending on the context](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (constraints, adjacent possible, etc.) –you just have to look outside of the (product) design realm for that.
That being said, this does not mean there is nothing to criticize about these concepts and what they vehiculate (see [here](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://blog.designcriticalthinking.com/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
[José Torre](https://medium.com/u/463659dc147f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) congrats on the *skateboard metaphor 👏* , which is good to communicate the uncertainty inherent to our work and the adaptability required to navigate it. Might need to be adapted for an audience with no skateboard experience (surf, ski, snowboard, etc. 🤷♂️).
Thanks for reading!
### Startup UX Design, User Research, And Pragmatism
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/startup-ux-design--user-research--and-pragmatism/
Last updated: 2021-02-13T00:00:00.000Z
### A discussion with Pascal Briod from Monito.com
Unsplash
In this episode, we discuss with [Pascal Briod](https://medium.com/u/e8dc83be91c4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Head of Product at [Monito](https://www.monito.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), about user research and UX design in a Startup company.
From the very inception of the company to managing a growing team of UX & UI professionals, Pascal had to basically learn & practice many aspects of design & product management at the same time. This helped him build a very pragmatic approach to UX, research, and design decision.
---
## 🔗 About Monito
[Monito is a Swiss-based company](https://www.monito.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), specialized in money transfer provider comparison.
[**Monito Stories**](https://medium.com/monito-stories?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Stories from the team at Monito, the comparison and review platform for international money transfer services.*](https://medium.com/monito-stories?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/monito-stories?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
🔥 Monito is looking for a Senior UX/UI Designer and a Product Manager.[ Find out more](https://www.monito.com/en/jobs?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The Innovation Washing Machine: Efficient But Deceptive
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-innovation-washing-machine--efficient-but-deceptive/
Last updated: 2021-02-13T00:00:00.000Z
### Cold washing; Mixed linen; Max spin; Start, repeat.
> We should be even more skeptical when we want to believe.
Unsplash
The *“new wave”* of business management and innovation *“truths”* are mainly about selling a point. They often advertise models, not to help you work with reality and be **less wrong**, but instead are nice & shiny ideas that have the potential to sell books & conferences and, altogether, help their author gain a place in the pantheon of *“those who make authority”*, not because they’re necessarily right about anything but because they *“convinced”* others to believe in them. At least, if it’s not the intention, this is a recurring pattern.
If there is something recent years have demonstrated us pretty well, is that ideas don’t spread based on their *“righteousness”* or *“soundness”* (if I may formulate it that way): **adoption** (quantity) is not, by any means, a measure of **quality**.
This is unfortunately true for a lot of things.
Business and innovation are these kinds of special places where, despite the common trope that *“business people are rational beings”* because *“they look at the numbers”*, we all accept too easily to [suspend our disbelief](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Suspension%5Fof%5Fdisbelief?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (something better attributed to movies, games, and stories). However, I think that 1) we are often willing to give too much credit to business people; 2) that this idea is inherited and spread (unintentionally) by business people themselves (i.e. [Homo economicus](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)); and 3) that on the contrary they are very irrational people, run by emotions, and stick to whatever idea please them the most –spoiler: they are humans after all.
This leaves the space, especially innovation, full of **magical thinking** and **misplaced faith** with extra-layer blindness: people in real need are willing to quickly trust anyone with anything that approximate an answer. This is something shared with the overlapping space that is **Design**, from which things like the (in)famous Design Sprint originated [\[1\]](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[2\]](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[3\]](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**A Critical Analysis Of The Design Sprint’s Argumentation**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Thinking critically about what we know helps shape and improve what we’re doing & how we’re doing it.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Bigger the claim, greater the need for evidence
A recurring theme in innovation (and design) is that if some companies succeed and many others fail, this is (probably) because the former are doing something better (or differently) than the latter.
This really really really (really) not a new idea.
Now meet [Alberto Savoia](https://www.albertosavoia.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), an engineer turned innovation coach, whose book is praised by some in the field to be an insightful and novel approach. If you are not familiar with it, I invite you to take a look at this video 👇
Well, I have some issues with the redefinition of *“prototype”* and the false opposition to the made-up neologism *“pretotype”* –but apparently, people get hyped with little these days. We have to note, interestingly tho, that a *pretotype* posses all the characteristics of a *prototype* (made for test, cheap & quick to build, etc.), except the guy didn’t invent the term so he cannot sell books about it 🤷♂️
Funnily enough, this seems to be a trend these days to re-invent or simply rename and rebrand™️ already well-known things. Guys, it’s cool to be open to new things, but when… they are actually new.
Anyway, we are introduced to the concept of *“The Right it”*, an ontological proposition of the supposed *“thing companies must do to succeed”* which is literally the rebranding (again) of the notion that *“some companies succeed because they do the right thing and others don’t because they do the wrong thing”*.
Well, it has to be said that:
1. **Even if we accept as true** that “*some companies succeed because they do the right thing*”, it doesn’t necessarily follow that *“others don’t because they do the wrong thing”* (e.g. this might be that companies that fail are doing the same things).
2. Either way, you cannot address the latter with cases that only validate the former. Here we are given the impression that the proposition is backed with research, but the same old selection bias applies: looking at **examples that confirm** our prior belief tells us nothing about **examples that might invalidate it**.
3. Most often than not, those *“research”* are mainly based on context-dependent [anecdotal evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal%5Fevidence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (e.g. interviews with C-Suite board members) and provide, at best, a very weak correlation. As a reminder, here’s [a simplified graphic of the different levels of evidence](https://www.compoundchem.com/2015/04/09/scientific-evidence/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
4. Mr. Savoia admits in the video, when talking about products that failed, that he doesn’t know *“why it failed or what happened here”*.
5. This doesn’t prevent him to claim that there is a *“Wrong it”* and that to avoid it you have to start with *pretotyping*.
Looping back to this idea of stories (and extrapolating stories from anecdotes) and our willingness to suspend our disbelief, it is interesting how Mr. Savoia praise what Elon Musk supposedly did that made Tesla succeed (causality?), and which should be evidence for Savoia’s proposition, when we actually know that Musk did not do any of these things [\[1\]](https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settlement-original-founded-martin-eberhard-origin-story-tesla?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[2\]](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tesla,%5FInc.?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[3\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [\[4\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DopFo1rjAr4&ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
So, here we are again with yet another model (not even original), with no-to-few **epistemological evidence** to give **credence** to the proposition. But, hey, at least now you can say that you’re *“pretotyping”*, as a cool way to say you actually do market research.
### Why Ethics In Organisations Fail
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/why-ethics-in-organisations-fail/
Last updated: 2021-01-23T00:00:00.000Z
### And how designer & innovators could do it right
There is a lot of discussion going on about ethics in Tech, Design, innovation, etc. many of them revolve around (legitimately) the societal consequences of companies’ decisions. One of the logical steps is to look for public institutions and our politics to intervene, regulate, etc. but institutions are slow and mainly work through systematic audits & expensive fines to incentivise change in behavior. How does it even apply to innovations?
Another perspective would be to address the subject by involving organisations directly, and, for instance, see how we can transition businesses to different models that help them make better ethical decisions. Here, the logical step is to establish a “code of ethics” or other forms of deontological approaches, but who will enforce them?
Ethics in organisations is usually approached as a compliance issue, mainly to avoid company exposure and reputational risks. This makes the discussion bounded to existing rules, not challenging or, worse, maintaining the status quo. We can therefore see companies investing in compliance programs and efforts to be more environmentally responsible. But more often big gaps still exist between these efforts and the core business activities, which creates a very disjointed picture: a company may be praising its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously funding trade associations that lobby against climate change efforts.
Meet Alison Taylor and Charles Paré, who will share perspectives on both strategic and practical approaches to ethics & sustainability in organisations.
---
**🌟 Alison Taylor** is Executive Director of [Ethical Systems](https://www.ethicalsystems.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Senior Advisor at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business. She has extensive experience consulting for multinational companies on risk, anti-corruption, sustainability, human rights, culture and behavior, stakeholder engagement, ESG, and ethics and compliance.
[**Alison Taylor - Executive Director - Ethical Systems | LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/followalisont/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*I work on challenges at the intersection of corporate integrity, risk and responsibility. I'm the Executive Director of…*](https://www.linkedin.com/in/followalisont/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/followalisont/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**🌟 Charles Paré** is Senior Compliance, Ethics, and Risk Executive at Unisys, an information technology company specialised in security related software & services. Prior to Unisys, Charles served for five years as Head of Ethics & Compliance EU-West at Philip Morris International, supporting colleagues in various markets, factories, and shared-service-centres with the transformation of the Company and the launch of new modified-risk-products. Before that, he held various positions in Ethics & Compliance with global responsibility for risk management and the deployment of new technical solutions.
[**Charles Paré - Head Compliance Advisory - Unisys | LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlespareethics/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Senior Compliance, Ethics, and Risk Executive: results oriented problem solver, with extensive experience in securing…*](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlespareethics/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlespareethics/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
👋 Don’t miss our future events and subscribe to our Meetup group 👇
[**Design & Critical Thinking (Genève, Switzerland)**](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Design & Critical Thinking aims to build shared understanding, collective knowledge & sensemaking through a community…*](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The ‘Space-for-action Barrier’ Trap And A Way To Move Forward
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the--space-for-action-barrier--trap-and-a-way-to-move-forward/
Last updated: 2021-01-11T00:00:00.000Z
### The thing that prevents you to do “what should be done”.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Some times ago, [I proposed the concept of ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#9aa2)[*“space-for-action barrier”*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#9aa2) as a potentially useful description of the conditions of a context that hinders your ability to act & learn in a *“necessary space”* because of imposed constraints.
I recently wanted to extend it a bit further and provide a path through it, in the light of 1) some words of wisdom from D. Snowden and; 2) my own, surely limited, understanding of his work at Cognitive Edge and my endeavor through Systems & Complexity themes.
The *“necessary space”* here is what we think/believe we ought to do in order to understand the context and discover possibilities that could lead to novelty. In my article [*“The Multiples Design Thinking”*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), I describe the concept as such:
> “Most of the time, when we work within companies or on specific projects, there is an assumed *“space for action”* on which either the project is based or the company expectations are built. **This space for action is unconsciously determined by the type of outcomes, the** **“horizon”** **that a company is able to foresee \[from its current context\].** Narrow outcomes or not-so-far horizon means limited space for action.These constraints \[…\] are totally blind toward the complexity of the reality it evolves in! Unfortunately, their implications are huge.
> **The barrier happens when designers, innovators, or change agents try to redefine these constraints to make alignment with reality.** Indeed, this barrier is the system’s immune response to change. As I said, this barrier impacts our ability to *think*, *act*, and therefore *navigate*: ignorance –or illusion of certainty– is sometimes preferable to some organizations.”
Now, I would probably talk of *“system’s immune response to* **forced change** *”* instead: complex systems, like organizations and the people that compose them, are not averse to change by definition, it’s quite the contrary, systems do change all the time **but only when the context necessitates such adaptability**.
In other words, this is a mismatch between **“expectations”** that emerges from the current ordered context (and therefore are bounded to initial conditions, the knowns) and **“intentions”** to reach a yet-to-be-discovered future state and explore the unknowns. **This creates ambiguity.**
An instinctive way to handle this is generally to devise an ideal future state, like *“only when we’ll do X will we be innovative”*, and work backward to devise a linear course of action to reach this state. One problem with this is that it tends to create a non-inclusive, binary (either/or), and reductive narratives that flattens the diversity of contexts and negates/dismisses any other possibilities: the kind of thinking that leads to extremes (polarization) when confronted with contradictions.
The kind of game played by consultancy firms & agencies because, let’s face it, reductive & simplistic narratives (supported by numbers) are easier to sell.
Another problem is that design and innovation are not linear. As [Enrique MG](https://medium.com/u/9ed45b9d2e00?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) explains in his article soberly titled [*‘8 | Planning’*](https://medium.com/750-max/8-planning-ed14b51d2f54?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> “**Planning is a linear process that moves in one direction, always forward.** Designing is multi dimensional and moves forward, backward, and sideways as needed.**Planning is scripted: a good plan leaves nothing to chance.** Designing is a dynamic process that adapts to its context in order to respond to uncertainty.
> **Planning \[begins\] with the desired solution and then goes backward to figure out the steps needed to get there.** Designing never starts with a solution: it starts with a question.”
Organizations are, indeed, comfortable with linearity: planning and traditional *sense, analyze, respond*. And this makes it difficult to apprehend things that don’t fit the pre-established paradigms. Agile Software development approach like Scrum offers some relief but only as a transitional medium ([liminal space](https://agileleanhouse.com/en/complexity-once-again-liminal-cynefin.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and is not sufficient to understand what to do in the first place (sensemaking & orientation):
> “The strength of approaches like Scrum is holding things in a liminal state long enough to become right before they move to complicated.” — [Dave Snowden on Liminality in Cynefin and Moving beyond Agile to Agility](https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/cynefin-moving-beyond-agile/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Sensemaking* is what is needed to make sense of a context, reveal possibilities, and orientate decisions before moving to development. But this obviously counterintuitive in organizations oriented toward operational & governance constraints.
> We only see what we expect to see.
## A Way Forward: start from the current context, not your idealized future.
The *space-for-action barrier* seems an implacable realization from which the only way is simply to avoid contexts that would prevent you to act: needless to say, it is a doomed headlong rush.
Working with constraints is what we should master because they are (generally) useful and necessary for the organization to function. Organizations are used to approaches that fit in ordered and rather clear situations. The problems emerge when the context is ambiguous and necessitates sensemaking rather than good practices. But how do you move from good practices (governing constraints) to discovery/questioning (enabling constraints)?
Cognitive Edge / D. Snowden
[In a recent article titled ](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/selling-novelty/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“Selling novelty”*](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/selling-novelty/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Dave Snowden gives us some great insights, answering a Customer Experience Manager’s question about the practicality of convincing a C-Suite board to use an approach they never heard of (here Cynefin’s) to measure the customer experience, while they already have a very different idea of what should be done (i.e. using [NPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net%5FPromoter?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
1. **Don’t challenge \[the idea/solution\]**, it is where the buyer is, its a safe decision, you won’t change it.
2. **Start asking open questions** \[and show what others found as potential issues\] —E.g. “*It's a great statistical tool”,* talking about NPS, *“but how will you know what it means?”* or “*Other people I have talked to often find the score baffling as they don’t understand what the number means or why it is changing”*.
3. **Try and find their motivation for this** — have they been told to do it, or are they the sort of person who will only do what other people have done? That will tell you how much reassurance you have to give
4. If you are comfortable **start to suggest things as questions**—*“If your managers could do X, Y, Z”* in other words, what your approach allows them to do, *“would it help them make better decisions?”*.
5. Have you heard about \[your approach\]? **Then explain and illustrate with metaphors.**
6. Suggest (but be subtle) that if this works s/he will be a hero, **if it doesn’t nothing much will change anyway**.
7. Suggest \[your approach\] **can not only provide what’s expected but can bring more** (e.g. contextual meaning, for instance).
8. **Find champions** working for the buyer who likes your ideas.
9. **Offer an experiment** in which the buyer can bring in other people in the organization to share the risk.
10. Feed-in a small amount of technical language (abduction in this case) explaining what it means and listen hard for said language to be fed back to you — **when it is they will buy** (adoption).
11. If you have an agreement **do not introduce any new information or ideas,** close and move on.
12. **Be prepared for refusal.** Be honest, say why you think they are wrong, and leave politely — they will call you back when the more traditional approach failed.
**Note:** I slightly modified the list to be less specific but I recommend you [read the original article in full context and find more wisdom here](https://www.cognitive-edge.com/selling-novelty/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
## Conclusion
The space-for-action barrier is a relative concept from which the effects depend on the initial context: there’s always a limit to which people (especially managers) will accept change & novelty.
The idea of *“start from where the buyers are”* is a powerful reminder that context matters. Accompanying change is more an open questioning than a force-fitting focus on arbitrary and externally defined targets & goals. Opening possibilities and proposing safe-to-fail experiments broaden-up and add-up to their current perspective(s) instead of subtracting/replacing it for a so-called idealistic *“better world”*.
### Shaping The Tools That Shape Us: Paradigms & Provocations
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/shaping-the-tools-that-shape-us--paradigms---provocations/
Last updated: 2020-12-07T00:00:00.000Z
### Join us for our first community event
Unsplash
UPDATE: If you missed it, here’s the recording of the opening session. Enjoy!
If you’re interested in sharing ideas and/or helping to organize future events or simply discuss with the community, feel free to join our Slack here 👇
[**Join Design & Critical Thinking on Slack**](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-jti8d8k7-LAvM%5F2jEak6tnyTEvqZ6jA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Slack is a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.*](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-jti8d8k7-LAvM%5F2jEak6tnyTEvqZ6jA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.slack.com](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-jti8d8k7-LAvM%5F2jEak6tnyTEvqZ6jA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Back in August, [I shared my wish to create a space for a community to grow](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/building-up-a-community-to-create-collective-understanding-d4bc45aa1455?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). After 3 months, a Slack group, and tons of very interesting discussions, we are happy to announce our first Design & Critical Thinking (D&CT) event on [**Tuesday 15, December 2020 at 6 PM CET**](https://www.airmeet.com/e/bf1b7c10-3328-11eb-8a75-3be5c13c1a9d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us” — Marshall McLuhan
The goal of this online event is to introduce Design & Critical Thinking’s mission and the approach that motivates this community to exist in the first place.
We will also discuss what’s coming next, and the space for collective understanding we hope to create with you. Finally, everyone will get the opportunity to interact with other participants around virtual tables.
Join us here 👇
[**Shaping The Tools That Shape Us: Paradigms & Provocations | Airmeet**](https://www.airmeet.com/e/bf1b7c10-3328-11eb-8a75-3be5c13c1a9d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*We are happy to announce our first event! Discover Design & Critical Thinking approach, mission, and motivates this…*](https://www.airmeet.com/e/bf1b7c10-3328-11eb-8a75-3be5c13c1a9d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.airmeet.com](https://www.airmeet.com/e/bf1b7c10-3328-11eb-8a75-3be5c13c1a9d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
See you soon! Stay safe 👋
### The Dark Side Of a Galaxy Far Far Away
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-dark-side-of-a-galaxy-far-far-away/
Last updated: 2020-11-23T00:00:00.000Z
### Why Star Wars isn’t a desirable future
Unsplash
Hi, Kevin here.
I take the time to reflect on personal thoughts here, after watching this video.
Despite me being a (more or less) fan of the franchise, I can’t undermine the critical thoughts that came to my mind. Not that I never had any against these movies (or the Star Wars universe in general), but I never fully reflected on the whole system being narrated.
It has to be said that from a movie perspective, the coherence of the stories relies mainly upon the characters, their relationships, the struggles they overcome, and their evolution. This is the archetypal narrative structure of the hero (or anti-hero) and this what makes them (more or less) lovable & relatable.
But as a whole, the system depicted in the stories is interestingly, unexpectedly, and unchangeably incoherent & inequal despite the premise of an epic galaxy-wide quest for equilibrium, justice, democracy, freedom, and hope for everyone, with the help of futuristic technological advancements and a somewhat New-Age-y mysticism.
## Social Stagnation
Yet despite all the high-tech, spaceships, species, societies, cultures, and generally speaking, all the diversity of this galaxy far far away, nothing new or different is created.
[It displays eons (and eons)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMJY3lBoYrw&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of **social stagnation**, from which nothing else than dictatures, republics, and, in between, wars, seems to be able to emerge.
[**Why The Politics Of The 'Star Wars' Universe Makes No Sense**](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459812699/why-the-politics-of-the-star-wars-universe-makes-no-sense?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast Unless you've spent the past year or so in an ice cave on Hoth - or have…*](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459812699/why-the-politics-of-the-star-wars-universe-makes-no-sense?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.npr.org](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459812699/why-the-politics-of-the-star-wars-universe-makes-no-sense?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
What I mean by *social stagnation* is that even though technological progress seems tremendous, it does not serve social & societal progress in any meaningful way: technology is made (mainly) for warfare/trade/travel, while corruption, slavery of all sort (children, workers, droids, etc.), [caste systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), inequality, poverty, violence, etc. are the rule, not the exception. **Interestingly, these are the characteristics that better qualify a** [**dystopian future**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
Worse is the inability for the emergence of something truly different, as an organizational system, than oversimplistic and centralistic models of decisions in a system physically bounded by space-time constraints that we can hardly comprehend with our personal experiences –I’m no physicist, but we’re talking of a galaxy-size Einstein’s relativity issue here.
Many of the planets’ social systems presented to us are, basically, kingdoms, ruled by one single ruler (a King, a Queen, a regent, etc.). And many other worlds are simplistic mono-purposed or mono-directed places: planet-sized *cities*, planet-sized *forest*, planet-sized *deserts*, planet-sized *wastelands*, planet-sized *weapon*, etc.
And this probably accounts for many of the issues: surface-level simplicity & coherence, such as scaling *one single homogenous concept or idea* to a planet, probably ease narration but it lacks subtlety and all the necessary interactions of [complex adaptive systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Even [the Galactic Republic itself is a centralized, pseudo-federal, and pseudo-democratic](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459812699/why-the-politics-of-the-star-wars-universe-makes-no-sense?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) representative-based model (a vague copy of the US federal model). By the way, despite their so-called good intentions, industrialized warfare seems to be their main Etatic apparatus (any resemblance with reality is fortuitous).
*What type(s) of social contract(s) defines the relationship between social structures and the various people of the galaxy?* It’s almost like these structures are forced to exist because it has to (to save the story coherence) with no other purposes than follow the flux of events the self-fulfilling universe throw in the way — but hey, it’s the Force.
The Jedi and the Siths are, as variables, likely both responsible for the lack of originality, the [unbalance in the forces at play](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459812699/why-the-politics-of-the-star-wars-universe-makes-no-sense?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [are victims too of this search for apparent simplistic coherence and homogeneity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPD1w78D5I&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). In fact, I suspect Star Wars to be a [game with only a few (dumb?) rules](https://ncase.me/trust/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), mainly to make the “force sentients” archetypally central.
The media and especially journalists' representativeness is close to inexistent, and the internal paths of information are as obscure as the force itself. Some events with major consequences seem barely known by most people, as we often hear casual characters referring to “legends” or “stories”. We hardly know how information transits, except by word of mouth(?) which makes very little sense. Why data isn’t playing a more central role adds to the ambient mysticism.
Lastly, it is interesting to note, except for a few (particularly lovable or hateable) characters, how the diversity of the galaxy is represented in the movies. When non-human appears on screen, it is likely to show “out of the laws” western-like, or wide & dangerous places. Other species are likely to be dispensable beings and casualties to the benefit of a more important story to be told. Human-like characters are more likely to represent more “civilized” or “noble” places and cultures. I’m probably doing a bit of an over-generalization here because there are exceptions, but this seems a predominant pattern to me.
## Status-quo benefits the internal story
Like this map below, Star Wars assume things to be static and unchanging — how does it account for moving star systems? [Galaxy rotation curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy%5Frotation%5Fcurve?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)? [Lightspeed travel paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin%5Fparadox?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) & relativity? etc.
This inclination for status-quo in Star Wars is probably well-explained by the need for serving the story from a character-level point of view. The advantage is that the Star Wars “ambient universe” remains the same, relatable, lovable thing we (the spectators) already know so much, allowing us to focus on the characters' evolution.
It’s like we mixed up an old idealized and romanticized past draped with technology, only to relive the same stories again and again: an odyssey, a western, a samurai battle. But we would not appreciate living in one of these pasts — and neither you would appreciate living in a Star Wars “future-past”.
> A possibility is that *“what makes Star Wars”* today will likely kill it due to its lack of progression.
## Something new in the galaxy?
Star Wars could innovate by introducing unexpected and impactful organizational models that would shape interactions in a more profound way, better account for the physical constraints at play, and reset the “game's rules” to create new and refreshing stories, plots, and movements.
Diversity of people, species, worlds, and perspectives should be reflected in the diversity of ways to “play”, narrate, and interact: non-linear, exponential, and unpredictable possibilities.
Thanks for reading.
### Publication update
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/publication-update/
Last updated: 2020-11-19T00:00:00.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
As you might have noticed, *Human Centered Thinking* changed its name and now becomes *Design & Critical Thinking.* No worries, the URL and all our previous articles’ links remain the same.
Behind the change, the idea is to align the publication with [my recent community initiative](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/building-up-a-community-to-create-collective-understanding-d4bc45aa1455?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This allows a more seamless and clear connection between what the community discusses and what happens in the publication, to build this collective understanding at the intersection of design, innovation, tech, change, and more.
I think this evolution in purpose doesn’t betray what this publication was originally about: *think about what we do, and how we do it*. Crossing boundaries, broaden-up our views, and engage in conversations have always been part of the publication’s DNA.
If you want to be part of the conversation, [feel free to join our Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-hu62nfqv-6h4IwwcS9icahgSYiNEFHg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Anyway, stay safe!
---
## To read
### [**Innovation By Design — A complexity-based understanding and provocation.**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/innovation-by-design-54fdb1debbe2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Why I see Design and Innovation as a means to instigate change and impact (positively) our environment and what it has to do with complexity theory.
> “If an ‘*innovation’* is measured by the **positive impact of changes in a context**, then we must include all the events that led to these changes: it is more than a neatly defined ‘*new thing’*.”
### [**The Ethics Of Design Sprint — An endeavor you are passively subscribing to**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
The question is not whether it is morally acceptable to win the race. The question is ‘should we run the race in the first place?’.
### [**The Multiples Design Thinking — There is no such thing as one single true “design thinking”, and what complexity has to do with it**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
My point is that **people really mean different things** when they talk about Design Thinking. In practice, Design Thinking is not a standardized approach, nor a clearly defined body of knowledge, despite what one might think. From its origins to its current mainstream use, **the approach evolved and mutated following its various appropriations** as well as the evolution and specialization of the design practices.
### Innovation By Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/innovation-by-design/
Last updated: 2020-11-09T00:00:00.000Z
### A complexity-based understanding and provocation.
The world (can be) is a turbulent, complex adaptive system.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Ioften talk here [about Design as a catalyst for organizations](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), businesses, and at a much smaller scale, teams. Design is to me, a means to instigate change and impact (positively) our environment. This is why [I also think this not the job of one person](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Because of this, I consider innovation in many ways similar to Design in terms of purpose. “Innovation” — whatever it translates to in your context — is another way of designing our environment toward an intent.
As I recently explored in *“*[*The Multiples Design Thinking*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* and *“*[*The Ethics Of Design Sprint*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, the multiplicity of Design practices and the various level of complexity we’re facing when designing requires us to use different *thinking styles* to approach the challenges. We, as communities, create or adopt paradigms that allow us to more easily *anticipate* and *navigate* our environment.
**In a given paradigm, we expect certain things to occur.** As such, these paradigms are as much helpful than detrimental, because they limit our views to a set of predetermined expectations. Most of my criticisms against some *“Design paradigms”* are precisely this. When some of their proponents lure themselves (and their followers) by genuinely believing they can address any challenges in any environment, this is clear blindness toward the limitations of their paradigm.
The *Design Sprint*, *Design Thinking*, *User-Centered Design*, *Lean*, *Agile*, etc. are (more or less) constrained and motivated paradigms. **Note that this is not an attempt to equivocate them:** they are not intended to navigate the same level of complexity, or if so, they do it from different backgrounds. They are different. But they also share some characteristics and are all dependent on their environment.
So bear with me while we’ll try to understand them together.
## Does Design Equal Innovation And Vice-versa?
Design and innovation both share common goals. They both seek *change*, from a **current state** of a context (system) to a **future-yet-undefined state**. But their intents might differ in the type of outcomes they are seeking/expecting, although, note that the distinction here is more than blurry and there is a lot of overlaps.
**Designers** are often taught to, and therefore comfortable with, defining solutions. They devise such solutions from more or less disordered, unclear, messy context, the *“problem”*, and apply their skills to order things, make sense of them, and materialize a relatively clear & finite solution.
See the use of the *problem → solution* dichotomy here, predominant in the design world, and inherited from the industrial era. The huge trend toward Product Design in the tech industry is a perfect example of that *“thinking style”* legacy. Most of this “traditional” way of designing specifically seeks solutions that are (so-called) “tangible” or “concrete” — i.e. a product or a service (in the digital or physical meaning) with clear boundaries. These are clearly the most dominant characteristics of one largely shared design paradigm.
Although, as diversity exists in challenges, and so exists in the way of designing: from Service Design and Business Design to Organisational Design and Systems Design, there’s a huge variety of practices, knowledge, profiles, and backgrounds we can draw from the increase in complexity. And this is where the line between design, innovation, change, etc., is more than blurry.
> “Design is an intent” *— Jarred Spool*
**Innovation** is an even less clear practice. They too work toward making sense of and ordering things, but not necessarily in the same way. While designers seem to seek change through a solution, innovators seem to seek change in a broader context: actions become mediums for change — this is why every solution isn’t an innovation. We can also probably draw a difference in scale here. But innovators become “designers” of some sort when they start devising solutions to support their actions. Borrowing from Open Innovation and Systems Change communities, the paradigm here would be more: *challenges → intervention strategies*.
[**Everyone Is A Designer, You’re A Facilitator.**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Great User Experience Happen When Design Is Shared Among The Entire Team.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Again, these are blurry lines and I don’t want to reduce the discussion to my short definitions. So please, share your thoughts in the comment!**
Clearly, some people do both while being considered as either designers or innovators and, generally speaking, we can find profiles focused on broad challenges and more narrow problems on both “sides”.
Defining them as **change agents** seems to better reflect this ambiguity. If *“design is an intent”* then [there are more anonymous and self-unaware designers than one might think](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**Change agents** have a normative role: they *prescribe rules and preferable behaviors* toward a specific context. They are *moral agents* and as such “ethics” are indivisible from their actions. Only the scale at which it applies vary.
**On that point, maybe one more note:** the broader & complex the challenge, the more diverse & multiple the group (and sometimes network) of people tackling *it necessarily is* (formal vs. informal). Ethics behooves on each agent, and more specifically upon the group as an entity, not upon one single individual (i.e. the designer). The fallacy of reducing ethical issues to an individual designer’s responsibility, as if one person could/should have such an agency/power, is precisely the type of thinking that led to today's issues.
## **But What Is Change Anyway?**
Source
> Change (noun): *“An act or process through which something becomes different.* **”**
**Change is, therefore, a transitional, moving, dynamic, and ongoing state.** It brings a *temporary* disorder in a system. This state creates new (relative to the current context) opportunities for negative AND positive outcomes.
### Innovation, Invention, Creation, Production.
Some easily conflate notions like *invention*, *creation*, and *production* for the notion of *innovation*. But these are fundamentally different concepts.
> “Innovation is about the creation of something that is both new and a value however it is also about its adoption and implementation so as to change some established way of doing things. \[…\]Innovation is different from pure creativity in that it is looking at both ends of the equation both the creation of something new and useful but also its adoption and usage within society so as to enable real change in the world around us” —[ Systems Innovation, an overview.](https://youtu.be/rVGoeFAW0FM?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
For instance, an invention is the result of any process aimed at creating or producing something, usually (but not necessarily) new. The novelty or existence of which does not necessarily lead to innovation — as we defined it earlier, a change in the context of the said invention.
The shortcut comes from the flawed reasoning that if most innovation seems to come from the *“creation of something new”* — in the sense of *“the production of tangible artifacts”* — therefore, creating new things is an innovation by itself.
The problem is that it is not a 1–1 causal relationship — all new things do not lead to significative changes — and reducing the outcomes of a change to one single event, maybe the most visible one to us, is narrowingly simplistic — a selection bias to the most salient (see [Selection bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Frequency illusion](https://news.ucdenver.edu/what-is-the-frequency-illusion/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Focusing effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring%5F%28cognitive%5Fbias%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Salience bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience%5F%28neuroscience%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), you named it!).
[**It’s Ecosystems, Not Inventions That Truly Change the World**](https://medium.com/@digitaltonto/its-ecosystems-not-inventions-that-truly-change-the-world-b41090dfd727?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*There are telltale signs that the system will flip within the next decade*](https://medium.com/@digitaltonto/its-ecosystems-not-inventions-that-truly-change-the-world-b41090dfd727?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/@digitaltonto/its-ecosystems-not-inventions-that-truly-change-the-world-b41090dfd727?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
If an *“innovation”* is measured by the **positive impact of changes in a context**, then we must include all the events that led to these changes: it is more than a neatly defined *“new thing”*. **As such, the value of an innovation is more than the sum of its constituents, and amongst other things, it lies in the relationships & interactions with its context** (social, economic, technological, etc.).
From this realization, we can add that the value of an *innovation process* is therefore not one of a *production process,* where outputs and quality are kings, but one of probing, sensing, testing, learning, and responding/adapting.
In business terms, we would call this an exploit-explore tension.
## Complexity, Design, And Innovation: What The Matter?
**Change agents**, have to face a harsh reality when they start to move into action: **complexity** \[1\]\[2\]\[13\]\[15\]. It is the very state of the context the agents evolve in. As such, complexity is a relative notion: *a gradient from chaos to order*.
The complexity continuum
Interestingly, practitioners from various horizons have developed over time **tools** and **paradigms** to help them *make sense* and *act* within their environment. By looking at them from a complexity perspective, we can observe that some practices are better fitted for certain types of contexts: *these are the different types of innovation (or design).*
> Complexity lies in every context.
This helps us understand the convergent and divergent aspects of the different paradigms and ideologies. We can now draw the interrelation between the **complexity of a context** (system), the **tools**, and the **paradigms** needed to tackle its challenges.
Complexity, Paradigms, Tools — The CPT relationship
## Deconstructing Paradigms: The Patterns Of Innovation
Interestingly, all these paradigms –and their tools (methods, processes, thinking styles)– display similar patterns with more or less degree: *pattern identification*, *pattern optimization*, and *pattern creation*.
.
### Pattern Identification
Pattern identification is a key component, commonly found in most processes that aim to gain a (more or less) deep understanding of a problem/challenge and the situation in which it occurs. This is done by various means, some of which may involve field study (ethnography, user testing, etc.) or group exercises. I like to call it *“mapping”* –and a map can be more or less precise & detailed.
Pattern identification is literally the **process of identification of** **relevant** **patterns** (regarding the context) that have the potential to lead to *“innovative”* ideas — a meaningful change.
.
It is important to note that not all paradigms are equal in this regard and the methods used to achieve it certainly vary a lot depending on the paradigm that leads to the process. Neither they are always mindful of this very first phase the following thinking styles required to navigate an innovation process.
To quote Dave Snowden, **the problem with paradigms is that** **“we don’t see what we don’t expect to see”**.
### Pattern Optimization
Pattern optimization \[14\] is the creation of value by *modifying*, *improving*, *reshaping*, or *redirecting* an existing answer to an identified challenge. This is mainly what “incremental innovation” does: perfecting the existing, the known, and maximizing its value.
### **Pattern Creation**
Pattern creation \[14\] is the creation of value by *diverging* or *departing* from existing, typical, or conventional types of answers (solutions, ways of doing, etc.) to an identified challenge. This is exploring the unknown and thinking outside conventions of the said domain (i.e. industry).
## What Are Paradigms?
Paradigms are pre-packaged, assumption-boxed, articulated answers to certain levels of complexity, build on different background history, assumptions, and ideologies. Through time, communities of practices created, borrowed, and re-appropriated tools, thinking styles, methods, processes, etc. to both *make sense* and *address* the complexity they were facing.
*Lean*, *Design Thinking*, *Service Design*, *Human-Centered Design* (HCD), *Scrum*, etc. are all paradigms. These paradigms include the different patterns (in some form) we talked about, as well as assumptions about what to expect from them.
For instance, a *product thinking* such as the Design Sprint or Agile assumes a certain type of results, which determines what to expect from the pattern identification.
## Conclusion
Paradigms are useful constructions because they provide a simplified way to approach challenges through shortcuts, tools, thinking styles. But they rarely provide the necessary tools to identify when they become irrelevant or maladapted to our context — you know, because contexts are subject to changes.
> “We don’t see what we don’t expect to see”
Most of the mismatch between our tools/paradigms and reality generally comes from our own ignorance and misplaced *“faith”*. It wouldn’t be so big of an issue if we could truly learn from this.
### Learnings From Skepticism & Rationality
Paradigms deconstruction is a good first step in being aware of the preferences displayed (imposed?) by our paradigms.
Paradigms, like mental models, are subject to biases, assumptions, and call for *motivated thinking,* or as [Julia Galef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia%5FGalef?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) calls it, the *Soldier Mindset* metaphor.
Instead, [she demonstrates what science showed to be the most effective thinking style to overcome biases](https://www.ted.com/talks/julia%5Fgalef%5Fwhy%5Fyou%5Fthink%5Fyou%5Fre%5Fright%5Feven%5Fif%5Fyou%5Fre%5Fwrong?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), what she calls the *Scout Mindset*.
### Toward Agnosticism?
Let’s face it, first, a project is rarely the best place to question our paradigms and we generally tend to follow the default ones at play in our organizations.
Secondly, paradigms are inevitable. Escaping our current ones to build a new, different understanding of the world is basically creating a new paradigm with its assumptions and tools — all models are a simplification of the world.
Besides, most often than not, paradigms are useful. What we must focus on is increasing our capacity to understand their limitations, and when one does not apply to what we’re facing.
**Agnosticism** is the art of saying *“I don’t know AND I prefer not to believe”*. **Skepticism** is the art of doubting and questioning our knowledge. The two are about building good practical epistemology and accepting the uncertainty of things.
If you are willing to explore beyond the boundaries of your own paradigms, join me and a growing community of thinkers & practitioners 👇
[**Create Account**](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Slack is a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.*](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.designcriticalthinking.com](http://join.designcriticalthinking.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Sources, References, And Inspirations
### a. Complexity & Systems Innovation
\[1\] Dave Snowden, 1999\. [Cynefin Framework, Wikipedia](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**Cynefin framework**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or "domains"- obvious (known until 2014 as simple, more recently renamed…*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[2\] [Systems Innovation, an overview](https://youtu.be/rVGoeFAW0FM?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), 2018.
\[3\] Systems Innovation, [Systems Change Book 2020](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/post/systems-change-book?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
\[4\] Systems Innovation, [Systems Innovation Book 2020](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/post/systems-innovation-book?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**Home | Systems Innovation**](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Edit description*](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.systemsinnovation.io](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[5\] Mikael Seppälä, 2020\. “[What are innovation ecosystems and what do they have to do with wicked problems?](https://www.sitra.fi/en/blogs/lab-log-20-what-are-innovation-ecosystems-and-what-to-they-have-to-do-with-wicked-problems/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”, Sitra Lab.
\[6\] Simone Cicero & Al., 2020\. [Platforms-Ecosystems White Papers](https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/whitepaper2020/home?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), The Platform Design Toolkit.
\[7\] Robert Rulli & Al., 2020\. [For Impact: Generate Snowballs, Don’t Select Snowflakes!](https://drive.google.com/file/d/17EO0eNHUF11OldL9fArAZN1eJNLcJyfJ/view?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), AXILO / [Chôra Foundation](https://www.chora.foundation/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### b. Business & Innovation
\[8\] Alexander Osterwalder, [Business Model Generation, 2010](https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/ref=pd%5Flpo%5F14%5Ft%5F2/131-4286388-1784624?%5Fencoding=UTF8&pd%5Frd%5Fi=0470876417&pd%5Frd%5Fr=f59bc6ac-dc02-4eaf-870b-c36f85185e5f&pd%5Frd%5Fw=EqQpI&pd%5Frd%5Fwg=Pcb2a&pf%5Frd%5Fp=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf%5Frd%5Fr=PWQ3F2VTQJG91HSNY6RY&psc=1&refRID=PWQ3F2VTQJG91HSNY6RY&ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
\[9\] Alexander Osterwalder, [How To Build Invincible Companies, 2020](https://www.amazon.com/Invincible-Company-Alexander-Osterwalder/dp/1119523966?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (book).
\[10\] Alexander Osterwalder, [How To Build Invincible Companies, Strategyzer](https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/posts/2018/1/8/how-to-build-invincible-companies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (Blog).
[**How To Build Invincible Companies**](https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/posts/2018/1/8/how-to-build-invincible-companies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It's more important than ever for companies to focus on inventing the future. Companies have to start giving more power…*](https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/posts/2018/1/8/how-to-build-invincible-companies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.strategyzer.com](https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/posts/2018/1/8/how-to-build-invincible-companies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[11\] W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, 2004\. [Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business Review Press.](https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?dchild=1&keywords=9781625274496&linkCode=qs&qid=1593077112&s=books&sr=1-1&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**What is Blue Ocean Strategy | About Blue Ocean Strategy**](https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Blue ocean strategy is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and…*](https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.blueoceanstrategy.com](https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[12\] Jan Spruijt, 2019\. [4 Paths to a Sophisticated Innovation Strategy, OpenInnovation.eu](https://www.openinnovation.eu/09-01-2019/the-ambidextrous-organization/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**The Ambidextrous Organization**](https://www.openinnovation.eu/09-01-2019/the-ambidextrous-organization/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*4 Paths to a Sophisticated Innovation Strategy In december I reached out to both Alexander Osterwalder and John Bessant…*](https://www.openinnovation.eu/09-01-2019/the-ambidextrous-organization/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.openinnovation.eu](https://www.openinnovation.eu/09-01-2019/the-ambidextrous-organization/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### c. Design & Innovation
\[13\] Systems Innovation, [Systems Design Book 2020](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/post/systems-design-book?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**eBooks | Systems Innovation**](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/books?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Edit description*](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/books?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.systemsinnovation.io](https://www.systemsinnovation.io/books?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[14\] GK VanPatter, 2018\. [Innovation Methods Mapping: De-mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design, Humantific.](https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Methods-Mapping-mystifying-Process/dp/1540788849?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[15\] GK VanPatter, 2019\. [Rethinking Design Thinking: Making Sense of the Future That has Already Arrived (NextD Futures), Humantific.](https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Design-Thinking-Already-Arrived/dp/0578632772/ref=pd%5Flpo%5F14%5Ft%5F0/146-3290596-1168939?%5Fencoding=UTF8&pd%5Frd%5Fi=0578632772&pd%5Frd%5Fr=6b7a9a03-5e0e-477f-8958-5929fe5bdab2&pd%5Frd%5Fw=6WeFV&pd%5Frd%5Fwg=IMrKz&pf%5Frd%5Fp=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf%5Frd%5Fr=0VT01DARGPN0CHT6453S&psc=1&refRID=0VT01DARGPN0CHT6453S&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Accelerating Enterprise Adaptability | Humantific | United States**](https://www.humantific.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Recognizing that making sense of complexity was becoming essential to all forms of effective leadership we launched our…*](https://www.humantific.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.humantific.com](https://www.humantific.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
\[16\] Gary S. Metcalf, 2014\. [Social Systems and Design, Springer.](https://books.google.ch/books?id=DzS7BQAAQBAJ&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Social Systems and Design**](https://books.google.ch/books?id=DzS7BQAAQBAJ&dq&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*We live in the worlds that we help to create every day. Every activity either supports an existing system or effects…*](https://books.google.ch/books?id=DzS7BQAAQBAJ&dq&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[books.google.ch](https://books.google.ch/books?id=DzS7BQAAQBAJ&dq&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design & Critical Thinking Community Update
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking-community-update/
Last updated: 2020-11-05T00:00:00.000Z
### We need your help to create and engage in discussions that have the potential to cross boundaries.
United Nations COVID-19 Response
Hi, Kevin here.
As you may know, Design & Critical Thinking is now a community slowly growing. Our aim is to build a shared understanding & collective knowledge that crosses over different disciplines, practices, and communities.
To reach that goal, we want to create and engage in discussions that have the potential to cross these boundaries. We need design, development, management, business, product, innovation people to join, share ideas, and participate in discussions.
We have created [a small survey to capture discussion topics & ideas](https://forms.gle/xyrF3vG52AF3u6Eg8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
We would also need some motivated people to help us prepare and organize these online live discussions.
D&CT’s Slack group
Consider joining the community Slack group here 👇
[**Join Design & Critical Thinking**](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-hu62nfqv-6h4IwwcS9icahgSYiNEFHg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Slack is a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.*](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-hu62nfqv-6h4IwwcS9icahgSYiNEFHg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.slack.com](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-hu62nfqv-6h4IwwcS9icahgSYiNEFHg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thanks!
### The value of UX: Appropriate Friction
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-value-of-ux--appropriate-friction/
Last updated: 2020-09-23T00:00:00.000Z
### Designing for meaningful human experiences, not vacuous simplicity.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with Joel Marsh about the broad topic of UX design. We covered so much that we decided to break it down into smaller pieces (will release the full conversation later). Here are a few notes about that first part.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Joel Marsh**](https://twitter.com/JoelMarsh?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is an experienced UX designer, Founder at Peekerton and author of [*UX for Beginners*](https://www.amazon.com/UX-Beginners-Crash-Course-Lessons/dp/1491912685?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) published by O’Reilly.
This conversation is part of a series of podcasts for **Design & Critical Thinking,** in which I aim to create shared & collective understanding around the topics of *design*, *business*, *tech*, *society*, *complexity*, and more. The episodes are held in *English* or *French* depending on the invitee’s preferences –subtitles available in the video format.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## UX Maturity: understanding the need for ‘appropriate friction’
In this first part of our conversation, Joel introduces himself and explains his concept of *“Anti-UX”*, or *“Appropriate Friction”*, which contradicts a common misconception about UX, that is *“UX design is the act of removing friction for the users”*. This is, indeed, an oversimplification.
Here’s Joel’s thread on the topic:
This confusion with a pseudo-Lean approach (?) of UX design, a so-called “removal of waste”, is unfortunately too common. Joel & I argue instead for the importance of context over vacuous “simplicity”. Redundancies and frictions play an important role in UX, as studies have demonstrated ([here](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/peak-end-rule/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end%5Frule?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)):
> “We don’t want \[spending $100\] to be too fast & too easy. And we don’t want the deletion of anything that matters to the users to be too fast & too easy.”
Indeed, we can differentiate two important things:
- The experience itself.
- The memory of the experience.
Actual frictionless experiences will not necessarily be remembered as such. The relationship between our (humans) intents and the systems in which we evolve are learning experiences, **and we learn more from** **“negative experiences”** **than** **“positive ones”** **if there is a space for recovery** –not necessarily in the literal meaning.
*How do you design for learning and failure? How do you design for (psychological) recovery?*
Thanks for reading, watching, listening 😉
### How to understand & explain complex topics?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/how-to-understand---explain-complex-topics-/
Last updated: 2020-09-11T00:00:00.000Z
### A discussion with Massimo Curatella
In this episode, we discuss with [Massimo Curatella](https://medium.com/u/73b133f78d91?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about our need as designers to understand & explain complex topics to enable collaboration while complexity cannot be reduced or simplified by definition.
- 0:00:00 Intro
- 0:01:05 Massimo’s self-introduction & topic
- 0:03:46 Easing the learn/act (thinking/doing) tension
- 0:05:39 A good designer is also a leader
- 0:10:25 Making complexity actionable
- 0:14:38 Sensing & changing a company’s culture
- 0:22:31 The need for persuasion
- 0:24:52 Becoming agent of change & collective intelligence
- 0:29:24 Overcoming the space-for-action barrier through complexity
- 0:39:15 Leading through uncertainty
- 0:51:14 The link between critical, systems, and design thinking
- 0:55:04 Is “metacognition” or “metathinking” undervalued in design?
- 1:01:15 Conclusion
👉 **Massimo Curatella** is a Senior Strategic Designer, aiming at improving the well-being of people and the planet while promoting the sustainable adoption of new technologies and co-designing ecosystem-centered solutions.
- Website: [https://curatella.com/](https://curatella.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Twitter: [https://twitter.com/maxcuratella](https://twitter.com/maxcuratella?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/massimocuratella/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/massimocuratella/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Find out Massimo’s article about our discussion:
[**Simply Complexity Podcast with Kevin Richard and Massimo Curatella | Massimo Curatella**](https://curatella.com/simply-complexity-podcast-with-kevin-richard-and-massimo-curatella/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Kevin Richard invited me to an online cafè discussion on complexity, design, and education for his "Design & Critical…*](https://curatella.com/simply-complexity-podcast-with-kevin-richard-and-massimo-curatella/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[curatella.com](https://curatella.com/simply-complexity-podcast-with-kevin-richard-and-massimo-curatella/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
👉 **Kevin Richard** is a senior Designer & editor of “Design & Critical Thinking” through which he tries to popularize design and shares his thoughts.
- Website: [https://www.kevinrichard.ch/](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Medium: [https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Twitter: [https://twitter.com/KevinRichard\_CH](https://twitter.com/KevinRichard%5FCH?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### 🎶 Music
- “Skydive” by Loxbeats
- “Underground Stars” by Loxbeats
- “Anything” by Soyb & Amine
- Maxwell “You & I” by Amine Maxwell & Soyb
[https://www.audiolibrary.com.co](https://www.audiolibrary.com.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Thank you for reading!
### Communication For Designers
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/communication-for-designers/
Last updated: 2020-09-10T00:00:00.000Z
### When communication is conflated with “sales pitch”, this is problematic.
Hi, Kevin here!
I recently came across an interesting article called [“The one critical skill most designers overlook”](https://medium.com/designing-atlassian/this-is-the-skill-most-designers-overlook-e889e5de1a7f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), written by **Alastair Simpson** from the [Atlassian design](https://medium.com/designing-atlassian?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and I wanted to give a quick reaction to it.
[**The one critical skill most designers overlook**](https://medium.com/designing-atlassian/this-is-the-skill-most-designers-overlook-e889e5de1a7f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Most designers spend a ton of time learning about the latest design tools. Or debating the latest and greatest…*](https://medium.com/designing-atlassian/this-is-the-skill-most-designers-overlook-e889e5de1a7f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/designing-atlassian/this-is-the-skill-most-designers-overlook-e889e5de1a7f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The author develops the idea that, as designers, we are probably not spending enough time on our **communication skills**. He goes on by saying that *“communication skills can make or break any design projects that you working on”*.
I think we can agree with this statement. I mean, communication is indeed an inherent and important part of our work.
Now, what is interesting here is the development he makes from this statement. Because he is presenting us with an approach to communication that I would qualify as *“presentation skills”*. He is, from his own words, conflating **sales** and **presentation** techniques with **communication** in the general & commonly shared meaning of the term: *exchanging with others —* and I think what we really mean here is a *“mutually beneficial and meaningful exchange”*.
And I have a real problem with the underlying proposition that communication *IS* selling ideas. When he explains in the *“set the stage”* section that what is important is to “*match the audience’s expectations”* or, later on, that you *“have to engage your team”* by “*creating awareness”,* it feels like you never had all of this at the beginning, which I think is problematic. Worse, when he proposes to use *“psychology”* to create a **sense of urgency** on what you’re selling to them, this is (unintentionally) sending a bad message of potential meaningless manipulations, selfish interests, and hegemonic/elitist position from the designer in a collaborative environment.
I mean, most of these make sense only when you are in a situation where you don’t work with the people you’re trying to convince, but you did some work outside and then try to bring it back in the project — and that they are defensive toward your role. In this situation people are surely not aligned: they did not participate in your process, they know nothing about what you did, why you did it, and what it can bring to what you’re all trying to achieve.
Let me ask this:
> If people already care about what you’re doing, why wouldn’t they actively listen to you?If they know about what you did & why you did it, why wouldn’t they feel the urgency or importance already?
## Learning from systems, networks, and complexity
.
If you are a designer in a company or a freelancer working for companies, you need to understand how *“communication”* works — you know the one definition we commonly share.
Communication is an emergent property of a system. To simplify, this means that what we call *“communication”* is in fact some aspects of the relationships between the agents of the system, that we can incorporate into a larger concept of *“culture”*. *“Good communication”*, *“trust”*, *“psychological safety”*, etc. are results of the system’s behavior as a whole, not intrinsic qualities of the individuals.
**Therefore it is important to note that communication is context-dependent.** This is one of the reasons that *“good communication”* cannot be applied systematically from a framework. It has to evolve from the system, the context, through a set of (simple) rules between the agents — and here I’m only speaking of tacit rules, but you can add explicit ones and it becomes more complex.
> “The medium is the message” –[Marshall McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5Fmedium%5Fis%5Fthe%5Fmessage?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
So, trying to sell something that happens outside of a context is by definition hard, because you have to bring back enough of the original context to help people make sense of what you’re saying.
**Consequentially**, this means that communication cannot be reduced to a well designed & purposefully created pitch that comes out of your mouth, directed to an audience’s hears. And adding slides won’t change anything: people are not machines whose brain endlessly receive & stock information.
On a basic level, our brain seeks patterns and tries to make sense of them through surrounding information and past experiences. The newer the information, the more cognitive-load increases, especially if the context as well is different. This helps fixate partial but relevant information (and this is why learning by doing can be so effective). The selection is based on past (but most of the time recent) experiences and informs situational judgement. **This process is very much close to a learning process and this is why emotions play a big role here.**
By the way, this is something that the author indirectly points out when he proposes to use psychological tricks to make people care about what you’re selling. Those tricks, like **social proof** or **loss aversion,** basically trigger **strong negative emotions** that are known to play a powerful role in our decision-making process.
So, I think we could say that my disagreement with the author’s proposition is not because it is wrong, but because he equivocates *communication* with *presentation* and *sales pitch*.
## Changing the interactions, not the people
The author’s proposition is very much focusing on *endogenous factors* or in other words, the internal properties of an individual. What social & systems sciences have shown is that this is a common misconception and an outdated way of seeing communication.
As designers, we should understand that what matters here are the interactions, not the individuals. By changing the interactions, and therefore the relationships between the agents of the system (aka the people), you can change how the system behaves, in a non-linear, exponential way. So how to use this knowledge?
One thing I try to do is to embed others in the design process as much as I can. When I have ideas I try to co-create a maximum with them, when I do user testing sessions I invite them as observers, etc. This changes their relationship with us, with what we do and how we do it. I also try to make them actors of the process, by enabling them to lead or co-lead workshops, interview sessions, and other activities.
I’m not saying that I’m always good at this, but I try to consistently do it and welcome when others do the same. For them and me, this is a learning experience. And when we have to make difficult decisions, we have prior experiences & shared understanding.
Okay, obviously you cannot involve everyone in everything you do, but by including key people, those who can share and incentives others, into key moments of your process, you can then just bridge the gap in between by letting them know what you are doing & what are the outcomes.
## Conclusion
Now, clearly what I’m proposing here is not incompatible with what Alastair is talking about in his article. Indeed, **this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to sell** anything at some point to someone who may be external to this process or the development of the product/service. But when it occurs, **you then have shared trust and actionable knowledge** among a diversity of people that can support, speaks about, and *“sell”* what you’re doing.
So, to wrap it up, I will rephrase my original point by saying that I agree with most of the author’s proposition if only limited to a narrow definition of *communication*. And this where I think he made a bad job of defining what he meant by *“communication skills”*, to the point of equivocating it with at least two other definitions.
Anyway, I hope you find this article useful.
Thanks for reading!
### Shaping The Right Product: Rethinking how we develop products
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/shaping-the-right-product--rethinking-how-we-develop-products/
Last updated: 2020-09-04T00:00:00.000Z
### A discussion about Basecamp’s new book
## A discussion with Emilijan Sekulovski and Kevin Richard.
For our first [podcast](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in English, we discuss product development, production processes, organizational design, and team organization.
Basecamp’s book *“Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters”*
[**Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters**](https://basecamp.com/shapeup?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Shape Up is for product development teams who struggle to ship. Full of eye-opening insights, Shape Up will help you…*](https://basecamp.com/shapeup?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[basecamp.com](https://basecamp.com/shapeup?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
👉 **Emilijan Sekulovski** is the Head of User Experience at Pix4D, a Swiss company focused on delivering the best photogrammetry & drone mapping software for professionals. Find him on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilijan/%20?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/emil%5Fsek%20?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
👉 **Kevin Richard** is a senior Designer & editor of “Design & Critical Thinking” through which he tries to popularize design and shares his thoughts. Find him on [Medium](https://medium.com/@kvrichard?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/KevinRichard%5FCH%20?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvrichard/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
*Music:* [*Skydive by Loxbeats*](https://www.audiolibrary.com.co/loxbeats/skydive?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Building Up A Community To Create Collective Understanding
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/building-up-a-community-to-create-collective-understanding/
Last updated: 2020-08-28T00:00:00.000Z
### At the intersection of design, business, tech, innovation, ethics, and more…
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
The more I learn and do in the field of design, the more I see connections with an exponential amount of other disciplines, practices, and knowledge. To deepen our understanding of what it means to tackle a whole variety of challenges in a whole variety of contexts and environments, we have to cross the boundaries that we have created — or at least, this is the premise.
I recently shared my interest in building such a “cross-practice” community.
We need to create collective discussions, reflections, questioning, and understanding. This would bring more value, meaning, and knowledge than the sum of individual knowledge, but more interestingly, more than the knowledge available in one single practice alone.
Well, obviously to reach that intent I need people like you 😊. So if you feel interested enough to join the initiative, I created a Slack here 👉 [https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared\_invite/zt-gzqz2eip-8\~xQq912rNfn23EJI6ZcEg](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-gzqz2eip-8~xQq912rNfn23EJI6ZcEg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I wish it to be a collective & participatory thing. There is this idea of organizing video-calls with all members to make sense of our experiences/knowledge and create collective grounds, share ideas, ask questions, etc.
There is also a discussion around the co-creation of some resources, content, etc. to literary build practical, actionable, and shareable knowledge. We could also map out our collective challenges, interests, methods, (etc.) and their relationships in order to think about learnings or actions we could take.
But, hey, there is so much we could think about!
[**Create Account**](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-gzqz2eip-8~xQq912rNfn23EJI6ZcEg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Slack is where work flows. It's where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come…*](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-gzqz2eip-8~xQq912rNfn23EJI6ZcEg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[join.slack.com](https://join.slack.com/t/skepticaldesign/shared%5Finvite/zt-gzqz2eip-8~xQq912rNfn23EJI6ZcEg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Psst! The Slack link might expire after a few weeks. Don’t hesitate to drop a line and I will update it* 😉
### Journey Maps vs Service Blueprints
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/journey-maps-vs-service-blueprints/
Last updated: 2020-07-13T00:00:00.000Z
### What’s the difference? — A practical understanding.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about what’s the difference between a journey map and a service blueprint, when to use which tool and we explored a few tips about the general topic of mapping experiences.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for **Design & Critical Thinking** with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [**Swiss Innovation Academy**](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [**Service Design Magazine**](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## What are these two tools?
**A journey map** is the visual summary of the experience of a user when he goes through a service or product. The journey map shows every step of the experience, it shows what happens at the start, in the middle, and in the end. Service Designers often call this the frontstage of the experience: the description of what is visible to the user.
**A service blueprint** adds to a journey map the description of what is needed to make that experience happen. What do employees do to create the service or product that is necessary but often invisible to users? What are the internal processes that need to take place for stuff to happen for the user? So, a service blueprint is in a way a journey map to which we add what service designers call the “backstage”.
## When do you use which tool?
The journey map as we explored in the conversation is really the basis of the service blueprint. So you’ll use it usually more often than a service blueprint. As the service blueprint adds more complexity and information to a journey map, it also needs, obviously, more time to create. So “time” can be one of the first criteria to define what tool you will use.
Another criterion to know if you should build a journey map or a service blueprint is to define the goal of your mapping process. If you want to bring together all the departments of a company and synchronize them towards a shared way of working, a service blueprint is the stronger tool. If you don’t need to change or adapt internal processes, then a journey map might be the better tool.
## What are some tips and dangers when using these tools?
The biggest danger we talked about when it comes to any mapping exercise is to create so-called “proto-maps”: maps that are not based on research but describe a set of assumptions.
The problem is that often “proto-personas”, “proto-journey map” (etc.) can give a false sense of certainty when they are just an exercise of the imagination. Nevertheless, “proto-maps” like “proto-service blueprints” can be of value. For example, to imagine new services and products. These “proto-maps” can then be used as the basis for user testing.
A smart simple tip for mapping exercises is to define the different levels you want to achieve: Will it be a very detailed map? Should the map be understandable in 20 or 2 minutes? Who will be able to help us internally to build them? How much time do we have to build them?
These different levels help you make sure that while you are building your next service blueprint or journey map, you stay in line with the goals that you have set at the start — because it’s pretty easy to get lost in the process and finish by over-mapping.
## Explore and be critical
If you are interested in the topic of experience mapping, we recommend that you check out the slide deck “[There’s a Map for That! The Designers’ Cartography of Complexity](https://www.slideshare.net/linnviz/theres-a-map-for-that-the-designers-cartography-of-complexity?ref=)” by Linn Vizard.
### Designing In Startup, Corporate, and Agency Environment
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/designing-in-startup--corporate--and-agency-environment/
Last updated: 2020-07-09T00:00:00.000Z
### Same same but different — A conversation with Géraud De Laval.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Géraud de Laval](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerauddelaval/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about what are the differences in doing design in a startup, a corporate, and an agency environment.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Our guest, [Geraud de LAVAL](https://medium.com/u/4f4a3079602b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a talented product designer who works are Romande Energie and coaches startups as a freelancer.
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for **Design & Critical Thinking** with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [**Swiss Innovation Academy**](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [**Service Design Magazine**](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## A difference in speed
Generally speaking, we can see that there are three different speeds of execution for design reflecting their different constraints and setup.
In the world of startups, design goes fast as within the next week the startup might already have pivoted and changed completely.
In an agency, design might be a bit slower (but still pretty fast) as the business model is all about spending less time on projects than what you have planned in the initial budget.
Finally, on the corporate side, things can take longer. Especially because of hierarchy levels which are more complex, legal, and compliance elements and finally because of legacy structures (and software) that need to be maintained.
## A difference in trust
We couldn’t say that trust is always higher for the agency or the in-house design team in a corporate structure. But it might depend on the type of tasks.
For tasks where a lot of hands-on implementation will be needed, trust might be higher towards in-house designers. But when it comes to more strategic initiatives, it’s often harder for in-house designers to get the trust of managers who believe that hiring an outside perspective will be stronger.
## Knowledge transfer
As designers, we discover powerful insights when doing research for a specific project. These insights and learnings could often benefit others within the organization, but that often doesn’t happen.
During our conversation, we ask ourselves if booking a specific set of extra time to create that knowledge transfer at the end of every project could improve organization’s shared understanding?
## Explore and be critical
What’s the biggest difference you see between design in startups, corporate, and agencies? How could steal the strengths of the other context to make yours better?
### Mental Models For Designers
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/mental-models-for-designers/
Last updated: 2020-06-26T00:00:00.000Z
### How to use them to better understand users' expectations.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about what are mental models and how to use them in a simplified way in our design process.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for *Design & Critical Thinking* with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [*Swiss Innovation Academy*](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [*Service Design Magazine*](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## What are “mental models”?
Mental models are an explanation of how a person sees the world and how it works. The way I believe something works has a huge impact on how I interact with it.
## What is a simplified mental model for designers?
I use a simplified type of mental model in order to, for example, understand what’s the mental model for a certain task is. I ask employees: *“If you had to explain your work by choosing another profession that is similar to yours which one would it be? Would you be a doctor? A teacher? A firefighter?”*
If a user sees himself as a firefighter in specific circumstances, this will helps create solutions and services that fit that specific mental model in the right context.
## Context and time-specific mental models
Mental models are specific in context and time. A manager can use a mental model of the firefighter when it comes to handling clients, but can then switch to the mental model of the *“mom”* when it comes to handling team members.
---
## Explore and be critical
If you want an in-depth view of the power of mental models you can check out the [book](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) by **Indy Young**. Also on her website, you’ll find tons of [great resources](https://indiyoung.com/pubs-apps/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) on the subject.
[**Mental model | Wikiwand**](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mental%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a…*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mental%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wikiwand.com](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mental%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Mental Models and User Experience Design**](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Mental models are one of the most important concepts in human-computer interaction (HCI). Indeed, we spend a good deal…*](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Mental Models - Rosenfeld Media**](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Indi Young is a freelance researcher who coaches, writes, and speaks about inclusive software strategy, bringing depth…*](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[rosenfeldmedia.com](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### In Search Of Delight Experience, Mental Models For Designers, and more…
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/in-search-of-delight-experience--mental-models-for-designers--and-more-/
Last updated: 2020-06-26T00:00:00.000Z
---
## Recently Published
- [**In Search of Delightful Experience —** ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/in-search-of-delightful-experience-c9d0161ff8bd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Is there a formula to designing for delight?*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/in-search-of-delightful-experience-c9d0161ff8bd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [**The Ethics Of Design Sprint**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ — ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*An endeavor you are passively subscribing to.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [**The Multiples Design Thinking**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ — ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*There is no such thing as one single true “design thinking”, and what complexity has to do with it.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Recent Podcasts
From ‘Design & Critical Thinking’ Series.
- [**Mental Models For Designers**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/mental-models-for-designers-f7aa871458bb?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ — ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/mental-models-for-designers-f7aa871458bb?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*How to use them to better understand users’ expectations.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/mental-models-for-designers-f7aa871458bb?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [**A Conversation About Strategic Design —** ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-conversation-about-strategic-design-efaa7e42f32b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*What it is and how it looks like to practice it in an organization.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-conversation-about-strategic-design-efaa7e42f32b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [**Tips For Remote Workshops —** ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/tips-for-remote-workshops-7e334d0c8943?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Prepare, organize, motivates, and communicate better.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/tips-for-remote-workshops-7e334d0c8943?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [**Design Differently Through The Negative —** ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-differently-through-the-negative-a45bda405f1c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Define boundaries, find opportunities, and build evaluative criteria.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-differently-through-the-negative-a45bda405f1c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Thank You
Thank you for reading, following, sharing, and supporting this publication!
Don’t hesitate to share feedback and follow the publication on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SkepticalDesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Also, you can [publish your own piece here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/publish-your-article-with-human-centered-thinking-989ce6b06236?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### A Conversation About Strategic Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-conversation-about-strategic-design/
Last updated: 2020-06-20T00:00:00.000Z
### What it is and how it looks like to practice it in an organization.
Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Géraud de Laval](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerauddelaval/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about what is Strategic Design and how it takes form in different organizations.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Our guest, [Geraud de LAVAL](https://medium.com/u/4f4a3079602b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a talented product designer who works are Romande Energie and coaches startups as a freelancer.
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for **Design & Critical Thinking** with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [**Swiss Innovation Academy**](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [**Service Design Magazine**](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## What is strategic design?
Strategic design is basically the art of zooming out and asking where are we going with this? What the change that we want to create and why does that change matter? At that stage of design, you are not interested in details like *“how will this button look like”*, but you will ask questions like *“where do we want to be as a group in 5 years, and what’s holding us back?”*.
But how is that different from *“strategy”*? It can be different because we might use a prototyping mindset –through the use of scenarios– and start with empathizing with the people we want to serve –through interviews to prepare it for example.
## The importance of scenarios
There is not just one way to arrive at a given goal. Designers understand that as they love to prototype different solutions. The same goes when designers do strategic design.
The designer doing strategic design will create multiple scenarios. Each scenario will be quickly tested out in order to evaluate what are the positive forces that push us in that direction and what’s holding us back.
## Use interviews to prepare it
As most initiatives performed by designers, strategic design also starts by empathizing with the people we aim to serve. **This means that preparatory interviews are key** if you were for example to prepare a workshop to prepare the next strategy of a company, department, or group.
## Explore and be critical
If you are interested in the topic of strategic design, we compiled a list of links and resources that might help you explore this topic by yourself and build your own opinion about it.
[**Strategic design | Wikiwand**](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Strategic%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Strategic design is the application of future-oriented design principles in order to increase an organization's…*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Strategic%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wikiwand.com](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Strategic%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**What is strategic design?**](https://www.quora.com/What-is-strategic-design?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Answer (1 of 2): Here is a good definition of Strategic Design given by Brian Ling on Designsojourn - > Strategic…*](https://www.quora.com/What-is-strategic-design?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.quora.com](https://www.quora.com/What-is-strategic-design?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**What is strategic design?**](http://helsinkidesignlab.org/pages/what-is-strategic-design.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Helsinki Design Lab helps government see the 'architecture of problems.' We assist decision-makers to view challenges…*](http://helsinkidesignlab.org/pages/what-is-strategic-design.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[helsinkidesignlab.org](http://helsinkidesignlab.org/pages/what-is-strategic-design.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**What a strategic designer\* does**](https://medium.com/strategic-design-lab/what-a-strategic-designer-does-b942f295379?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*\*I prefer Design strategist*](https://medium.com/strategic-design-lab/what-a-strategic-designer-does-b942f295379?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/strategic-design-lab/what-a-strategic-designer-does-b942f295379?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Tips For Remote Workshops
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/tips-for-remote-workshops/
Last updated: 2020-06-12T00:00:00.000Z
### Prepare, organize, motivates, and communicate better.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about the very simple and practical tips when you organize remote workshops. Here’s a summary 👇
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for *Design & Critical Thinking* with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [*Swiss Innovation Academy*](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [*Service Design Magazine*](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Preparation is even more important
Preparation is key for any workshop, but it’s maybe even more important for remote workshops. Dry runs where you bring together all workshop participants to try out the tools and verify that everything works are a must-have. Every time you’ll find new bugs or issues that you have to fix. Someone who can’t connect his mic, another person who has to switch browsers, etc.
## Hand signs help
Often in remote workshops, everyone is muted to avoid hearing kids screaming, people sneezing, etc. But that makes quick reactions harder. Also as you don’t see the full-body, it’s harder to read how someone feels when you just see a face.
That’s why it can be smart to use hand signs. A simple thumb up to show that you agree. The double thumb up to show excitement. A waving hand to say that you have something to add, etc.
## You can transfer what you learned
When you’ll do your first remote workshops you’ll learn new ways of facilitating. These new ways of facilitating or organizing a workshop can then be transferred back to your on-site workshops. You learned to use more hand signs, great, maybe that could make on-site workshops even stronger!
---
## Explore and be critical
If you are interested in going further, Daniele has prepared for you a few resources about remote workshops that can help you get started. And for those interested in the usage of hand signs in workshops [check out Finger Rules on Sessionlab](https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/finger-rules?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**Finger Rules**](https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/finger-rules?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Preparation Prepare a flipchart with drawings of all the hand signs that you want to use during the meeting and a short…*](https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/finger-rules?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.sessionlab.com](https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/finger-rules?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Remote workshops (public)**](https://www.notion.so/Remote-workshops-public-6831033e13d44c8c9c492d99a04b3196?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Make a test call during 30 minutes and get the phone numbers or email of participants in order to fix problems if…*](https://www.notion.so/Remote-workshops-public-6831033e13d44c8c9c492d99a04b3196?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so/Remote-workshops-public-6831033e13d44c8c9c492d99a04b3196?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Complexity Dependent Decision Making
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/complexity-dependent-decision-making/
Last updated: 2020-06-10T00:00:00.000Z
Thanks for this interesting piece [Adrian H. Raudaschl](https://medium.com/u/921c5fccdb85?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 👏
I want to add some thoughts and remarks to yours, and hopefully spark discussion 🤷♂ 😉
---
## 1/6 The Skeptic Approach: Less Wrong.
> “Product managers (PMs) don’t build products. However, what we do contribute is something equally tangible: decisions. For any given day we can make hundreds of choices. But, being wrong about an important decision can feel like a very public and career-damaging affair, so it’s worth investing the time to develop this skill.”
First of all, I think you touch upon a very important point here: as decision-makers, we *should* aim at being *“less wrong”*, not more *“true”*. This mindset transcribes in being more comfortable in navigating uncertainty: *knowing that you don’t know mitigates the cognitive dissonance of ignorance –no disillusion for whom is ready to drop the comfort of the illusion of certainty.*
[**LessWrong 2.0**](https://www.lesswrong.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*A community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality*](https://www.lesswrong.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## 2/6 The Missing variable: context.
I humbly think you’re missing an important variable in your decision model: the context (or environment). Your decisions are not isolated components, and all contexts do not imply the same kind of *level of confidence*, nor imply necessarily the same kind of decisions. **The complexity of the environment** you are navigating in should call for different types of *thinking* and *evidence*.
Note that your agency –ability to make sense & act– is interrelated with the systems you are part of, [and so are the tools (thinking styles, methods, etc.) you (should) use.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#9aa2)
Cynefin Framework
For instance, most technical & engineering contexts are *known-knowns* (Obvious) and *known-unknowns* (Complicated) environments: here, decision-makers can rely on best-practices, intuition, classical analysis, and reductionism because of predictability of the environment.
---
## 3/6 Measuring Wrongness Over Truthness.
> “Try this: Envision a future where everything has worked out, and your goals have been achieved. Then ask yourself, “How did we get here?”. This lets you think through the steps taken that lead to success, and any additional decisions/events required along the way.”
I‘ll be quick on this one, but in an *uncertain environment*, it is way easier to define in your hypothetical future *what you don’t want to see as outcomes*. [Setting-up constraints open opportunities, possibilities, and different kind of thinking.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-differently-through-the-negative-a45bda405f1c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) It’s less about focusing on *“successes” —* because ofuncertainty — than [measuring how wrong we are (or can be)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis%5Fof%5Fcompeting%5Fhypotheses?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Source: Sitra Lab
---
## 4/6 On Self-determinism.
> “We make bad decisions mostly as the consequence of cognitive bias.”
I cannot overstate how:
1. I sincerely **understand** why you’re believing such a thing;
2. I kinda **disagree** with this over-simplistic mono-causal description.
We make *“bad”* decisions because of many things: *limited or contradictory data, systemic & unpredictable changes, inaccurate models, maladapted tools,* to cite a few. And indeed, our *cognitive bias*. [But, you ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[also](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ make ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“good”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ decisions (by many standards) because of your cognitive bias as well, and this, every day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Cognitive biases are not *“bugs in the matrix”*. They are (unavoidable) patterns of thinking, which sometimes, lead to erroneous conclusions.
Therefore, what’s *bad* and *good* is not dependent upon which a decision was informed by our cognitive biases or not –it most certainly always is.
I’m not sure you’re implying this, but the [myth of self-determined all-rational (and emotionless) agents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is (should be) long dead since [behavioral sciences and neurosciences showed that emotions are necessary components to our ability to make decisions.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%5FKahneman?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I know that it might seem trivial, but reducing *“bad decisions”* to self-deterministic mono-causal explanations IS by definition ignoring and neglecting the impact of all the (systemic) exogenous factors at play. Ironically, this is a [fundamental attribution error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental%5Fattribution%5Ferror?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**In short:** your environment influences you as much as you influence it.
You should adjust your cursor accordingly.
---
## 5/6 Probabilistic Thinking → Bayesian Thinking.
> “One of the most useful tools I have found for comparing decisions is a [*Decision Matrix*](http://jefkalil.com/2015/03/the-decision-matrix-a-product-managers-tool/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). I love this tool. It forces you to process a set of well-defined alternatives from many different angles.”
An interesting tool indeed. But the problem you seem to point out later is the lack of consideration for prior belief.
> “Allow yourself to mull over your options. Go for a long walk or just get creative enough to let your mind wander and think away in the background.”
See, you don’t really start from a blank page. Most of the time, what comes first in mind are our *“preferred”* assumptions about the problem, the solution, etc. Your probabilistic model lacks *“forgiveness”* to 1) the user fallibility; 2) an unknown context.
Source.
In fact, you probably don’t want a model that tells you what IS the *“good answer”*, but more what are, based on the available information, **the likelihood of ALL the answers to be correct**, and then seek for more evidence to adjust your *scale of likelihood*. The trick here is that you never really exclude any proposition.
Bayesian Thinking
Theses two videos [here](https://youtu.be/x-2uVNze56s?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (in French with English subtitles) and [here](https://youtu.be/BrK7X%5FXlGB8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) explains the approach very well. But, well, I guess, you probably already know it.
---
## 6/6 A Portfolio Approach
My final, short point.
Because *complex*, *uncertain*, and *adaptive* environments cannot be reduced to clear causal relationships (only in hindsight), a portfolio approach of strategies (decisions, hypotheses, etc.) maximizes chances to impact *positively* your environment.
Source
---
**What do you think of these points?**
Anyway, hope this helps in your interesting reflection around decision making 👍
Best, Kevin.
### The Ethics Of Design Sprint
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-ethics-of-design-sprint/
Last updated: 2020-06-09T00:00:00.000Z
### An endeavor you are passively subscribing to.
Unsplash
> The question is not whether it is morally acceptable to win the race. The question is ‘should we run the race in the first place?’
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Not so long ago, [I shared some thoughts about the necessity of Design Sprint](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). The reason is that so many are keen to “tweak” or adapt the method to their context. [As I explained here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), that’s totally expected because of the relationship between our tools and the context we are evolving in. And the more the context is ambiguous and complex, the stronger is this relationship: **both are interrelated to our ability to act.**
[**\[Brainshot\] Is Design Sprint A Necessity?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Is one single tool more important than the goals it should help to achieve? Switching the center of discussion.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Beyond this reality, designers’ keenness to favor the Design Sprint (DS) by almost [systematically conflating it with other approaches](https://uxdesign.cc/design-sprints-are-not-sprints-cd6c3933e97d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), like say, the Design Thinking (DT), is not only proof of a form of lack of maturity, but also a good demonstration of a recurring issue in the design field: a philosophy of *“acceleration”* for the sake of *“delivering fast”*.
---
## Surface Similarities: An Equivocation Fallacy.
Firstly, understanding the main differences between DS and DT is important to tackle our modern challenges. In short, the Design Sprint is to Design Thinking what a production line (or classic manufacturing) is to Agile development –and you’ll see how this comparison is not trivial.
Both the *Design Sprint* and the *production line* imply *linearity*, *reductionism*, *optimization* whereas the *Design Thinking* and *Agile* are both frameworks and philosophies. **It’s about levels of abstraction.**
Cynefin Framework
Because of several intrinsic differences, the space for mapping, thinking, understanding (sensemaking), and acting they allow are *very different*. This determines your ability to:
1. **Navigate complexity** and deepen your understanding of the problem space;
2. **Create time and space** for long-lasting shared understanding (i.e. at company scale);
3. **Open-up opportunities** for diversified strategies (instead of single-point solution) –strategies are not necessarily digital products;
4. **Favor self-organization**, emergent, and platform-like thinking/behavior;
5. **Ensure environment responsiveness/adaptiveness** (non-linearity) –instead of linear and rigid;
6. Etc.
So, even though on the surface, it’s easy to conflate *Design Thinking* with *Design Sprint* (and a *production line* with *Agile*) **because of apparent similarities**, that’s as far as it goes.
This *equivocation fallacy* is prevalent in the tech world, because –it has to be admitted– it is way more convenient and comfortable to see problems as a *one-way-to-solution* while (genuinely) believing you simply “apply” Design Thinking “principles”.
If designers feel uncomfortable “using” the Design Thinking approach, that’s ironically probably because of its very nature: the process much more adapts to its reality (navigate uncertainty) –whereas the Design Sprint forces reality to fit the process (controlled environment).
Here, the analogy to Design Sprint “recipe” fits pretty well with this observation, as [I covered in another article](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> “Let’s extend a bit further the recipe analogy by looking at the ‘chef/cooking’ domain to see its limitations. If you ever worked with a chef, you should know that:- A chef’s kitchen is an extremely controlled environment, not an uncharted territory. In fact, it has been designed for that very purpose.
> \- It’s all about mastering the process. When you have dozens or hundreds of clients waiting in the restaurant, it’s no time for doubts, questions, change in plans, or improvisation.
> \- In a chef’s kitchen, there is no place for uncertainty or exploration. Everything has been devised and tested beforehand.
> \- It’s about delivering outputs at the right rhythm and in a qualitative manner.”
As you can find in the article, this reasoning implies we already know the expected result. This is a production line –just look at the fast-food industry as an extreme.
[**The 4 Pancakes Of Great Design**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*How to design in large and complex organizations.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Design Sprint’s parent philosophies: Solutionism and Productivism.
Secondly, this *“acceleration”* of the design process relates to the same phenomenon visible in almost every industry related to tech (but not only). The Design Sprint crystalizes this issue pretty well.
> “Teams **must** generate ideas; Designers **must** deliver prototypes quickly; teams **must** learn fast and iterate;”
Here are the underlying imperatives (as principles) promoted by the Design Sprint. *“Ideas”* are not much judged on the basis of how they originated (are they properly informed), but more on how successfully they pass the so-called *“reality check”* –assuming the way you test properly reflects your *“reality”*.
Interestingly, these imperatives remind us of the *Lean Startup* *“build→measure→learn”* cycle, from which the Design Sprint clearly originates. This engineering approach to business (and design) is solution-begging, meaning that it often assumes that every problem must be answered by a defined & finite solution –hence solutionism. This is the *“there is an app for that”* effect.
[**Eric Ries**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric%5FRies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) himself claimed that the *Lean Startup* was heavily inspired, as its name suggests, by the *Lean Manufacturing* developed by Toyota –even though the comparison is criticized for its inconsistencies. However, we can clearly find tendencies towards *reductionism*, *optimization*, *redundancy removal*, *efficiency*, and *streamlined linearity*.
source
Toyota’s *Lean Manufacturing* is, in many ways, a concrete example of *productivistic ideals* of the manufacturing era, still ongoing today. The very same tendencies that have put most countries at risk in the face of the pandemic. Why? Because the world isn’t linear, and our societal challenges are complex –i.e. redundancies have their place in such context.
To simplify, the supposed *“goodness”* of this philosophy comes from the optimization of the production lines, impacting the production capacity and quality while reducing costs. Here, *“good”* means *“more goods at the same price, but with reduced costs”*.
Intuitively, this quality, this *“goodness”*, is transferred to any means toward this achievement. Mimetically any sub-part of the promise seems to inherit its quality: removing redundancies helped to achieve *\[the goal\]* therefore it is good, regardless of other consequences.
This is flawed in many ways, let alone logically, despite being intuitive and attractive.
So, the Design Sprint inherited from these philosophies as well as transposed qualities. The *Lean Startup* showed successes in scaling some startups fast by streamlining (software) production, reducing costs of materializing ideas in a rapid manner –whatever the idea.
> “Evolution is analogous to learning cycles, indeed. But dropping a cat from a cliff, iteratively, in the hope it spontaneously develop wings –as some companies do– is not how evolution works.”
The ethics of Design Sprint is not really different: *“good”* means *“deliver fast”* from the inherited premise that it will *“produce more while reducing costs”*. Here, cheaper to develop ideas allow early *“reality-check”* –whatever this means. Any means toward this goal is assumed to be as good as the conclusion. Without being necessarily aware of it, this may certainly become an imperative moral duty for many designers.
[As explained here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), moral duties are deontological arguments. We do *this* or *that* because it is *intrinsically good*, whatever the consequences. But, **could it be that what is good by Design Sprint standards aren’t for the environment we are solving problems for?**
The answer is not so trivial, and it can surely approximate a good *YES*, it *CAN* and it *IS*. By too easily heading first at solutions before properly understanding the underlying systems, we are creating tomorrow’s problems while remaining ignorant of the systemic interactions that created the problem we were trying to *“solve”* in the first place.
[**Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Understanding the differences between metaethics, normative ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> “The question is not ‘can we hit, faster, more nails with our hammer?’; the question is ‘do we need a hammer in the first place?’.”
---
## The “is-ought” problem.
Okay, so almost everything I just presented to you constitutes a moral problem: moral values, such as *good* and *bad*, are derived from *descriptive qualities* that have been turned into *prescriptive statements*.
> For instance:We observe “x”;
> A majority of people do “x”;
> Therefore we should do “x”.
On the matter, [David Hume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%5FHume?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) tells us that [one cannot easily derive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought%5Fproblem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) prescriptive statements (what we ought to do) from observations of *“what is”* –also called positive statements– unless one is able to present arguments for what one ought to do besides the fact that this is how things are today. **In other words, this is not because something is a certain way that we ought to do it this way.**
---
## Nuancing My Criticism
**First**, please, note that I do not aim to position this critique from a *“this”* vs *“that”* perspective. Indeed, I’m necessarily biased towards my understanding of what *IS* and what *SHOULD*, however, this piece is more an attempt for me **to make sense & articulate my perspective, and spark discussion.**
**Secondly**, in a more nuanced way, I will add that *“Design Thinking”* — for which it certainly seems I advocate for — is guilty of the same issues. Or, at least in most definitions and application of it. [As I wrote here, there is not one single “Design Thinking”](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**The Multiples Design Thinking**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*There is no such thing as one single true “design thinking”, and what complexity has to do with it.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Thirdly**, we can observe that *linearity* and *non-linearity* are not to be opposed but are, instead, both the ends of the same continuum and, therefore, are both necessary.
Mapping the tension between two interdependent sides of the same problem.
**My critique here goes against the tentatives to equivocate two notions (and what they imply) as if they were the same.** This does not mean one is better, when in fact, it depends on the context.
.
---
## Conclusion
**Again, I’m not saying** the Design Sprint is *bad* or that you should not use it. But, as I often say, we should know the problems and limits of our tools. **The problem is that many use it in plain ignorance and that’s precisely my point here.**
Design Sprint is solution-begging and heavily framed for tech *solutionism*. The answer (almost) lies in the question, like a beautiful example of circular reasoning. But, to be fair, I am not saying that you can not *“produce”* something else with it, even though it is almost always implied as such. [Neither am I implying that Design Thinking is exempt from any problems, misuses, or ethical issues.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-multiples-design-thinking-7fe29a9b719?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Linear approaches taken into a larger systemic approach do make sense.**
However, I do say that we must deeply *think* –not just *talk*, *share*, *sell*– about the “How” we do design, else who will?
And please, mind that criticizing a trendy tool is indeed a good (excuse?) opportunity to reflect on certain interesting patterns, aspects, and issues of the field.
Finally, the *“is-ought”* problem is an invitation to build strong(er) arguments for the moral imperative implied by the Design Sprint. *What are yours?*
*What makes it “good” in your context? Are there any plausible or observable consequences of such behavior? Is the frame of reference necessarily “us” (we designers, makers, innovators, etc.) or is it the context we are working in?*
BTW, if you want to read a good criticism of Design Thinking, [I invite you to read this post by GK VanPatter from ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-fiction-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Humantific*](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-fiction-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)on LinkedIn.
[**Truth or Fiction?**](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-fiction-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Hello again Humantific readers. Happy to be alive and posting here while we are all in the Covid storm.*](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-fiction-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-fiction-gk-vanpatter/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**Thanks for reading!**
What are your thoughts about this?
---
## Sources & References
### 1\. Design
- [*Design thinking*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design%5Fthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design%5Fthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?*](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Rikke Friis Dam and Yu Siang Teo in The Interaction Design Foundation (2018)](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Why Design Thinking Works*](https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-design-thinking-works?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Jeanne Liedtka in Harvard Business Review (2018)](https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-design-thinking-works?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Wicked problem*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked%5Fproblem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked%5Fproblem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Design Sprint Book, Jake Knapp](https://www.thesprintbook.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Design Sprint — GV](https://www.gv.com/sprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Share and engage with the Design Sprint Community, The Design Sprint Kit](https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*The 4 Pancakes Of Great Design — How to design in large organizations*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Kevin Richard in Design & Critical Thinking (2019)](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Design Sprints are not actual Sprints*](https://uxdesign.cc/design-sprints-are-not-sprints-cd6c3933e97d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Mauricio Wolff in UX Collective (2020)](https://uxdesign.cc/design-sprints-are-not-sprints-cd6c3933e97d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Design Sprint = Design Thinking, really?*](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/design-sprint-design-thinking-really-e7b757487a81?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Kevin Richard (2020)](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/design-sprint-design-thinking-really-e7b757487a81?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 2\. Lean Startup & Manufacturing
- [*The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses*](https://www.academia.edu/6418358/The%5FLean%5FStartup%5FHow%5FToday%5Fs%5FEntrepreneurs%5FUse%5FContinuous%5FInnovation%5Fto%5FCreate%5FRadically%5FSuccessful%5FBusinesses?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ (2011), Academia](https://www.academia.edu/6418358/The%5FLean%5FStartup%5FHow%5FToday%5Fs%5FEntrepreneurs%5FUse%5FContinuous%5FInnovation%5Fto%5FCreate%5FRadically%5FSuccessful%5FBusinesses?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Toyota Production System — Vision & Philosophy*](https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website](https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*The Lean Startup: A pragmatic view on its Flaws and Pitfalls*](http://essay.utwente.nl/66221/1/Heitmann%5FBA%5FMB.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Jan Heitmann, The University of Twente (2014)](http://essay.utwente.nl/66221/1/Heitmann%5FBA%5FMB.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Not every startup should be a Lean Startup or embrace the pivot*](https://blogs.anderson.ucla.edu/gap/2013/05/marc-andreessen-not-every-startup-should-be-a-lean-startup-or-embrace-the-pivot.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Marc Andreessen (2012)](https://blogs.anderson.ucla.edu/gap/2013/05/marc-andreessen-not-every-startup-should-be-a-lean-startup-or-embrace-the-pivot.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Lean philosophy and its applications in the service industry: a review of the current knowledge*](https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-65132015005079012&script=sci%5Farttext&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Higor dos Reis Leite & al. (2015)](https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-65132015005079012&script=sci%5Farttext&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Why Companies are Not Startups*](https://steveblank.com/2014/03/04/why-companies-are-not-startups/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Steve Blank (2014)](https://steveblank.com/2014/03/04/why-companies-are-not-startups/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Why the Lean Start-up Has Serious Flaws*](https://www.inc.com/jon-burgstone/flaws-in-the-lean-start-up.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Jon Burgstone in Inc. (2012)](https://www.inc.com/jon-burgstone/flaws-in-the-lean-start-up.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*The Case for the Fat Start-Up*](http://allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-startup/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ — Ben Horowitz — News — AllThingsD](http://allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-startup/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*The problem with a Lean Startup: the Minimum Viable Product*](http://paulkortman.com/2012/11/21/the-problem-with-a-lean-startup-the-minimum-viable-product/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Paul Kortman (2012)](http://paulkortman.com/2012/11/21/the-problem-with-a-lean-startup-the-minimum-viable-product/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 3\. Moral & Ethics
- *Is–ought problem*, [RationalWiki](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought%5Fproblem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought%5Fproblem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*A Treatise of Human Nature*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%5FTreatise%5Fof%5FHuman%5FNature?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [David Hume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%5FHume?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (1739)
- [*Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Kevin Richard in Design & Critical Thinking (2020)](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 4\. Misc
- [Silicon Valley Solutionism: A Reductionist Account of the Human Condition, In Dark Times (2018)](https://medium.com/@indarktimes/silicon-valley-solutionism-a-reductionist-account-of-the-human-condition-87bde7432b6b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Silicon Valley’s ‘solutionism’ issues appear to be scaling, TechRepublic](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/silicon-valleys-solutionism-issues-appear-to-be-scaling/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Perils of Perfection, by Evgeny Morozov, The New York Times (2013)](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/the-perils-of-perfection.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Basic Principles of Effectuation — How to Use What You Already Have to Become More Innovative, The Interaction Design Foundation (2018)](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/the-basic-principles-of-effectuation-how-to-use-what-you-already-have-to-become-more-innovative?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [*Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning*](https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, by Stewart Brand in MIT Journal of Design and Science (2018)](https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design Differently Through The Negative
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-differently-through-the-negative/
Last updated: 2020-06-07T00:00:00.000Z
### Define boundaries, find opportunities, and build evaluative criteria.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about the idea that sometimes it’s easier to define what something is not instead of what it is. Here a few notes about that conversation.
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for *Design & Critical Thinking* with Daniele (hold in French). [Daniele Catalanotto](https://medium.com/u/d61f63103c5f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [*Swiss Innovation Academy*](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [*Service Design Magazine*](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## What do we mean with negative definitions?
*Negative definitions* are the idea that instead of defining what something is, you define what something isn’t. For example, if I had to define what type of car I want to buy, I can say: I don’t want it to be a truck, neither a limousine.
Imagine a strategy game like [*Civilization*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization%5F%28series%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). When you start, a thick fog covers the entire map and most of the terrain is hidden to all participants. You can move your pawns to uncover more of the map but note that you actually see the terrain as far as your pawns can: a few cells around. Your map only “captures” important events, such as mountains, cities, rivers, etc. but other players’ moves and their pawns are always hidden to you except if at sight range: *i.e. the map isn’t the territory.*
Of course, in this case, the map is defined, has limits, and one of the goals is (obviously) to uncover it all. But let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that the map is undefined in the sense that it has no clear limits.
Here, going by the negative could mean intentionally not exploring some areas of the map, and therefore drawing some boundaries to a complex situation.
Why is that? Well, some clues here:
1. **Prior experiences:** people that experienced the challenges so far know what consequences had negative impacts on their lives.
2. [**Negativity bias**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**:** we all have a tendency to remember better negative events even when of equal intensity to positive ones. This bias makes negative events more salient as they require more cognitive resources to process.
Interestingly, we have more differentiated terms and vocabulary to explain negative things.
## A good tool for the start of projects
This way of defining things by the negative is especially interesting when the project you are working in is hard to grasp and the limits of the project aren’t clear to all stakeholders involved in it.
I use this type of negative definition especially at the start of the project. For example, at the start of a digital transformation project in a company, the team might define that: *this initiative should never track employees*. This becomes then a design principle for the rest of the project.
Daniele uses these types of negative definition even before projects start. While he is in the sales process he always shows what the solution he is offering does, and what it doesn’t do.
## A good evaluation tool
Once you have defined the *“don’t”* of a project or the negative boundaries you can re-use after the start of the project. For example, you can ask yourself: *“Does this feature that we are adding respect the fact that we don’t want to track employees?”*
---
## Explore and be critical
If you are interested in the topic of negative definitions we compiled a list of links and resources that might help you explore this topic by yourself and build your own opinion about it.
[**Show me what you won’t do for me**](https://service-design.co/show-me-what-you-wont-do-for-me-57bb252d3019?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*How to better manage customer expectations*](https://service-design.co/show-me-what-you-wont-do-for-me-57bb252d3019?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[service-design.co](https://service-design.co/show-me-what-you-wont-do-for-me-57bb252d3019?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Negativity bias | Wikiwand**](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Negativity%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The negativity bias,\[1\] also known as the negativity effect, is the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things…*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Negativity%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wikiwand.com](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Negativity%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**What is Worst Possible Idea?**](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/worst-possible-idea?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Worst Possible Idea is a Design Thinking technique where team members seek the worst solutions in ideation sessions…*](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/worst-possible-idea?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.interaction-design.org](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/worst-possible-idea?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**To Come Up with a Good Idea, Start by Imagining the Worst Idea Possible**](https://hbr.org/2017/08/to-come-up-with-a-good-idea-start-by-imagining-the-worst-idea-possible?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Executive Summary There are many creative tools a designer uses to think differently, but none is more…*](https://hbr.org/2017/08/to-come-up-with-a-good-idea-start-by-imagining-the-worst-idea-possible?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[hbr.org](https://hbr.org/2017/08/to-come-up-with-a-good-idea-start-by-imagining-the-worst-idea-possible?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Self-service & Shadow Work In Service Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/self-service---shadow-work-in-service-design/
Last updated: 2020-05-29T00:00:00.000Z
### What is it, how to use it, and how to mitigate some ethical issues.
Unsplash
Hi, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about the notions of *Self-service* and *Shadow Work*. Here is a short summary of this conversation.👇👇
[🎙 See listening options here!](https://anchor.fm/design-critical-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for *Design & Critical Thinking* with Daniele (hold in French). Daniele is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [*Swiss Innovation Academy*](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [*Service Design Magazine*](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
[🌟 Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new episodes are out!](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Kee-xzhjnjAlRy0pfcxwA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## What do we mean by “self-service” and “shadow work”?
👉 **Self-service** is the idea that the user does the work without needing any interaction with a staff worker. For example, when you go buy groceries, you are the person going in the shop. You are the person who searches and carries that frozen pizza. And you are the person who scans the product and pays at the cashless counter where there is no worker.
👉 **Shadow work** is is a term coined by Austrian philosopher [Ivan Illich](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituaries.highereducation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Shadow work is basically unpaid labor that benefits someone else.
[**Obituary: Ivan Illich**](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituaries.highereducation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Ivan Illich, who has died of cancer aged 76, was one of the world's great thinkers, a polymath whose output covered…*](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituaries.highereducation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituaries.highereducation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Is all self-service shadow work?
We would say that the difference between self-service and shadow work is the notion of “win-win”. If both parties, the company & the user, get something out of those experiences, then we can say it’s *“good”* self-service: a mutual exchange.
But on the other side, when as a user I don’t get anything in return (it’s not cheaper, nor quicker, nor easier for me) or that the tradeoff is not clear (i.e. I’m not really sure what I got in the exchange), then we can consider that it’s *shadow work* because it mainly benefits the company and not the user.
## Make the tradeoff visible to avoid shadow work
How can you avoid that your self-service experience becomes shadow work that hurts the customer? The quick answer: show the tradeoff.
**This is transparency in its most basic form.**
**Display what the person gains** as it is a self-service experience, **and also what she looses**: as it’s a self-service experience, it’s cheaper but you have to invest more of your own time.
When it starts to become interesting is when we can quantify that tradeoff: i.e. *“it will take you 20 minutes of your time, but you’ll save 100 bucks.”*
---
## Explore and be critical!
If you are interested in the topic of self-service and shadow work, Daniele compiled a list of links and resources that might help you explore this topic by yourself and build your own opinion about it 👇👇
[**Self Service Support (public)**](https://www.notion.so/Self-Service-Support-public-9905ff9f9dfc44ab946bef0dd82d472b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Self service support means that people find by themselves the answers to their questions for examples via public…*](https://www.notion.so/Self-Service-Support-public-9905ff9f9dfc44ab946bef0dd82d472b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so/Self-Service-Support-public-9905ff9f9dfc44ab946bef0dd82d472b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### The Multiples Design Thinking
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-multiples-design-thinking/
Last updated: 2020-05-28T00:00:00.000Z
### There is no such thing as one single true “design thinking”, and what complexity has to do with it.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
A quick reflection on Design Thinking and why I disagree with most of today’s use of the concept.
And yes, I know what it sounds like but, please, bear with me: what I’m going at is probably the most common misunderstanding in the field. But first, let me clarify something: yes, you can find a somewhat “standard” definition of Design Thinking from some authorities.
It does not prevent practitioners to disagree on terms like *process, stages, phases, steps, methodology, method, etc.*
> So, is Design Thinking a process? Or is it a “way to think”? Or is it a method? Do we have to pass through all the steps? Or are they stages? Phases?Well, it depends… right?
My point is that **people really mean different things** when they talk about Design Thinking. In practice, Design Thinking is not a standardized approach, nor a clearly defined body of knowledge, despite what one might think. From its origins to its current mainstream use, **the approach evolved and mutated following its various appropriations** as well as the evolution and specialization of the design practices.
Because of this, and its inherent adaptiveness, this made the concept easily permeable to other concepts. For instance, the Business appropriation of the Design Thinking added notions from the consumer, marketing, economics, and management theories (as taught in business schools). The appropriation of the approach in the *“recent”* technology-as-product field merged it with concepts from engineering and manufacturing –although it’s not the first occurrence.
Logically one might think that the true, untouched, “Design Thinking” lies somewhere in the past and it’s up to anyone to reconnect with it. But much like with religions and some recent appeal to nature, how do you determine what makes the true one truer than the others? How far should you look in history? How do you mitigate the most probable misalignment between this pure, original version, and our current reality and its dire contemporary challenges? And by doing so, don’t you alter its purity?
This is simply dumb reasoning, and history is on my side on this.
To be honest, I don’t think such a thing really exists apart from our desired and idealized idea of what could have been the original version, from our today’s point of view. It is, to me, a vain quest for “perfection” or “purity” that in some cases dangerously flirts with over-conservatism, radicalism, extremism, and change denial. This is also, in many instances, a demonstrable lack of understanding of field reality.
Personally, I see here the irony of the situation.
---
## Built-up Tension
Most reactions and behaviors –either search for an “original truth” or disagreement on the definition– reveals interesting tensions that exist between different influences and realities within the same field. In other words, these tensions show a more multi-dimensional and transversal aspect of the broader definition of what we call “Design” today.
Conflicting theories, ideologies, and worldviews colliding together and from which emerges various, and diversified understandings. I think that we should probably, more than anyone else, accept this diversity instead of rejecting it. Note that acceptance does not mean taking everything for granted, and this should not prevent us to discuss, combine, merge, or eventually dismiss/remove some concepts. But doing it mindfully is different than blind & ignorant rejection.
But the design field does not really work like this. We do not build on each other knowledge in an efficient manner. The design world is much more built on hegemonic paradigms than, say, the scientific process. And it’s even without talking about the designers’ need for strong authoritative figures along with their ideas –a recurring pattern. Anyways.
**Same words, different meanings.**
These tensions reflect what you can realize when you start study complexity & systems theories, that different realities (contexts) imply different degrees of complexity, hence the sometimes inaudible critics made against *this* or *that* approach: this is the multi-dimensionality I talked about earlier. **I am, sometimes, guilty of this oversimplification, as you probably are too.**
Yes, some approaches are linear or too simplistic. So, what?
Let’s be honest, the problem does not lie here: you don’t have to always approach everything in a systemic, complex manner. There are plenty of instances where these approaches suffice.
Instead, **the issue lies when not always well-informed practitioners try to fit a certain approach to all challenges.** This is true on both sides of this continuum.
---
## The Space-for-action Barrier
This problem is due to a lack of understanding of a very harsh reality:**there is a relationship between the context and the tools (approach, framework, methods, etc.) you use.** And the more complex the context, the stronger is the relationship.
But another principle overlooked here is what I call the “space-for-action barrier”. Most of the time, when we work within companies or on specific projects, there is an assumed *“space for action”* on which either the project is based or the company expectations are built. **This space for action is unconsciously determined by the type of outcomes, the** **“horizon”** **that a company is able to foresee.** Narrow outcomes or not-so-far horizon means limited space for action.
These constraints against our ability to *think* and *act* are, most of the time, totally blind toward the complexity of the reality it evolves in! Unfortunately, their implications are huge.
**The barrier happens when designers, innovators, or change agents try to redefine these constraints to make alignment with reality.** Indeed, this barrier is the system’s immune response to change. As I said, this barrier impacts our ability to *think*, *act*, and therefore *navigate*: ignorance –or illusion of certainty– is sometimes preferable to some organizations.
**Now does it mean that we always have to pass the barrier?**
I don’t think so. We need as much *“incremental improvements”* as *“deep & profound systemic change”*. The question IS NOT to choose between linearity vs. non-linearity or reductionism vs. holism or simplicity vs. complexity. These are different ends to the same continuum! We probably need all of these to face future challenges. Now, place your cursors accordingly.
The only difference, to me, is maybe the actual awareness of organizations toward this reality. I will remain an advocate of mapping before picking the appropriate approach.
---
## Conclusion
But to come back to the conflicting uses of Design Thinking and its related terminologies, my point with all of that is that all designers do not work at the same level of complexity. And necessarily the meaning, mental models, and concepts attached to terminologies are different.
I personally might have a very personal –or at least specific– idea of what “using” Design Thinking means. One that I share with some more or less recent tentative to make it evolve toward more a systems-oriented approach.
Is it the right definition? Well, with respect to the kind of challenges I try to tackle, yep. Do I have to impose this definition upon everyone’s definition? Nope. But I can surely disagree with –while understanding where they come from– if some try to use a definition for simple problems in a complex context (or vice-versa).
This reminds me of [a recent discussion with Daniele Catanalotto about Planet Centric Design](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/beyond-human-centered-design-48c0e673f1dc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com):
> “You can redefine existing concepts to make them fit a new reality, or you can change the terms so that people understand that it requires a real shift in mind and worldview.”
Maybe we can do things better here?…
[**Beyond Human Centered Design**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/beyond-human-centered-design-48c0e673f1dc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Is Planet Centric Design The Next Thing?*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/beyond-human-centered-design-48c0e673f1dc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/beyond-human-centered-design-48c0e673f1dc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**What are your thoughts on that?**
This article was first published in [Design & Critical Thinking](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## References
- Kimbell, L. (2011). Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I. Design and Culture, 3(3), 285–306\. [doi:10.2752/175470811x13071166525216](https://caa.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2752/175470811X13071166525216?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (or read on [sci-hub](http://sci-hub.tw/10.2752/175470811X13071166525216?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
- GK VanPatter (2020). [Rethinking Desing Thinking, Humantific & NexDesign Leadership Network.](https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Design-Thinking-Already-Arrived/dp/0578632772?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Donald A.Norman, Pieter Jan Stappers (2015). [DesignX: Complex Sociotechnical Systems, The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240587261530037X?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- [Don Norman Keynote at Relating Systems Thinking and Design 4 Symposium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UYh9ul3h28&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Systemic Design Research Network (2015).
### Beyond Human Centered Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/beyond-human-centered-design/
Last updated: 2020-05-23T00:00:00.000Z
### Is Planet Centric Design The Next Thing?
Unsplash
Hi, Kevin here.
Recently, I had a lovely conversation with [Daniele Catalanotto](https://twitter.com/danielec?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) about what might come after human-centered design. Here a few notes of our conversation.
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for **Design & Critical Thinking** with Daniele (hold in French). **Daniele** is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the [**Swiss Innovation Academy**](https://store.swissinnovation.academy/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and the [**Service Design Magazine**](https://service-design.co/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
For those of you who don’t speak French –or just don’t want to listen to us thinking out loud– here’s the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
---
## This Is Not Because Something Is Desirable That It Makes Sense.
The issue with *Human Centered Design* (HCD) that many see is that by creating something that is viable for the business, desirable for the humans it serves and feasible technically, you still can create services and products that mess up the world. Desirable for humans doesn’t mean it brings our society further.
## A Natural Evolution vs. A Real Break.
Some are, therefore, proposing to have a *Planet Centric Approach* to replace the *Human Centric Design* approach. This would look like as a logical evolution: we came from an engineering or business-centric perspective first. In reaction came then a human-centric perspective. And now in reaction comes a planet centric perspective. **Basically, it’s another zoom out.**
But what if, instead of zooming out in centricity terms, we would take a completely different approach instead, as systems designers do?
## A Rebranded Systemic Design?
We are asking ourselves: how is a *Planet Centric Design* different from a *Systemic Design* approach that looks at the whole ecosystem of a problem?
Perhaps, it’s just a rebranding that might scare less designers. *Systemic Design* sounds academic and complex, whereas planet centric design perhaps sounds easier to grasp?
---
## Explore And Be Critical!
If you are interested in the topic of *Planet Centric Design*, [Daniele compiled a list of links and resources](https://www.notion.so/Planet-Centric-Design-Earth-Centered-Design-Environnement-Centered-Design-public-cc6a9e10254d4d38bc37d8e3367c6037?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) that might help you explore this topic by yourself and build your own opinion about it.
[**Planet Centric Design, Earth Centered Design, Environnement Centered Design (public)**](https://www.notion.so/Planet-Centric-Design-Earth-Centered-Design-Environnement-Centered-Design-public-cc6a9e10254d4d38bc37d8e3367c6037?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Planet centric design is a methodology for designing products and services that do not harm the planet. It is a…*](https://www.notion.so/Planet-Centric-Design-Earth-Centered-Design-Environnement-Centered-Design-public-cc6a9e10254d4d38bc37d8e3367c6037?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so/Planet-Centric-Design-Earth-Centered-Design-Environnement-Centered-Design-public-cc6a9e10254d4d38bc37d8e3367c6037?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### [Brainshot] The Issue With Common Sense
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-brainshot--the-issue-with-common-sense/
Last updated: 2020-04-10T00:00:00.000Z
### And why it’s a bad tool in most contexts.
At the time I’m writing this piece, the COVID-19 pandemic still forces most European countries to impose restrictions on their population, such as more or less drastic confinement at home.
I live in Switzerland, and the federal government decided to not apply drastic confinement measures –unlike neighboring France or Italy– but instead invite people to stay at home and limit travels to absolute necessity. Of course, there are measures in place, such as a huge reduction in public transport, some public places & all non-necessary markets closed. Most companies sent back people at home weeks ago. But for the rest, **the government officially relies on its population’s own discipline.**
rts.ch
Indeed, Swiss people are known to be quite disciplined. Switzerland is often qualified as the *“Japan of Europe”*, and you can basically lose your wallet on the train it will come back to you with everything left inside or let your car open with no fear.
---
## Un-common sense
But in this long sunny Easter weekend (4 days holidays), the temptation to go outside is high. During its recent message to the population, the Federal Council called for people’s **common sense** and accountability to avoid domestic travel, limit regroupings in public places, and even avoid certain activities that put you at risk –and could lead you to occupy a scarce bed in the hospital. **For weeks, the government repeats the same call for people’s common sense**.
But, unsurprisingly, today, the first day of the holidays, a lot of people are outside.
rts.ch
See, **common sense IS NOT an equally distributed thing.** In other words, common sense is only common for those appealing to it. As the study of group dynamics shows, it appeals to a limited set of shared values and understanding. The more strongly homogenous a group’s individuals are (on certain subjects), the more “common sense” exists. Therefore, common sense is not an absolute thing.
### Ethical implications
Calling for people’s common sense **is the same** as telling them to follow what they feel is right. This **moral subjectivism** leads to everyone’s right to judge the situation based on their own feeling. If you *feel* this pandemic is overrated, why would you stay at home? If you *feel* your need for fresh air **is more important** than the risks, why stay at home?
### Logical fallacy
Appeal to common sense is the assertion that a conclusion or facts are just “common sense” when, in fact, they are not. In its logical form, we can observe:
> It’s common sense that X is true.Therefore, X is true.
Even though something is “common sense” this wouldn’t make either **true** or **good**. This fallacy is often used to support a proposition without the need to provide strong arguments or actual evidence.
---
## Conclusion
Common sense is a bad tool to use, either in a prescriptive way or as an argument –unless one is able to demonstrate the commonality and likelihood of the proposition. “Common sense” is a form of sophism that can push people either to conformity or individualism.
I observed this situation several times as a designer when, for instance during a meeting, someone asserts something (knowingly) without evidence and tries to convince the majority of their truthness. Designers are subject to such fallacy as well. We often assert the commonality of such and such behavior, mainly because we read or heard it from some authority –this is a faulty generalization.
If “common sense” is your best justification for any conclusion/proposition, ask yourself how do you know such a thing. Ask what would disprove it to be true. Try to build a better argument.
If you’re a designer, remember that **no authority is better than you** to validate if a certain behavior occurs in your specific context. This is an invitation to systematically test your assumptions and build a case for your observations & decisions.
### An Answer To Designers Moral Imperative To Focus On Known Knowns
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/an-answer-to-designers-moral-imperative-to-focus-on-known-knowns/
Last updated: 2020-04-08T00:00:00.000Z
Hi [Fabricio Teixeira](https://medium.com/u/50e39baefa55?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), thanks for sharing thoughts 👍
Let me, for the sake of a (hopefully) interesting debate, kindly challenge your point of view. Not that I necessarily disagree with your points, but I think the ethical & philosophical implications of your propositions are questionable.
---
## Certainty of uncertainty
To begin with, let’s analyze your first proposition here:
> “The only certainty is change.”
For more clarity to my coming argument, let’s define **change**: *“an act or process through which something becomes different.”*
We can then affirm that *“change”* is by definition a *transitional state* which brings uncertainty to the outcomes (of the change), as it is often difficult, complex, or even impossible to know, understand, or guess all the variables and their implications in the process. In short, this is [Complexity theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (see also [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Note that this affirmation **is not completely true** because it really depends on the [current level of complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (context) you are dealing with, but let's stick to it for now.
We can, therefore, say that what you mean by *“the only certainty is change”* equates:
> “The only certainty is uncertainty.”
Note that even though in both cases this sounds catchy, **this is a self-refuting claims** as *it is absolutely certain that nothing is certain —* a recurrent issue with [some forms of relativism](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Moreover, you refute this affirmation later by saying that there are *“things that will never change”*.
**Let me ask:** i*s change really the only certainty?* Apparently no.
---
## Deriving To Prescriptivism
Your second proposition is interesting because unlike the first, it is a prescriptive/normative statement:
> “Only when you understand, recognize, and accept change is coming, you can future-proof yourself as a designer. Instead of trying to keep things exactly as they are, **focus your energy on the things that will never change**.”
Here is a syllogistic version of the argument you're trying to make:
- p1) Everything change;
- p2) Change is part of the future;
- **c1)** Therefore, you **should/must** accept change in order to be a *good* designer;
- p3) You cannot prevent change to happen;
- p4) Some things never change;
- **c2)** Therefore, you **should/must** focus on the things that will never change.
Note that I replaced *“future-proofed”* with *“good”* because your proposition implies a value judgment: it is supposedly **better** to be *“future-proofed”* **than not.**
Okay, so the first part of the argument (until conclusion #1) **is valid in its form**, but premise #1 can be refuted because we can find things *that don’t change,* as stated in premise #4, making the second part of the argument contradictory.
Moreover, we can doubt the final imperative conclusion: *“you should focus on things that never change”* doesn’t logically follow from its premises *“because change is certain AND you cannot prevent it”.*
In other words, it seems far fetched to claim an effect from *your focus on immutable things* to *(your knowledge/understanding of) change and uncertainty*. **How is it that you, focusing on known knowns, can relate to your ability to navigate uncertainty (unknown unknowns)?**
### All things are not equal
Another problem is that the nature of each of these things is very different: *design fundamental ≠ collaboration ≠ communication*. However, you are [equivocating](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Equivocation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) these concepts by stating they are all the same “never changing” things.
Design fundamentals are mostly **the application of** best practices/rules/principles, whereas collaboration & communication are very less well defined, vague, and mainly dependent on the context — therefore, much more uncertain and prone to change.
You can be a good communicator/collaborator in a specific context and bad in others. You rarely have control over all the variable that leads to this result, assuming you can even define what **good** means in *every situation*. This is mainly dependant on your ability to understand your context, as you very well described.
> “You cannot control how people will interpret your message, but you can surely be more thoughtful about how you communicate it in the first place.”
**Then can’t you be more thoughtful about change and uncertainty?**
---
## **Ethical implications**
Your entire argument **requires** designers to focus on what they know, their comfort zone, and remain ignorant of what they don’t know and understand.
Anyways, thanks for sharing! Love what you’re doing 👍
### Design & Critical Thinking — Issue #2
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking---issue--2/
Last updated: 2020-04-01T00:00:00.000Z
### Uncertainty & changes are good opportunities for ethical thinking.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I sincerely hope you are all well in these uncertain, complicated times!
I continue my journey towards (humbly) setting up the basis for an ethics-literate community. This is more than ever important given the situation.
Indeed, what was questionable yesterday is now overlooked because, well, context changed. *Does it mean ethics is what one care of?*
For instance, technology currently seems to be the ultimate end to our shaking society, enabling *“remote working”* to everyone. **This is a fiction, and we need a hero.** Except it is not even remotely homogeneous or even equally distributed: inequalities are now, more than ever, visible.
Furthermore, not everyone **can** or **should** work remotely. And even though all the above were true, ethical questions remain i.e. the intrusiveness of some of our tools –even though the context influences the thin line of acceptability.
> Is the **urgency of the situation** a good justification to dodge ethical issues?
However, these extraordinary circumstances also offer a great opportunity to open discussion on many subjects and our relationship/dependency with many things.
### Anyways, thanks for reading!
Take care of your human, design, critical thinking.
Wish you all the best,
Kevin
*With ♥️ from Switzerland.*
---
## Ethics For Designers.
### [**Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Understanding the differences between metaethics, normative ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.
### [**Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
When your moral principles are what your society approves of.
---
## Ethics is “What should” not “What is”.
### [Collective Identity and the Limits of Innovation: A Review and Research Agenda](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339820651%5FCollective%5FIdentity%5Fand%5Fthe%5FLimits%5Fof%5FInnovation%5FA%5FReview%5Fand%5FResearch%5FAgenda?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) — [www.researchgate.net](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339820651%5FCollective%5FIdentity%5Fand%5Fthe%5FLimits%5Fof%5FInnovation%5FA%5FReview%5Fand%5FResearch%5FAgenda?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this essay, we discuss how collective identity shapes and constrains innovation \[…\]
> “Being a symphony orchestra constrains your innovation simply because everybody expects you to be a symphony orchestra.”
We go on to argue that innovation researchers need to pay more attention to the mechanisms through which collective identity limits and shapes innovation, to investigate potential strategies that organizations can use to manage the tension between collective identity and innovation, and to better understand how collective identity can be used as a resource in innovation.
---
## Ethics is Action in Complexity.
### [**CensemakingSystems Thinking About Action: Complexity** ](https://censemaking.com/2020/03/17/systems-thinking-about-action-complexity/amp/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**censemaking.com**](https://censemaking.com/2020/03/17/systems-thinking-about-action-complexity/amp/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The global pandemic situation has provided us with a lesson in complexity by giving us much to see, learn, and do if we pay attention. It’s been said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 …
---
## Ethics is Beliefs Informing Behavior.
### [**Elon Musk Offers to Make Ventilators at Tesla Factory**](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ventilators-tesla-factory?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**futurism.com**](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ventilators-tesla-factory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In a series of tweets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered to “make ventilators if there is a shortage” to assist hospitals during the coronavirus outbreak.
---
## Ethics is Equality.
### [TikTok ‘tried to filter out videos from ugly, poor or disabled users’](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) — [www.theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company’s efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to [new documents published by the Intercept](https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## Ethics is about the Experience.
### [**Ethics in the Game Industry** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter&v=V3PiM1y3jRI)**—** [**www.youtube.com**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3PiM1y3jRI&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this 2019 GDC talk, UX expert Celia Hodent analyzes what scientific research says about the potential problems video games can create in terms of addiction, violence, loot boxes, and dark patterns (without the fear-mongering) and invites viewers to think about where the industry should draw the line.
---
## Ethics is about Goals.
### [**India plans to build an all-seeing database to track citizens’ every move by 2021** ](https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/03/17/india-plans-to-build-an-all-seeing-database-to-track-citizens-every-move-by-2021/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**thenextweb.com**](https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/03/17/india-plans-to-build-an-all-seeing-database-to-track-citizens-every-move-by-2021/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
India, the world’s biggest democracy, built a massive database containing information and biometrics of its citizens in the form of [Aadhaar](https://thenextweb.com/in/2019/07/05/india-wants-to-use-aadhaar-for-the-good-of-people-without-data-protection-laws/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) back in 2009\. Now, it’s planning to build a new database that will continually track the lives of 1.2 billion people living in the country — and further enable surveillance without legal frameworks to prevent its misuse.
---
## Ethics is about Consequences.
### [**Asia fast-tracks hi-tech coronavirus solutions** ](https://news.trust.org/item/20200316140626-x791z?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**news.trust.org**](https://news.trust.org/item/20200316140626-x791z?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
AI-powered technology is being rolled out to help track the outbreak, clean hospitals, deliver supplies and develop vaccines throughout the continent.
---
**About design 👇👇👇**
## Design is Interconnectedness.
### [**Pandemics Are Also an Urban Planning Problem** ](https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/03/coronavirus-urban-planning-global-cities-infectious-disease/607603/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.citylab.com**](https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/03/coronavirus-urban-planning-global-cities-infectious-disease/607603/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Will COVID-19 change how cities are designed? Michele Acuto of the Connected Cities Lab talks about density, urbanization and pandemic preparation.
---
## Design is Navigating Uncertainty.
### [**How Futurists Cope With Uncertainty** ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-futurists-cope-uncertainty-amy-webb?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.linkedin.com**](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-futurists-cope-uncertainty-amy-webb?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A simple tool you can use to see plausible future states early I’ve been fielding lots of questions this week from clients, journalists, researchers and friends working in various parts of the federal government. Everyone is feeling anxious.
---
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[*Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter - Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter. Sharpen-up your human & critical…*](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.getrevue.co](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design & Critical Thinking 2020 — Issue #2
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking-2020---issue--2/
Last updated: 2020-04-01T00:00:00.000Z
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I sincerely hope you are all well in these uncertain, complicated times!
I continue my journey towards (humbly) setting up the basis for an ethics-literate community. This is more than ever important given the situation.
Indeed, what was questionable yesterday is now overlooked because, well, context changed. *Does it mean ethics is what one care of?*
For instance, technology currently seems to be the ultimate end to our shaking society, enabling *“remote working”* to everyone. **This is a fiction, and we need a hero.** Except it is not even remotely homogeneous or even equally distributed: inequalities are now, more than ever, visible.
Furthermore, not everyone **can** or **should** work remotely. And even though all the above were true, ethical questions remain i.e. the intrusiveness of some of our tools –even though the context influences the thin line of acceptability.
> Is the **urgency of the situation** a good justification to dodge ethical issues?
However, these extraordinary circumstances also offer a great opportunity to open discussion on many subjects and our relationship/dependency with many things.
### Anyways, thanks for reading!
Take care of your human, design, critical thinking.
Wish you all the best,
Kevin
*With ♥️ from Switzerland.*
---
## Ethics For Designers.
### [Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Understanding the differences between metaethics, normative ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.
### [Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
When your moral principles are what your society approves of.
---
## Ethics is “What should” not “What is”.
### [Collective Identity and the Limits of Innovation: A Review and Research Agenda](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339820651%5FCollective%5FIdentity%5Fand%5Fthe%5FLimits%5Fof%5FInnovation%5FA%5FReview%5Fand%5FResearch%5FAgenda?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) — [www.researchgate.net](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339820651%5FCollective%5FIdentity%5Fand%5Fthe%5FLimits%5Fof%5FInnovation%5FA%5FReview%5Fand%5FResearch%5FAgenda?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this essay, we discuss how collective identity shapes and constrains innovation \[…\]
> “Being a symphony orchestra constrains your innovation simply because everybody expects you to be a symphony orchestra.”
We go on to argue that innovation researchers need to pay more attention to the mechanisms through which collective identity limits and shapes innovation, to investigate potential strategies that organizations can use to manage the tension between collective identity and innovation, and to better understand how collective identity can be used as a resource in innovation.
---
## Ethics is Action in Complexity.
### [CensemakingSystems Thinking About Action: Complexity ](https://censemaking.com/2020/03/17/systems-thinking-about-action-complexity/amp/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)— [censemaking.com](https://censemaking.com/2020/03/17/systems-thinking-about-action-complexity/amp/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The global pandemic situation has provided us with a lesson in complexity by giving us much to see, learn, and do if we pay attention. It’s been said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 …
---
## Ethics is Beliefs Informing Behavior.
### [Elon Musk Offers to Make Ventilators at Tesla Factory](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ventilators-tesla-factory?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) — [futurism.com](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ventilators-tesla-factory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In a series of tweets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered to “make ventilators if there is a shortage” to assist hospitals during the coronavirus outbreak.
---
## Ethics is Equality.
### [TikTok ‘tried to filter out videos from ugly, poor or disabled users’](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) — [www.theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company’s efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to [new documents published by the Intercept](https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## Ethics is about the Experience.
### [Ethics in the Game Industry ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter&v=V3PiM1y3jRI)— [www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3PiM1y3jRI&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this 2019 GDC talk, UX expert Celia Hodent analyzes what scientific research says about the potential problems video games can create in terms of addiction, violence, loot boxes, and dark patterns (without the fear-mongering) and invites viewers to think about where the industry should draw the line.
---
## Ethics is about Goals.
### [India plans to build an all-seeing database to track citizens’ every move by 2021 ](https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/03/17/india-plans-to-build-an-all-seeing-database-to-track-citizens-every-move-by-2021/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)— [thenextweb.com](https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/03/17/india-plans-to-build-an-all-seeing-database-to-track-citizens-every-move-by-2021/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
India, the world’s biggest democracy, built a massive database containing information and biometrics of its citizens in the form of [Aadhaar](https://thenextweb.com/in/2019/07/05/india-wants-to-use-aadhaar-for-the-good-of-people-without-data-protection-laws/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) back in 2009\. Now, it’s planning to build a new database that will continually track the lives of 1.2 billion people living in the country — and further enable surveillance without legal frameworks to prevent its misuse.
---
## Ethics is about Consequences.
### [Asia fast-tracks hi-tech coronavirus solutions ](https://news.trust.org/item/20200316140626-x791z?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)— [news.trust.org](https://news.trust.org/item/20200316140626-x791z?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
AI-powered technology is being rolled out to help track the outbreak, clean hospitals, deliver supplies and develop vaccines throughout the continent.
---
**About design 👇👇👇**
## Design is Interconnectedness.
### [Pandemics Are Also an Urban Planning Problem ](https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/03/coronavirus-urban-planning-global-cities-infectious-disease/607603/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)— [www.citylab.com](https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/03/coronavirus-urban-planning-global-cities-infectious-disease/607603/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Will COVID-19 change how cities are designed? Michele Acuto of the Connected Cities Lab talks about density, urbanization and pandemic preparation.
---
## Design is Navigating Uncertainty.
### [How Futurists Cope With Uncertainty ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-futurists-cope-uncertainty-amy-webb?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)— [www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-futurists-cope-uncertainty-amy-webb?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A simple tool you can use to see plausible future states early I’ve been fielding lots of questions this week from clients, journalists, researchers and friends working in various parts of the federal government. Everyone is feeling anxious.
### Design & Critical Thinking — Issue #1
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking---issue--1/
Last updated: 2020-03-26T00:00:00.000Z
### Building the foundations for a more ethics-literate design community.
Unsplash
Hi, Kevin here.
Recently, I committed to writing about ethics in design ([here](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/ethics-explained-to-designers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). My goal is to humbly (try to) go beyond the current state of the discussion: *dark patterns*. My first idea is to illustrate the *“ethical landscape”* by approaching major ethical concepts. Another angle I would like to cover is to provide more specific discussions on current issues and see how we can connect that to designers’ reality.
Don’t get me wrong, *dark patterns* are an issue and the goal is not to overlook its impact. But this is, to me, more a visible artifact of the interactions between the different parts of our organizations. One side effect of focusing on the surface (dark patterns) is the prevalence of finding solutions for a *not-often-well-framed* problem space, from a design perspective.
The opportunity for a more ethics-literate (and critical thinking) community is as high as the trend toward more responsible design decisions in recent years. One aspect of the issue is that ethics, morals, and philosophy are usually not at the center of most of the design education –when it is at all a subject– especially given the fact of the many routes that lead to this domain –[even though there is a lot to read about this topic](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22design%20ethics%22&tbm=bks&tbs=cdr:1,cd%5Fmin:2007,cd%5Fmax:2018&lr=lang%5Fen&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Most companies are avid of more effective design *producers*, fewer *thinkers*, and the two are often presented as opposite *–thinking or doing, you must choose–* until one understands the interconnectedness of these *“states”*.
> Isn’t it a moral statement, in a sense, that commands more “doing” over “thinking” in the sake of efficiency?
Anyhow, I think that designers can also look to other domains for clues and ways to approach such complex issues. For instance, *applied ethics* are represented in many domains, usually through Ethics Councils, such as in *AI, Biology, Medicine, Governments,* *etc.* and help define policies to either mitigate known effects, study & build knowledge about the consequences of existing practices/technologies, and explore future potential ethical issues.
### Anyways, thanks for reading!
Take care of your human, design, critical thinking.
Wish you all the best,
Kevin
*With* ❤️ *from Switzerland.*
---
## Ethics for Designers.
### [**Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
When your moral principles are what your society approves of.
### [**Ethics Explained To Designers**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A series of articles about ethics and moral philosophy (for designers) that aim to go beyond dark patterns.
---
## Ethics is Privacy.
### [**How Privacy Works in a Pandemic** ](https://onezero.medium.com/in-a-pandemic-data-privacy-goes-out-the-window-478d4d999bf3?gi=675193d87fda&utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**onezero.medium.com**](https://onezero.medium.com/in-a-pandemic-data-privacy-goes-out-the-window-478d4d999bf3?gi=675193d87fda&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*What you need to know about your privacy as the coronavirus spreads.*
During a pandemic like the current coronavirus outbreak, the CDC as well as state public health departments, take on remarkably broad powers.
> Public health officials can detain you, force you into quarantine, and even search your phone, read your emails, and access your personal data.
So what, exactly, does this tangled web of powers actually allow public health officials to do?
> Obtaining clinical specimens and **data from persons affected by an outbreak**; obtaining data from healthcare facilities; collecting environmental samples; protecting the privacy of personal information; and implementing and enforcing control measures, such as vaccination, chemoprophylaxis, quarantine, or even seizure or destruction of private property.
---
## Ethics is Data.
### [**Students and Sensors: Data, education, privacy, and research** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/students-and-sensors-data-education-privacy-and-research/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/students-and-sensors-data-education-privacy-and-research/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
How should we think about the use of student data by colleges and universities in efforts to improve student retention or academic success?
---
## Ethics is Design.
### [**Designing down the rabbit hole — The Startup — Medium**](https://medium.com/swlh/designing-down-the-rabbit-hole-f76df8e3bfdd?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/swlh/designing-down-the-rabbit-hole-f76df8e3bfdd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Ethics is a tricky word. As soon as we mention it, the conversation suddenly becomes awkward. Probably because nowadays, ethics amounts to reading incomprehensible texts on moral and political philosophy. Who needs ethics anyway?
---
## Ethics is Conceptual & Practical.
### [**Conceptual Frameworks in Technology and Engineering Practice** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/conceptual-frameworks/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/conceptual-frameworks/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Conceptual frameworks drawn from ethical theories that have shaped the study of ethics over centuries can help you recognize ethical issues when you encounter them, and can also help you to describe them.
---
## Ethics is our Future.
### [**The Future of Humanity Depends on Design Ethics, Says Tim Wu**](https://medium.com/fast-company/the-future-of-humanity-depends-on-design-ethics-says-tim-wu-891982d8611d?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/fast-company/the-future-of-humanity-depends-on-design-ethics-says-tim-wu-891982d8611d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Social media sites are designed to create what he calls *“false loops,”* where you never reach the end of what you can do on the platform.
> \[Tim Wu\] thinks that goes against our way of making sense of the world: Humans have a natural predilection toward creating experiences and narratives that start and end \[…\]
But social media tends to disrupt these things–unlike a well-planned story or meal, Wu compares experiencing social media to a buffet, where nothing really goes together. Coincidentally, you also end up stuffing yourself and feeling ill.
---
## Ethics is Experience.
### [**AI, Death, and Mourning** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/ai-death-and-mourning/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/ai-death-and-mourning/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Should we develop “griefbots”?
> \[Muhammad Ahmad\] hopes that artificial intelligence will *“eventually allow us to craft the data left behind by an individual into convincing text-based simulations of that person.”* Such simulations would *“respond when prompted, imitating the deceased’s cadence, tone, and idiosyncrasies.”*
**Questions:** Is the development of *“grief bots”* ethical? How might this action be perceived through the ethical prisms of utilitarianism, rights, justice, virtue, and the common good?
---
## Ethics is Complex to navigate.
### [**Able, Allowed, Should; Navigating Modern Tech Ethics — Facebook Design**](https://medium.com/facebook-design/able-allowed-should-navigating-modern-tech-ethics-50f54f0df7d6?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/facebook-design/able-allowed-should-navigating-modern-tech-ethics-50f54f0df7d6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Facebook’s mission is to *“give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”* \[…\]
There’s a tension between these motives to be sure, and if they get out of balance, consequential decisions and unintended outcomes can happen. But the fact is, a well-capitalized business can do a lot of innovative things that are good for the world.
> “We just need to make sure that we keep the long view in mind and are vigilant about making ethical, responsible decisions along the way.”
### Design & Critical Thinking 2020 — Issue #1
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design---critical-thinking-2020---issue--1/
Last updated: 2020-03-25T00:00:00.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
Recently, I committed to writing about ethics in design ([here](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/ethics-explained-to-designers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). My goal is to humbly (try to) go beyond the current state of the discussion: *dark patterns*. My first idea is to illustrate the *“ethical landscape”* by approaching major ethical concepts. Another angle I would like to cover is to provide more specific discussions on current issues and see how we can connect that to designers’ reality.
Don’t get me wrong, *dark patterns* are an issue and the goal is not to overlook its impact. But this is, to me, more a visible artifact of the interactions between the different parts of our organizations. One side effect of focusing on the surface (dark patterns) is the prevalence of finding solutions for a *not-often-well-framed* problem space from a design perspective.
The opportunity for a more ethics-literate (and critical thinking) community is as high as the trend toward more responsible design decisions in recent years. One aspect of the issue is that ethics, morals, and philosophy are usually not at the center of most of the design education –when it is at all a subject– especially given the fact of the many routes that lead to this domain –[even though there is a lot to read about this topic](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22design%20ethics%22&tbm=bks&tbs=cdr:1,cd%5Fmin:2007,cd%5Fmax:2018&lr=lang%5Fen&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Most companies are avid of more effective design *producers*, fewer *thinkers*, and the two are often presented as opposite *–thinking or doing, you must choose–* until one understands the interconnectedness of these *“states”*.
> Isn’t it a moral statement, in a sense, that commands more *“doing”* over *“thinking”* in the sake *efficiency*?
Anyhow, I think that designers can also look to other domains for clues and ways to approach such complex issues. For instance, *applied ethics* are represented in many domains, usually through Ethics Councils, such as in *AI, Biology, Medicine, Governments,* *etc.* and help define policies to either mitigate known effects, study & build knowledge about the consequences of existing practices/technologies, and explore future potential ethical issues.
**Anyways, thanks for reading!**
Take care of your human, design, critical thinking.
Wish you all the best,
Kevin
*With ♥️ from Switzerland.*
---
## Ethics for Designers.
### [**Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
When your moral principles are what your society approves of.
### [**Ethics Explained To Designers**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A series of articles about ethics and moral philosophy (for designers) that aim to go beyond dark patterns.
---
## Ethics is Privacy.
### [**How Privacy Works in a Pandemic** ](https://onezero.medium.com/in-a-pandemic-data-privacy-goes-out-the-window-478d4d999bf3?gi=675193d87fda&utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**onezero.medium.com**](https://onezero.medium.com/in-a-pandemic-data-privacy-goes-out-the-window-478d4d999bf3?gi=675193d87fda&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*What you need to know about your privacy as the coronavirus spreads.*
During a pandemic like the current coronavirus outbreak, the CDC as well as state public health departments, take on remarkably broad powers.
> Public health officials can detain you, force you into quarantine, and even search your phone, read your emails, and access your personal data.
So what, exactly, does this tangled web of powers actually allow public health officials to do?
> Obtaining clinical specimens and **data from persons affected by an outbreak**; obtaining data from healthcare facilities; collecting environmental samples; protecting the privacy of personal information; and implementing and enforcing control measures, such as vaccination, chemoprophylaxis, quarantine, or even seizure or destruction of private property.
---
## Ethics is Data.
### [**Students and Sensors: Data, education, privacy, and research** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/students-and-sensors-data-education-privacy-and-research/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/students-and-sensors-data-education-privacy-and-research/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
How should we think about the use of student data by colleges and universities in efforts to improve student retention or academic success?
---
## Ethics is Design.
### [**Designing down the rabbit hole — The Startup — Medium**](https://medium.com/swlh/designing-down-the-rabbit-hole-f76df8e3bfdd?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/swlh/designing-down-the-rabbit-hole-f76df8e3bfdd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Ethics is a tricky word. As soon as we mention it, the conversation suddenly becomes awkward. Probably because nowadays, ethics amounts to reading incomprehensible texts on moral and political philosophy. Who needs ethics anyway?
---
## Ethics is Conceptual & Practical.
### [**Conceptual Frameworks in Technology and Engineering Practice** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/conceptual-frameworks/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/conceptual-frameworks/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Conceptual frameworks drawn from ethical theories that have shaped the study of ethics over centuries can help you recognize ethical issues when you encounter them, and can also help you to describe them.
---
## Ethics is our Future.
### [**The Future of Humanity Depends on Design Ethics, Says Tim Wu**](https://medium.com/fast-company/the-future-of-humanity-depends-on-design-ethics-says-tim-wu-891982d8611d?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/fast-company/the-future-of-humanity-depends-on-design-ethics-says-tim-wu-891982d8611d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Social media sites are designed to create what he calls *“false loops,”* where you never reach the end of what you can do on the platform.
> \[Tim Wu\] thinks that goes against our way of making sense of the world: Humans have a natural predilection toward creating experiences and narratives that start and end \[…\]
But social media tends to disrupt these things–unlike a well-planned story or meal, Wu compares experiencing social media to a buffet, where nothing really goes together. Coincidentally, you also end up stuffing yourself and feeling ill.
---
## Ethics is Experience.
### [**AI, Death, and Mourning** ](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/ai-death-and-mourning/?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter)**—** [**www.scu.edu**](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/ai-death-and-mourning/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Should we develop “griefbots”?
> \[Muhammad Ahmad\] hopes that artificial intelligence will *“eventually allow us to craft the data left behind by an individual into convincing text-based simulations of that person.”* Such simulations would *“respond when prompted, imitating the deceased’s cadence, tone, and idiosyncrasies.”*
**Questions:** Is the development of *“grief bots”* ethical? How might this action be perceived through the ethical prisms of utilitarianism, rights, justice, virtue, and the common good?
---
## Ethics is Complex to navigate.
### [**Able, Allowed, Should; Navigating Modern Tech Ethics — Facebook Design**](https://medium.com/facebook-design/able-allowed-should-navigating-modern-tech-ethics-50f54f0df7d6?utm%5Fcampaign=Design%20%26%20Critical%20Thinking%20Newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=Revue%20newsletter) **—** [**medium.com**](https://medium.com/facebook-design/able-allowed-should-navigating-modern-tech-ethics-50f54f0df7d6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Facebook’s mission is to *“give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”* \[…\]
There’s a tension between these motives to be sure, and if they get out of balance, consequential decisions and unintended outcomes can happen. But the fact is, a well-capitalized business can do a lot of innovative things that are good for the world.
> “We just need to make sure that we keep the long view in mind and are vigilant about making ethical, responsible decisions along the way.”
### Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ethics-for-designers--important-ethical---moral-notions/
Last updated: 2020-03-17T00:00:00.000Z
### **Understanding the differences between metaethics, normative ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.**
Unsplash
*This article is part of a series on Ethics and Moral Philosophy.* [*Read the introduction article here*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
---
Hi, Kevin here.
I hope you enjoy this series on Ethics so far! We recently [went through Cultural Relativism](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and we saw what are the arguments as well as some of its criticisms. The goal of this article was **not to tell you what to think** about it but, instead, to give you a broad overview of **the state of the debate** on this subject. You may agree or not with some of the arguments, and that’s perfectly fine! Don’t hesitate to leave a comment to tell us why.
## Metaethics, Normative & Applied Ethics
Anyhow, with this first article we covered one aspect of moral relativism. What’s important to understand is that relativism is part of a group of theories called Metaethics.
**Metaethics** theories seek to understand the nature of ethical behaviors**.** In other words, they try to define **what** **is** **good**. These theories are distinct from the other groups of theories that are *normative ethics* and *applied ethics*.
*Note: we will talk again about Metaethics with another theory that is moral subjectivism.*
**Normative ethics** theories, on the other hand, try to evaluate **specific practices and principles of action**. As such, they are concerned by *“what one should do”* (or *“what one ought to do”*). It is composed of several theories such as Deontology, Consequentialism, Virtue ethics, etc. although these theories possess some variants.
**Applied ethics** looks at the real-world practical application of ethics. Most of what is considered here relate to normative theories in general, either consequentialist and non-consequentialist ones (e.g. deontology). We can find specialization, however, by expertise domain such as Bioethics (health, biology, medicine) or Business ethics for example, but it basically touches upon all domains of life and society: private/public life, health, technology, law, governments, etc.
---
## Deontology vs Consequentialism
As we saw, there are two main differences between the normative theories: **deontology** is about the actions themselves, whereas **consequentialism** is about the outcomes of an action.
**Utilitarianism** theories are probably the most well-known forms of consequentialism and mainly aim to *promote actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals* and, as such, aim to consider the interests of all humans equally. Also, different types of utilitarianism exist, such as *classical*, *ideal*, *act & rule*, or *preference* utilitarianism. However, some have argued that this is flawed as it does not allow for one to be able to follow certain moral rules and it concentrates too much on the ends rather than the means.
**Deontology,** also called *“Duty-based ethics”*, is mainly about how actions follow certain *moral rules*. **Kantianism,** the ethics of Immanuel Kant, is a very good example of how one *must* apply certain rules, regardless of the consequences of the action, in order to be morally right. Kant’s stand was that moral rules should be adhered to if universalizing the opposite would make an impossible world: *“do not steal”* is a rule because if everyone stole, as a rule, there would be no concept of private property. However, some have argued that deontological ethics is flawed as it is too absolutist: some actions are *always good* or *always bad* without any judgment of the context of the action.
### **Thanks for reading!**
I hope you better understand some key notions in ethics. To be honest, we just scratch the surface here and I invite you to further read the “Sources & References” section below. I also invite you to think about your own position on this: *what do you think of and where do you stand regarding consequentialism and deontology?*
**Subscribe to Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter 👇👇**
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[*Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter - Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter. Sharpen-up your human & critical…*](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.getrevue.co](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Sources & References
- [Ethics Defined (a glossary). Ethics Unwrapped, University Of Texas.](https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Meta-ethics, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-ethics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Cultural Relativism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural%5Frelativism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Richard, Kevin (2020) “Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism”. [Design & Critical Thinking](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com); [Human Centered Thinking](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- [Moral Subjectivism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Relativism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Normative ethics, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative%5Fethics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Deontological ethics, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological%5Fethics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Kantianism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Ethics — “Introduction to ethics: Duty-based ethics”. BBC Ethics Guide.](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/duty%5F1.shtml?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Consequentialism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Utilitarianism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Virtue ethics, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue%5Fethics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Applied ethics, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied%5Fethics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ethics-for-designers--what-s-cultural-relativism-/
Last updated: 2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
### **When your moral principles are what your society approves of.**
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*As explained in* [*my introduction to this series*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-explained-to-designers-eb9e914d822?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, moral philosophy is mainly about trying to define what’s “good”, what’s “bad”, and how we act on the basis of these definitions. It’s about how we make decisions.*
---
This is maybe one popular and relatively well-known position: cultural relativism (CR). It can be defined as such: *“Good”* means *“socially approved”*. In other words, it claims that good and bad are relative to culture.
This concept has been popularized by anthropology and first introduced in 1887 by [Franz Boas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%5FBoas?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in his early work: *“civilization is not something absolute but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes”*. Cultural relativism finds its roots in the German enlightenment (but differ from), such as in the ideas developed by [Immanuel Kant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel%5FKant?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Johann G. Herder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann%5FGottfried%5FHerder?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), as well as in sociology (i.e. [ethnocentrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
**It is important to understand** that cultural relativism is both a *moral position* (as such) as well as a *practical tool for analysis*. Developed for anthropological research, the idea was to:
1. **raise awareness** of the researcher’s own ethnocentrism and potential bias toward other cultures;
2. **provide practical methods & tools** to mitigate its effects. For instance, [ethnography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is one of these tools, where the idea is basically to live with people of another culture for an extended period of time so that researchers can learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture.
Again, I insist on the distinction between a research tool and a moral position (or framework) as the goals are quite different. In the first case, we aim for a non-judgemental, observational, and as unbiased as possible view on the subject under analysis. In the second case, we aim for a moral compass, the kind that helps us determine what’s good or not, and make concrete decisions. We will see later why it is important.
## Cultural Relativism Metaethics
Let’s go a bit deeper into the moral stand behind cultural relativism (CR). Here I’ll try to make an argument for CR and later, we’ll see some of the moral issues it raises.
### The Relativism Argument
In its view, morality is a cultural construct: there are intrinsic moral differences between each society. The norms you were taught are those of your own society and other societies have different ones. As a society’s culture creates different styles of food and clothing, they also create different moral codes.
A common example of this is the belief that infanticide is wrong. You were probably taught this as *objective truth*, but it isn’t: when we say *“infanticide is wrong”* this means that our society disapproves of it. For instance, in ancient Greece and Rome, some forms of infanticide were commonly practiced and considered *right* (see [here](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42911813/ns/technology%5Fand%5Fscience-science/t/infanticide-common-roman-empire/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
As such, there is no sense in asking what is *correct*. Romans’ view is true relative to their culture, and our view is true relative to ours. **And here we come to the main point of cultural relativism:** there are no *objective truths* about right or wrong, and to claim otherwise is just imposing our culturally taught attitudes. *Good* is, therefore, a relative term and needs a further reference to complete its sense.
Similarly, something isn’t “good” *absolutely*, but only *“good in this or that society”*. In the same way, *goals* are not intrinsically good or bad, neither are behaviors intrinsically virtuous. We don’t have absolute moral rights, but, instead, society decides such questions for its members and different societies may decide them in very different ways.
Lastly, to extend a bit the CR’s reasoning, here are some of the major arguments:
- **The cultural differences argument** points out that cultures can differ radically on moral issues, like infanticide, polygamy, and women’s rights. When we speak of good or bad absolutely, we’re just absolutizing the norms of our society and taking them to be objective facts. So, in dealing with conflicting norms from another culture, we think that we’re right and they’re wrong. In other words, objectivity is a myth.
- **The “product of culture” argument** shows that societies create value systems and teach them to their members. Societies create different styles of clothing, different types of food, different ways of speaking, and different values. The clothing styles and the values of another culture aren’t objectively right or wrong; they’re just different.
---
### The Different Forms Of Relativism
Relativism exists in different forms, which may differ from cultural relativism. Here are some of the known forms and their differences:
**Normative relativism** holds that *“good”* is only relative to something else. This type of relativism is the closest to **cultural relativism.** Cultural relativism, also called **cultural normative relativism** makes morality relative to culture: *“X is good” means “the majority (of the society in question) approves of X”*. In such a context, it makes no sense to ask if *slavery* is “right”: *it might be right in one culture but wrong in another*. In other words, slavery is neither right nor wrong outside of cultural standards.
**Descriptive ethical relativism** holds that people *factually* differ in their basic moral norms. This position comes in two main forms, as we can differentiate again cultures from individuals. Here, two groups may agree on the basic norm that we *ought to promote the welfare of our parents* but they apply this differently because of *different factual beliefs*. In this sense, the implementation of similar basic values may differ from one group to another: *i.e. Americans drive on the right and British on the left, but both agree that society ought to promote safe driving by having everyone drive on the same side.*
**Global relativism** holds that *everything* is relative either to a culture or to an individual, not just morality. Therefore, *nothing* is absolutely true or false, but there are only things that are “true for a person or her culture”. Note that this is a self-refuting extreme, as it asserts that *it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth*.
---
### The Issues With Cultural Relativism
I will try to cover some of the major known issues with cultural relativism (CR) as an ethical (moral) framework.
So, one big issue with what we just covered is that **it** **forces** **us to conform to society’s norms.** Furthermore, if what is “good” is what is “socially approved”, this means we could prove that something is good from the premise that it is socially approved. This also means that **it should be contradictory** for something to be socially approved but not good. In other words, if cultural relativism is true then we have to conform completely to our society’s values whatever they are: *we could not disagree with them while being consistent with our moral framework.*
This is absurd as we can easily affirm that some things are *socially approved* and deny that they are *good*. Think about segregation — or basically any other social issue that is or was socially accepted. Cultural relativism as a moral framework would mean that we have to conform to the view *of the majority* even if the majority is ignorant. And if the majority opinions change, we should have to change ours accordingly. **Here, the central virtue is conformity**.
In the same way, CR allows us to defend racist actions as soon as they are socially approved. It would also show any position that acknowledges such actions to be socially approved but deny them to be good as *morally false* — which is difficult to accept. It is not better regarding other issues: take climate change, for instance. If we follow cultural relativism, we would have to accept any view on the subject as “good” until it is the majority, and even if people accept it out of ignorance of the scientific evidence.
As such, cultural relativism denies the idea of objective values and asserts that such objectivity is a myth: we have been taught some norms by our society and we’re just taking them to be objective facts. In this respect, it entertains the idea that while there are big moral differences between societies, there is uniformity within each society since the majority decide the norms.
This tendency to oversimplify the complexity of overlapping social groups and their conflicting interests and values is a problem. At a practical level, it dismisses sub-groups dynamics, requires us to define each group’s boundaries and what values apply. For instance, as an individual, you are part of a nation, state, city, etc. as well as part of other groups (e.g. family, professional, peers, etc). Each might promote conflicting values at some points. So which norms do you follow? Which majority do you conform to? CR poorly addresses such reality.
Another important flawed argument is that *“all moral beliefs are products of culture”*. We can indeed agree that our culture influences our (moral) beliefs but that is not the only factor. **Individual differences**, such as personal experiences, feelings, and thoughts create various (moral) beliefs that may differ from those of the larger group. Our **biology** also dictates certain of our social instincts, as it is the case for other social animals. **Religion** and other constructed beliefs may call us to higher or, perhaps, different standards than our society.
Finally, even though CR seems to promote tolerance over other cultures, it does so only if it is the view of the majority: *in an intolerant society, cultural relativism would mean we have to conclude this intolerance is “good”.* We can also see how cultural relativism, as an ethical framework, leads to intolerance over minorities as they are not the view of the majority and, therefore, by CR standards are wrong.
## Conclusion
As we saw, cultural relativism defines “good” as “socially approved” by the majority of a group, society, or culture. Here, slavery, infanticide, or racism aren’t objectively good or bad but are rather *good* in a culture that approves it and *bad* in one that disapproves it.
Despite its apparent plausibility, cultural relativism as an ethical framework raises some problems. It *forces us* into conformity and leads to questionable results regarding social issues such as racism, climate change, etc. It also leads to some oversimplifications regarding group dynamics. Following its reasoning, it becomes weirdly easy to support any position as soon as it is “socially accepted”.
Cultural relativism makes us accept self-contradictions. Societies may have inconsistent norms (e.g. promoting rights for liberty but limiting those of some minorities), yet cultural relativism requires us to accept all of them. Also, imagine your society disapprove of changing your beliefs to fit what most believe in. Cultural relativism requires you to not change your beliefs, but it also requires you to do it to follow the view of the majority. This is flawed.
Another topic not really discussed here is the inability for CR to resolve ethical contentions. As [Peter Singer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%5FSinger?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a renowned moral philosopher, points out:
> “If our society disapproves of slavery while another society approves of it, this kind of relativism gives us no basis for choosing between these conflicting views. Indeed, on a relativist analysis, there is no conflict — when I say slavery is wrong, I am really only saying that my society disapproves of slavery, and when the slave owners from the other society say that slavery is right, they are only saying that their society approves of it. **Why argue? Most likely, we are both speaking the truth.**” *–Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (p. 6).*
We can, however, take away some important concepts from cultural relativism:
- Culture influences our moral beliefs.
- We need to understand other cultures on their own terms.
- We should generally be tolerant of other cultures and their values.
### What It Means For Designers
So what does it mean for design decisions? What’s interesting for whatever is designed, especially if it does not yet exist, is to ask, together with your team, if what you are designing will support what’s socially approved even if this means supporting things that are arguably not good. In other words, we should not just hope for the good but also explore the potential consequences of our work.
You can do this by exercising your team to explore scenarios in which your design decisions could lead to negative outcomes.
- Are the design decisions, the product, the service, increase/favor socially accepted norms? What are they?
- Are these norms (and the behaviors they engender) questionable?
- Can we do so here or for other societies/cultures?
- What about multicultural environments?
- Are there other environments in which these norms and behaviors exist?
- What are the consequences?
- Etc.
Finally, designers and their teams should also ask themselves how they could measure the outcomes of their work.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*What are your thoughts about this? Leave a comment!*
*Subscribe to Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter* 👇👇
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---
## Sources & References
- [Cultural Relativism, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural%5Frelativism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Gensler, Harry J. Ethics (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy). Taylor and Francis](https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Contemporary-Introduction-Introductions-Philosophy/dp/0415803888?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. Cambridge University Press](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Boas, Franz 1887 “Museums of Ethnology and their Classification”, in Science.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1762958?seq=1&ref=designcriticalthinking.com#metadata%5Finfo%5Ftab%5Fcontents)
- Boas, Franz 1974 \[1887\] [“The Principles of Ethnological Classification”, in ](http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/rothschild/g6352/client%5Fedit/pdfs/boas.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*A Franz Boas reader*](http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/rothschild/g6352/client%5Fedit/pdfs/boas.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)ed. by George W. Stocking Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- *Caleb Rosado,* [*“Cultural Relativism”*](https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/80-241/guided%5Finquiries/articles/cultural%5Frel.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
- [Schmidt, Paul 1955 “Some Criticisms of Cultural Relativism” in ](https://www.pdcnet.org/jphil/content/jphil%5F1955%5F0052%5F0025%5F0780%5F0791?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Journal of Philosophy*](https://www.pdcnet.org/jphil/content/jphil%5F1955%5F0052%5F0025%5F0780%5F0791?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- Roger Lloret Blackburn, [Cultural Relativism in the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council](https://www.upr-info.org/sites/default/files/general-document/pdf/-blackburn%5Fupr%5Fcultural%5Frelativism.09.2011.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), ICIP Working Papers 2011/3, Institut Català Internacional per la Pau, Barcelona, September 2011
### Ethics Explained To Designers
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ethics-explained-to-designers/
Last updated: 2020-03-03T00:00:00.000Z
### **A series of articles about ethics and moral philosophy (for designers) that aim to go beyond dark patterns.**
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## Learn More About Ethics
Hi, Kevin here.
The recent gain in interest of designers for ethics is an interesting by-product of the [global realization of the various harms](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/ethical-design-handbook-prerelease/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and unintended consequences (externalities) caused by the excesses of certain intrusive technics.
Although, this is not a recent topic. [Designers across the world have interests in ethics for many years and tons of books have been written on this very subject over decades](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=design+ethics&year%5Fstart=1950&year%5Fend=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct%5Furl=t1%3B%2Cdesign%20ethics%3B%2Cc0&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). It is worth noting, however, that designers’ sensibility, interest, and care for this subject vary a lot depending on many factors: localization, culture, society, industry, (etc) or simply contextual triggers.
Another angle to this is the [increased availability of big data systems and the infiltration of artificial intelligence (AI) into software-enabled systems](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8693077?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Many concerns related to ethics regarding software engineering revolve around the ethics of AI and mostly focus on the fair and unbiased use of data. Corollary to this is obviously the subject of (data) privacy.
This convergence of interests towards ethical considerations in tech (ethics, morals, values, etc.) from both business professionals, academics, and society consequently **brings lots of attention in the places where decisions seem to be made** on a day-to-day, product or service level basis: design, engineering, and “front-line” management. For better and worse.
While today’s “ethics” in design seems closely (and inevitably) linked to [dark patterns](https://www.darkpatterns.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), it is only the tip of the iceberg. It brings an interesting but narrow focus on actual practices and technics used in user interfaces (UI ) to trick users to perform something that, in the short term, benefits the business while deserving the users (UX).
I will, however, try to separate the two subjects that are not exclusively related. To be clear, I will not talk much about dark patterns. Not because it is not interesting, but because of these few reasons:
1. **There have been already extensive writings** and discussions about dark patterns over recent years. [Some great books](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/ethical-design-handbook-prerelease/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) are available that cover the subject very well and in great detail.
2. **The intentionality and specificity** of “dark patterns” cannot be overstated (see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark%5Fpattern?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174108?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). While I’m sure some companies willing to “growth hack” their business at any cost may be attracted to such practices, there are also tons of other situations that lead to negative outcomes, **yet not covered by dark patterns and which are still part of ethics**.
3. **Ethics (and values) are about how we make decisions** and how they lead to positive or negative outcomes by their standards. Ethics are about how we define what is “good” and “bad”, what is “desirable/preferable” or not, and how we act upon these definitions. Dark patterns are, therefore, a subset of such considerations.
For that, I will focus on what philosophers discuss for centuries: moral philosophy. Through a series of articles, I will cover the basic themes of the various movements and ideologies in moral philosophy. This will help understand some principles behind some positions of today’s discussion and what are some of their limitations.
*Design deontology? Ethical principles? Utilitarianism? Design virtues? What are they and what are the differences?*
## Available Articles
I will update this list regularly.
[**Ethics For Designers: What’s Cultural Relativism?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*When your moral principles are what your society approves of.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-whats-cultural-relativism-e732477ad67f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Ethics For Designers: Important Ethical & Moral Notions**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Understanding the differences between metaethics, normative ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/ethics-for-designers-important-ethical-moral-notions-e9dfd1c730cc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Design & Critical Thinking - Issue #1**](https://link.medium.com/llB4z59Ah5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Building the foundations for a more ethics-literate design community. Hi, Kevin here. Recently, I committed to writing…*](https://link.medium.com/llB4z59Ah5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[link.medium.com](https://link.medium.com/llB4z59Ah5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Design & Critical Thinking — Issue #2**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-critical-thinking-issue-2-ee6bbb60d170?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Uncertainty & changes are good opportunities for ethical thinking.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-critical-thinking-issue-2-ee6bbb60d170?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/design-critical-thinking-issue-2-ee6bbb60d170?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**The Ethics Of Design Sprint**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*An endeavor you are passively subscribing to.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-ethics-of-design-sprint-65463cb3c910?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**On the same subject** 👇👇
[**\[Brainshot\] Design doesn't happen in a vacuum. Do we act accordingly?**](https://link.medium.com/jryO47hBh5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Hi everyone, Kevin here. This week I was synthesizing some work done during a session about Business Value definition…*](https://link.medium.com/jryO47hBh5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[link.medium.com](https://link.medium.com/jryO47hBh5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**\[Brainshot\] The Issue With Common Sense**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-the-issue-with-common-sense-8542ebd4106?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*And why it’s a bad tool in most contexts.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-the-issue-with-common-sense-8542ebd4106?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-the-issue-with-common-sense-8542ebd4106?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**An Answer To Designers Moral Imperative To Focus On Known Knowns**](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/hi-fabricio-teixeira-thanks-for-sharing-thoughts-396ced75363c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Hi Fabricio Teixeira, let me, for the sake of a (hopefully) interesting debate, kindly challenge your point of view.*](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/hi-fabricio-teixeira-thanks-for-sharing-thoughts-396ced75363c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/hi-fabricio-teixeira-thanks-for-sharing-thoughts-396ced75363c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## About The Series
I will publish here and [on Design & Critical Thinking](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) the articles regularly over the coming days, weeks (months?). This is a broad topic with a lot to cover, so expect some length extensive articles as well as shorter ones on more specific principles or concepts. So stay tuned!
**I am not a moral philosopher.** As such, I write here as a humble learner, largely inspired by referential books and writings. Through my readings and researches on the subject of morals and ethics, I discovered views I was unaware of and others not unfamiliar with but rarely as well articulated. I sincerely hope you will too.
That being said, and for full transparency, I tend towards the consequentialist stand of ethics which, to my own understanding, better acknowledge the complexity of the world.
---
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[*Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter - Design & Critical Thinking Newsletter. Sharpen-up your human & critical…*](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.getrevue.co](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/designcriticalthinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## References
- [Meet “The Ethical Design Handbook”: How To Leave Dark Patterns Behind](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/ethical-design-handbook-prerelease/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Google Books Ngram Viewer for “design ethics”](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=design+ethics&year%5Fstart=1950&year%5Fend=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct%5Furl=t1%3B%2Cdesign%20ethics%3B%2Cc0&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [IEEE — Ethics Is a Software Design Concern](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8693077?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Dark pattern, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark%5Fpattern?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design | Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174108?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design Sprint = Design Thinking, really?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/design-sprint---design-thinking--really-/
Last updated: 2020-02-27T00:00:00.000Z
Hi [Mauricio Wolff](https://medium.com/u/17347c02a356?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), thanks for your article.
If I understand well, your aim is to clarify what is a Design Sprint and how does it relate to agile sprints, right?
But the problem is that your definition is self-refuting, and I will show you why. First, let’s take your affirmation that:
> “Design Sprint is Design Thinking in action.”
You kindly provided a definition to Design Thinking, the one from Interaction Foundation:
> Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.
Indeed, as you explained it right away, Design Thinking (DT) is a framework that does not prescribe any particular application. But let’s clarify first here that *“not prescribing a specific method or application”* does not mean that **any method or application** fits into the DT framework. In fact, we could exclude any application that would contradict DT’s definition.
And here is the point of contention: Design Sprint (DS) is, by its very nature, contradicting DT’s definition. Yes, Design Sprint **seems to be similar** to Design Thinking. As you explained it, you find similarily the same stages (which are not stages in the case of DS). And in the end, you prototype and test. But that doesn’t make it equal to DT.
Why? Because, as the definition goes, **Design Thinking IS non-linear & iterative. Design Sprint**, on the other hand, **IS linear and non-iterative**. You have to follow the process — you even have to trust it, no matter what. All the exercises lined-up (surely) make it “efficient” in a certain way but non-flexible and very much linear. **DS contradicts DT’s definition by (at least) two core principles.** And because of that, DS posses no stages at all (from which you can back and forth) but instead just “steps”.
And, no, repeating DS process, again and again, does not make it iterative. I could also add that DT includes user research and does far better at problem space discovery and understanding. But yes, DS does probably better at moving fast into materialization. Is it necessarily good though? …
So, saying that Design Sprint is Design Thinking is by their definitions erroneous.
Of course, we can discuss the details further if you want, but what seems “little details” are in fact not. In the meantime, I kindly invite you to read my two articles on Design Sprint 👇 and [here I explain why our tools should serve our intent](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and not the contrary (as more and more designers are looking for problems to fit into a Design Sprint 🤷♂ 🤦♂).
[**A Critical Analysis Of The Design Sprint’s Argumentation**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Thinking critically about what we know helps shape and improve what we’re doing & how we’re doing it.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**\[Brainshot\] Is Design Sprint A Necessity?**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Is one single tool more important than the goals it should help to achieve? Switching the center of discussion.*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/brainshot-is-design-sprint-a-necessity-nope-6e88c860869d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Anyway, thanks for sharing 👍
### Hey Designers, Trust Your Intuition?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/hey-designers--trust-your-intuition-/
Last updated: 2020-02-09T00:00:00.000Z
### Magical thinking and unicorns — the designers’ fairytales
Unsplash
Dear Designers,
I’m sure many of you trust your intuition and personal experience to make decisions. It is in fact quite an *intuitive* topic in design. It goes by different names: *instinct*, *gut feeling, a hunch*. But what do we mean by intuition?
> “Intuition is a person’s capacity to obtain or have direct knowledge and/or immediate insight, without observation or reason. It’s the “gut feeling” you get.” —[*Intuition. (n.d.)*](https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Intuition&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In psychology, we understand it by the capacity of someone to build a model of his surrounding world over time through a process called [*Mental Models*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). These models we are forming allow us to make sense of our experiences and anticipate future ones. Intuition, therefore, can be seen as the result of such a process of anticipation. So far, so good.
Interestingly, this process is unconscious: you don’t have conscious control over it. As [D. Kahneman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%5FKahneman?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) explains in his book *“*[*Thinking, Fast and Slow*](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, such process goes through our *System 1*, the *“*[*fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,%5FFast%5Fand%5FSlow?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#Two%5Fsystems)*”* system. It is, therefore, **consequently more subject to our cognitive bias.**
Such an unconscious process — which can be significantly amplified by one’s environment — leads people to adhere to flawed ideas and false beliefs.
## The Land Of Magical Thinking
[Clément Freze](http://clementfreze.fr/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is a French mentalist. In his show, he invites spectators to an extraordinary journey into the supernatural. Mind reading, predictions that turn to be true, he can guess any names, dates, etc, as if he can read minds. The public is impressed. Many believe in his incredible “gift”. Except that he doesn’t have any special abilities.
As he reveals it to the audience toward the end of the show, he only uses technics and tricks to make you believe he possesses a supernatural 6th sense. And with proper training, *you could too*.
So, when a French “medium”, Bruno Charvet, became popular through his Youtube channel *“Bruno received a new message”* (*“*[*Bruno à un nouveau message*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcfZ8YqjeAoDnhf5lLUX9tA?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”)* where he meets followers (“clients”) to *“help them connect with dead family members or friends”,* Clément wonders how is it possible that he is able to perform the same without such *“supernatural”* abilities.
This ended up in a [series of videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/clementfreze/videos?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) where Clément, with the help of other skeptics, organized a test for Bruno’s abilities. In short, Bruno is a fraud.
## A Fallible Intuition
*What the point? And how is it even related to design?* — you may think.
See, we can derive some interesting insights from this story:
1. **A lot of people trusted** this medium because *“there were no apparent reasons to NOT believe in his abilities”*;
2. **A lot of people claimed** that *“you have to experience it to know if it works or not”*;
3. **A lot of people thought** the fact that a *lot of people believed in his abilities was any proof*;
But, is the fact that *“there is no apparent reason NOT to believe”* evidence that one should believe? Is your experience can be tricked in any ways? Can a lot of people be wrong about something?
## Train System 1 to trigger System 2
If you find funny or ridiculous that people believe in Bruno’s abilities, such behavior is far to be restricted to such beliefs. The same behaviors are common in tons of practices and can, unfortunately, be easily found in professional ones. Design is no exception.
If you consider that intuition and personal experience are not reliable methods to conclude that something is true:
- Is it possible that you may currently believe in things only based on the aforementioned criteria? *Note: It doesn’t have to be spiritual or supernatural things*.
- What would be a better method to know if those beliefs are true? How could test them?
Being skeptical does not mean being *against* beliefs. Remember: if *“*[*absence of evidence is not evidence of absence*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence%5Fof%5Fabsence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*, there is none-the-less no evidence for you to believe. Being skeptic is recognizing the uncertainty of our complex world.
Now, think about this next time you participate in a workshop that supposed to prove the validity of an approach or during a process that heavily rely on situational subjectivity.
### [Brainshot] Is Design Sprint A Necessity?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-brainshot--is-design-sprint-a-necessity-/
Last updated: 2020-02-03T00:00:00.000Z
### Is one single tool more important than the goals it should help to achieve? Switching the center of discussion.
Unsplash
Recently, Robert Skrobe wrote on [LinkedIn an interesting post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6621062458163372032/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) that, to me, is a sign (if needed) of the maturation of the Design Sprint movement.
[**Robert Skrobe on LinkedIn: #designsprint | 87 comments**](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6621062458163372032/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*I'm starting to move away from the design sprint methodology that I've been working with for the past three years. Now…*](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6621062458163372032/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6621062458163372032/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Here is an excerpt:
> “I’m starting to move away from the design sprint methodology \[…\]\[What\] I am doing is moving more towards my central thesis of 2020 for the process: **It will be more about the recipe than the blueprint.**
> Since Jake Knapp’s original process first debuted in 2016, **it’s been modified many times over.**
> Steph Cruchon created the **Design Sprint Quarter**. Jeroen Frumau and Sabrina Goerlich have been working on the **Talent Sprint** with some initial success. Maaike Coppens is ready to set the world on fire with her **Voice Sprint** process.”
So, why talking about maturation? Well, as you may know, [I am a critic of the design sprint](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) as it is sold. Not because *“I don’t like it”* or *“I don’t believe in it” (as a ‘Sprint Master’ once told me)*, but because it is objectively blind towards the context you are working in and the context for which you are trying to deliver value.
Besides, it is interesting to call for *“belief”* or *“faith”* in a discussion about Design Sprint, during which the “best” argument thrown being *“it’s not science”* along with *“you have to trust the process”* and *“what matters is to validate at the end”*. Magical thinking anyone?
*Anyways…*
**My point is: the Design Sprint is a tool**, and we need to understand the limitations of our tools [to know when and where it is best suited for](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). As I wrote in my article *“*[*How to design in large organizations*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”:*
> “A recipe is a formalized process –in other words, a method. It’s a tool to reach a desired predetermined result. \[And\] **a tool is a means toward a goal.**\[Because\] of its very formulation, a tool implies some prerequisites to reach the intended result. Here, it implies **that you have access to such ingredients** and that you are able to **perform such instructions**.
> In complex organizations, the prerequisites necessary for ready-to-use recipes, methods, or processes are not guaranteed. Sometimes you don’t have all the ingredients. Sometimes, you can’t perform all the instructions. And quite often, it’s a bit of the two. In fact, in such environments, **it is impossible to control all the variables that lead to a desired state**. Our tools, methods, and processes are, by design, ignorant of this reality.”
Therefore, it is not surprising that people tend to modify their tools to better fit their context(s). The various adaptations of the Design Sprint are an expected observation (evidence?) of this reality.
Question: *How far should it go?* I mean, *will it make any sense to call it “Design Sprint” at some point? Will we realize that Design Sprint or not,* [*what matters is that it helps to reach our goals/intents*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design-490af03c0ed4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*?*
With my team, we created “*sessions”* designed for the very specific challenges we were facing. This requires understanding your environment, recognizing what people value, what it means to them.
For this, I don’t call these sessions *“design sprints”* because:
1. We don’t care if people recognize it as a specific approach;
2. We didn’t wait on the design sprint to recognize that any type of directed & time-boxed sessions lead to results;
3. We don’t want people to *believe* a specific method is all that they need because it would be at best a misinformed recommendation — and at worst a lie;
What we care about, however, is what people got from it and what they do with it now.
In the end, what does matter the most? That we use *“Tool X™️”* for all types of problems OR that we used the *best* methods to reach our goals/intents in the *best* understanding of the problem space?
*\*best being variable depending on the context.*
---
## **What are your thoughts on that?**
Hey you, Design Sprint lovers! Hope I’m not too rough…
I’ve nothing against you, on the contrary. I’m nice, so let’s discuss it.
**Leave a comment!**
### [Brainshot] Are You Stuck In The Innovation Paradox?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-brainshot--are-you-stuck-in-the-innovation-paradox-/
Last updated: 2020-01-31T00:00:00.000Z
### Aiming for the butterfly effect you can’t see coming.
Unsplash
An *“innovation”* is **a change (shift) in a system**, where *\[something\]* at its fringe becomes mainstream. For this reason, an *\[innovative thing\]* can **only be assessed as such afterward** (once the change occurred), by looking in the (near) **past**.
Therefore, an *“innovation process”* should be one that looks for strategies to enable interconnections between parts (niches) of the system, which **might** enable them to become mainstream (ref. [*Cultivating System Change*](https://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-System-Change-Practitioners-Companion-ebook/dp/B075GX4Z9Q?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Anna Birney 2017; [*Platform Strategies*](https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/toolkit/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), The Platform Design Toolkit).
> **Think about this:** throughout history, for each “successful” innovation — read a practice, a technology,a product, etc. that became mainstream — how many never reached a point of influence of the mainstream? **Countless**, that’s for sure! (ref. [the survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
For all of you working on innovative *\[things\]*, that’s the paradox you’re living in: *innovation is about a future state, a change, but the* **measure** *of its “innovative impact” lies in the past.* Your *“innovation superpower”* should be one that helps you **observe emerging changes** in the system (ref. [*“Monitor, not measure”*](https://twitter.com/AnnasQuestions/status/1214509857119838208?s=20&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Anna Birney).
## What are your thoughts about this?
What do you do to monitor the state of change in the system you’re aiming to change/impact? How do you handle this way of thinking with traditional management? Do you *feel* this paradox at all?
Leave a comment!
### [Brainshot] Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Do we act accordingly?
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/-brainshot--design-doesn-t-happen-in-a-vacuum--do-we-act-accordingly-/
Last updated: 2020-01-29T00:00:00.000Z
### Business value, ethics, and designers’ responsibilities.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
This week I was synthesizing some work done during a session about *Business Value definition* and I came to think about this (roughly) this way:
> Thinking in terms of the **value** requires to think about **what** is valued by **whom** in which **circumstances**.This demonstrates that \[things\] have **no intrinsic value**, but rather those we give them.
> In this respect, if these “higher goals” are to help prioritize what we should “act upon”, the “business value” is a form of ethics.
Interestingly, **normative ethics,** and its branch [**consequentialism**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**,** is really about that: in [*utilitarianism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ways, the practical consequences of various policies are evaluated on the assumption that the right policy will be the one which results in the greatest *happiness.* A basic transposition of this in the business world is what is seen *as positive* is *valued & promoted* and what is seen as *negative* is *avoided or diminished*.
Nothing revolutionary here, but I wonder how much this is taken into consideration in the ongoing trend around *“ethical design”* and in the ongoing discussions about designers’ responsibilities *\[over what’s produced\].*
Business values *impact* the design as much as the org values or the HR ones *impact* the business (and vice-versa). Doesn’t it imply a strong relationship between all parts?
> If a business values things (let’s say based on “good intentions”) that turn to be “bad”, is there a way for design to make ethical outcomes in such space? And where (and how) do we draw the boundary of the responsibilities?
Finally, if the outcomes are the result of the interactions between the parts of a system, isn’t the “problem” on another level?
## **What are your thoughts on that?**
Do you have strategies that promote virtuous behaviors as a whole? What do you do to take into account the interconnectedness of your organization that leads to the outcomes we see in the world?
Leave a comment!
### The 4 Pancakes Of Great Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-4-pancakes-of-great-design/
Last updated: 2020-01-03T00:00:00.000Z
### How to design in large and complex organizations.
Unsplash
*This article is based on a presentation made for the* [*Service Design Network (SDN) Switzerland*](https://www.service-design-network.org/chapters/switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *in December 2019.*
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I work in the financial & banking technology industry (aka *FinTech*) as a Senior Designer consultant, currently helping to improve the Experience of Compliance solutions at Pictet Bank. If large global organizations are usually complex, banks & financial companies are probably amongst the top. Compliance is one aspect of this complexity, as rules & regulations apply to markets at more or less local levels, with, on top of that, the company’s risk tolerance strategy. Beyond compliance, regulations, and rules, there are real people –human beings– ensuring that the company (and its clients) follows the regulations (therefore reducing its risks), and in general, a lot of people that are impacted at many different levels.
This makes interesting challenges, as you may guess: *How do you transform something which is mandatory/regulatory –and experienced as such– into something that feels necessary, useful, meaningful, and transparent? Something that adds value to the end services and the people using them?*
Some really good questions…
To be honest, one year ago I didn’t know much about how a *Compliance department* really works and interacts with the rest of the bank. And when approaching a new environment, it is tempting, in general, to rely on our known tools, methods, process, and personal experience. As designers, we really love to talk about these a lot. The Internet is full of articles and discussions about our tools. However, I think that it creates several issues in general:
- An unnecessary focus or “lens-effect” on tools & methods. This can give the illusion that this is all that matters the most.
- A disproportionate reliance on such tools and methods as a by-product of this “lens-effect”.
- A false-sense of standardization of our methods as a process of reduction to the most “popular” ones.
- A false-sense of “shared understanding”, as the tools/methods are supposedly known to everyone in the same way. Except they are not.
Moreover, focusing on tools when we don’t understand the environment we are in gives an illusion of being in control, while in reality, we are just blind towards how the system works and what leads to certain outcomes (e.g. success or failures).
---
## A Recipe For Pancakes
Sweet, sweet pancakes.
The **recipe analogy** is a recurring one in our domain (i.e. [here](https://medium.com/@jakek/the-product-design-sprint-a-five-day-recipe-for-startups-84fde3e97d79?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](http://www.incrementalinnovation.com/innovation-management-development/innovation-recipe?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [here](https://bridgeforbillions.org/blog/breakthrough-innovation-ingredients/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) — aka *the* [*Design Sprint*](https://www.gv.com/sprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *—* so let’s use it to illustrate my point.
All recipes contain at least two main basic elements: a list of *ingredients* and a list of *instructions* explaining how to use the aforementioned ingredients, how to prepare them, in which order, etc… (note that it can be presented in various ways, but you get the idea). It’s **deterministic and linear by nature** as each step, executed as instructed with the listed ingredients **causes the predicted result**. Therefore, this process brings a *sense of certainty* to the outcome — while in reality, it increases *probabilities/likelihood (at each step)* upon the *belief (intent)* of what *good (expected)* outcomes *should be*. But more on that later.
Recipe for pancakes example.
A [recipe is a formalized, linear process](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/recipe?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) –in other words, a [method](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/method?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). **It’s a tool to reach a desired predetermined result.** And because of its very formulation, a tool implies some *prerequisites* to reach the intended result.
intent → likelihood → outcomes
Here, it implies that you have access to such *ingredients* and that you are able to perform such *instructions*. This also means that diverting from either the required ingredients or the instructions threaten the very point of using a recipe, by removing its *“certainty”*.
> *A tool is a* **means** *toward a* **goal** *.*
Design, innovation, change, (etc.) are mainly about *navigating uncertainty* to move from a given *observable* state to a *yet-to-be-uncovered* one. **Yet, we see that framing our work around our tools is about the opposite.**
Let’s extend a bit further the recipe analogy by looking at the “chef/cooking” domain to see its limitations. If you ever worked with a chef, you should know that:
- A chef’s kitchen is an extremely **controlled environment**, not an uncharted territory. In fact, it **has been designed** for that very purpose.
- It’s all about **mastering the process**. When you have dozens or hundreds of clients waiting in the restaurant, it’s no time for doubts, questions, change in plans or improvisation.
- In a chef’s kitchen, there is **no place for uncertainty** **or exploration**. Everything has been devised and tested beforehand.
- It’s about **delivering outputs** at the **right rhythm** and in a **qualitative manner**.
**That doesn’t mean chefs don’t innovate.** But they are usually not doing it while serving clients\*. They instead have dedicated time to test new things, with space for failures & learnings. And when they do so, they don’t follow existing recipes. **They are creating new ones that fit their goals and context.**
To an extent, look at the fast-food industry, like McDonald’s to see these elements taken to an extreme.
**\*Note:** *a bit of context is needed here. I did research the topic a bit and discussed it with people in the field, but I’m clearly not an expert. From my understanding, all chefs work in different ways, but they also share a lot of common practices/methods. Creativity is obviously an important component (i.e. combining known things in new ways) but clearly not required all the time. As explained, creating new dishes is usually an upstream process, which can be quite organic. If the result is satisfactory, it is refined and scaled to the restaurant's capacity. If you’re interested in “food & cooking innovation”,* [*there are interesting research articles available*](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as%5Fsdt=0%2C5&q=innovation+haute+cuisines&btnG=&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *(see also the article’s references section).* **Spoiler alert:** *no mention of any recipe for innovation…* 🤔
---
## The World Is Complex. So Are Large Organizations.
.
> “A recipe implies that you have access to such ingredients and that you are able to perform such instructions.”
In complex organizations, the prerequisites necessary for ready-to-use recipes, methods, or processes are not guaranteed. Sometimes you don’t have all the ingredients. Sometimes, you can’t perform all the instructions. And quite often, it’s a bit of the two. In fact, in such environments, **it is impossible to control all the variables that lead to a desired state**. Our tools, methods, and processes are, by design, ignorant of this reality.
Focusing on the tools here would require first to address the problem of *“ability”*, which leads to the problem of *“change in mindset”*, which eventually loops back to the need for tools to bring the change, etc… It’s a never-ending quest for the *“right”* or *“perfect”* tool.
demonstrates that both motivation & ability must be met for change to occur.
### Organizations As Beliefs Systems
Another aspect of this complexity is something I really find amazing: how systems create beliefs that impact decisions, impacting in turns the systems and the beliefs themselves.
.
Looking at organizations this way helps realize that beliefs are not inherent properties of people but rather observable expressions of the interactions between parts of systems. Acknowledging this helps also in the realization that fighting the people holding the beliefs may be a waste of time. [Changing behaviors, minds, and beliefs is more about changing the context than changing the people.](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/changing-peoples-behavior-awareness-alone-is-not-enough/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> “Making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.” –*Deborah Rowland,* [*Lead like an anthropologist — and lead change well*](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/02/07/lead-like-an-anthropologist-and-lead-change-well/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## An Approach To Design In Complexity
Far from a linear process, here is my approach to complex organizations. These are its components, not required in this specific order neither mandatory, even if I found them useful and quite efficient as listed below.
A non-linear approach to design in complex systems, starting from understanding the system from people point of view.
### People And Their Contexts
As said earlier, understanding the environment you’re in, its components and interactions, is key to understand how problems arise/evolve, how people experience them, how they talk about them. You also want to capture their aspirations, their goals, hopes, and meaning of what they’re doing. Make it visible, so that everyone shares that overview and understanding.
### Vision And Strategy
From a shared understanding of this “current state”, accompany the people in drawing their vision of a desirable future, for them and their environments. A vision is not fixed and rigid. It should contain uncertainty, unclear components, and room for better definition. And it should evolve over time. It’s an ever going work in progress.
A vision gives you a direction on the map, but not how to go there. Devise strategies grounded in reality and shows possible paths. You should have a “portfolio of strategies” that you can test and maybe follow in parallel. But such as your vision, your strategies should evolve as your environment reacts and “mutates” due to your actions — *remember that you’re part of the system*.
Also, **ethical considerations** should happen here, as you want to explore the potentialities of your actions. *What could happen if I’m wrong about this? Would I be okay with this if I was the one impacted? etc.*
### Goals And Metrics
Your strategies should help devise clear goals. On a practical level, metrics *must* inform on your progress toward these goals. This is generally difficult to do well, but it can be really detrimental if done wrong: mind the [*focusing effect*](https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Focusing+Effect&ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Yet, useless, meaningless and often unnecessary metrics are legion in large organizations.
Good metrics are based upon your goals and should help you assess their credence: in other words, aim to measure how wrong they are.
On a broader aspect, monitor the effects and changes in the system. Look-out for emergent behavior — also called “weak signals”.
### Tools And Processes
These goals inform on which tools, methods, and processes to use. It’s really important, so let me repeat this: **tools, processes, and methods should be considered in regard to the goals you’re trying to achieve.** Not the other way around.
---
## Shifting The Burden Of Understanding
As designers, we should **learn about as many and various things as we can**. But Designers should not hold a *“sacred position”* of lone geniuses. Instead, we should remain in a position of *“humble & curious learners”* as long as possible. Our role should be more one of *facilitators* that one of *genius creators*.
> *“Everyone Is A Designer, You’re A Facilitator.”*
It is important to realize that design doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that we don’t *“own the design”*. Working in large organizations means working with tons of different people which make tons of decisions every day that impact the design and the experience of what an organization brings to the world, whatever it is. [In a sense, they are designers as much as we are.](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
This perspective invites us to shift the burden of understanding, to be more *humble*, more *empathic*, and *actively listening* to others. You cannot possibly be involved in each decision ever made. You cannot even control every aspect of an organization that brings to life things as they are. But you can act as an *enabler* to ensure that people act as designers, share a common understanding of the problems, the people, their contexts, and ultimately *trust* them to make informed decisions about it.
### Critical Thinking
Being a *humble & curious learner* means asking pretty good & respectful questions. And this is what [critical thinking & skepticism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skepticism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) are about. But, it is often seen as a “skill”. To me, it is more a set of tools and a mindset to ask better questions –key to properly discover problems and deeply understand them.
Some of tools of Critical Thinking: Socratic debate (left), Street Epistemology (right).
### Bayesian Thinking
As explained, beliefs are everywhere. And as much as you need to understand the systems you are in, you need to acknowledge the biases people will start from working with. Yes, the illusion of starting from a “blank page” is probably one of the most detrimental designer’s false-belief.
Everyone hold beliefs, either it is about the problem, the solution, the outcomes, etc.
[Bayesian thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian%5Fprobability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), roughly speaking, allows people to assess and give certain [credence](http://acritch.com/credence/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to the beliefs they hold about a topic, turn them into hypotheses, find actual evidence, and reassess the beliefs in the lights of the evidence.
Bayesian thinking arises from Bayesian inference, a probabilistic approach to statistics.
Interestingly, the Bayesian approach does not refute beliefs but instead weights them on a *scale of likelihood* (credence)*,* taking into account prior weight in the result, making it an inclusive approach.
### Evidence-Based Design. Because Faith Isn’t Reliable Method.
Our tools should help us toward our goals. So I created a [set of canvases](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JBe0DI9axCQFVufLvsFKPohz5SyI1QT1&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to help me.
.
Formulating good –testable and measurable through observation– hypotheses from beliefs are really hard but fun to practice. People can gain agency and empowerment from such practices, leading to better shared-understanding, better decision-making, and eventually better design as a whole.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*This article was originally published in* [**Design & Critical Thinking**](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
Pancakes!
---
## References
All references (and a little extra 😉) organized in 6 sections. Enjoy!
### 1\. Original slides
### 2\. ‘Haute cuisine’ innovation research
[**Search, Recombination, and Innovation: Lessons from Haute Cuisine**](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630112000490?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli is Lecturer in Innovation Management at Politecnico di Bari, and co-founder of the…*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630112000490?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.sciencedirect.com](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630112000490?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Reflecting on a phenomenological study of creativity and innovation in haute cuisine**](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09596111211247254/full/html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This paper aims to present and reflect on a phenomenological research process used to elucidate the nature of…*](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09596111211247254/full/html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.emerald.com](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09596111211247254/full/html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals**](https://journals.sagepub.com/action/cookieAbsent?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Access to society journal content varies across our titles. If you have access to a journal via a society or…*](https://journals.sagepub.com/action/cookieAbsent?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[journals.sagepub.com](https://journals.sagepub.com/action/cookieAbsent?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 3\. Systems Thinking
[**Systems Thinking: What, Why, When, Where, and How? - The Systems Thinker**](https://thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-what-why-when-where-and-how/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*f you're reading The Systems Thinker®, you probably have at least a general sense of the benefits of applying systems…*](https://thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-what-why-when-where-and-how/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[thesystemsthinker.com](https://thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-what-why-when-where-and-how/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Cynefin framework | Wikiwand**](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The Cynefin framework \[1\] is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making.\[2\] Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden…*](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wikiwand.com](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking**](https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking-379cdac3dc6a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*In this series on systems thinking, I share the key insights and tools needed to develop and advance a systems mindset…*](https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking-379cdac3dc6a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking-379cdac3dc6a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Systems Innovation**](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutCcajxhR33k9UR-DdLsAQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Systems Innovation is an open platform for applying systems and complexity theory towards innovating new solutions to…*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutCcajxhR33k9UR-DdLsAQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutCcajxhR33k9UR-DdLsAQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Systems Change Book**](https://systemsinnovation.io/systems-change-book/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Systems change is about changing the underlying structure to a complex system to change its behavior and outcomes. This…*](https://systemsinnovation.io/systems-change-book/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[systemsinnovation.io](https://systemsinnovation.io/systems-change-book/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 4\. Critical Thinking
[**Socratic Method Research Portal**](http://www.socraticmethod.net/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The Socratic method is one of the most famous, least used, and least understood teaching and conversation practices…*](http://www.socraticmethod.net/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.socraticmethod.net](http://www.socraticmethod.net/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Street Epistemology: The Basics**](https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street%5Fepistemology%5Fthe%5Fbasics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This article is a brief outline on the basics of Street Epistemology. For more detail, see the 40-page "Complete Street…*](https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street%5Fepistemology%5Fthe%5Fbasics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[streetepistemology.com](https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street%5Fepistemology%5Fthe%5Fbasics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Anthony Magnabosco**](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocP40a%5FUvRkUAPLD5ezLIQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Objective Subjective Truth Street EpistemologySummary: While Maritza initially says that she is fine believing things…*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocP40a%5FUvRkUAPLD5ezLIQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocP40a%5FUvRkUAPLD5ezLIQ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Three Tools for Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills**](https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46781/three-tools-for-teaching-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving-skills?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*One of the tools Jason Watt learned about in his training is called the ladder of inference. It's a model for decision…*](https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46781/three-tools-for-teaching-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving-skills?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.kqed.org](https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46781/three-tools-for-teaching-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving-skills?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Ethics Defined (a glossary) - Ethics Unwrapped**](https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Productive discussions have a shared vocabulary. Many scholars contributed to this glossary to provide common ground…*](https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu](https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Ethics: a general introduction**](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro%5F1.shtml?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*If ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way human beings behave. Some philosophers…*](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro%5F1.shtml?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.bbc.co.uk](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro%5F1.shtml?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 5\. Bayesian Thinking
[**Bayesian probability | Wikiwand**](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bayesian%5Fprobability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*You can help our automatic cover photo selection by reporting an unsuitable photo. The cover is visually disturbing The…*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bayesian%5Fprobability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wikiwand.com](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bayesian%5Fprobability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Bayesian Thinking**](http://www.statisticalengineering.com/bayes%5Fthinking.htm?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*considers not only what the data have to say, but what your expertise tells you as well. There is a continuing debate…*](http://www.statisticalengineering.com/bayes%5Fthinking.htm?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.statisticalengineering.com](http://www.statisticalengineering.com/bayes%5Fthinking.htm?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Introduction to Bayesian Thinking: from Bayes theorem to Bayes networks**](https://towardsdatascience.com/will-you-become-a-zombie-if-a-99-accuracy-test-result-positive-3da371f5134?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Suppose that in the world exist a very rare disease. There is only 1 in 1000 chance that you have the disease. You want…*](https://towardsdatascience.com/will-you-become-a-zombie-if-a-99-accuracy-test-result-positive-3da371f5134?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[towardsdatascience.com](https://towardsdatascience.com/will-you-become-a-zombie-if-a-99-accuracy-test-result-positive-3da371f5134?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Bayesian Thinking: If You Want To Be A Critical Thinker You Need To Understand This Concept**](https://gainweightjournal.com/bayesian-thinking-if-you-want-to-be-a-critical-thinker-you-need-to-understand-this-concept/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It is the middle of the Cold War. Tensions are high and the United States wants to be ready to retaliate against any…*](https://gainweightjournal.com/bayesian-thinking-if-you-want-to-be-a-critical-thinker-you-need-to-understand-this-concept/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[gainweightjournal.com](https://gainweightjournal.com/bayesian-thinking-if-you-want-to-be-a-critical-thinker-you-need-to-understand-this-concept/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[**Bayesian Thinking: How to Improve Your Understanding of the World - Patrik Edblad**](https://patrikedblad.com/mental-models/bayesian-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Thomas Bayes was an 18 th-century English statistician, philosopher, and minister. His most famous work was " An Essay…*](https://patrikedblad.com/mental-models/bayesian-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[patrikedblad.com](https://patrikedblad.com/mental-models/bayesian-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### 6\. Miscellaneous
- [Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools — The Foundation for Critical Thinking](https://www.criticalthinking.org/files/Concepts%5FTools.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Ethics and Morality — Psychology Today](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/ethics-and-morality?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Moral Philosophy — Ethics Unwrapped | The University of Texas at Austin](https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/moral-philosophy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Moral Philosophy — ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/moral-philosophy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Systems Theory — Wikipedia](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Systems%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Chaos Theory — Wikipedia](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Chaos%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) — Wikipedia](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Complex%5Fadaptive%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [System Innovation Academy](https://systemsinnovation.io/academy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [An Introduction to Complex Systems Science and its Applications — MIT](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b68a4e4a2772c2a206180a1/t/5df3ee072087793e4a6df129/1576267272688/1912.05088.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The application of systems thinking in health: why use systems thinking? — Health Research Policy and Systems, BioMedCentral (BMC)](https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1478-4505-12-51?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Credence — using subjective probabilities to express belief strengths](http://acritch.com/credence/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Cassie Robinson on Medium](https://medium.com/@cassierobinson?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [In Search of Leverage — Exploring the most powerful climate actions](https://medium.com/in-search-of-leverage?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Humantific — Helping People Make Sense of Complexity and CoCreate Positive Change](https://www.humantific.com/blog?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Changing People’s Behavior: Awareness Alone Is Not Enough.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/changing-people-s-behavior--awareness-alone-is-not-enough-/
Last updated: 2019-09-15T00:00:00.000Z
### Systemic Behavioral Design Is More Than Throwing Information And Counting On People’s Internal Factors.
Hi, Kevin here.
Recently, I came along [an interesting study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563219302948?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) on whether notifications about smartphone use effectively decrease screen time or have an impact on related behavior. In brief, [**the study concludes the effect of such notifications is either weak or inexistent**](https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0747563219302948?token=C16B207203903987572ABE62518EFD630D9F2C1307AE2BCD8AF8D0D05CF7F46A5A5E6B7EAB5B378E3C82D7D84CB1369D&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.** One might say that one study is not enough to make a proof ([from a frequentist point of view](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5Fevidence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), and I would certainly agree: without further successful replications, this study is *“just”* an interesting *scientific clue*.
However, this *clue* adds up to an existing list of evidence that point in the same direction, reinforcing a sounded & well-supported belief: **informative messages on one’s behavior lead to a rise in awareness, but awareness doesn’t lead to a change of the said behavior.** Intuitively, it’s easy to think that the threshold between awareness of a potentially “not desirable” state and any corrective actions that one would undertake is small and depends largely on people’s willingness to change. **But this intuition is a false-belief**, not correlated by most social sciences literature, studies, and observations: this is a [fundamental attribution error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental%5Fattribution%5Ferror?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Yet, we can observe quite often design decisions taken from such *“intuition”* in our experiences. As seen in the study, the tentative of tech-giants to address the so-called *“*[*problematic smartphone use*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematic%5Fsmartphone%5Fuse?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* with system updates supposed to help you *“better control”* your smartphone usage, mainly by making you more aware of your screen time use of each app. In most cases, the system allows you to define time limits and different other restrictions. Here, we fall in the previously described issue: the design assumes that the user’s awareness will lead to a change of behavior…
[**Read the full story**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/changing-peoples-behavior-awareness-alone-is-not-enough-8de3b3204e35?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **👉**
### Critical Thinking Applied To Design
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/critical-thinking-applied-to-design/
Last updated: 2019-07-10T00:00:00.000Z
### Aiming for a human-centered approach implies (sometimes) to think about what we do and how we do it.
## Editor’s Note
Hi, Kevin again.
Hope you’re doing well. Lately, I went a bit deeper into critically thinking about design. Not just *Design* per se, but more on our relationships with the tools, [methods, processes](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [and the people that help us to ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“design”*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
As I wrote recently, [beliefs are everywhere](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/moving-design-decisions-from-ego-centered-to-user-centered-55960945a8b8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). However, we can make a difference between **informed beliefs**, based on research & actual evidence, and **blind or ignorant beliefs**.
Sometimes we like so much some of our beliefs, we tend to ignore or dismiss contradictory (or lack of) evidence. [Worse, we can elaborate erroneous reasoning to justify our likes/beliefs, which can ultimately spread false information](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This is human and this clearly applies to designers as well 😒(including me). Being aware of our cognitive bias and using the tools of [critical thinking](http://debunkatron.com/Quick%5FManual%5Fof%5FSkeptical%5FTools.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (and [skepticism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skepticism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) to look at our knowledge can help us assess and elevate its quality, in a humble and human way.
Interestingly, this follows recent big topics in the field, such as striving for a more ethical and responsible way to design and create value. How can we do that if it’s not by thinking *better* about what we do and how we do it? And if not us, who’s gonna do it? And surely, we need to include all other related fields in this reflection.
> The lure of the “doing” should not be an excuse for dismissing our responsibilities against the consequences of what we’re creating, either positive or negative.
Anyway, you should not agree with me and that’s great. Just *think* about it, elaborate your arguments, and share your thoughts in the comments! 😉
### HCT Updates
To close up this already too long note, I’d like to share some updates about the publication: As you may know, I wish to create a community of *“critical human-centered design thinkers”* (the name can be improved 😅). For that, [I recently opened up the possibility for anyone to submit articles to the publication](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/publish-your-article-with-human-centered-thinking-989ce6b06236?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). I’m also currently thinking about creating a space for discussions (like a Slack?). Let me know what you think 👉 [@KevinRichard\_CH](https://twitter.com/KevinRichard%5FCH?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Cheers!
[Kevin Richard](https://medium.com/u/75da4ce5b20e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [A Critical Analysis Of The Design Sprint’s Argumentation](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
The Design Sprint approach is quite trendy and aims to answer any teams, companies, and organizations’ challenges. Many are willing to try it, often as a way to kickstart *“a design mindset”* within their organizations. However, most of the arguments used by Design Sprint proponents to counter the main criticisms about the approach’s issues are either weak or purely rhetorical (and sometimes fallacious). There are no data or actual reliable facts currently available to prove or disprove any of the brought arguments and claimed effects.
**This doesn’t mean we should not use design sprint at all.** But being aware of the limitations and weaknesses of the approach is the right way to know when to use it and for what purposes.
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprints-argumentation-e4a2753dd873?source=collection%5Fhome---4------0-----------------------)
---
### [Moving Design Decisions From Ego-Centered to User-Centered.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/moving-design-decisions-from-ego-centered-to-user-centered-55960945a8b8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
As I like to say quite often here, companies and businesses –and the people working there– are full of beliefs. Beliefs that have been built over time, through successes and failures. The belief that, for instance, acting in a certain way will more likely lead to success. Beliefs about how users and customers behave, about what they think, or about how they decide to buy your product. And as social sciences have demonstrated, context influences people thoughts, behaviors, and decisions much (much) more than one would think.
All these existing beliefs in organizations predefine how people behave, act, and make decisions. This is called a paradigm. When we want to change a paradigm we often focus on the people. However, as said, the context (or environment) plays a critical role by driving how people behave.
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/moving-design-decisions-from-ego-centered-to-user-centered-55960945a8b8?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [Everyone Is A Designer, You’re A Facilitator.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
James, a fellow designer, believes in this idea that a designer possesses a certain higher knowledge and sophisticated skills learned from a small group of insiders, and presumably enjoys all-mighty powers allowing him to make the right decisions based on his own omniscient judgment and well-trained intuition. And James’ position is symptomatic of an opinion shared by a part of the design community. Unfortunately, it is not only outdated and elitist, but it also makes a lot of harm to the real value of design for companies.
I consistently see the designer’s role like a facilitator, an enabler by empowering teams to have a user-centric mindset, to practice UX methods, to “act like designers” — they’re the designers, as much as you are — and then to trust them to make good (read well thought and informed) decisions.
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator-43504511d1af?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**Thanks for reading and see you soon for more Human Centered Thinking!** **🙌**
### A Critical Analysis Of The Design Sprint’s Argumentation
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/a-critical-analysis-of-the-design-sprint-s-argumentation/
Last updated: 2019-07-09T00:00:00.000Z
Hi, Kevin here.
Thinking critically, questioning what we know and how we know it helps shape and improve what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and eventually what we believe in. *I wish this piece of critique to sparks a* [*sane debate*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic%5Fmethod?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *about our* [*knowledge*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, arguments, and beliefs as designers.*
[The Design Sprint](https://www.gv.com/sprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) approach is quite trendy and aims to answer any teams, companies, and organizations’ challenges (page 26 of [*“Sprint”*](http://amzn.to/1MBEqxa?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). Many are willing to try it, often as a way to kickstart *“a design mindset”* within their organizations. I personally know some pretty active *Sprint Masters* in Europe and I tried the approach a few times, both as a participant and a facilitator. I’ve been thinking about this approach since it gets noticed with Jake Knapp’s book *“Sprint”*, and I have to say that I’m still dubitative.
> “Focusing on the surface allows you to move fast and answer big questions before you commit to execution, which is why any challenge, no matter how large, can benefit from a sprint.” *— Jake Knapp,* [*Sprint*](http://amzn.to/1MBEqxa?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *(p. 28).*
What triggered this article is the many articles, talks, and workshops about it these last few weeks and some discussions with other professionals. First, let me clarify something: a design approach gaining in popularity can probably be seen as a “good thing” to raise awareness about design practices within companies –no problem with that. The critics here are really about the approach: its highly codified process, its methodological issues, its intrinsic *“premise”*, and the different arguments used by the community.
The Phases Of The Design Sprint
## General Lack Of Proper Research
This is probably the most obvious issue when you start applying the Design Sprint: the approach doesn’t specifically incite teams to do research. Worse, the illusion that you can nail down weeks of user research in one single day is so rooted in the approach that **the belief that user research is something more than optional easily permeates through teams.**
Because of that, teams start building heavily on assumptions, which is by definition **not user-centered.** Yet, the approach gives the *illusion* that it is –thanks to the implication of “experts”. I’m not saying it’s not a good thing to have “experts” or “user representatives” participating in the design process, on the contrary, but solely relying on them without prior field research is a mistake. This contradicts some basic user research principles, and, well, most UX literature and User-Centered Design (UCD) standards (see [here](https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-research.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234788597%5FThe%5Fstandard%5Fof%5Fuser-centered%5Fdesign%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fstandard%5Fdefinition%5Fof%5Fusability%5FAnalyzing%5FISO%5F13407%5Fagainst%5FISO%5F9241-11?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288190365%5FISO%5FStandards%5Ffor%5FUser-Centered%5FDesign%5Fand%5Fthe%5FSpecification%5Fof%5FUsability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), i.e. the basic difference between what people *say*, *think*, *do.* It’s without saying all the obvious bias of users participating in the workshops (see [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). Again, that’s why we want to mitigate with field data.
**The main counter-argument** I heard so far on that particular point **is that the real users are involved during the last day**, when you test your solution with users through user testing sessions.
Okay but we can easily see the bias here: you give people a solution that has been devised from assumptions. By doing so, **you create a precedent**, meaning that your solution becomes the reference, therefore framing any further discussion with them. **This puts your solution at risk,** by potentially hiding major flaws in your assumptions and/or misalignments with users’ needs and context. If you seek validation only, you just created the perfect conditions to get what you want 👉 see [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [observer-expectancy effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and the [law of the instrument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%5Fof%5Fthe%5Finstrument?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**That’s the reason why prior user research is so important:** starting from observable facts, gathering insights from the field, and devising measurable criteria to reduce bias and focus on actual needs, contexts, pains, etc.
## Rigid Systematic Approach
with its list of exercises.
The Design Sprint approach is a highly codified step-by-step process, and I suppose this is what makes it so popular. Whatever the problem you’re trying to solve, one simple and clear answer. And the best of it: *you always know what you’ll get at the end*. That’s a gold mine for consultancy firms and their clients that likes to have simple answers to complex problems. **But a rigid systematic approach is contextless by definition.**
> “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” *—* [*Abraham Maslow, 1996*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%5Fof%5Fthe%5Finstrument?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In research (in general, not just UX), we try very hard to design our research to make sure to measure the *right* things to answer our hypothesis (and [counterhypothesis](https://stattrek.com/statistics/dictionary.aspx?definition=alternative%20hypothesis&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). We do so by selecting the *right* methods to measure the *right* values, learn the *right* insights, or produce the *right* outcomes. *“Right”* here means that whatever the method, it is aligned towards what’s expected to be learned/understood. And this is critical to **validate or invalidate** a *hypothesis*. **This implies your** **hypothesis** **is not only testable but also** [**falsifiable**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**The Design Sprint, on the other hand, does not care much about either adaptability and falsifiability:** whatever your hypothesis, whatever the context, you have to use always the same methods, in a specific order.
It’s written in The Book. It’s preached by its proponents. It’s [irrefutable and absolute](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irrefutable?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#Adjective).
Source
For instance, let’s take the user testing method: it’s really great to uncover usability issues. **But is it ALWAYS the right method? Probably not.**
To give you an example, let’s say you’re a startup. Chances are your goal is to know as soon as possible if people are willing to buy your product. So, you decide to do a design sprint to quickly devise a solution, and you end the week with your testing sessions and everything goes well. **What does this tell about your freshly devised solution?**
**You actually proved that your solution is usable** — well because this is what user tests measure. **What does it tell us about people willingness to buy it? Not many things**, because that’s not the purpose of this method.
> Testing solutions ≠ User testing
Adapting your process and picking the right methods is the job of a researcher and when you’re testing a hypothesis (i.e. business models, products, services) you’re in a research mode. **But while user testing is part of the methods for testing solutions, testing solutions don’t necessarily equal user testing.** It depends on what we want to know/learn.
By the way, [here is a great list of experiments to test business hypothesizes.](https://medium.com/precoil/an-introduction-to-experiment-pairing-8e2e24796f3e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
A list of experiments to test business hypothesizes.
So, having the ability to adapt your process and pick the right methods is key to de-risk ideas and *validate/invalidate* hypothesizes.
## Rhetorical Speeches And Faulty Reasoning
[A recent interview (in English) of a French Sprint Master](http://inno-insight.net/design-sprints-allow-to-innovate-faster-but-are-they-customer-centric?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) contains most of the recurring rhetorical arguments I hear from most Sprint’s facilitators ([see my comments here](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6547361012536877056?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). Let’s point out that they don’t answer their main question [*“Design Sprints allow to innovate faster. But are they customer-centric?”*](http://inno-insight.net/design-sprints-allow-to-innovate-faster-but-are-they-customer-centric?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and that most answers are dogged with misleading comparison or ready-to-use catchy phrases. That’s not the interviewee’s fault tho, but more an issue with a shared library of rhetorical arguments in the community.
> “\[So\] day 1 is enough to devise the problem to solve and the users’ needs and context etc, except when things are not clear — then you probably need user research?The issue here is for a company/team to have the ability to spot the nuance between actually having enough insights, data, and information to begin a sprint VS believing that it the case.
> Either way, to have the proper criteria to devise a solution that fits real needs in real contexts, this implies the team did do user research beforehand. Otherwise, it is not user-centered (which is exactly the problem with Design Sprints and the point of the question).
> So in brief, if you don’t do research that’s because you already did it, else do research… Yet, how many teams start design sprints with nothing else than their beliefs *🤔*
> Anyway, that’s kind of a flawed circular reasoning.” *—* [*source*](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6547361012536877056?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In [*“The Top 10 Misconceptions about Design Sprints”*](https://medium.muz.li/the-top-10-misconceptions-about-design-sprints-77fa08ae387e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)(2017)*,* [Tim Höfer](https://medium.com/@timhoefer?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) replies to the criticisms against the Design Sprint. But, here again, most of them are diluted in a misleading mix of rhetorical arguments.
**We can find the same circular reasoning about user research, in a more nuanced way.**
> “It’s a common misconception that in a Design Sprint, you skip research and jump straight to generating solutions. If that was the case, it would be pretty bad, but it’s just not true. The start of every Design Sprint is dedicated to learning about problem by interviewing experts and Sprint participants from the client side. What is true, however, is that long, upfront ‘Design Research’ phases are not a part of the Design Sprint (which doesn’t mean that existing data will be ignored when a Sprint kicks off).”
**Some** [**sophisms**](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sophism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
> “Waiting for the results of in-depth design research is a perfect excuse for procrastinating on executing on solutions and testing them in reality.”
This is interesting. These kinds of pseudo-arguments seem irrefutable because they are purely rhetorical –it’s catchy but doesn’t prove anything or provide any meaningful information to advance further the debate. Funnily, the argument can easily be reversed and still works, which demonstrates its total vacuity:
> “Executing on solutions and testing them is a perfect excuse for procrastinating on in-depth design research”
**Some fallacies.**
> “My go-to example for this is Nokia: World-class designers and researchers spent years traveling the globe to find out how people all over Asia and the African continent use their cellphones. The idea: Gain insights how people live, so Nokia can build products that people would buy.Really fascinating stuff, but this treasure-trove of research still left Nokia unable to defend their market share against the iPhone (which, by the way, was considered a product “real consumers don’t want”). Nokia, an industry juggernaut and defining brand during my youth, on par with Nintendo, Nike and Apple collapsed in a shockingly short amount of time because their products became irrelevant.”
So Nokia failure as a company is enough to say that a specific practice used there is irrelevant? hum…🤔 Fine, I’m waiting for a company using Design Sprints to fail then 😈. Joke aside, this seems pretty convenient that it demonstrates specifically the inefficiency of user research… (what about Management? [Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)? [Agile?](https://www.gearstream.com/nokia-demise-more-proof-that-agile-and-scrum-are-merely-tools-not-solutions/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) Etc.)
No seriously, [Tim Höfer](https://medium.com/u/8bb39b814110?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), this is faulty reasoning. Where’s the [causality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or even the [correlation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation%5Fand%5Fdependence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)? Are there no other more parsimonious explanations? Or maybe you possess evidence others don’t have? That’s [*probable*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), after all.
What’s also *highly probable* is that there are multiple variables to consider, well before user research 👉 see [here](https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/the-strategic-decisions-that-caused-nokias-failure-7766?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Nokia-fail?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/5-reasons-why-nokia-lost-its-handset-sales-lead-and-got-downgraded-to-junk/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). **In complex situations,** [**things are rarely monocausal**](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050914012940?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
Last year, [Invision published](https://medium.com/inside-design/what-design-sprints-do-for-enterprises-c872758d32ce?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) an online book called *“*[*Enterprise Design Sprints*](https://www.designbetter.co/enterprise-design-sprints?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* (2018) on *DesignBetter.co.* **Again, we can find some** [**biased reasoning**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty%5Fgeneralization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
> “The design sprint has become a trusted format for problem-solving at many large companies, but there’s still concern amongst some enterprise organizations that it’s not appropriate for their needs. The evidence is mounting to the contrary as massive organizations, public enterprises and government agencies rack up successes using sprints to overcome design and product roadblocks.” *— Richard Banfield,* [*Enterprise Design Sprints*](https://www.designbetter.co/enterprise-design-sprints?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Here we’re talking about *“mounting evidence”*, but as often nothing more to show. Can we see them? Unfortunately, some biased articles from people’s subjective experiences –praising their success through any kind of process– are not enough. At best we could say these are interesting *“clues”,* subject to caution because of two main issues:
1. [**Cherry-picking bias**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry%5Fpicking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**:** is the *“act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position”*. Well, I’m not saying that this what Sprint proponents are doing intentionally, but currently we have not much data to support the claimed effect.
2. [**Survivorship bias**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**:** is the *“logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility”.* After all, we only hear about successful stories through what one would point out a *“polished communication”*, **but what about all the failures we have never heard of?** [The absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence%5Fof%5Fabsence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “The evidence is mounting to the contrary as massive organizations, public enterprises and government agencies rack up **successes** using sprints to overcome design and product roadblocks.”
Please, define “success” because the definition seems to be conveniently vague, especially when later you say 👇
> “\[There\] is little evidence that evidence from a design sprint also confirms a product-market fit. Unless you are also testing pricing and benchmarking competitive offers, you’ll find it very difficult to know if your validated prototype is something people will pay for or switch over to from a competitive option.”
**We can also find what is now a recurring issue with Sprint proponents reasoning about user research.** So in *“*[*What design sprints are good for*](https://www.designbetter.co/enterprise-design-sprints/when-to-sprint?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* section we can read:
> “In the Understand phase, the first of the five phases, design sprints are about building a case around what your user’s pain might be. It’s important to note that traditional research alone won’t always give decision makers the insights they need. In traditional research approaches, there’s a risk that organizations will value data that supports an existing solution over contradictory data. Design sprints are very useful in aligning potential solutions to user pains. However, it’s important to note that feasibility and usability (two other important product characteristics) are not the domain of the design sprint.”
And later, we can read this in the *“*[*What a design sprint can’t do*](https://www.designbetter.co/enterprise-design-sprints/when-to-sprint?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* section:
> “When planning a new project initiative or innovation, it’s best to already have research about what problems are worth solving (see chapter 1). Although the exercises in a design sprint help reveal a customer pain point and potential solution, they’re not ideal for establishing whether a market exists for that, or any, solution. Fundamental research is necessary for enterprises to discover opportunities that can then be validated with a design sprint. Don’t skip the research. Solutions without markets are destined to fail.”
## Irrefutability And Magical Thinking
Last but not least: there is a sort of irrefutability in the shared speeches among Sprint proponents.
Irrefutability here can be seen when, for instance, as soon as we criticize the approach its proponents argue that this is because we misunderstood it, without the need to provide any arguments to the critics –[which is fallacious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Irrefutability also in the circular thinking about user research (as we saw it). Worse: it even spreads misinformation about what is user research by depicting a false-representation of it, just to be able to say *“see, this is non-sense! Our approach is better!”* –it’s called [the ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw%5Fman?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“straw man”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw%5Fman?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ tactic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw%5Fman?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Let’s take this video for instance, where [Jake Knapp](https://medium.com/u/f230699aec44?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Jonathan Courtney](https://medium.com/u/cc9220c83269?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (AJ&Smart CEO) talk about user research.
What they are saying here is symptomatic of this shared circular reasoning. From their own words: ([starting at 1:35](https://youtu.be/c7K3ubQw3XA?t=95&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) because people have to *“believe”* in user research to be able to perform it, and that this is *“the most difficult part”*, then it’s better to do a Design Sprint which is a *“Trojan horse for research”* because *“at the end of the week, even a team totally averse to research will be hooked to learning from the users”*.
So what Jake is telling us here is that because it’s hard to convince to understand the users first, then build something from this understanding, and test it to learn — basically, the design thinking approach — it’s better to skip the first stage and go directly to build → learn. And from here comes the magical thinking ([starting at 2:29](https://youtu.be/c7K3ubQw3XA?t=149&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)):
> “There’s a sort of bigger question about ‘Where good ideas come from? Where do good businesses come from?’.Do they come from doing exhaustive customer research, talking to people, and discovering what their needs are and empathizing with them or whatever? Or do they come from the insights that people in the business have, the way the folks on the team are thinking about the problem?
> I want to say they come from doing research but I think quite often they actually come from people just having insights.”
Well, that’s interesting. If *good ideas* come from people having insights, then where do these insights come from? How do they get those insights? And if it’s not by talking with users, understanding their needs, well, are they not just beliefs?
Then, Jake, tell me how do you make the difference between someone who believes having an insight and someone who actually has one? **We’re still stuck in the loop.**
> People has “actual insights” magically popping out of their mind. Research rarely leads to innovative products or businesses. Hum… *🤔*
How does Jake able to give such definitive and absolute certainty about the ineffectiveness of research? His own experience? Others Sprints proponents’ own experiences and beliefs? Sorry, but we need more reliable sources to prevent bias, such as [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or (again) [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Finally, is the question really about *“where good ideas come from”*? If you’re a company willing to consistently create great businesses, products, etc., you probably want to know what makes a good idea… a *good* idea. How do we define *“good”*? What are the criteria? Anyway, if you master this understanding you basically master your ability to produce good ideas consistently over time. **And this is exactly what user research allows you to do and this is why UX maturity is a thing:** your users' needs, contexts, pains, gains, etc. are such criteria for *“good”* ideas.
The fallacy of opposing business/products needs of good/innovative ideas to the understanding of users is the real misconception because businesses and products should be aligned with users' reality: the innovation lies in the *“how”* you actually do that, which requires you to understand first. The problem here is that we try to apply a product-oriented approach to any level of complexity, [whereas it mainly fits well in a ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“known knowns”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ and sometimes in a “known unknowns” domain)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin%5Fframework?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## Conclusion
Most of the arguments used by Sprint proponents to counter the main criticisms about the approach are either weak or purely rhetorical. There are no data or actual facts available currently to prove or disprove any of the brought arguments and claimed effects.
**This doesn’t mean we should not use design sprint at all.** But being aware of the limitations and weaknesses of the approach is the right way to know when to use and for what purpose. We should dissociate the false promises and weak arguments from what objectively works. Design sprint seems undoubtedly a great method to move quickly in the materialization of ideas, and aligning people around it. However, it fails to provide a proper understanding of the users and is a non-flexible way to go to experiment.
On a much higher level, the design sprint seems to mainly satisfy the necessity for teams to show that they are producing outputs quickly more than anything else, which satisfies managers’ constant pressure to show results. This is what makes it attractive and probably easier to sell. But this is problematic because this approach also spread false-beliefs about user research and, well, most of the design process.
## Note
To be honest, I wanted first do share a quick debate I had recently about the design sprint. But, after some research on the topic for the purpose of this article, I realized how deeply fallacious the speeches on the matter were. Because there is a lot to say and that some elements came to grow the length of the article organically, I apologize for the somehow messy structure.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*This article was first published on* [*Design & Critical Thinking*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
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### **How to use behavior design to drive change in your team and organization.**
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Following my [thoughts on ](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*design ownership vs leadership*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/everyone-is-a-designer-youre-a-facilitator/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), I thought it would be useful to go further on HOW to create this shared understanding I talked about, especially in environments reluctant to UX or where design is seen as purely cosmetic.
Note that this kind of environment depends on many variables to occurs, and can be a company-scale issue and/or at a much lower level, a team-scale issue. You probably work with this person, either it is a manager or an important stakeholder, who’s use to have strong “design opinions” (or opinions on how the design should be done). He probably drives most of the discussion around his point of view, narrowing any possible debate to a false-dilemma discussion –the “either you’re with me or against me” thinking– leaving no room for sain and user-centered criticisms.
If you feel that at least part of this description fit your situation, well, let me tell you a little truth: **you’re part of the issue**. As I like to say quite often here, [companies and businesses –and the people working there– are full of beliefs](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Beliefs that have been built over time, through successes and failures. The belief that, for instance, acting in a certain way will more likely lead to success. Beliefs about how users and customers behave, about what they think, or about how they decide to buy your product. And as [social sciences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%5Fscience?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) have demonstrated, [context influences people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical%5Fconditioning?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thoughts, [behaviors, and decisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural%5Fsciences?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) much (much) more than one would think. **Don’t get me wrong:** these contextual *functional* beliefs are not necessarily “bad”.
[In fact, beliefs are part of us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Indeed, even tho I can rationalize, doubt, and be critical toward everything, it’s more likely that I will trust you offering me a glass of water being safe to drink. This is because in our day-to-day interactions, questioning everything would require a huge amount of effort. Our brain likes to optimize thing, and beliefs are really effective. These day-to-day beliefs can be classified as a “functional beliefs” –which can be distinguished from “spiritual beliefs” or “symbolic beliefs”, for instance. There is a whole field of study, by the way, for which you can find interesting studies [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600630/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.sofn.org.uk/sofia/101allport.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [there](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318390603%5FFunctional%5Fbeliefs%5Fand%5Frisk%5Fminimizing%5Fbeliefs%5Famong%5FThai%5Fhealthcare%5Fworkers%5Fin%5FMaharaj%5FNakorn%5FChiang%5FMai%5Fhospital%5FIts%5Fassociation%5Fwith%5Fintention%5Fto%5Fquit%5Ftobacco%5Fand%5Falcohol?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Functional beliefs are quite malleable because of their practical nature: ease our thought and decision processes.
> “Remember last time you were waiting for the elevator to come? How many times did you press the button to make it come faster?” *— an example of a functional belief at play.*
Let’s precise that functional beliefs are most of the time based on personal experience, and can be characterized by a tendency to create ad-hoc “explanations” –that are supposed to be easily adjusted by new experiences– and can be shared among a group/population (i.e. stereotypes) which then will become less malleable. Some beliefs have positive impacts and some have negative impacts. The problem in general, however, is that cognitive biases are part of their creation, leading to [faulty generalizations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty%5Fgeneralization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [all kind of faulty reasoning](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
## To Change How People Behaves, Change Their Environment.
All these existing beliefs in organizations predefine how people behave, act, and make decisions. **This is called a paradigm**. When we want to change a paradigm we often focus on the people. However, as said earlier, the context (or environment) plays a critical role by driving how people behave. In addition, it is less costly –in terms of effort, ability, etc.– to modify people’s immediate context than the people themselves, and, as it is often overlooked, you have greater chances to succeed without people even noticing the “hack”.
In science, the changes you apply to an environment are called [independent variables](https://www.thoughtco.com/independent-and-dependent-variables-differences-606115?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). These variables are the one you have control onto. Note that you probably want to introduce changes in a progressive way to avoid a change-averse reaction: the [psychological reactance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance%5F%28psychology%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). As a designer, you probably know this phenomenon typically when introducing a brand new “redesign” of an existing product or feature.
Another concept I want to introduce here is “[positive reinforcement loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive%5Ffeedback?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)” or “positive feedback loop”. To put it simply, it’s a process in which, for instance, a specific behavior leads to an outcome perceived as positive, which makes it more likely to occur again. We then say that the behavior is positively reinforced –which doesn’t mean the behavior to be positive *per se*.
> “Predictable behavior leads to predictable outcomes.”
Furthermore, this kind of feedback loop can be provoked and amplified with specific triggers and (psychological) rewards. To give you a sense of how strong this process can be, this is what is [known to be the reason for most addictions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward%5Fsystem?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). On the other hand, this process is used by behavioral designers to incite you to use and reuse an application.
The Hook Canvas
It has been properly theorized, observed, applied and all this shows you that you can not only have an impact but also favorize a specific behavior to make it a new norm. Of course, there is a discrepancy between an experimental environment and reality, and the effectiveness of the tactic will depend on many factors on which you probably don’t have control –unlike in experimental setups. That being said, it doesn’t prevent most of your mobile application to use such process every day with success –even tho they trigger a relatively “simple” behavior.
### From Theory To Practice
So we want our team to be more user-centric and keen to try a UX approach. The problem is that we, as UX designers, often feel the importance of advocating for more UX practices at the beginning of a new project/product. That’s understandable as this is a critical phase for user research, etc. Unfortunately, this is also the time at which people will be less keen to hear it if not ready. This can be explained by the high uncertainty and risk level that people’s brain will automatically –and unconsciously– compensate with high change-averse attitude: *this is* [*psychological reactance*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance%5F%28psychology%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *(again).*
Instead, people will be more keen to accept change on low-risk/low-uncertainty projects. Pick one project that your PM/PO/Manager considers as “not that important” and plan to apply one UX method on it. You want this method to create a kind of *Aha!* moment in people’s mind. I personally recommend you to do some User Tests, that has the capacity to show the difference between what people say and what they actually do. If you never practiced such method, I invite you to read the classic [“Rocket Surgery Made Easy” by Steve Krug](https://www.sensible.com/rsme.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
And to be honest, as a first attempt to open some eyes on UX, don’t put the stakes too high: if it’s complicated to ask actual users/customers to come at your office perform the test, pick some participants among your colleagues (or other employees). I know, that’s far from being perfect but here the test is more for the observers than the actual quality of data you can gather. Importantly, try to repeat this kind of experiments on small projects as often as possible, and vary the type of methods.
The advantage of doing like this has to do with another interesting psychological effect: [people are more keen to accept something they already know. This the confirmation bias.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) Interestingly, repeated exposition to a new/foreign element (idea, concept, object, etc.) increases psychological safety, playing on our confirmation bias. By exposing people to UX practices, you make them more keen to accept their use. **That’s why it’s important to involve the right persons in your experiments.**
Also, note the importance of probing for acceptation at the end of your experiments. Ask people what they thought about it, and if they are willing to try it again. Each time, try to increase the value of the experiments by increasing the quality of insights gathered. **And don’t forget to show how these insights can drive decisions. Make your team sees you as the facilitator that leads them to more chances of success.**
### The Tipping Point
Another element you have to understand about behavior change is the different angles you have to focus on to make it happen. [Fogg’s behavior model](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fogg-behaviour-model-From-BJ-Foggs-Behavior-Model-by-B-J-Fogg-2018%5Ffig1%5F332383756?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) highlights them really well: B=MAT or *Behavior* \= *Motivation+Ability+Trigger*.
Fogg’s Behavior Model
In other words, if you want a behavior to occur, you need a certain amount of motivation, the ability, and a trigger to perform it. If your motivation is high but your ability is low, you’ll most likely fail to perform it and *vice versa*. [You can read this article which well-summarize the model.](https://www.growthengineering.co.uk/bj-foggs-behavior-model/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Using the model, we can easily understand that to pass consistently the threshold at which the trigger always succeed you need some prerequisites to be in place. **This is the tipping point.**
This applies to our case as well, and you have to acknowledge that until these criteria are not properly fulfilled, the change in paradigm will not spread into your organization to become the new norm. **And let’s be clear: it can take time.**
## Notes, limitations, and issues.
If you didn’t notice it yet, this article is about manipulation. This obviously raises some legitimate concerns about the ethical implications of such tactics. Indeed, even tho the purpose here is to better integrate new or disregarded practices –UX methods– and its potential added value and positive impact on a team/company’s outcomes, I can only recommend you to put some clear guidelines to help you take the right decisions about how far you should and should not go to reach your goal.
**Remember:** this is not about you, nor it is about your career. There are real people lives and well-being at play. You’re not playing god here and you’re not free from mistakes, erroneous judgment, or faulty reasoning. **You’re human as much as everyone in your team/organization, with all the bias and limitations.** Be humble.
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*This article was first published on* [*Design & Critical Thinking*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
### Everyone Is A Designer, You’re A Facilitator.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/everyone-is-a-designer--you-re-a-facilitator-/
Last updated: 2019-05-18T00:00:00.000Z
### Great User Experience Happen When Design Is Shared Among The Entire Team.
Unsplash
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Today I would like to discuss an issue I keep confronting in the design realm: *design ownership and leadership*. These are mainly thoughts on the subject, roughly put together after some recent discussions with colleagues and people from the community. To tackle the issue, let me start with something I always found amazing –and sometimes disturbing: everyone wants to have a say on whatever is being designed. Okay, let’s try to go further than this blank observation which leads to the same old complain designers have.
First, the reality –we have to admit it– is that when there is no “designer” per se, someone else does the job (e.g. the PM, PO, BA, or any product-related person). And yes, despite the increasing interest of more and more companies in [design as a competitive advantage](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-value-of-ux/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), there is plenty of places where there is no designer.
But, is it really a problem? One of the common bias I observe from many designers is to think that we need a designer in everything that is designed. Yet, many products/services are designed without designers participation. Or are they? Does it makes the people behind those products “designers”?
> *Despite what one would think, having a designer in the team does not increase the chances of success, while, however, design practices do.*
## Recurring Fallacies And Elitist Point Of View
Some weeks ago [I published an article about a study on the Aesthetics-usability effect](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/reconsidering-the-effect-of-aesthetics-on-usability/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). I shared it on the usual social media and “design groups” where I occasionally get some kind feedback and interesting comments. A few days later, one comment caught my intention, as a fellow designer, *James,* wrote this under my post:
> **James:** “35 years of observing the field has taught me that the undying attempts to quantify the complex set of considerations and experienced judgement involved in real (not superficial) design will never succeed.All putting, no driving.”
So, I asked him to develop his reasoning a bit –and he did. Here is the full “exchange” we had:
> **Me:**“Interesting. Can you elaborate a bit more: what’s “real” design? And what’s a successful quantifying of the UX for you?”**James:** “‘Real design’ is where an experienced designer, educated in the full design spectrum, uses their experienced judgement and intuition (trained and gained by working alongside more experienced designers) to derive embodiment solutions that are elegant, successful but which are not crudely number-driven.
> Good experienced designers have the skills to know how to approach a design and make it better, more whole, easier to use and all-around more valuable \_and\_ elegantly integrated.”
> **Me:**“Well, you seem to oppose designers’ personal experience & skills-set to a verifiable, replicable, and well-proven method, denying, by the way, the actual science behind it (you know: psychology, behaviorism, neuroscience, etc.)… Sorry but beyond the fact that this sounds a bit arrogant and dogmatic, it seems to be contradictory with past and current UX literature.
> Tell me, how do you know that your work is actually a success if you don’t measure anything? Using your own personal, subjective, judgment? Waiting for the recognition of the designer community, which is itself biased? Well if so, you miss a real opportunity to anticipate and improve the impact of your work on actual people lives, beyond one’s intrinsic capabilities.
> Don’t get me wrong: your judgment will inherently play a role at some point, but this doesn’t mean you have to solely rely on it.
> As a reminder, the main point of our work (as UX designers) is to understand and answer users (real people) needs, pains, gains, and expected outcomes in (real) contexts. All of these are measurable and factual criteria and only proper user research (for which usability plays a good part) can give you objective & unbiased insights. For that, you need a verifiable method which works regardless of one’s judgment, intuition, or experience.”
> **James:**“A good designer \_is\_ a user, a “real people,” not a wonk in a tower, and understands how people look at or use things. And a good designer learns how to assess and address all of those needs in arriving at a design that integrates solutions to those needs (and which can be iteratively refined, but arriving close to the goal). You may think designers need a “verifiable method” but that’s not an objective truth.
> There’s a reason that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1998, he turned the “user research labs” into storage rooms.Also, every good design need not conform to nor pass some analytical test. And designers need not test or justify every decision that they make.”
James’ position is symptomatic of an opinion shared by a part of the design community. I often hear it and read it, most of the time as an underlying message, in articles about design, and these rhetorical pseudo-arguments can be found in many designers’ speeches.
Here is my last answer to James, with no response so far.
> **Me:** “‘A good designer is a user’ → Well, it depends. I personally work in a domain where I can hardly be more than an occasional user playing with scrambled or fake content/data, so your argument isn’t an “objective truth” either.But okay, let’s assume you’re right: even tho a designer would be an actual real user of the service/product he is working on (which sounds already highly biased), he would only have a limited understanding of the experience of using it, because he is not representative of the actual audience. A part of the users might be using it in a very specific context, or on a specific device, or with specific constraints which varies between groups of users, etc. It’s without saying [all the cognitive bias at play that can significantly affect this all-mighty designer judgment](http://bit.ly/2W1DV5T?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> And what about this little issue → [http://bit.ly/2L7qals](http://bit.ly/2L7qals?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
> Note that the problem exists regardless of one’s own experience, skills, intuition, or whatever. This is just factual. And if you think that our human cognitive limitations don’t apply to you, [you’re probably facing one](http://bit.ly/2Gve5Rg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> Of course, an experienced designer might acknowledge some of these issues and probably would go talk to real users (a.k.a doing user research?) or do who-knows-what-magical-intuition thing, but still: correlation doesn’t imply causality –meaning this is not because some designers successfully relied only on their intuition that intuition causes success. Either way, without a proper method, the quality of the gathered insights might be compromised…
> And please, why do people arguing on “not doing research” always use Steve Jobs as an argument *🤔*
> First, [it’s a myth that Steve Jobs didn’t listen to customers](http://bit.ly/2UShJib?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> Secondly, it’s purely rhetorical and fallacious because:
> 1) Steve Jobs never did UX research himself, so why would he be more relevant than my granny’s opinion on the matter (see [argument from authority](http://bit.ly/2IIm9BZ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
> 2) Steve Jobs was not a designer at all (again, [argument from authority](http://bit.ly/2IIm9BZ?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) –plus, he was not the only guy who participated in the success of Apple, so stop the glorification bias.
> 3) Steve Jobs judgment can be objectively criticized: he was not right on everything → see [here](http://bit.ly/2GC79my?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [here](http://bit.ly/2Xx95ma?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). It’s easy to overestimate the successes and underestimate/overlook the failures → [fundamental attribution error](http://bit.ly/2GBSN5U%E2%80%9D?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> 4) Apple –even under Steve Jobs’ reign– didn’t always make successful products → see [here](http://bit.ly/2L0KaGj?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [there](http://bit.ly/2vli2mC?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> 5) Apple is [still making some sh\*\*\* design decisions](http://bit.ly/2GHV1Q7?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)! Proof that financial success doesn’t mean everything is fine.
> 6) I can find tons of companies which are not Apple nor have a “Steve Jobs way” of doing things, yet they are really “successful” while using proper UX methods: i.e. [Facebook](http://bit.ly/2WaS80k?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Intercom](http://bit.ly/2DtX8WT?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Monzo Bank](http://bit.ly/2UzzY6Q?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Google](http://bit.ly/2GCaZMu?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Salesforce](http://bit.ly/2PpYpmq?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and many more…”
Yeah, I know, I’m really not good at short answers… 😅
Anyway, this idea –that a designer possesses a certain higher knowledge and sophisticated skills learned from a small group of insiders, and presumably enjoys all-mighty powers allowing him to make the right decisions based on his own omniscient judgment and well-trained intuition– **is not only outdated and elitist**, it makes a lot of harm to the real value of design for companies.
These *“lone cowboys”* who, without necessarily realizing it, often behave in a way which prevents knowledge to spread, therefore preventing shared understanding to be built. In such a scenario, the team becomes dependent on the “expert” who’s entertaining some sort of obscurantism: a lack of understanding and fear of uncertainty rarely leads to good results.
> *Don’t aim to be indispensable, aim to be memorable.*
## You Don’t Own The Design.
Since many years, I consistently see my role –the designer’s role– like a facilitator, an enabler. Let me explain.
My opinion (yes, it’s just my opinion) is based on a simple reasoning elaborated around facts: before building a product or a service, you should first understand your users and their context(s). Furthermore, you want to be able to answer a few questions: what are their mental models, their paradigms? What are the different environments in which the needs occur? What are the expected outcomes? **In brief, you want to create an understanding of your users –you’re building knowledge. This is true whatever the product is and whenever you do something, either it is to build a new product from scratch or update an existing one.**
But as a designer, you’re probably not the only one who benefits from this understanding/knowledge. In fact, if you really aim to create a great product/service with a great experience for the users, you probably want the Product Manager, the developers, the customer support, and almost anyone working somehow on the product/service to have the same understanding, so that they can take the best decisions at their level.
> “Design is a team sport” *— Jared Spool*
It’s illusory to think that you can –or have to– be involved in every single decision taken (well you can try… wish you good luck!). And let’s face it: **you’re not the only one making design decision!** When your PM or PO decide to prioritize some features instead of others, when technical constraints drive how developers implement design specifications, **they’re all making design decisions.**
## You’re More Like A Facilitator.
To prevent the endless (and meaningless) quest to control everything, build trust and empowerment instead. Help everyone in your team build the same understanding of the users. **Empower them to have a user-centric mindset, to practice UX methods, to “act like designers” –they’re the designers, as much as you are.** Then trust them to make good –read well thought and informed– decisions.
> “Predictable behavior leads to predictable outcomes”
For this, start not only to embed them in your process but also to participate and practice them. You’re planning some user interviews in the coming week? Some usability testing? A journey mapping or co-creation workshop? Help the team organize and accompany them to perform the activities.
**Make the process transparent, understandable, and explicit.** All domains have their own jargon, but while it can be understandably useful among a group of practitioners, it can create unnecessary opacity and confusion to others. “Journey Map”, “Co-creation”, “Prototype” –all these seem pretty obvious and explicit, right? Probably for you. But don’t just assume it is, makes it clear.
For each activity, remind your team what’s the purpose, what kind of outcomes are expected, for what means, and what will be the next step. While doing this, I also recommend you to show where does it stand compared to your entire process, so the people can make their own visual representation of it.
## Conclusion
Next time you complain about “this guy”being “stupid” because *“he does not understand the point of doing something this way”*, or complain about your PM not buying into your *“improvement”* proposal, or a developer not implementing properly your design, ask yourself: *did I do all my best to involve them in the process? Did I build a shared understanding of the users’ needs and context?*
One thing is certain: [people are putting more value on something if they participated in its elaboration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This works for ideas as well.
**Designers, stop producing, start empowering!**
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*This article was first published on* [*Design & Critical Thinking*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
### Reconsidering The Effect Of Aesthetics On Usability
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/reconsidering-the-effect-of-aesthetics-on-usability/
Last updated: 2019-05-03T00:00:00.000Z
### Recent study shows no effect of aesthetics on usability, but instead highlights a significant effect of occasion and that participants’ perceptions of their own improved performance accounted for increased usability scores.
This is one of the biggest discussion amongst designer, whether or not aesthetics play a role in usability. Since [Kurosu and Kashimura (1995) study](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290957555%5FApparent%5Fusability%5Fvs%5Finherent%5Fusability%5Fexperimental%5Fanalysis%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fdeterminants%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fapparent%5Fusability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) several studies showed a correlation between the interface’s visual attractiveness to users’ perception of usability.
## A Faulty Reasoning Lead To Myth Creation
One of the recurring fallacy we can hear sometimes from some designers comes from a shortcut: if doing visually appealing interfaces increases usability perception, then *aesthetics = usability*. Therefore it becomes a justification for doing only the first, assuming the latter is then covered. And how many times did I heard the same faulty reasoning to justify not measuring user experience and usability… Well, of course, no studies ever stated anything like that and ironically you would need proof to support both statements, meaning you would have to measure both attractiveness AND usability of your interface.
Fortunately, most renowned figures of the community are more parsimonious on that matter, emphasizing that we should take care of both aspects to guarantee good user experience. In their article [*“The Aesthetic-Usability Effect”*](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *(2017),* Nielsen Norman Group while talking about *“users being more tolerant to minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing”* yet urges on the limitations of such effect.
[**The Aesthetic-Usability Effect**](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It's a familiar frustration to usability-test moderators: You watch a user struggle through a suboptimal UI…*](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Aesthetics And Perceived Usability
A study published in the [*Journal Of Usability Studies*](http://uxpajournal.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [*“Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Effect of Aesthetics on Perceived Usability”*](http://uxpajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/pdf/JUS%5FGrishin%5FFeb2019.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)by J. Grishin and D. Gillan (2019, February), specifically focused on the link between aesthetics and user judgment on usability. The author’s motivation can be summarized in this statement:
> “Even though a correlation between aesthetics and usability was demonstrated in much of the research (e.g., De Angeli, Sutcliffe, & Hartmann, 2006; Tractinsky, 1997), there were few experiments that manipulated aesthetics and usability as separate variables. As a result, a causal relationship between aesthetics and users’ perceptions of usability has not been sufficiently established.”
The study comes back on the original [Kurosu and Kashimura (1995) study](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290957555%5FApparent%5Fusability%5Fvs%5Finherent%5Fusability%5Fexperimental%5Fanalysis%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fdeterminants%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fapparent%5Fusability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) by specifying that the study originally didn’t start out as an investigation of
aesthetics, but as an attempt to study the relationship between inherent usability and something Kurosu and Kashimura called *“apparent usability”*. The *apparent usability* being how much an interface looks easy to use, while the *inherent usability* refers to an interface intentionally designed to be efficient, safer, and easier to understand. Yet, even tho the study showed a correlation between apparent usability and the perceived “beauty” of the interface, J. Grishin and D. Gillan (2019) question the direct implication of aesthetics on the apparent usability.
*“Although Kurosu and Kashimura found that apparent usability correlated highly with beauty, this observation does not establish that interface aesthetics directly influences apparent usability. In fact, the reverse — that apparent usability might cause users to perceive greater beauty in the interface — might be true. Or, perhaps the relation between apparent usability and aesthetics is spurious.”*
[**Aesthetic-usability effect - Wikipedia**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic%E2%80%93usability%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The aesthetic-usability effect describes a paradox that people perceive more aesthetic designs as much more intuitive…*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic%E2%80%93usability%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic%E2%80%93usability%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Furthermore, the authors highlight the lack of studies that manipulated aesthetics and usability as independent variables and with multiple observations.
> “Based on the findings from previous studies, it was unclear under which circumstances the aesthetics of an interface affects users’ perceived usability, or the direction of the relationship. Most studies were correlative and did not attempt to manipulate aesthetics and usability as independent variables. Hassenzahl (2004) and van Schaik and Ling (2009) suggested a causal relationship between aesthetics and usability, but this was mostly theoretical conjecture, and it remained untested, leading Hassenzahl and Monk (2010) to conclude that there was a lack of studies that tested the effects of aesthetics on usability through experimental manipulation.”
## The Results
In definitive, the authors aimed to address those points. **Interestingly, the study failed to show the hypothesized effect.**
> “Interestingly, a chi-square test for Observation 1 of Experiment 2 did show a significant effect of aesthetics not on perceptions of usability or aesthetics, but on performance. However, \[…\] all four observations of Experiment 2 combined failed to show the same effect of aesthetics on performance, and a chi-square test for Experiment 1 similarly failed to show an effect of aesthetics on performance.”
The authors further discuss the possible reasons behind these results. One of the explanation would be that the effect does exist, depending on the context, but is really weak. Another explanation would be that in previous studies the initial judgment of the participants’ perceived usability might have influenced the rating of visual attractiveness. Finally, the authors highlight the fact that participants who rated perceived usability with high score could have had a tendency to give higher score in general, therefore creating a spurious correlation.
[**Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Effect of Aesthetics on Perceived UsabilityJUS**](http://uxpajournal.org/boundary-conditions-aesthetics-usability/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*A growing body of usability research suggests that the aesthetics of a system affects users' perceptions of the…*](http://uxpajournal.org/boundary-conditions-aesthetics-usability/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[uxpajournal.org](http://uxpajournal.org/boundary-conditions-aesthetics-usability/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Conclusion
What does it mean for designers? Well, more than ever it shows that measuring and testing both visual appeal AND usability (perceived and effective) is really important. Whether the aesthetic–usability effect exists or not, designers should acknowledge its limitations and weaknesses. If visual appeal could reduce some small usability issues, it can’t be overstated that a usable interface is preferable over purely aesthetic aspects on itself.
As a reminder, the [SUS is a great standardized way of measuring usability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System%5Fusability%5Fscale?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and brings many benefits, such as being scalable and consistent over all kind of interfaces, and works well even on small population set. On the other hand, performing on regular basis user tests with basic usability scoring and users’ impression questionnaire at the end is a good first step in measuring your design decisions.
[**Advanced Common Sense - Rocket Surgery Made Easy**](http://sensible.com/rsme.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Steve Krug's second book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, explains exactly how to do your own fast, effective, low-cost…*](http://sensible.com/rsme.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[sensible.com](http://sensible.com/rsme.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## References
- [Journal Of Usability Studies, ](http://uxpajournal.org/issue/volume14-issue2/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*February 2019: Volume 14, Issue 2*](http://uxpajournal.org/issue/volume14-issue2/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [J. Grishin and D. Gillan (2019, February), ](http://uxpajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/pdf/JUS%5FGrishin%5FFeb2019.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Effect of Aesthetics on Perceived Usability*](http://uxpajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/pdf/JUS%5FGrishin%5FFeb2019.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Nielsen Norman Group (2017), ](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*The Aesthetic-Usability Effect*](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [M. Kurosu and K. Kashimura (1995), ](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290957555%5FApparent%5Fusability%5Fvs%5Finherent%5Fusability%5Fexperimental%5Fanalysis%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fdeterminants%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fapparent%5Fusability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Apparent usability vs. inherent usability experimental analysis on the determinants of the apparent usability*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290957555%5FApparent%5Fusability%5Fvs%5Finherent%5Fusability%5Fexperimental%5Fanalysis%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fdeterminants%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fapparent%5Fusability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [M. Hassenzahl & A. Monk (2010), ](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233864572%5FThe%5FInference%5Fof%5FPerceived%5FUsability%5FFrom%5FBeauty?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*The Inference of Perceived Usability From Beauty*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233864572%5FThe%5FInference%5Fof%5FPerceived%5FUsability%5FFrom%5FBeauty?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [P. Schaik & J. Ling (2009), ](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581908001304?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*The role of context in perceptions of the aesthetics of web pages over time*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581908001304?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)(see also a [free-access version here](https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581908001304?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))
- [*System Usability Scale (SUS)*](https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Usability.gov](https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [*System Usability Scale* ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System%5Fusability%5Fscale?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System%5Fusability%5Fscale?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- User Testing How To → [*“Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems”*](https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself/dp/0321657292?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[, Steve Krug (2010)](https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself/dp/0321657292?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**Thanks for reading!**
*This article was first published on* [*Design & Critical Thinking*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
### Uber vs Europe, Or The Good Against The Evil
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/uber-vs-europe--or-the-good-against-the-evil/
Last updated: 2019-03-27T00:00:00.000Z
[Manuel Woerner](https://medium.com/u/83e8452fe11f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thanks for this article.
I would like to kindly elaborate criticisms over your article and especially its underlying message. Hope you’ll see this as a constructive and friendly share of thoughts!
First, you talk a lot about success. But can you define “success”? And harder: can you define “success” without subjective moral (good/bad) considerations? And would it make sense to define “success” without taking into account its socio-cultural context?
Well, you can see the problem here: success is mainly a moral and cultural construction that can only be defined by a context and subjective moral values. So, what’s your definition. According to your own words:
> “Uber Technologies Inc., the transportation network-focused company founded in 2009 has been incredibly successful in conquering a huge market share in its home market. Per Business Insider’s recent article on the ugly market-share battle in reimbursed ground transportation, Uber still maintains almost 75% of market share in the ride-hailing industry, with Lyft (currently pushing past 25%) still trailing by a gigantic margin.”
You seem to focus on a U.S. liberal capitalist and financial definition, which probably fits well in the context of the [Californian startup culture the company originates from](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and which you seem to value.
> “Yet, in spite of its popularity in the U.S., the company has struggled to find a foothold in the European market, clashing with the well-established taxi unions and individual governments across the European continent.”
However, you do present a false opposition here by using a rhetorical argument called [*argumentum ad populum*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Argumentum%5Fad%5Fpopulum?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)and by presenting things in a way suggesting that Uber ’s popularity should have prevented such struggles and clashes on the European market. *European market* that you define by as *overly regulated* and *excessively protected*. Interestingly, those terms are negatively connoted superlatives.
Therefore, you seem to favor Uber against its “opponents” (as it is a *fight,* from your own words), [ignoring many ethical issues](https://medium.com/forbes/mark-zuckerberg-and-the-tech-world-still-do-not-understand-ethics-6f29ca4935be?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) that arise from such companies and their culture. To support your point of view, you give us partial information:
> “It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that Uber has shut down all services in a number of European countries, including Denmark in 2017, Greece in 2018 (after regulations were implemented that required all rides to begin and end in the fleet partner’s designated headquarters or parking area) and the Netherlands in November of 2015, when local authorities raided the Uber headquarters in Amsterdam.”
To be fair, it must be precise that Amsterdam authorities effectively did raided Uber headquarters, but as you forgot to mention, because of a [then-ongoing investigation on suspected illegal taxi services.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-netherlands-idUSKCN0RT12920150929?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Intended or not, and in addition with your introduction in which you try to legitimate Uber’s popularity and success by showing their *“market-share domination”* over the ride-hailing industry, this creates a disproportionated and unfairly balanced perspective, which one could summarize as: *“the good Uber fight against the evil European market”.*
This not an accusation, tho, more an observation. But please, correct me if I’m wrong. Therefore, this article sounds **less like an explication** and **more like a** **judgment**.
In one hand, you seem totally aware of these socio-cultural and non-generalizable specificities (i.e. US ≠ EU), but on the other hand you seem to reject those when you title your article like this *“Resisting progress: Why Uber failed in Europe”*, present in a negative way such differences, and conclude as such:
> “I mean let’s face it, the world has never seen a better funded start-up.”
**Questions:** Do European countries really resisting progress? Could other factors well explain European countries position than this intent? Could it be that Uber’s price to “progress” is too high when looking at its [obvious detrimental effects](https://medium.com/forbes/mark-zuckerberg-and-the-tech-world-still-do-not-understand-ethics-6f29ca4935be?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)? And finally, could there be more than one answer to all these questions?
Thanks for reading!
### The Filter Bubble Issue, The Value Of UX, And Critical (Design) Thinking.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-filter-bubble-issue--the-value-of-ux--and-critical--design--thinking-/
Last updated: 2019-03-25T00:00:00.000Z
## Editor’s Note
Hi, Kevin here.
Hope you’re going all well! It’s been a while since the last newsletter. End of March is coming (already) and 2019 is going fast so far 🏎
Meanwhile, things are moving on our side. I have recently released a new home for my writings: [**Design & Critical Thinking**](http://bit.ly/2HFpGjB?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). I combined my efforts on [*Brain Diet — Think Before Eating!*](http://bit.ly/2FwY2TS?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* one of my previous Medium’s publication dedicated to **critical thinking, rational skepticism, and ethics,** together with *Human Centered Thinking Switzerland.*
Moreover, I believe there’s a place for such topics in the design realm. As designers, developers, innovators, and more generally makers, we impact lives, we influence behaviors, and we create –all together– small pieces of a larger whole: *the future*. Therefore, we have a responsibility to critically think of what we’re doing. This goes with our responsibility to fight some [**myths and fallacies**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) vehicle by certain business cultures about design and the understanding of the users.
So in sum, expect to have a bit more mixed articles in the coming months on UX, Design, Business Innovation, as well as Critical Thinking and Ethics.
Finally, I wanted to say thank you. **Thank you for your support** by reading, clapping, sharing, and (sometimes) commenting on my articles. All this is a project I do only in my spare time, but always with the hope of bringing quality reading and *food-for-thoughts* to the community.
Cheers,
[Kevin Richard](https://medium.com/u/75da4ce5b20e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [Discover our website, Design & Critical Thinking!](http://bit.ly/2HFpGjB?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Sharpen-up your human-centered and critical thinking by understanding the humans you’re living with and solving problems for.*
---
## Hot Like a Fondue.
*Our stories, served hot and creamy, just like a good Swiss Fondue!* 🧀🇨🇭
### [The Algorithms That Were Meant To Delight Us Locked Us Into Misinformation (Or Don’t They?)](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-algorithms-that-were-meant-to-delight-us-locked-us-into-misinformation-or-dont-they-b00f2c749042?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this article, I go into detail on the “filter bubble” effect: its origin, the reasons companies like Facebook or Google use algorithms from a User Experience perspective, the science behind, and the issue with the current formulation of the phenomenon.
There is a misconception of the effect in the public. This is a complex subject, but too often wrongly reduced to a technical issue by the media. In reality, things are more nuanced and we need to understand all those subtleties to properly address the issue. **Designers and developers have an important role to play here.**
> “The main issue with the ‘filter bubble’ effect is that even tho we are sure these algorithms do have an impact on what we’re consuming on the internet, their impact is thought to be relatively marginal in most studies.People confuse correlation and causality.How to fix it: A study showed interesting results, suggesting that awareness of the consumption empowers the users, both in the understanding of mechanisms and control of the data stream they were exposed to.”
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-algorithms-that-were-meant-to-delight-us-locked-us-into-misinformation-or-dont-they-b00f2c749042?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [The Value of UX And ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-value-of-ux-6ec61c599022?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[**Where It Stands In An Agile Approach**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-value-of-ux-6ec61c599022?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
UX and Design are wide domains which overlap with so many disciplines, it is sometimes hard to draw clear limits. I recently had to prepare a brief introductory course to UX Design for a room full of businesspeople and Manager. This article sum-up most of the topic discussed.
> “To design a product — whose value proposition is aligned with the needs — which is viable, desirable, useful, usable, and why not innovative, it is above all a question of teamwork, methods, process, and good communication. This means it is not because a person ‘takes care of the UX’ that the products will necessarily be ‘better’.\[We\] must be aware that this is an effort everyone must agree to make at their level. This requires everyone to be properly sensitized, have access to proven methods, and acquire a certain maturity in the field. UX is not the ‘thing’ of a single person, but a common effort for which the UX specialist brings tools, methods, support, etc. in the form of a partnership with stakeholders, while ensuring a degree of autonomy.”
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-value-of-ux-6ec61c599022?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
### [How To Prevent Sterile Debate When Facing False Beliefs](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/rational-skepticism-business-and-design-90ebc07b2a6b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
In this article, I discuss what is street epistemology and how this method can help you talk with, for instance, people refractory to UX or Human-centered design.
> “If you have nothing else than your belief to be right to bring on the table, you can’t really build something constructive from critics and debates. \[…\]Street epistemology (SE) or epistemological interview can help you adopt a non-dogmatic, open-minded approach toward opinionated speeches and people.”
[**Read more →**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/rational-skepticism-business-and-design-90ebc07b2a6b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thank you for reading! 🙌
*We believe that Business, Design, and Technology should all join forces to do what matters the most: answering people’s pains. This is where innovation lies!*
*Thanks for helping us share this message of hope and for supporting us!*
*See you soon for more stories and adventures!*
### The Algorithms That Were Meant To Delight Us Locked Us Into Misinformation (Or Do They?)
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-algorithms-that-were-meant-to-delight-us-locked-us-into-misinformation--or-do-they--/
Last updated: 2019-03-23T00:00:00.000Z
### AI, Cognitive Biases, User Experience Design, Ethics, And The Problem With The “Filter Bubble” Effect.
Unsplash
[**This article was first published on our official website, Design & Critical Thinking →**](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-algorithms-that-were-meant-to-delight-us-locked-us-into-misinformation-or-dont-they/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
In her article on [Medium’s OnZero Publication](https://onezero.medium.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), reporter [Erin Schumaker](https://medium.com/u/5a08cc50a22c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) talks about conspiracy theories and why they work so well on social networks.
[**Why Conspiracy Theories Work so Well on Facebook**](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Are we all just clicks away from identifying as ‘flat-Earthers’?*](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[onezero.medium.com](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
She describes what are the issues of moderating content for big Tech companies such as Facebook, either it is by the actions of real humans or it is the use of fully autonomous algorithms. The latter is, however, not yet ready and humans are still needed to review pre-filtered content to be moderated.
Delete, delete, delete, delete, … Oops.
One of the issues relates to the fact that it is really hard to come with clear criteria to determine if a content is really worthy or not. Absolute criteria don’t take into account specificities –and have already shown their limits– and it is hard for algorithms to understand properly contexts with all the subtleties of our languages. All of this is really well explained and sourced in the article and [I invite you to take it a look](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
## The Filter Bubble Effect
Further on the article, E. Schumaker talks about the current issues related to the use of algorithms in social networks:
> “That social networks like Facebook tend to create an echo chamber — or what Eli Pariser famously called a ‘filter bubble’ — isn’t by accident. It’s the inevitable result of the attention economy.”*– Erin Schumaker,* [*Why Conspiracy Theories Work so Well on Facebook*](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
As said, this “[filter bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter%5Fbubble?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)” effect was first coined by [Eli Pariser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%5FPariser?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in his book [*“The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think”*](https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). It is worth mentioning that E. Pariser is known for his internet activism and his 2011 TED Talk largely helped to popularize the concept of the filter bubble.
The whole topic is emotionally charged and pretty touchy: we are talking about one of the core elements of the current tech giants’ strategy. What some calls the [*“attention economy”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention%5Feconomy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Is it a conscious move of those companies? Do they have an evil plan to take over the world?
[**How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know**](https://fs.blog/2017/07/filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Read the headline, tap, scroll, tap, tap, scroll. It is a typical day and you are browsing your usual news site. The…*](https://fs.blog/2017/07/filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[fs.blog](https://fs.blog/2017/07/filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Well, of course, the reality is way more nuanced than that. In fact, those algorithms were meant to improve our experience and ease our journey through their services. Those companies invest a lot to ensure frictionless and delightful experiences to their users.
This is not an altruist position tho, as fewer frictions and a more enjoyable experience make you stay longer, use more, and increases chances that you come back to the same service or product next time. **There are no evil intentions here, but the lack of ethical considerations lead to visible side-effects and obvious concerns at a society-scale level.**
Anyway, the lack of knowledge of the public on this topic in addition to a bit of misinformation fuel imaginations, conspiracy theories, and fears in the public discussion.
[**Algorithms and the Filter Bubble Ruining Your Online Experience?**](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shira-lazar/algorithms-and-the-filter%5Fb%5F869473.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Are there too many algorithms determining your online experience? Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the…*](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shira-lazar/algorithms-and-the-filter%5Fb%5F869473.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.huffingtonpost.com](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shira-lazar/algorithms-and-the-filter%5Fb%5F869473.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Same Concept, Different Context.
**In 2008** (3 years before E. Pariser’s book) was released the book [*“Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment”*](https://books.google.ch/books?id=139Oa4MOsAgC&redir%5Fesc=y&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* written by [Kathleen Hall Jamieson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen%5FHall%5FJamieson?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Joseph N. Cappella](https://ldi.upenn.edu/expert/joseph-n-cappella-phd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), both professor of communication, respectively at the [University of Maryland](https://www.umd.edu/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Annenberg School for Communication](https://www.asc.upenn.edu/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
This book offered a criticism of the relationship between the politics and medias during the 2008 U.S. elections, showing what co-author J. Cappella calls a *“Spiral of Cynicism”* (on [dedicated paper](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/spiral-of-cynicism-9780195090642?cc=ch&lang=en&&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [a book](https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Cynicism-Press-Public-Good/dp/0195090640?ref=designcriticalthinking.com))*,* or how journalistic political point of views can create self-protective enclave amongst a population, shielding those groups from other information sources and promoting highly negative views toward opponents. The term “Echo Chamber” became then quite popular. The concept of “filter bubble” is known to be similar in meaning, while it applies to the context of social networks –with the addition of a technological dimension.
[**The Echo-Chamber Effect**](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/21/barack-obama-and-the-psychology-of-the-birther-myth/the-echo-chamber-effect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Americans across the political spectrum distrust the news media more than their own social group.*](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/21/barack-obama-and-the-psychology-of-the-birther-myth/the-echo-chamber-effect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.nytimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/21/barack-obama-and-the-psychology-of-the-birther-myth/the-echo-chamber-effect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
If the “Echo Chamber” is largely known by the public –as well as the “filter bubble”– due to its large media coverage, however, some of the studies that support the concept are criticized amongst the scientific community. Specifically, the *“Spiral of Cynicism”*: [In a study of the Danish’s political news coverage](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255596373%5FThe%5FSpiral%5Fof%5FCynicism%5FReconsidered?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of an EU summit taking place in Denmark, [Claes de Vreese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claes%5Fde%5FVreese?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Professor of political communication at the [University of Amsterdam](http://www.uva.nl/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), found very small evidence to support the claimed effect.
> “In sum, when the assumption that cynicism is detrimental to political participation is evaluated against the available evidence, there is in fact modest empirical evidence to support a direct link between high levels of cynicism and low levels of turnout. So far, we can only conclude that strategic news under certain circumstances can contribute to cynicism about politics, but a critical and reflexive citizenry might in fact be rather good news.” *— Claes de Vreese,* [*The Spiral of Cynicism Reconsidered*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255596373%5FThe%5FSpiral%5Fof%5FCynicism%5FReconsidered?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**In fact, the specificities of the first study on “Echo Chambers” can’t be overlooked:** one political scene (U.S.), during a specific context (2008 elections), on specific medias, should prevent us from [overgeneralizing a phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty%5Fgeneralization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Besides, it is worth noting that the concept of “Echo Chamber” describes a socio-psychological effect called [*“Ingroups and outgroups”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups%5Fand%5Foutgroups?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). An **ingroup** is a social group to which one psychologically identifies as being a member, and an **outgroup** is any social group exterior to the ingroup. For instance, think about your favorite sports team, in which you probably identify yourself. This is your **ingroup**. By opposition, the other teams are the **outgroups**.
This topic is [well researched](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups%5Fand%5Foutgroups?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#References) and explains very well the [polarisation in debates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group%5Fpolarization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (i.e. ideological or political), as well as several other [intergroup biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups%5Fand%5Foutgroups?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#Associated%5Fphenomena). The “Echo Chambers” concept is a questionable appropriation of the “ingroups and outgroups” in the Political Communication realm.
## The Race For Frictionless, Delightful, And Addictive Experiences
As explained earlier, these algorithms are originally meant to improve our experience and ease our journey through those companies’ online products and services. And it is important to understand some core principles at the root of this purpose.
**Nir Eyal,** psychologist and Behavioral Designer, explains in his book [*“Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591847788/ref=cm%5Fsw%5Fr%5Ftw%5Fdp%5FU%5Fx%5FCEZKCbPD5NFQR?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) how companies such as Facebook, Google, etc. use a simple yet effective model that exploits our [brain’s addiction to habits](http://news.mit.edu/2012/understanding-how-brains-control-our-habits-1029?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
[**The Billion Dollar Mind Trick: An Intro to Triggers**](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-billion-dollar-mind-trick-an-intro-to-triggers-f31fdcf7aebd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Note: I’m proud to have co-authored this post with Jason Hreha.*](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-billion-dollar-mind-trick-an-intro-to-triggers-f31fdcf7aebd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-billion-dollar-mind-trick-an-intro-to-triggers-f31fdcf7aebd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
His work resulted in a framework called the “Hook Canvas” and that shows how, by going through four specific stages, a product could be designed to create habits which will make you more likely to come back to the same product again and again.
The Hook Canvas
To simplify, when you are in a specific state, let’s say boredom (the internal trigger), you are more sensitive to certain external trigger that may catch your curiosity/interest –let’s say a notification, an email, etc.
This trigger provides generally an action that will probably send you through the product and will give you an “immediate reward”. Therefore, the reason you came is fulfilled but you want more, and everything is made for that.
Perhaps the product will ask you to enter information, or actively participate (i.e. share/like/comment) and by doing so, make you “invest” in the product (i.e. emotionally). This investment increases chances that you come back to the product next time the same conditions occurs. Time over time, this [reinforcement loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) “hook” you into an addictive habit state.
[**The Behavioral Approach: Understanding Psychology By Observing Behavior**](https://www.psychologistworld.com/issues/behavioral-approach?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The behavioral approach is based on the concept of explaining behavior through observation, and the belief that our…*](https://www.psychologistworld.com/issues/behavioral-approach?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.psychologistworld.com](https://www.psychologistworld.com/issues/behavioral-approach?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
However, Nir Eyal reminds us that companies which use such models have huge ethical responsibilities:
> “What are the ethical responsibilities of companies that are able to manipulate human behavior on a massive scale? It’s a question one hopes technologists and designers ask themselves \[…\]The tech industry needs a new ethical bar. \[…\] I humbly propose the ‘regret test.’
> If we’re unsure of using an ethically questionable tactic, ‘If people knew everything the product designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they likely to regret doing this?’.If users would regret taking the action, the technique fails the regret test and shouldn’t be built into the product, because it manipulated people into doing something they didn’t want to do.”*– Nir Eyal in “*[*Want to Design User Behavior? Pass the ‘Regret Test’ First*](https://medium.com/swlh/want-to-design-user-behavior-pass-the-regret-test-first-e8036a83cb6b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*
Facebook, Google, Uber, and many others are using similar models to understand people’s behavior and make you stay longer on their platform, ensuring you invest enough in those to come back, read, share, like, comment, etc.
## The Science Behind The Effect
Do science back up the whole concept of “filter bubble”? Well, **yes** and **no**. Scientific consensus has yet to come on that topic and several studies have indeed attested the effect, **but there is a catch. A subtle one, but still important.** Can you find the problem? Let’s play!
First, here are some relevant studies we can find on the topic:
**1) DuckDuckGo’s study of the filter bubble** leads to interesting results on how Google algorithms pick the content that appears in your search results. Well, of course, their motivation is obviously questionable because of their position against Google.
[**Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google is influencing what you click**](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Over the years, there has been considerable discussion of Google's "filter bubble" problem. Put simply, it's the…*](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[spreadprivacy.com](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**2) This experiment** (in French) — **“I tested the algorithms of Facebook and it quickly degenerated”**, by [Journalist Jeff Yates at Radio Canada](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeffyates?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — lead to some impressive differences between the test and control groups. However, because of the date of this article, the results should be taken carefully.
[**J'ai testé les algorithmes de Facebook et ça a rapidement dégénéré**](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*CHRONIQUE - Croyez-vous encore que votre fil Facebook vous montre la réalité? J'ai fait une petite expérience pour…*](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ici.radio-canada.ca](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**3) This very well documented paper** explores how different democracy theories affect the filter bubble. It also describes some tools and tactics used today to fight the filter bubble effect and their effectiveness and limitations.
[**Breaking the filter bubble: democracy and design**](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It has been argued that the Internet and social media increase the number of available viewpoints, perspectives, ideas…*](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[link.springer.com](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Excerpt from the paper’s conclusion:
> “\[…\] viewpoint diversity is improved not only by aiming for consensus and hearing pro/con arguments, but also allowing the minorities and marginal groups to reach a larger public or by ensuring that citizens are able to contest effectively. As we have mentioned earlier, minority reach could be a problem in social media for certain political cultures.” *— Engin Bozdag & Jeroen van den Hoven,* [*Delft University of Technology*](https://www.tudelft.nl/en/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
**4) This empirical research paper** explores filter bubbles in the field of political opinions on Facebook. They concluded that Facebook increased exposition to different opinions. Yet, their work suffer from the affiliation of the main author with Facebook Labs. *(*[*Read the full paper for free here*](https://sci-hub.tw/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130.full?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*)*
[**Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook**](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*People are increasingly turning away from mass media to social media as a way of learning news and civic information…*](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[science.sciencemag.org](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**5) This large study from the University of Amsterdam** points out the lack of studies and research being conducted outside of the US system on the topic and highlights the links between the context and certain aspects of the filter bubble effect.
**→** [**Beyond the filter bubble: concepts, myths, evidence and issues for future debates**](https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Beyond%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5F%5Fconcepts%5Fmyths%5Fevidence%5Fand%5Fissues%5Ffor%5Ffuture%5Fdebates.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **(PDF)**
[*Source: “Two IViR studies included in Parliamentary paper on the future of independent journalism in the Netherlands”*](https://www.ivir.nl/rapporten%5Fjournalistiek/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**6) This study published in Oxford’s Public Opinion Quarterly (2016)**concluded a limited implication of the algorithms in the “filter bubble effect”, stating that *“the most extremely ideologically oriented users expose themselves to a high variety of information sources from the same ideology”*. [*(Read the full paper for free here)*](https://sci-hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**In other words**, the study reminds us that the “filter bubble effect” exists without algorithms, as we’re keen to confirmation bias and cherry-picking.
[**Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption**](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Abstract. Online publishing, social networks, and web search have dramatically lowered the costs of producing…*](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[academic.oup.com](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Question:** Now, can you see the problem with the claim around the “filter bubble”?
## Conclusion & Discussion
As you can see, the scientific community does not yet agree on a consensus and there is still a debate on **the exact degrees of impact of the algorithms** on people behavior, beliefs, and ideologies.
As a reminder, what’s the claim behind the “filter bubble” effect?
> “\[That’s\] what I’m calling the “filter bubble”: that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by these algorithms to who they think you are. …We turn to these personalization agents to sift through \[information\] for us automatically and try to pick out the useful bits. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But the technology is invisible. We don’t know who it thinks we are, what it thinks we’re actually interested in.”*–* [*Eli Pariser in an interview for The Atlantic*](https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/the-filter-bubble/181427/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**The main issue here** is that even tho we are sure these algorithms do have an impact on what we’re consuming on the internet, their impact is thought to be relatively marginal in most studies. **People** [**confuse correlation and causality**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation%5Fdoes%5Fnot%5Fimply%5Fcausation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.** There is an effect, we can correlate it, but **does it implies** what’s observed? Not necessarily.
[Occam’s razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s%5Frazor?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) –or the principle of parsimony– tells us that *“simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones.”* So, what could explain otherwise the observed effect? The last paper gives us a clue.
> *“\[The\] most extremely ideologically oriented users (2%) expose themselves to a high variety of information sources from the same ideology. This exposition occurs through direct browsing. Algorithms play no role.” —* [*Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption*](https://sci-hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
We have an already well-proven phenomenon that explains perfectly the observations: **the** [**human’s cognitive biases**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.** With an [extensive list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of hundreds of them, including the famous [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (or [cherry-picking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry%5Fpicking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
The Cognitive Bias Codex
Yes, it is most likely probable that algorithms increase somehow –and depending on the context and many other variables — some of our biases. But most overlooked a bit the human part of the equation, especially media.
[**Blame the Echo Chamber on Facebook. But Blame Yourself, Too**](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-echo-chamber/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Ever since the Presidential elections, every one I know seems to be worrying about their social media echo chamber. And…*](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-echo-chamber/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.wired.com](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-echo-chamber/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Some Thoughts On How To Fix It
**In this study, the researchers explore ways to influence** the effect among a population, with the intent of reducing it. It shows interesting results, suggesting that awareness of the effect empowers the users, both in the understanding of mechanisms and control of the data stream they were exposed to.
**→** [**Understanding and controlling the filter bubble through interactive visualization: A user study**](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266660926%5FUnderstanding%5Fand%5Fcontrolling%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5Fthrough%5Finteractive%5Fvisualization%5FA%5Fuser%5Fstudy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
What is interesting here is a very simple yet effective principle: if the service informs –by design– the user of its consumption type of information, this awareness helps him take “better” (or at least different) decisions.
---
### Thank you for reading! 🙌
[**This article was first published on our official website, Design & Critical Thinking →**](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-algorithms-that-were-meant-to-delight-us-locked-us-into-misinformation-or-dont-they/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*We believe that Business, Design, and Technology should all join forces to do what matters the most: answering people’s pains. This is where innovation lies!*
*Thanks for helping us share this message of hope and for supporting us!*
---
## References
- [Why Conspiracy Theories Work so Well on Facebook](https://onezero.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theories-work-so-well-on-facebook-466a42af6b76?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by [Erin Schumaker](https://onezero.medium.com/@erin.l.schumaker?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Going Further On The “Filter Bubble” Effect](https://medium.com/@kvrichard/going-further-on-the-filter-bubble-effect-2afbf9cd8367?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by [Kevin Richard](https://medium.com/@kvrichard?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The filter bubble, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter%5Fbubble?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Who’s Eli Pariser, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%5FPariser?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think](https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Amazon
- [Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”, TED Talks](https://www.ted.com/talks/eli%5Fpariser%5Fbeware%5Fonline%5Ffilter%5Fbubbles/transcript?language=en&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Attention economy, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention%5Feconomy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment](https://books.google.ch/books?id=139Oa4MOsAgC&redir%5Fesc=y&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Google Books
- [Spiral of Cynicism](https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Cynicism-Press-Public-Good/dp/0195090640?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by Professor J. Cappella (1997)
- [The Spiral of Cynicism Reconsidered](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255596373%5FThe%5FSpiral%5Fof%5FCynicism%5FReconsidered?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by Professor Claes de Vreese (2005)
- [Faulty generalization, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty%5Fgeneralization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Ingroups and Outgroups in social Psychology, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups%5Fand%5Foutgroups?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Ingroups and Outgroups: Group polarization, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group%5Fpolarization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591847788/ref=cm%5Fsw%5Fr%5Ftw%5Fdp%5FU%5Fx%5FCEZKCbPD5NFQR?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by Nir Eyal (2014)
- [How the brain controls our habits](http://news.mit.edu/2012/understanding-how-brains-control-our-habits-1029?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), MIT News (2012)
- [Hooked: These Simple Habit-Forming Tricks Increased our App’s Retention by 53%](https://medium.com/behavior-design/hooked-these-simple-habit-forming-tricks-increased-our-apps-retention-by-53-222150a5905f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by [Adam Moen](https://medium.com/@thatMHG?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) on Medium
- [The Hook Canvas (image)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1%2AsKaJPu6inT4qTx-jCRJZ8Q.png?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Reinforcement in behavioral psychology, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Want to Design User Behavior? Pass the ‘Regret Test’ First](https://medium.com/swlh/want-to-design-user-behavior-pass-the-regret-test-first-e8036a83cb6b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by Nir Eyal
- [Measuring the “Filter Bubble”: How Google is influencing what you click](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by DuckDuckGo (2018)
- [J’ai testé les algorithmes de Facebook et ça a rapidement dégénéré](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), by Jeff Yates at Radio-Canada (2017)
- [Breaking the filter bubble: democracy and design](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Ethics and Information Technology (2015)
- [Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook](https://sci-hub.tw/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130.full?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Science [Issue 6239](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) “Political Science” (2015)
- [Beyond the filter bubble: concepts, myths, evidence and issues for future debates](https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Beyond%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5F%5Fconcepts%5Fmyths%5Fevidence%5Fand%5Fissues%5Ffor%5Ffuture%5Fdebates.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), University of Amsterdam (2018)
- [Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption](https://sci-hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), Oxford University’s [Public Opinion Quarterly](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/S1/298/2223402?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (2016)
- [The Filter Bubble](https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/the-filter-bubble/181427/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), an interview of Eli Pariser in The Atlantic (2010)
- [Correlation does not imply causation, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation%5Fdoes%5Fnot%5Fimply%5Fcausation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Occam’s razor, the law of parsimony, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s%5Frazor?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Cognitive bias, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [List of cognitive biases, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Confirmation bias, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Cherry picking, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry%5Fpicking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Understanding and controlling the filter bubble through interactive visualization: A user study](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266660926%5FUnderstanding%5Fand%5Fcontrolling%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5Fthrough%5Finteractive%5Fvisualization%5FA%5Fuser%5Fstudy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), University of Saskatchewan — ResearchGate (2014)
### The Value of UX
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-value-of-ux/
Last updated: 2019-03-18T00:00:00.000Z
### And where it stands in an Agile approach.
Unsplash
**This article was originally published in** [**Design & Critical Thinking**](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-value-of-ux/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
---
The “design process” aims to ensure a human-centred design approach, as well as to ensure the consideration of the needs ([sometimes not expressed](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) of [users and the context in which they evolve](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/le-design-ux-cest-quoi-marie-glandus/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). We, therefore, define success criteria based on the users’ expectations and needs, which enable us to generate ideas, define KPIs, and develop a product that will not only be suitable but will have a strong added value (Value Proposition).
The design process, its different phases and the evolution of complexity over time.
Some Key Activities & Deliverables (examples).
As a reminder, the Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a formalized process that includes tasks that guide UX specialists through user research, design, prototyping, testing with real users, and iterations based on what we learned from the tests.
toptal.com
This approach also ensures that the “innovation” part of a project/product [does not focus solely](https://uxdesign.cc/the-what-how-why-cycle-of-every-new-technology-wave-f6b1a9de256f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) on [technological aspects](https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2016/2/29/why-rd-is-not-business-model-innovation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). The word “innovation” is sometimes brandished without understanding the issues: [an innovation in technological terms does not necessarily mean an innovation for the user and vice versa](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/when-ux-means-innovation-8c1939122edc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
For example, the blockchain is mainly a technological innovation for the change of concept it implies, but it is not (yet) innovation for the users: there is not yet an application of the blockchain which has really made a large-scale change or impact in our day-to-day lives as human beings (at least, at this time of writing).
To put it another way, my neighbor will probably not use cryptocurrencies tomorrow, but she is more likely to consider buying an electric car like a Tesla.
Besides, Tesla understood what no other car manufacturer (at the time) did: the users and their contexts. **Tesla fully understood that the biggest obstacle to buying an electric car was the fear of falling out of batteries in the middle of a trip**. They have, therefore, built an innovative Business Model (BM) around this understanding of their users.
**Example #1:** Tesla’s navigation system will always make sure to offer you the most efficient route while passing near charging stations, depending on your current and anticipated consumption. So you can ride with confidence.
The initial version of Tesla’s Business Model.
Here, the innovation lies primarily in the Business Model, as it answers in a different way to the user’s problem and articulates through technology (technology as a medium).
**Example #2:** Tesla’s infrastructure of fast charging stations mainly exists to serve the Business Model and thus increase the ability of a user to charge their car quickly (and previously for free) at any time — here again, to reassure the user. All other features of Tesla’s products serve to increase user gains.
**Example #3:** Tesla’s huge screen-tablet in the center of the car clearly shows the state of charging of the vehicle and its easiness of use, close to an iPad’s one, are intended to reassure the user (again).
**Tesla is a good example of UX, from strategy to implementation, fully coherent.**
Source
> “The user experience exists, whether or not there is someone to take care of it.”
To design a product — whose [value proposition](https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas/value-proposition-canvas?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) ([see here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReM1uqmVfP0&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) is [aligned with the needs](https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/10/15/why-companies-work-on-products-nobody-wants?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — which is **viable**, **desirable**, **useful**, **usable**, and why not **innovative**, it is above all a question of teamwork, methods, [process](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and good communication. This means that it is not because a person *“takes care of the UX”* that the products will necessarily be “better”.
I think we must be aware that **this is an effort everyone must agree to make at their level**. This requires everyone to be properly sensitized, have the right reflexes, have access to proven methods, and acquire a [certain](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-1-4/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [maturity](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-5-8/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in the field. UX is not the “thing” of a single person, but a common effort for which the UX specialist brings tools, methods, support, etc. in the form of a partnership with stakeholders, while ensuring a degree of autonomy.
UX Maturity Model
So yes, UX *–and human-centered approaches in general–* requires taking more time upstream. Yes, it requires managing our natural impatience to start as soon as possible to build and develop the product. But everything we do early in a project to clarify needs, define criteria and KPIs that make sense for users, and build a [vision of the desired experience](https://medium.com/@jmspool/the-experience-vision-a-self-fulfilling-ux-strategy-ce4cdb58227e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the more we reduce the risks of developing something that from a technological point of view may work perfectly, but will fall short regarding users needs. **See this as a medium-long term investment.**
> “What cost 1$ to be changed in a prototype, costs 5$ in development and 20$ in production.”— [Paul Boag](https://boagworld.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), UX & Service Design Consultant
**IBM** (see [here](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2018/03/design-thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [there](https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), **Salesforce** ([here](https://www.salesforce.com/quotable/articles/salesforce-sales-discovery/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [there](https://www.salesforce.com/video/1765235/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)), **Airbnb**, **Uber**, et **many others invest heavily** in recent years **in UX practices** and [more generally in human-centered approaches](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/ibms-got-a-plan-to-bring-design-thinking-to-big-business/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Why? Because it reduces costs and counter-intuitively reduces the time to market. It also brings a measurable competitive advantage to companies that practice and masters it.
> “In 2013, the Design Management Institute (DMI) devised the Design Value Index (DVI), an investment tool showing that companies that integrate design thinking into corporate strategy can outpace industry peers by as much as 228%.”
> — [Fortune, on a report from the Design Management Institute](http://fortune.com/2017/08/31/the-design-value-index-shows-what-design-thinking-is-worth/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
As you can see, it goes far beyond the “visual” (or UI) aspects of design. Here, we are talking about a **mindset**, a **corporate culture**, **processes**, and **methods** applied at all levels of an organization.
Even the European financial sector *–known for certain inertia towards adopting new concepts–* heavily invests in UX, with more and more UX teams and Design services implemented within banks. Some few examples in the European banking and financial sector:
- [**Orange Bank**](https://www.orangebank.fr/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the French online banking created in one year by a telephone operator (thanks to the [partnership with Groupama](http://www.groupama.com/fr/report/rapport-annuel-2017/orange-bank-alliance-bancaire-inedite/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) and using a [human-centered approach (UX + Design Thinking)](https://www.orange-business.com/fr/blogs/realiser-transformation-digital-workplace-avec-design-thinking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- [**Revolut**](https://www.revolut.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the multi-currency credit card service, [uses a human-centered approach](http://melewi.net/blog/2018/01/02/how-revolut-won-180k-users-in-90-days-by-banking-on-trustworthiness/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- [**TWINT**](https://www.twint.ch/en/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the Swiss cashless payment service [hired a UX agency](https://made.ginetta.net/twint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to develop its product.
- [**Monzo Bank**](https://monzo.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the rising star of the UK online banking stage, [uses the UX method since its creation](https://theuxreview.co.uk/monzo-bank-disrupting-banking-industry/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
---
## When Agile Meets UX: Agile UX
The Agile UX Approach
[For a long time](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/agile-not-easy-ux/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), those who practice UX methods have sought to integrate with Lean, [Agile](https://ux.nearsoft.com/blog/user-research/here-is-how-to-do-user-research-in-agile-teams/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [Scrum](https://agile-od.com/lean-agile/design-thinking-plus-scrum?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [practices](https://www.userzoom.com/blog/integrating-ux-into-an-agile-environment/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This gave birth to Agile UX and Lean UX, a kind of marriage between the two worlds.
toptal.com
The idea is basically to practice a “Sprint 0” (as soon as possible) that can last a few weeks to a few months, to go into the loop of the UX process and then deliver to the devs elements “ready” to be developed. The result is a product developed more quickly, [with higher quality and an increased value proposition, for each Sprint](https://www.toptal.com/product-managers/agile/agile-ux-design-explained?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
toptal.com
---
### Clarifications
The approach, methods, tools, activities, and deliverables that I propose are standards in the industry. The paradigm shift offered by the approach and the associated issues are well established and discussed for a long time in the field. You will thus find several references and sources supporting the various arguments presented here.
One of the founding principles of the approach is that if a user interacts with a product or service, then one [must understand](https://www.iso.org/standard/52075.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) the [user and its context upstream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-centered%5Fdesign?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) in order to [propose something that fits](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/faites-vous-r%C3%A9ellement-de-lux-marie-glandus/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). So you probably can question how to integrate UX practices into your existing processes, but alter this basic premise — for example, by not taking the time to do user research upstream — and the quality of the result cannot be guaranteed.
As a little reminder, here is a summary of the User-Centered Design Principles ([ISO 9241–210](https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#iso:std:52075:en)):
- **Take into account** **the users** from the beginning, their tasks and their environment (context).
- **Active participation of the users** to guarantee the fidelity of their needs and expected outcomes related to their tasks.
- **Proper repartition of the features** between the users and the technology.
- **Iterate on the design solutions** until satisfaction of the needs and expected outcomes **expressed by the users**.
- Contribution of **a multidisciplinary design team** aiming for optimal **user experience**.
---
## Conclusion & Discussion
Beyond project management, UX is also a way to better inform business decisions and certain technological choices by creating a clear understanding of the users, their context, and the interweaving of the **touch points** between them and the different technological systems, services, and products.
Different metrics should be put in place in order to correctly measure the current and future user experience, and thus to see its evolution. Therefore, some tools should be put in place, and a simple and effective way for the users to give direct feedback should be implemented (i.e. analytics, in-app satisfaction form, surveys, etc.).
---
*Thanks for reading!*
[*This article was originally published in Design & Critical Thinking*](https://www.kevinrichard.ch/the-value-of-ux/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
### Going Further On The “Filter Bubble” Effect
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/going-further-on-the--filter-bubble--effect/
Last updated: 2019-03-11T00:00:00.000Z
[Erin Schumaker](https://medium.com/u/5a08cc50a22c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thanks for your article!
As explained in the article, it’s probably one of the side effects of algorithms intentionally made to invite you to consume more content, [hooking you into a feedback loop](https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addicted-to-facebook-slack-pinterest-468a86eb562?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) through endless proposition of content that you'll most likely share, like, watch, listen, etc.
Unsplash
It is interesting to note that this intentional use of our cognitive biases — which [can be called manipulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVDN2mjJpb8&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — [could be positive](http://behavioralscientist.org/ask-behavioral-scientist-nir-eyal-regret-test-makes-good-ethics-good-business/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) if used in [an ethical way.](https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/what-are-the-ethical-implications-for-creating-a-habit-forming-product?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Anyway, as it’s a more complex subject that it may seem, here are further reading:
**1) DuckDuckGo’s study of the filter bubble** leads to interesting results on how Google algorithms pick the content that appears in your search results. Well, of course, their motivation is obviously questionable because of their position against Google.
[**Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google is influencing what you click**](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Over the years, there has been considerable discussion of Google's "filter bubble" problem. Put simply, it's the…*](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[spreadprivacy.com](https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**2) This experiment** (in French) — **“I tested the algorithms of Facebook and it quickly degenerated”**, by [Journalist Jeff Yates at Radio Canada](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeffyates?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — lead to some impressive differences between the test and control groups. However, because of the date of this article, the results should be taken carefully.
[**J'ai testé les algorithmes de Facebook et ça a rapidement dégénéré**](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*CHRONIQUE - Croyez-vous encore que votre fil Facebook vous montre la réalité? J'ai fait une petite expérience pour…*](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ici.radio-canada.ca](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1029916/experience-facebook-algorithmes-bulle-desinformation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**3) This very well documented paper** explores how different democracy theories affect the filter bubble. It also describes some tools and tactics used today to fight the filter bubble effect and their effectiveness and limitations.
> “\[…\] viewpoint diversity is improved not only by aiming for consensus and hearing pro/con arguments, but also allowing the minorities and marginal groups to reach a larger public or by ensuring that citizens are able to contest effectively.”
[**Breaking the filter bubble: democracy and design**](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It has been argued that the Internet and social media increase the number of available viewpoints, perspectives, ideas…*](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[link.springer.com](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**4) This article highlights a study published in Oxford’s Public Opinion Quarterly (2016)** that concluded a limited implication of algorithms in the “filter bubble effect”, stating that *“the most extremely ideologically oriented users expose themselves to a high variety of information sources from the same ideology”*. In other words, the study reminds us that the “filter bubble effect” exists without algorithms as we’re keen to confirmation bias and cherry-picking.
[**Academic research debunks the myth of filter bubbles**](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/academic-research-debunks-the-myth-of-filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*The interest for the " Filter Bubble" phenomenon reached an all-time high after 2016 US presidential elections (see our…*](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/academic-research-debunks-the-myth-of-filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.intotheminds.com](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/academic-research-debunks-the-myth-of-filter-bubbles/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Note:** *mind your confirmation bias here, as this doesn’t disprove the existence of the effect. In fact, this is not surprising to have some contradictory studies ( both in results and conclusion) in science, and that helps to build the scientific consensus.*
---
**5) This large study from the University of Amsterdam** points out the lack of studies and research being conducted outside of the US system on the topic and highlights the links between the context and certain aspects of the filter bubble effect.
**→** [**Beyond the filter bubble: concepts, myths, evidence and issues for future debates**](https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Beyond%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5F%5Fconcepts%5Fmyths%5Fevidence%5Fand%5Fissues%5Ffor%5Ffuture%5Fdebates.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **(PDF)**
[*Source: “Two IViR studies included in Parliamentary paper on the future of independent journalism in the Netherlands”*](https://www.ivir.nl/rapporten%5Fjournalistiek/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
**6) Finally, this study explores ways of influencing** the filter bubble effect among a population, with the intent of reducing it. It shows interesting results, suggesting that awareness of the effect empowers the users, both in the understanding of mechanisms and control of the data stream they were exposed to.
**→** [**Understanding and controlling the filter bubble through interactive visualization: A user study**](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266660926%5FUnderstanding%5Fand%5Fcontrolling%5Fthe%5Ffilter%5Fbubble%5Fthrough%5Finteractive%5Fvisualization%5FA%5Fuser%5Fstudy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
Anyway, it’s a very interesting topic!
Thanks again 👍
### Manipulation And Ethics
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/manipulation-and-ethics/
Last updated: 2019-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
[Kate Morgan](https://medium.com/u/324326475b88?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thanks for this great article!
Most of the tactics elaborated here are taking advantage of our [cognitive biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and this is a really interesting topic. However, to be a little critical with what’s proposed here, I think we can easily raise concerns regarding the ethics of using such tactics.
Manipulation — because this is what we’re talking about here — is either “good” or “bad”, it’s really a matter of point of view and morality.
Examples of philosophical and ethical questioning:
- Changing someone’s belief, okay, but is it really for his/her own good or yours?
- How do you determine what’s good or bad? Can you even determine such good/bad for someone else?
- If so, what’s the difference with a dogma?
Well, anyway really interesting topic.
Thanks again 👍
### Taking a step back!
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/taking-a-step-back-/
Last updated: 2019-02-25T00:00:00.000Z
### Balancing rationality with intuition.
[Philonomist](https://medium.com/u/ba2f740b1558?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thanks for your article!
It brings an interesting perspective and tons of questions with it. It seems important, however, to be critical (while remaining open-minded) to new propositions, don’t you think?
Unsplash
1) First, I wonder the relevance of the authors’ analysis of today’s business and organizations’ environment through Henri Bergson’s thoughts on intuition.
I have to admit, I’m not familiar with Bergson’s literature and you can probably correct me if I misunderstood, but we’re talking about [books written in the early 1900s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri%5FBergson?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), right? The context, the state of the sciences, and our understanding of the world were then quite different. This does not mean his position is irrelevant per-se, but it should not be overlooked and we still have to take it sparingly.
**Question:** how do you prevent yourself to fall into a confirmation bias by selecting only what fits with a pre-established conclusion? In other words, what’s your method to draw your conclusion, and then what criteria make Bergson’s point of view more relevant here?
2) Secondly, as I just talked about, our understanding of the human mind evolved since the early 1900s. We know more about our psychological traps, namely the [cognitive biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and this is exactly the issue with the said intuition. Not that it is a “bad thing” to listen to your intuition, but your advises maybe lack some acknowledgment of such phenomenon. Balancing “intellect” (our logical part) with intuition is indeed a hard thing to do, but whatever the “tool” you use for doing so, it should help you prevent some obvious traps.
To cite a few:
- **The** [**Confirmation bias**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **(and** [**cherry-picking**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry%5Fpicking?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**)** by which one will search for and favor information that confirms preexisting beliefs or hypotheses**.** It’s soo common and it’s so easy to fall in. Unfortunately, intuition calls for it inevitably at some point and it’s a well-known cornerstone to false-belief construction.
- **The Authority bias** by which one will attribute more credit to an authority figure.
- **The** [**Halo Effect**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo%5Feffect?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) by which one will form an immediate judgment to someone/something else, only based on some physical attributes for instance compared to socially accepted criteria. (We generally call this “intuition”, by the way.)
- **The** [**Fundamental attribution error**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental%5Fattribution%5Ferror?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) **(and** [**Group attribution error**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group%5Fattribution%5Ferror?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**)** by which, in a given situation, one will generally emphasize someone’s internal motivators rather than external factors, in explaining his behavior.
**Question:** taking a step back, okay, but to listen to your intuition (the very one that leads to so many biases and interpretation errors) is it not a bit contradictory if the goal is to make thoughtful decisions?
*Note, this question is voluntarily a bit provocative and I’m not particularly defending an “all-rational” position.*
3) Finally, you assume a certain behavior that is yet to be proven: *to summarize, people are too rational in the business world.* As you do not provide any much proof and seem to talk about subjectivity and perception (your point of view?), let me share my point of view.
As a designer working in corporate environments for over 10 years, I can say from my own observations that [people tend to use their intuition more than your article suggests](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). And most of the time, they use data, charts, and diagrams more to justify such [intuition than truly being “rational”](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-need-for-a-paradigm-shift-4d25c714b846?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). It’s a perfect example of [rationalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization%5F%28psychology%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and confirmation bias. Our brain doesn’t like uncertainty (and so do businesspeople), and our biases play a great role in reducing this [cognitive dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%5Fdissonance?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Therefore, while I totally understand and find truly interesting your development and conclusion — *we need a better balance between intellect and intuition* — I mainly disagree with what leads you to this.
Anyway, thanks again 👍
### False Beliefs, Lack of Proper Research, and Faulty Reasoning.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/false-beliefs--lack-of-proper-research--and-faulty-reasoning-/
Last updated: 2019-02-23T00:00:00.000Z
### Being blind to well-supported arguments does not make you right.
[Lorelei Weldon](https://medium.com/u/ae8a573a7559?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) thank you for [your response](https://medium.com/@lweldon/you-are-the-one-with-rhetorical-fallacies-and-huge-gaps-in-critical-analysis-daec9d9dd37c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
When I first saw that you took the time to answer my critics, I was really pleased. Unfortunately, you seem blocked in your belief of being right no matter what. Your blindness to not only arguments but the data that support them and your keenness to personal attacks and hate speeches are other proofs of your faulty reasoning.
Unlike you, I will take the time to answer your “points” in a respectful way and (again) with real arguments.
### 1\. Respect is a good step toward sain debate.
> “You are the one with rhetorical fallacies and huge gaps in critical analysis.”
[My previous answer](https://medium.com/brain-diet/sharpen-up-your-critical-thinking-d5382687a263?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) was respectful, well-researched and all my arguments are clearly supported by reliable sources (all links to references, research, and sources are available). If you missed them, I kindly invite you to check them out.
Of course, that does not make me necessarily being right, nonetheless. My arguments can be criticized with proper and well-supported counter-arguments. Unfortunately, you seem keener to display **hateful, unrespectful speeches** instead.
I sincerely wonder **why you feel obliged to attack the person instead of the arguments?** Unfortunately for you, this does not make your arguments more right either.
### 2\. A Non-argument Remains A Non-argument Even If You Repeat It Again And Again.
> “If people die and become disabled from vaccines (which they do every year) then they do present some danger. Duh! Vaccines are beneficial in many instances and they are also catastrophic in some others.”
Well, you continue to claim this but if it’s true, you should be able to show actual proofs or evidence. So, this is still a fallacy called [“](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[**onus probandi**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Ironically, let me quote yourself:
> “You saying that doesn’t make it actually true, though.” — [Lorelei Weldon](https://medium.com/u/ae8a573a7559?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [answering](https://medium.com/@lweldon/you-saying-that-doesnt-make-it-actually-true-though-fc4f78b8285a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) [Jordan Chandler](https://medium.com/u/917ad1e92129?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’s [comment](https://medium.com/@HappyHighwayman/there-is-zero-correlation-between-vaccination-and-autism-f8b2374d121c?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
You seem to live with weird contradictions: In one hand, you’re keen to remind everyone (with a bit of anger) that just claiming something doesn’t make an argument. And on the other hand, you so easily use the same rhetorical logic yourself, all the time.
### 3\. Dismissing The Debate Is Not An Argument Either
> “That’s why it’s a complex issue, with many grey areas. If most people are helped and some people are killed, that’s a complex issue.”
You insist on the “complexity” of the subject. And who said the contrary? It’s effectively a complex subject, way more than the overly simplified [false dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False%5Fdilemma?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) you wave to anyone who dares contradict you.
If it’s complex, then show some verifiable facts, some reliable data, some research or studies published on scientific papers. You seem to know things that I don’t, so [complexity should not be an excuse to dismiss the discussion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fignorance?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### 4\. The Burden Of the Proof
> “Why do you assume that just because I haven’t gone in depth into all the supports for my assertions (all of which you could easily Google for yourself) that I too am talking out of my ass? Is it because you a condescending zealot, I wonder?”
Why would you have to prove your claim? Well, because otherwise, it’s pure rhetoric and anyone could claim anything with no need to bring evidence. What a place to live in: Journalists could tell anything with no proof as soon as it makes people click and scientist could invent any theories as soon as it pleases them and is in line with what they believe…
Happily, this is evidence-based science that allows your car to move forward or allows us to write messages on Medium (computer, internet, Wifi).
Okay, so let me give you an example of your faulty reasoning. Let’s say you chat with John. John strongly believes that unicorns exist:
> Unicorns exist! I know they exist and I’ll belive so until you prove me they don’t!
Of course, [you can’t prove something does not exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence%5Fof%5Fabsence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). We call this [*“shifting the burden of proof”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#Shifting%5Fthe%5Fburden%5Fof%5Fproof)and it’s a [logical fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a sophism ([from the French “Sophisme”](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophisme?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)). In fact, this is John who should bring the proofs of his claim.
**This is the distinction between belief and actual knowledge.**
### 3\. Dismissing The Debate Is Still Not An Argument
> “I’m not going to get sucked into a long discourse with you.”
That’s a shame, really. You only show the few arguments you have to put on the table and dismiss the debate once done. If I’m a *“condescending zealot”*, how should we call that behavior?
### 4\. Love, Beliefs, and Appeal From Authority
> “If you care to be fair minded and to further educate yourself (which I doubt), look this shit up and round out your perceptions. You can start by looking up the table of compensation from the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation program by vaccine, injury, and amount paid. This will give you greater insight into what kinds of side effects and damage that real people have experienced and been compensated for due to vaccine injury. Here, I’ll get you started. Look on the subsequent pages for tables of injury and death.”
There’s so much kindness here, I’m overwhelmed. No really, I don’t know where to start. So, let’s begin with the beginning:
> “If you care to be fair minded and to further educate yourself (which I doubt), look this shit up and round out your perceptions.”
Well, my previous message was not “my opinion against yours”. You claim things with no actual proof or even a beginning of clues. This is factually fallacious and rhetorical. [I made the proof of that](https://medium.com/brain-diet/sharpen-up-your-critical-thinking-d5382687a263?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) with well-supported arguments.
**If you are able to prove what you’re saying**, then it will be my pleasure to consider them. So far, you seem unable to do so.
> “You can start by looking up the table of compensation from the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation program by vaccine, injury, and amount paid. This will give you greater insight into what kinds of side effects and damage that real people have experienced and been compensated for due to vaccine injury. Here, I’ll get you started. Look on the subsequent pages for tables of injury and death.”
Again, the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation program and the said compensations **are not proof of the supposed danger of the vaccines**. It simply proves that people won in the court (despite lack of evidence).
To quote the [document you kindly share with me](https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/monthly-stats-february-2019.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), the very same document you apparently didn’t read properly:
> “\[…\] Approximately 70 percent of all compensation awarded by the VICP comes as result of a negotiated settlement between the parties in which **HHS has not concluded, based upon review of the evidence, that the alleged vaccine(s) caused the alleged injury.**
> \[…\]**What reasons might a petition result in a negotiated settlement?**
> \- Consideration of prior U.S. Court of Federal Claims decisions, both parties decide to minimize risk of loss through settlement
> \- A desire to minimize the time and expense of litigating a case
> \- The desire to resolve a petition quickly”
> — [VICP Monthly Statistics Report, first page.](https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/monthly-stats-february-2019.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Okay, so you provide numbers but it has no more value than demonstrating how many people attribute their health conditions to vaccines, with no actual proofs (as stated in this document, [as well as here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine%5Fcourt?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
This means many people believe things with no proof. **Thank you for proving that.**
> “The forward to JM’s book, Louder Than Words, is written by Dr. David Feinberg, medical director of the Resnick Neuro-psychiatric Hospital at UCLA, and an introduction by Jerry J. Kartzinel, a top pediatric autism specialist.”
First, how a book, in general, could be proof of anything? If it references proper scientific research and studies, yes probably. [But this book](https://www.amazon.com/Louder-Than-Words-Mothers-Journey/dp/0452289807?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), in particular, is the story of the personal experience of a mother, Jenny McCarthy, also [known as being an anti-vaxx activist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny%5FMcCarthy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). **Unfortunately, personal experiences are not enough to make a proof.**
If I tell you that *“last week, I saw a unicorn in the woods”*, what proof it makes that unicorns exist? [There are easier ways to explain what I saw (whatever it is) than having to introduce an extraordinary element such as a unicorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s%5Frazor?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). In addition, we know that [memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory%5Fimplantation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and perception (see [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylWOoqYXWqw&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4QcyW-qTUg&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [there](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiEzf3J4iFk&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)) can easily be tricked. **So, personal experiences are not really reliable.**
Secondly, if you properly read my previous message, you might have seen something called [*“appeal from authority”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). What you did here is a great example of it.
- **Dr. Kartzinel is a pediatrician.** How could his point of view be relevant to the topic of vaccines? Did he participate in research on the subject? Well, I was not able to find his name on any scientific paper about vaccines. If you have any proof, could you provide them?
- **Is Dr. Kartzinel a reliable source anyway?** He wrote a book on autism called [“Healing and Preventing Autism”](https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Preventing-Autism-Complete-Guide/dp/0452295920?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), interestingly co-written with Jenny McCarthy. What small world. Again, a book is not enough to make a proof, and unfortunately, **I was not able to find Dr. Kartzinel’s name on any scientific paper (period)**. If you have proof of the contrary, could you provide them?
In addition, Dr. Kartzinel position is not really supported by the scientific community. Read here a critic of Dr. Kartzinel’s work in the scientific journal “[Society for Disability Studies](http://dsq-sds.org/index?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”:
> “Although Dr. Kartzinel is a parent of a child with autism and a doctor with patients on the autism spectrum, his narrow and negative view of autism is harmful and has led him to advocate potentially dangerous “cures” for autism. Instead of working with the child, he works against his/her body with treatments such as chelation, which aims to extract mercury from the body. Children with autism can struggle socially, but they have so much to offer that Dr. Kartzinel neglects to see. By ignoring the unique capabilities of people on the autism spectrum, Dr. Kartzinel underestimates their talents and worth in society. In contrast, Daniel Tammet, Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison all have written about their lives as individuals with autism and show that through their unique ways of thinking, fixations, and rare talents, they have each accomplished quite a lot.”
> — [Disability Studies QuarterlyFall 2008, Volume 28, №4](http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/148/148?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Surprise! Selling books and wellness therapies do not make you necessarily relevant…
Anyway, by invoking Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Kartzinel as proof for your argument (that vaccines are dangerous), you are making an [*“appeal from authority”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.* This is nothing else than a fallacy and a sophism.
### Conclusion
You seem to make a point alas your argumentation relies on nothing. You’re good at attacking people with hateful and unrespectful speeches, which one could interpret as a way of compensating your lack of concrete arguments.
Recognizing such fallacious speeches is one of the aspects of proper critical thinking. I would recommend you a bit more open-mindedness to recognize the facts in front of you and –why not– apply your own recommendation to “educate yourself”.
### Sharpen-up Your Critical Thinking
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/sharpen-up-your-critical-thinking/
Last updated: 2019-02-20T00:00:00.000Z
### Take care of the method you use to sort all the food you feed your brain with.
[Lorelei Weldon](https://medium.com/u/ae8a573a7559?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) with all respect, [your message](https://medium.com/@lweldon/to-be-fair-to-jenny-mccarthy-all-of-her-decisions-and-opinions-were-not-pulled-out-of-her-ass-as-ddcf6c024b67?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) displays some crying methodological issues, [rhetorical and fallacious speeches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**Please note, this is a critic of your method and arguments.**
Image source
### 1\. Appeal to authority and lack of reliable sources
> “To be fair to Jenny McCarthy, all of her decisions and opinions were not pulled out of her ass \[…\] They were the medical opinions of the doctors that she was working with on her son’s health issues.”
Do you have any sources? Which doctors? What are their specialties? Did they publicly support her behavior/claims?
**→ In short:** [**reliability of the sources**](https://sites.umuc.edu/library/libhow/credibility.cfm?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**, plus** [**argumentum ab auctoritate**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
And to be fair to the topic treated here, this should be (at least) about facts, [verifiable evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical%5Fevidence?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), proper [replicable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) method, and [scientific consensus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5Fconsensus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and certainly not about [opinions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [beliefs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Why? because we are talking about [vaccines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), a product of scientific research that fulfills such criteria.
### 2\. Appeal to the masses and appeal to spite
> “We have a National Vaccine Injury Program (and corresponding Federal court, because you can’t sue Big Pharma directly) for a reason.”
And so what? Having a [compensation program because several U.S. lawsuits against vaccine makers won substantial awards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine%5Fcourt?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) does not make vaccines dangerous (it’s not an argument). It proves that “justice” can be blind toward facts… because this is not the point in a court.
**→ In short:** [**argumentum ad populum**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum%5Fad%5Fpopulum?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**and**[**argumentum ad odium**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal%5Fto%5Fspite?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
### 3\. Lack of sources and vague approximations
> “Vaccines are largely safe for most people, but not for everyone. \[…\] There are also people who develop horrible side effects — and I’m not talking about autism.”
Again, any source to prove that claim? What scale “Horrible side effects” is based on exactly?
**→ In short:** [**onus probandi**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ **(burden of proof)**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)or as I like to call it “who says proves”.
**Spoiler alert:** yes, there are body reactions and effects to vaccines. No joke.
**In fact, this is mainly the point of a vaccine:** to simplify, a vaccine works by introducing a tiny amount of virus (sometimes active but diminished and sometimes “dead”) to activate the immune system, “print” the characteristics of the virus, and make antibodies ready to react next time. So in other words, a reaction is expected. Common “side effects” are inflammations, skin reactions, tiredness, etc. which can last a few days.
Find [here](https://www.livescience.com/32617-how-do-vaccines-work.html?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [here](http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/how-do-vaccines-work?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [there](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/how-vaccines-work/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) some (really) better explanations. Also, find some good descriptions and explanations of the composition of most common vaccines [here](http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vaccine-ingredients?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
In addition, here are some actual studies on “vaccines side effects”:
- [Vaccine side effects: Fact and fiction](https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378113506001441?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Side-effects with Japanese encephalitis vaccine](https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2891%2992707-9/fulltext?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
- [Intradermal, Subcutaneous or Intramuscular Administration of Hepatitis B Vaccine: Side Effects and Antibody Response](https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00365548709117195?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
As you can see, there are no secrets, no “hidden proof” of dangerous effects. Just science doing its work. Everything is accessible to anyone (who wants to) → here is my simple (stupid) [google scholar’s search query](https://scholar.google.ch/scholar?hl=en&as%5Fsdt=0%2C5&q=vaccine+side+effects&btnG=&oq=va&ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
### 4\. Lack of sources and manipulation of the basic premise
> “Biology is not a uniform thing and there are people who die from vaccines every year.”
Humm… Do you have some numbers? Any statistics? How many dies from vaccines? And how many dies from not having access to vaccines?
**→ In short: (again)** [**onus probandi**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ **(burden of proof)**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden%5Fof%5Fproof%5F%28philosophy%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**.**
By the way, this is a real subtle fallacious statement: focusing your point only on one aspect of the problem, only to make an argument regardless of the actual context. → So, [here are actual data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-caused-by-vaccine-preventable-diseases-over-time?time=1990..2016&ref=designcriticalthinking.com) computed from most international health organizations.
### 5\. False dilemma, faulty generalization, and WTF
> “And there are also lives that are saved.”
**→ In short: WTF 🤔**
Yep, it’s probably magic… lives are saved! Could be vaccines, could be karma… Who knows!? 🤷♂ 🤷♂ 🤷♂ 🤷♂
Sarcasm aside, as you can see in [the previous chart](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-caused-by-vaccine-preventable-diseases-over-time?time=1990..2016&ref=designcriticalthinking.com), vaccines not only save lives, [they have a significant impact on mortality rates since its introduction (period)](https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). **There is more than just a correlation, there is causality!**
Fallacious thinking here again:
- *“there are people who die from vaccines and there are also lives that are saved.”* — things are presented like it is a 50/50 chances ratio. Two possible sophisms here: [*“Affirming the consequent”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming%5Fthe%5Fconsequent?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) *and* [*“faulty generalization”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty%5Fgeneralization?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
- So, people either *die because of vaccines* OR *their lives are saved? —* Here we have a[false dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False%5Fdilemma?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) at play
- Manipulation of the basic premise: the whole sentence (quote in point 4 & 5) infer a conclusion based on faulty reasoning by picking an arbitrary postulate, only to make a point — “People die each year. Death is bad. Vaccines can kill people. Therefore vaccines are dangerous.”
### 6\. Misconception, facts, and beliefs
> “It’s not really an either/or thing — it’s more of a grey area that needs a lot more open discussion and dialogue.”
Okay, sooooo… It seems that there is a huge misconception of how [science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5Fmethod?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) works. Find some really great explanations of it [here](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-biology-foundations/hs-biology-and-the-scientific-method/a/the-science-of-biology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and [there](https://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/how%5Fscience%5Fworks.pdf?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Regarding this “open discussion” you are talking about, it would be based on what exactly? Personal opinions? Scientific studies? Beliefs? Facts? Numbers? Faith?
The problem here –as you may probably figure– is that everything is not factually on the same level of reliability, credibility, and methodological replicability. When it comes to beliefs, an opinion is not better than someone else’s, even tho she is a renowned celebrity/actress— a great example yet again of sophism [*“argumentum ab auctoritate”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*.*
### Conclusion
Using arguments to prove or support a position or opinion is great, however, it is necessary to bring proper reliable and verifiable sources and data to make them valid. Otherwise, how can your position be relevant or distinguishable from an unfounded belief?
People need to sharpen-up their critical thinking (and media have a clear responsibility here), by taking care of the method used to sort all the food they feed their brain with.
### How To Prevent Sterile Debate When Facing False Beliefs
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/how-to-prevent-sterile-debate-when-facing-false-beliefs/
Last updated: 2019-02-18T00:00:00.000Z
### Rational Skepticism, Business, And Design.
Unsplash
Recently, I came across a video about [Street Epistemology](https://streetepistemology.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and it made me think about how we discuss the topic of design and user experience in organizations.
Specifically, if you ever been in a situation where you find yourself arguing against someone that is refractory to UX or HCD, we can sometimes land in a position where facing arguments that seem to us irrational (yet following its own well-constructed logic), we feel powerless and unable to elaborate proper or clear answers, even though we’re sure of the righteousness of our points.
In such situations, we may doubt at some point that we know what we know. But then, our natural tendency to cognitive biases will make us rationalize, and probably through a beautifully formed fundamental attribution error, make us keen to believe that the person was wrong and stupid.
> Next time, I’ll be ready!
The rest of the story can easily end up in a fight, a polarization of the debate.
Without going so far in the extremes, a tiny amount of such behavior can lead to catastrophic communication issues.
## Beliefs, opinions, facts, and methodology
What I often observe is that most people have beliefs (sometimes strong ones) about the users and how they behave, even tho these beliefs are contradictory or irrational.
[**On Myths & Beliefs in Business**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*3 Myths We All Have Been Taught And That Prevent You And Your Business To Grow*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I also observe that Design and Business are often seen as places for (strong) opinions and acts of faith. You have to “trust your gut” in order to be “successful”, right? There are countless articles each year on this topic. The funny thing is to think of how many articles were not written about those “gut feelings” that didn’t lead to the expected outcomes. What a beautiful confirmation bias could that reveals, isn’t it?
”, Strategyzer.
If the only things to do in order to make your business or design successful is “trusting your gut” to have great ideas, then your opinion on the subject is not better than my grandmother’s one. In such a context, it’s clear that anyone is qualified to criticize your decisions. If you have nothing else than your belief to be right to bring on the table, you can’t really build something constructive from critics and debates.
In the same vein, people tend to believe what a particular group has accepted as true, even tho there nothing to back it up. [These false beliefs spread due to our tendency to accept the established norms of our social group and environment.](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-need-for-a-paradigm-shift-4d25c714b846?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) In business, it is well translated by the belief that [“customers don’t know what they want”](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-2-cc56b70d9556?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “If I had 1 hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.” — Albert Einstein
If you have a clear and [replicable methodology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), people may criticize the result but you would have way more factual arguments to explain, justify, and prove it. And this is probably what can teach you critical thinking –and especially [**rational skepticism**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical%5Fmovement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)**:** making you care for the **method** that makes you know what you know, trust what you trust, and believe what you believe.
This approach helps you questioning your own reasoning, forcing you to verify and fact-check your arguments on a subject. This teaches you humility towards topics you don’t know. It makes you actively listening to other’s arguments, force you to check for reliable sources, and verify the arguments (yours and others) and eventually reconsider your position on the lights of new facts. It forces you to be aware of our cognitive biases and helps you sharpen up your capacity to detect fallacious speeches.
That’s what’s at the heart of the [scientific method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5Fmethod?ref=designcriticalthinking.com): *building a proper understanding of the world surrounding us (knowledge), and improving it over time.*
## Prevent Sterile Debate
Street epistemology (SE) or [epistemological interview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) can help you adopt a non-dogmatic, open-minded approach toward opinionated speeches and people.
This approach will make your interlocutor to explain the elements that lead to his opinion or belief, allowing you to highlight and question potential flaws in his reasoning as you ask questions, all this in a respectful way. The approach also has some similitudes with the “Four Whys” and the “user interview” methods in some regards. Anyway, by following some of its guidelines can help you become a better interviewer in general.
It is worth noting that this approach is iterative through a conversation.
## A Step-by-step To Epistemology
### 1\. Build rapport with your interlocutor
Build rapport with your interlocutor before getting deep into dialogue. Try to find something that you have in common.
### 2\. Identify the claim
This step may involve idle chit-chat with the hope of chancing upon a worthwhile claim.
### 3\. Confirm the claim
Confirm that you have understood your interlocutor correctly by summarizing and repeating their claim back to them. Don’t continue until you are both sure that you understand it clearly. If necessary, write down the claim so that you can both refer to it if the conversation goes off track.
### 4\. Clarify definitions
If there are any words that are ambiguous (or potentially so) this would be a good time to nail them down with your interlocutor. Clarifying definitions is something that you may have to do multiple times as the talk progresses should it become apparent that you’re using words differently.
### 5\. Identify a confidence level
Ask your interlocutor how confident they are that their claim or belief is true. If possible, have them put a number on it. If they are not willing or able to quantify it, accept whatever they give you and note that as their “initial confidence level”. For example, “How confident are you that “\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_” on a scale of 0 to 100?”
Note: The confidence scale is just a way of judging for yourself how much effect your efforts are having. It is optional and not an integral part of SE. **Don’t persist, as doing so may annoy your interlocutor and be counterproductive.**
### 6\. Identify the method used to arrive at the confidence level
Ask your interlocutor how they have determined that their belief is true, or how they’ve arrived at their stated confidence level. They may provide multiple reasons. Try to focus on just one or two, ideally those that contribute the most to their confidence. Once you’ve settled on a primary reason or method, stay focused on that through the rest of the talk.
### 7\. Ask questions that reveal the reliability of the method
Your main tools here are the Socratic method, the outsider test of faith (OTF), and questions that revolve around the falsifiability of their claims. Ask questions that, when answered, lead to a contradiction of your interlocutor’s assumptions or hypotheses.
### 8\. Listen, summarize, question, watch, repeat
**Listen** to your interlocutor closely. Look at them directly and try to understand what they are attempting to convey without getting hung up on their exact word choices.
**Summarize:** Repeat what you think your interlocutor is trying to communicate and verify with them that you’ve understood them correctly. It’s important that they feel like they’ve been heard. It proves that you are being attentive and taking their beliefs seriously.
**Question:** construct more [socratic questions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic%5Fmethod?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**Watch** for those special moments where your interlocutor stops to “think”. This is often betrayed by the act of looking up at the ceiling, clearly trying to sort through things in their head. It’s important to detect these “aporias” and allow the silence to continue uninterrupted until the interlocutor speaks.
### 9\. Wrap up the conversation
If your interlocutor previously offered their confidence level, ask them again as you wrap up. This can help you judge whether your dialogue had an immediate effect.
For example, “Given the things we’ve talked about, do you think your confidence level has changed? Do you still feel that 100% is accurate?”
### Rules of Thumb
Pay close attention to your own demeanor. If your words, body language, or tone of voice betray even a small amount of condescension, your interlocutor will recognize this and be justified in reacting negatively to it. If your goal is only to “win”, and you don’t genuinely respect your interlocutor (even if you don’t respect their beliefs), then SE might not be right for you.
Most people new to Epistemology struggle to avoid being sidetracked when they hear clearly false, or unsupportable claims. They reflexively react to them by presenting opposing evidence or arguments. When you do this, you’ve gone off the rails. It’s not a disaster as you can just drop the point and get back on track, but it’s normal to struggle with this through many talks before you feel comfortable ignoring these things and staying focused on epistemology.
Don’t allow frustration to overwhelm you. Everyone is different.
**Source:** [“Street Epistemology — The Basics”](https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street%5Fepistemology%5Fthe%5Fbasics?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## What’s Your Methodology?
And you, what’s your methodology or approach to talking with such people in your work?
**Other questions:** Is “UX evangelist” a good definition in our context or a bit too dogmatic? Do you feel like a “UX believer”?
---
*Thanks for reading!*
### Skepticism: Overuse and Misunderstanding
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/skepticism--overuse-and-misunderstanding/
Last updated: 2019-02-18T00:00:00.000Z
[Kate Morgan](https://medium.com/u/324326475b88?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) Thank you for your article.
It would be great to give a clear definition of the kind of skepticism you are talking about: **ignorant skepticism**.
It is worth noting that [skepticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and especially [rational skepticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical%5Fmovement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) are one of the roots of the [scientific method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5Fmethod?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and approach to build knowledge and understanding of the world.
Skepticism, if based on beliefs or [unfalsifiable assumptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) — and without proper questioning of the method used to build them — is just another word for a kind of [dogma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and a fertile ground for false beliefs, “[alternative facts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative%5Ffacts?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)”, and [conspiracy theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy%5Ftheory?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Maybe [negationism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical%5Fnegationism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or [denialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) are better words to describe their behavior and claims.
### The Need For A Paradigm Shift
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-need-for-a-paradigm-shift/
Last updated: 2019-01-18T00:00:00.000Z
### Switching from inside-out to outside-in organizations.
Unsplash
## **The Inside-out Paradigm**
If you ever worked in an established organization or you are creating your own, you may realize that most of the tools available to them are narcissistically focus on themselves: *looking for answers internally, either within the company or the competitors of their market.* This is called an **inside-out process**, a paradigm in which –most of the time– people believe that generating strong ideas solely based on internal expertise is the path to growth and innovation.
These organizations believe so much to have a strong business model that they don’t see why they should question what they are doing and how they do it. They have well-developed processes that –more or less– fit their existing models, regulations, constraints, but oftentimes lead to a sort of “process paralysis”, a state in which a way of doing things prevent both new idea generation and different thinking, therefore preventing any kind of objectivism and questioning of the said process. They sometimes emphasize only on some aspects of what they are doing whether it is Marketing, IT, Sales, etc. without any kind of coherence. Such organizations tend to see customers from a distant and distorted point of view and this leads to absurd reasoning, such as the customers are the inherent risk of their business. This is exacerbated by decades of [false beliefs about how people think and behave](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). **I call it the** **Homo economicus complex.**
[**On Myths & Beliefs in Business**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*3 Myths We All Have Been Taught And That Prevent You And Your Business To Grow*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
And even tho this description is more or less true depending on the organization or the market we’re looking at, places like that are quite common. Places in which false beliefs are king, such as “[*customers don’t know what they want*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-2-cc56b70d9556?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* or “[*they don’t like change*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-3-c451ccccd0c2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*. Places that love to use [**arguments from authority**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), like the so-called [H. Ford](https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’s statement “[*If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses*](https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”,* to justify their inability to effectively build proper understanding and knowledge of their customers, users, and market.
We can see how this blindness towards customers’ pains, needs and contexts come from the acceptance of what is judged as “normal” amongst some professionals. And as those organizations have very few external indicators to know if what they are doing is “good or not”, they morbidly compare themselves to the competition. They are locked in their market, doomed to die or follow. Innovation seems a far, complex, and inaccessible.
> *“But hey, we’re not Apple or Tesla!” — But saying that suggests that we should be one of these organization to start doing things differently.* *Don’t you see the fallacious thinking here?*
All of this lead to myths creation, false beliefs and ultimately it creates invisible and unconscious barriers that prevent one to propose anything new.
[**Customers Needs Are Your Business Needs**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*UX Maturity vs Business Myopia*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## The Outside-in Paradigm
To move out of market analysis paralysis and low-value product/service creation, to better retain people, gain new ones, increase their loyalty and your organization growth, and ultimately enable the path to innovation, we need a paradigm shift: we need to move from an inside-out to an outside-in process, through human-centered thinking.
The Jobs To Be Done Framework
An outside-in process is the fact to seek information, knowledge, and insights outside first: we start by identifying the people we aim to solve problems for, their *job-to-be-done*, needs, pains, gains, and their contexts. Instead of focusing only on what competitors do and simply align to their features, therefore being limited by what a market already proposes, the human-centered thinking allow to identify value creation through more tangible criteria: the customer’s needs and expected outcomes. Therefore, you can go beyond a predefined market limitation and –from a more tactical standpoint– you can create products/services that are *desirable*, *usable*, and *useful*.
> When an entire organization adopt human-centered thinking and focus on value creation by understanding and building an objective and practical model of knowledge of the people, they internally gain in alignment and agility.
The human-centered thinking is not a tool or a process, it’s a **mindset**, a **philosophy.**
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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*Give some claps 👏👏👏👏👏👏 and hit the follow button!*
### Switching From Inside-out To Outside-in Paradigm
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/switching-from-inside-out-to-outside-in-paradigm/
Last updated: 2018-12-27T00:00:00.000Z
### Everyone is a designer. But everyone hasn’t the right tools to be good at it.
Unsplash
> “Businesspeople don’t just need to understand designers better; they need to become designers. \[…\] The world is so full of ambiguity and uncertainty that the design attitude of exploring and prototyping multiple possibilities is most likely to lead to a powerful new business model.” — **Alexander Osterwalder**, [Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/9815226?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Editor’s Note
Winter is here. 2019 is coming. Everything sounds fine in this festive and convivial period.
Thus we continue the journey towards sharing our message. A message that we hope can bring closer people from different backgrounds and professions. We love when knowledge, ideas, and point of views collide together. But to give birth to something that will be used, be useful, and –why not– create true innovation, you need an approach that everyone can apprehend and that can guarantee, at least, that you focus on what matters.
We call it *Human-Centered Thinking*. It’s nothing new, nothing we invented. Yet, it brings a holistic approach to what we all do, exempt from any particular beliefs. It’s just a tool, and you don’t have to change your job title to use it. It can be combined with many other tools to answer more strategic or tactical purposes, without altering the promise.
That’s what we think is the real strength of this approach.
Cheers,
[Kevin Richard](https://medium.com/u/75da4ce5b20e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Hot Like a Fondue.
*Our stories, served hot and creamy, just like a good Swiss Fondue!* 🧀🇨🇭
### [Customers Needs Are Your Business Needs](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Business people used to have an inside-out approach to pretty much everything they do. This normal since most business tools are narcissistically focused on themselves: *looking for answers internally, either within the company or the competitors of a given market.* The human-centered thinking can help break some established barriers and go beyond what’s commonly accepted by looking at the people you’re helping get the job done.
[*Read more →*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs-5b1b2346ebff?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### [On Myths & Beliefs in Business](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Since the last 3 weeks, we covered the most largely shared myths and beliefs in business about customers and people. Those are linked to our cognitive biases and some stereotypes. Through our “debunk” we show how blindness toward customers needs and pains come from the acceptance of what’s judged as normal among some professionals: *customers are rational beings, they don’t know what they want, they don’t like change.*
[Read more →](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-de9ee568b631?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Just. Read. It.
*Our sweet selection of books and articles.* 📖
*Just like chocolate, once you start you wish to never stop!* 🍫
### [Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant](http://a.co/d/actycUp?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**What:** this best selling book shows how companies that succeed in the long-term do not seek to from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”―untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
**Why:** this book gives a great framework to think about your strategy, with key tools to elaborate your own. Combined with a human-centric approach, it’s a powerful way of developing any business.
> “It is conventionally believed that companies can either create greater value to customers at a higher cost or create reasonable value at a lower cost. Here strategy is seen as making a choice between differentiation and low cost. In contrast, those that seek to create blue oceans pursue differentiation and low cost simultaneously.” ― **W. Chan Kim,** [Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/63877836?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thank You For Your Support!
*We believe that Business, Design, and Technology should all join forces to do what matters the most: answering people’s pains, needs & wants. This is where innovation lies!*
*Thanks for helping us share this message of hope and for supporting us!*
---
*Don’t hesitate to* [*clap, share, and comment*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*. See you soon for more stories and adventures* 🙌
### On Myths & Beliefs in Business
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-myths---beliefs-in-business/
Last updated: 2018-12-26T00:00:00.000Z
### 3 Myths We All Have Been Taught And That Prevent You And Your Business To Grow
Unsplash
The Cognitive Bias Codex, which list more than 200 known human biases.
We, as humans, are [full of biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fcognitive%5Fbiases?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or *“cognitive short-cuts”* which help us understand the world around us –let’s say– more easily. These biases help our brain to take quick decisions *all the time*. Sounds good, right? But it comes with interesting side effects.
Stereotypes, [rationalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization%5F%28psychology%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation%5Fbias?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (*e.g.* cherry-picking news), are some examples of cognitive biases.
And let’s make it clear: **we are all equal towards these biases**.
At some point, they are inevitably part of our reasoning and eventually affect it, even tho we appear to remain logic. Interestingly, these biases provide a fertile ground to spread some myths, beliefs, and –sometimes– wrong information (*a.k.a.* fake news).
So here are some of these myths and beliefs you may encounter when conceiving a business, a product or a service.
## Myth 1: Humans Are Rational Beings
[**On Myths & Beliefs in Business — Part 1**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Humans are Rational Beings*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Myth 2: People don’t know what they want
[**On Myths & Beliefs in Business - Part 2 - Kevin Richard - Medium**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-2-cc56b70d9556?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This myth probably comes from the most misunderstood concept in business. This myth is perfectly illustrated by this…*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-2-cc56b70d9556?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-2-cc56b70d9556?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Myth 3: People don’t like change
[**On Myths & Beliefs in Business - Part 3 - Kevin Richard - Medium**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-3-c451ccccd0c2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Is it true? Do you really believe that? Or are you just saying that because we all already heard that at least once…*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-3-c451ccccd0c2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/on-myths-beliefs-in-business-part-3-c451ccccd0c2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### Customers Needs Are Your Business Needs
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/customers-needs-are-your-business-needs/
Last updated: 2018-12-24T00:00:00.000Z
### UX Maturity vs Business Myopia
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Some time ago, I was helping a colleague on presenting a review of what has been done during the year to a wide range of people in his company. The presentation went well (or so we thought) and we came to the part where he talked about the [UX Maturity](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-1-4/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) of the company. No surprises here: it was low in the scale. He showed how he thought his team could elevate the maturity of the company.
At some point, during the Q&A, one of the business representatives threw something like that:
> “But design has to consider the business needs. Business needs should come first and then perhaps user needs.”
This started a debate amongst the audience on whether design should be able to influence business decisions or at which point the team should be included in the decision process.
We tried to argue that designers should ideally be involved as soon as the business had a problem or a question, thus well before they come with a solution: *“we need feature X”*. Even better, the design team should be able to challenge business decisions when they discover new insights during in-field research. Needless to say, it’s far from being the *“default”* here.
**Our point was:** **your business needs should be aligned to the customers’ needs.**
## UX Maturity and Business Myopia
Interestingly, this discussion was right into the subject of [UX Maturity](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-1-4/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). With my colleague, we found interesting to correlate the discrepancy between the so-called *business needs* and the understanding of the customers.
Source
When a company’s maturity grow, more and more people start to use [human-centric](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/about-us-57850c49460e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (or customer-centric) approaches at many more levels, [switching an organization from an “inside-out” to an “outside-in” paradigm](https://youtu.be/MaAolcARSmM?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). As maturity grows, the business tends to align with the customers’ needs.
From my own experience, a company that opposes the two concepts usually is low in maturity scale. The discussion which started from this business representatives’ remark is the perfect illustration.
This discrepancy revealed how blind the business can be toward the value proposition and the experiences they deliver to the users. When a company is narcissistically looking at itself for answers — what I’m referring to as an “inside-out” paradigm — there is not so much space for doubts about the value of what is done: this is the *business myopia*.
## Design, Value Proposition, and Business Models
Your customers’ needs and wants are what you are supposed to focus on. You, as a business, should have a Value Proposition that aims to answer one simple question: “what jobs are you helping your customers to get done?”. This should be a key element of your business model.
This means knowing your customers. And by knowing them, I mean conducting [user research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%5Fresearch?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) (in-field interviews, surveys, user tests, etc.) to properly understand their context, goals, struggles, and mental models. And to be clear, this should not be a one shot. Understanding your customers requires a constant effort.
This is probably where we can show the value of UX, by connecting the business and design on this critical understanding. Designers are good at building this understanding about the users, and they probably have to better at communicating this knowledge to non-designers.
### Side note: Being a rational skeptic in the business world
Originally, [rational skepticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical%5Fmovement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) comes from the scientific skepticism and is an agnostic approach to knowledge building. Skepticism could be otherwise defined as: [“the right to doubt about everything”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9t%C3%A9tique?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). This thought exercise is aimed to help ask the right questions about what we know (or not) and is part of the toolbox of the scientific method (like the [Occam’s razor](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s%5Frazor?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)).
Pretty much like the scientific method aims to create models of knowledge to help us understand the world around us, being a rational skeptic in business, design or entrepreneurship is the idea of building an impartial model of understanding of your customers and your solutions. In such a paradigm, you build a hypothesis (an idea or a solution) and you test it to fail (and not to success). The more your hypothesis passes the tests, the more you become confident that it is viable. You can then build several hypotheses for the same “problem”, test them in parallel and pick the “best” one.
Interestingly, this is what the [Business Model Canvas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business%5FModel%5FCanvas?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) is about. Recently, [Alex Osterwalder](https://blog.strategyzer.com/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) has talked about [the importance of having a portfolio of several hypotheses that you regularly test.](https://youtu.be/TeJb1SfB49o?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Conclusion
Of course, business is complex and it’s easy to take a step back and say we should have done things otherwise. And sometimes there are business needs that do not depend on answering customers needs, especially in highly regulated markets (i.e. banks).
However, using human-centric approach can help implement such requirements in respect of the customers’ context, goals, and needs, so that it does not create avoidable frictions in their experience.
Furthermore, human-centric thinking is a holistic approach to business and product management. It helps gain alignment between business, technologies, and design by focusing on people’s needs and by defining key metrics. Combined with great tools such as the Business Model Canvas, the Blue Ocean Strategy, Jobs To Be Done, Design Thinking (and many more), you increase probabilities of growth and success and you [reduce chances to build something that nobody wants](https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2016/6/20/why-companies-fail-how-to-prevent-it?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> Good design is good business. — Thomas J. Watson Jr., IBM
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### On Myths & Beliefs in Business — Part 3
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-myths---beliefs-in-business---part-3/
Last updated: 2018-12-19T00:00:00.000Z
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## Customers don’t like change
Is it true? Do you really believe that? Or is it just because we all already heard it once?
> People don’t like change. They don’t know what they want. They complain all the time. And now we should listen to them!? Holly crap, let’s do our change as we thought anyway!
At first, it seems counter intuitive. All these contradictory signals, it can feel scary and uncertain. Business and product people (and, well, humans in general) don’t like uncertainty.
But why would we “hate” changes?
> We are creatures of habits.
At the psychological level, change can be seen as disruptive –or even dangerous– when it comes to habits, therefore triggering a specific emotional reaction: *rejection*. Interestingly, rejection seems stronger toward changes that have not been introduced beforehand and for which people are not psychologically prepared to envision.
We feel more confident with the things we’re used to, and we are pretty good at creating routines. In his book, [*“Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”*](http://nirandfar.com/gethooked?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*,* [Nir Eyal](https://medium.com/u/295258f6269d?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) explains that the ultimate goal for companies is to build *“habit-forming”* products, which tend to follow a specific pattern.
The Hook Canvas
If building habit-forming products is a top-notch goal, perhaps proper *“change management”* in products should be seen as an important business skill, and therefore should be an important metric.
In his article, [*“Users Don’t Hate Change. They Hate Our Design Choices.”*](https://articles.uie.com/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-our-design-choices/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Jared M. Spool](https://medium.com/u/b90ef6212176?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) explains how change should be approached so the users feel in control, therefore reducing uncertainty for them. He reminds us that users and customers are rarely part of the decisions that led to those changes and that we rarely introduce those changes in an optimal way, i.e. either little by little or before they become definitive.
> Users don’t hate design changes, they hate the choices designers make when rolling out a change. \[…\] We’ve found users only hate changes some of the time.
Designers — and everyone working on a product — have the responsibility to think about how to introduce changes to users. Ultimately, change acceptance/rejection should be measured and should be plan well before it becomes definitive.
Companies should definitely see here an opportunity to engage and improve their customers/users loyalty. Despite what one may think, people like to be involved in what matters to them. And if they use your product, chances are they do.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### Don’t think design. Feel it.
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/don-t-think-design--feel-it-/
Last updated: 2018-12-17T00:00:00.000Z
Stop thinking. Start doing.
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**Designers, stop the mental masturbation:** your job is just about colors, good typography and how much appealing you can make something look like.
Some people are trying to fool you with weird ideas as if you could “think” your design. Bullsh\*\*! The best design process is the one you can come up with by yourself, through good old’ hard work.
So please, stop thinking. Stop talking. Stop sharing foreign ideas… Stop trying to look like a modern-age process Guru. Stop trying to be the business or tech guy you would hate to work with.
## Design doesn’t need to be managed.
Why this picture? Don’t know, seems creative…
You better remain alone. Loneliness is the best creative space. Look at the writers, the artists, *Elon Musk*, the geniuses of all eras: this is their secret weapon. Don’t you dream of this golden-age era, when a lonely genius could just reveal its masterpiece to the world, everyone quietly listening and watching? I wish to live that…
If you dare ask me to show my process, I would tell you that you can’t understand, and you know it’s complicated stuff to be creative.
> There is no such thing as a canvas or a framework for my creativity.
And all of these weird theories about psychology, usability… But hey! This is fake news!
> Design is no science. It’s about emotions!
If I would be a scientist, I would tell you creativity is somewhere over there… kinda. Yep.
To work with data? No thanks, leave it to the marketing guys (or worse, the PMs). This is design, not maths!
> You don’t like it? Leave it to me, you probably have no taste whatsoever.
## Don’t think design. Feel it.
No need for workshops or co-creation *blabla*. Close your eyes, imagine the solution. Feel the shadow of the buttons, the *inconsistent–yet–really–cool* radius and styles you will add to your already messy sketch file. Feel all the vibrant colors you will probably find on Dribble, or on a *yet-another-article* about *“*[*the importance of gradients*](https://medium.com/search?q=gradients&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* or *“*[*design trends for 2019*](https://medium.com/search?q=design%20trends%20for%202019&ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”*. And don’t ask your users, they don’t know anything about design.
> Empathy is overrated.
**There’s some magic here:** you don’t have to talk to tons of people. You don’t have to plan anything. You don’t have to care if you will redesign again existing stuff.
My design strategy? Open sketch and just do the job!
> If it’s beautiful, people will buy it; people will use it. Otherwise, they are dumb!
KPIs? If people in the design community –only the good ones– like it then that’s fine to me. Everything else is none of my *business*.
Look at those colors… and waves at the bottom!? And you can video-call people while playing music! …Makes sense!
---
Anyway, why would I have to justify my self? Is there justifications for creativity!?
**Be bold. Be brilliant.**
### On Myths & Beliefs in Business — Part 2
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-myths---beliefs-in-business---part-2/
Last updated: 2018-12-16T00:00:00.000Z
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## Customers don’t know what they want
This myth probably comes from the most misunderstood concept in business and is perfectly illustrated by this well-known quote from Henry Ford. Yes, you know, this one:
> “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
It’s not uncommon to see people using this kind of [**argument from authority**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) when it comes to beliefs and myths. All tho, it might have been [wrongly interpreted](https://medium.com/@megak/faster-horses-everyones-favorite-excuse-to-skip-user-research-8da4093a0836?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) or worse, [it would have never existed](https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Fortunately for us, Henry Ford was not the only one to speak about what people want, need and do. Back in the 60s’ [Theodore Levitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore%5FLevitt?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), when explaining the importance of [focusing on a wider view of business](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing%5Fmyopia?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), might have said:
> “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”
Which means that a product is not an end but rather it is a mean toward a higher goal.
Surely, this is another *argument from authority* and could be misinterpreted (or simply could be an appropriation), but it is worth noting that recent business frameworks successfully embedded this concept.
[Clayton Christensen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton%5FM.%5FChristensen?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [Tony Ulwick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony%5FW.%5FUlwick?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and others wrote extensively about this concept as “Jobs To Be Done” (or JTBD), an approach that describes people as *“agents seeking to ‘hire’ the best product or service to achieve a job (or higher goal)”*. Even tho all these authors may have a slightly different definition of JTBD, they all agree on the necessity of understanding first their customer and their environment in order to deliver a good or innovative solution.
The concept of Value Proposition
Frameworks like the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas show the importance of performing initial research before working on a solution. Interestingly, these exhibit something well known to UX and Design Thinking practitioners: **user/customer research**. They are showing the importance of not only talking to your users/customers but properly framing your questions so that you can learn something actionable.
Saying that *“people don’t know what they want”* may demonstrate that you are not using the right approach, therefore not asking the right questions.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### About Human Centered Thinking Switzerland
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/about-human-centered-thinking-switzerland/
Last updated: 2018-12-12T00:00:00.000Z
**In short:** We believe that Business, Design, and Technology should all join forces to do what matters the most: **answering people’s needs, pains, gains, in respect with their contexts.**
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---
## What is it?
The *Human-Centered Thinking* (HCT) approach aims to help any type of organizations, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to better understand the humans they are solving problems for and their contexts. HCT is a holistic approach, with various methods coming from different disciplines — for instance: Jobs to be done, UX, Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas, etc.
HCT arises from the necessity to find a common term of all the practices that focus on understanding humans in the context of people creating systems, products, and services to serve other people, whether there is a transactional aspect or not.
---
## Who are we?
Human Centered Thinking Switzerland 🇨🇭 is a free and independent Swiss-based (but not limited to) publication, launched in December 2018 by [Kevin Richard](https://medium.com/u/75da4ce5b20e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). Since then, [several writers joined us](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/about?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 😎👏.
We try to have a [rational skepticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical%5Fmovement?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) and an [epistemological](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) approach, tho we acknowledge our inherent biases.
We believe in the right for free expression, justice, and equity. Therefore, anyone should be able to express their ideas through our articles and through the comments, as soon as they 1) remain respectful; 2) are clearly argued; 3) obviously match the theme of this publication.
We otherwise invite everyone to **cite their sources,** whenever possible*.*
Finally, we seek to empower and inspire people around us.
*Thanks for reading and see you soon for more stories and adventures* 🙌
*Follow us on* [*Facebook*](https://www.facebook.com/HumanCenteredThinkingCH) *or hit the “Follow” button to stay tuned!*
---
---
### Disclaimer
*We want to make clear that Human Centered Thinking is not about* [*anthropocentrism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*, humanocentrism or any related ideology, tho without any subjective judgment from the publication’s editors.*
*As previously stated, everyone is in right to express their ideas, argued, respectfully, and therefore remain their respective personal point of views.*
### Let’s Sharpen Up Our Human-Centric Skills
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/let-s-sharpen-up-our-human-centric-skills/
Last updated: 2018-12-11T00:00:00.000Z
> “Figure out what your product is and what your value chain is. Understand where those things touch important social needs and problems. If you’re in financial services, let’s think about ‘saving’ or ‘buying a home’ — but in a way that actually works for the customer.” — Michael Porter, in [*Creating Shared Value*](https://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Because it always begins somewhere…
A week ago, [**Human Centered Thinking**](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) has been successfully launched! It came out from a long reflection, years of hard work, and so many discussions about the value of practices such as *User Experience Design* and *Design Thinking* for businesses, startups and all type of organizations.
We aim to provide yet another point of view: we believe that Business, Design, and Technology –which are today’s pillars of any organizations– should all join forces to do what matters the most:**answering people’s pains and enabling people to perform their goals, frictionlessly**.
After all, what’s a business without people to interact, buy, and exchange with? What’s the point of building a piece of technology if there are no humans to benefit from it? What’s the purpose of designing a beautiful interface if it’s not usable and useful for users or customers?
In that respect, they should be treated not only separately but furthermore as a whole.
> You Don’t Design Customers, You Understand Them (Or Not) — [Alexander Osterwalder](https://twitter.com/AlexOsterwalder?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
**Time to sharpen up our Human-Centric skills!**
---
## Hot Like a Fondue.
*Our stories, served hot and creamy, just like a good Swiss Fondue!* 🧀🇨🇭
### [When UX Means Innovation](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/when-ux-means-innovation-8c1939122edc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Innovation, as many complex topics, has its own world of myths & beliefs and obviously, everyone has an opinion on it. However, latest business frameworks acknowledge the importance of proper user research at the beginning of the process. UX practitioners have relevant expertise in this field and can definitely help businesses generate innovative solutions.
[Read more →](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/when-ux-means-innovation-8c1939122edc?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### [Companies, Startups & Business: Map Your Experiences](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/companies-startups-business-map-your-experiences-80f70c1ae6d6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
Today it’s still easy to watch so many businesses more keen to find circumstantial justifications to not improve their experiences than trying to be objectively critic toward what they do (aka investing into UX, user research, etc.).
> Blindness toward users’ pains (or experience’s frictions) is probably the most widespread plague within companies
However, you can act upon it! One key approach to increase awareness and promote change is by mapping the current company’s experience, therefore exposing what *works* and what *doesn’t*.
[Read more →](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/companies-startups-business-map-your-experiences-80f70c1ae6d6?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### [Improving The Human Experience Of Public Organizations](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/improving-the-human-experience-of-public-organizations-654705d964bd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
We all suffer from systems that deliver truly poor experiences. Systems developed by public institutions. Systems that, for administrative or technical or legal purposes, have been de-humanized. it’s not about technology or digital transformation. **It’s about how at its core, people think about what they do, how they do it and for whom they do it.**
What if someone has told them that there are approaches that guarantee more success in behavior change and provide real benefit to the human experience?
[Read more →](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/improving-the-human-experience-of-public-organizations-654705d964bd?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### [On Myths & Beliefs in Business — Part 1: ](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*Humans are Rational Beings*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
One recurrent argumentation during within organization is that *people are rational beings*: if they are exposed to a choice between two products, for instance, they will always make a rational decision based on facts.
This popular belief amongst businesses is the root of many misunderstanding about the role of Psychology and UX…
[Read more →](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland/the-lies-youre-telling-yourself-when-thinking-of-people-using-your-products-or-services-part-1-99bed607b005?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Just. Read. It.
*Our sweet selection of books and articles.* 📖
*Just like chocolate, once you start you wish to never stop!* 🍫
### [Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams](http://a.co/d/5YNQjA2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
*By James Kalbach.*
**What:** This practical book shows how to use alignment diagrams to turn valuable customer observations into actionable insight.
**Why:** Maps and Diagrams are powerful tools, yet often overlooked or little-known, despite being truly accessible to anyone keen to improve its company’s experience.
[Get this book →](http://a.co/d/5YNQjA2?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
## Thank You For Your Support!
*We believe that Business, Design, and Technology should all join forces to do what matters the most: answering people’s pains. This is where innovation lies!*
*Thanks for helping us share this message of hope and for supporting us!*
---
*Don’t hesitate to* [*clap, share, and comment*](https://medium.com/human-centered-thinking-switzerland?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*. See you soon for more stories and adventures* 🙌
*Cheers!*
[*Kevin Richard*](https://medium.com/u/75da4ce5b20e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### When UX Means Innovation
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/when-ux-means-innovation/
Last updated: 2018-12-11T00:00:00.000Z
*What you can learn from designers that can benefit your business innovation.*
Unsplash
Defining *“Innovation”* is a hard thing to do. There are so many points of views. I know it can be controversial to say that, but in fact, that explains the never-ending discussions around this topic. People have mental models, they have their own pre-existing beliefs, norms, and concepts by which they tend to see the world around them.
However, from my point of view, innovation is not a *thing*. It’s not a specific technology (aka Blockchain or AI), or a specific way of designing interfaces (aka Voice Interface or Conversational Interfaces), or a specific process in which you have to go through very specific steps in a linear way (aka the misused/misunderstood Design Thinking process). Innovation is not even a *goal*, and it should not be one. **The risk of defining innovation as a** **goal** **is to focus only on the** **things** **I previously described.**
### Debunking The Innovation Misconception
When we talk about innovation, there are often the same examples that pop out from time to time. *And excuse me in advance for specific-domain people, such as IT & Business guys, I know you’re great people.*
A Tesla Cockpit
**Tesla** or **Apple** are great examples I often hear, and it’s hard to remain still when some IT person explains that Apple or Tesla win over their market because of their technological advances. Same when a business person quote Steve Jobs when he basically said: *“don’t listen to your customer, they don’t know sh\*\*” —* [which is not the full story](https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2013/12/19/myth-busted-steve-jobs-did-listen-to-customers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com#d2ddb1b87f32), by the way. He then explains to you that *“people don’t know what they want”*, and therefore, we have to come up with “brilliant ideas”.
Oftentimes, there is this huge misconception about innovation: *mistaking it with R&D.* Because for most people, R&D and Innovation are interchangeable concepts.
Same goes for business models and idea generation. In general, there is a tendency within organizations to see things only in one way: *an inside-out process.*
But did Tesla invent the car? Or the battery? Or even the electric car? No, they didn’t. They didn’t invent the ultra-connected car either. Same for Apple: did they invent the smartphone? or the touchscreen? Or even the App Store model? Nope.
At this point, you may think if something THAT important exists, it should be a secret buried deep underground. But the interesting part is that it’s one of the most accessible resources may have, unlimited, always available, and it’s right at your doorstep!
So what is it? What is this unbelievable secret that holds you from innovation? The answer is a deep understanding of the users, their context and their problems. **In other words, user research.**
What Apple and Tesla (and many others) are great at is understanding people pains, people mental models, and address it. For instance, Tesla understood that what people fear the most with electric cars is not having enough energy to go where you need to go. And all their strategy (at least at the beginning) was focus on addressing this HUGE pain point, i.e. by adding a big screen when you can clearly see the status of your car, a navigation system that ensures you pass nearby electric charging stations, etc. Everything to make you *feel in control and confident*.
**Don’t get me wrong:** technology does play a key role, but more as a medium. And keep in mind that it could have been done otherwise (i.e. with a different tech) without altering the promise. This is why the innovation does not lie into the medium itself.
Bonus #1: [*\[Video\] How Psychology & UX can supercharge your product by Joe Leech.*](https://vimeo.com/298340126?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### When UX Enables New Business Models
> Industries are switching from an “inside-out” to an “outside-in” paradigm.
There are no secrets why most recent business frameworks, such as the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), the Business Model Canvas, and the Value Proposition Canvas, focus the first part of their processes on Customer research (e.g. interviews) and are largely inspired by design methods.
Strategyzer
For instance, the Business Model Canvas starts with the Value Proposition, which focuses on 1) discovering the customers' jobs, pains, and gains; 2) ideating on the product/service’s pain relievers and gain creators. Of course, these frameworks provide a much more dedicated process for business models generation. However, these frameworks share lots of common roots with other design processes. *And it’s a good thing!*
Strategyzer
Bonus #2: [*Prof. Clayton Christensen on Customer Jobs-To-Be-Done.*](https://youtu.be/wbWs5mRSe%5FY?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
## Conclusion
Innovation may have many different definitions depending on one’s point of view, however, latest business frameworks acknowledge the importance of proper user research at the beginning of the process. UX practitioners have relevant expertise in this field and can definitely help businesses generate innovative solutions.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### Companies, Startups & Business: Map Your Experiences
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/companies--startups---business--map-your-experiences/
Last updated: 2018-12-09T00:00:00.000Z
*In the name of your business well being, commit to this basic UX practice.*
Unsplash
In my 10 years experience, I worked within organizations of different sizes, from the small startups to the large corporate environment with thousands of employees.
My last 5 years has been focused on the Swiss Banking industry, a very interesting and quite little-known environment, which can be seen as mysterious from the outside. One obvious thing is the overwhelming culture of secrecy which, most of the time, wrongly justify an aversion of the customer-centric and open-minded mindset largely brought by the startup culture.
As a User Experience & Design Thinking practitioner, such an environment makes my work really challenging: *how can I get the users/customers feedback I need to properly do my job when the customer is like an ultra-secure gold bunker buried deep under a Swiss mountain?*
> No cheese, no chocolate, no sweetness.
Beyond the specificity of the Swiss banks, I can still today watch so many businesses more keen to find circumstantial justifications to not improve their experiences than trying to be objectively critic toward what they do (aka investing into UX, user research, etc.). Here is probably another sad truth about UX: *as a practitioner, you may represent what people fear the most, by exposing what works and what doesn’t in a company’s experience.*
> Reality can be hard to accept, and so many people prefer to remain blind than face it.
It’s an interesting challenge tho to pass the psychological barriers and make people realize the real potential of being honest about the quality of what a company offers.
> Blindness toward users’ pains (or experience’s frictions) is probably the most widespread plague within companies
If you are a business or product person wishing to change your company’s mindset, or if you are a UX practitioner yourself, here are some pieces of advice.
### Hacking The Companies’ Blocking Points
One key approach to enable this awakening is to map the current company’s experience. It’s important here to do this mapping at least on the most critical product or service of the company. This is about making an electroshock!
If I learned something during these few years, it’s that you don’t have to wait on or ask for permission. Start to make connections within the company, discuss with people from customer support, sales, marketing, and other teams. Retrieve key information, such as the pain points that users & customers are reporting the most. Learn about all the steps users are going through when using the product, when people are opening an account, etc.
> What are you really putting at risk here? Your carrier? The awful experience of your company? At worst, you just did your work at trying to improve the whole thing.If you’re not recognized for that, you know where your company’s culture stands. #UXMaturity #CompanyCulture
Organize user testing sessions, ideally with actual users/customers. In a worst-case scenario, ask for participants directly within the organization. If you are a business or product people and you never practice such exercise, I recommend you to read this great book: *“*[*Rocket Surgery Made Easy*](https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself/dp/0321657292?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*” by Steve Krug*.
Otherwise, take notes of what people are sharing with you. From the user test to the feedback from the sales, the customer support, etc. Keep everything that seems important to you.
### Creating a Momentum
Once you have all that you need, put those steps, applications, forms, etc. you discovered people are going through, on an Experience Map. You can find some great examples, as well as a deep and accessible review of all the mapping & diagram tools, in the truly awesome book *“*[*Mapping Experiences*](http://a.co/d/5KpEZhL?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*”* by [Jim Kalbach](https://medium.com/u/4b8b911d809b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
Nielsen Norman Group
And to be clear: **it doesn’t have to be perfect**, or even close to that. Don’t be afraid to iterate, gather feedback and improve it. The goal now is to go back to all the people you discuss with and start to show them the map. If you can, find a wall, somewhere people pass through regularly, and expose your map on it.
Remember all that notes you took early on? It’s time to pick the one that speaks out the best about the issues on the experience. Print them in big letters and attach them to your map.
Do not underestimate the value of visibility and word of mouth. Your map and feedbacks hold an uncomfortable truth, by showing the pain points, the inconsistency, and sometimes the complexity of the current experience. Perhaps, it’s even the first time someone has a real overview of it!
Nielsen Norman Group
Invite key people in your organization to come to see the map, and if they can’t make it (you know, they are busy people) propose to do a “personal” presentation whenever they have some time.
Finally, use the connections you made earlier and create a “community”, a group with which you can share, discuss and promote change. Organize recurrent events to share updates, discuss open points and motivate others to invest in UX practices. However, be careful to not exhaust the participants and give everyone time to digest and try things. In other words, be aware of the meeting fatigue or you will kill the momentum, and it could be hard to recover.
Anyway, remember one thing: *it will take time*. Be patient, coherent in your approach, and sometimes accept to lose some battles to win the war.
## Conclusion
Blindness toward users’ pains and experience’s frictions is a widespread plague but you can act upon it. Mapping experiences are great tools to increase awareness and promote change within organizations. By creating a transversal community and shared understanding, you can hack your company’s blocking point for the good of your customers. **Ultimately, you can enable real business innovation by focusing on your customer pains.**
Such things should not belong only to designers.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### Improving The Human Experience Of Public Organizations
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/improving-the-human-experience-of-public-organizations/
Last updated: 2018-12-05T00:00:00.000Z
*To serve people well, it has to be human-centric at some point.*
The European parliament
Today’s companies, even the smallest one, have access to User Experience, Design Thinking, and Human-Centric practitioners more easily than ever. The state of awareness and adoption of such practices is increasing each year, therefore the “quality” of the experiences delivered by companies around the world *might* increase too.
However, we are not all equal toward adoption and change in general. Cultural, social and societal norms are important aspects when it comes to new idea and concept penetration. These dynamics can be observed from different perspectives: e.g. a market, a country, or a specific population.
### Mind the Gap
For instance, in Switzerland, the mentality is really different from the Anglo-Saxon one. Everything may seem slower. There is a largely shared risk-averse mindset, more trust in established institutions and systems. Legacy is everywhere as well as regulations.
This could be seen as a disadvantage, but objectively, if we look at the Swiss economy, the very well developed country’s infrastructures, the health care system, etc., it’s a difficult position to hold. Of course, this is not the whole story and I won’t jump into a micro-level analysis here, because I chose Switzerland, not as a good example of anything, but much more as a pretext to talk about something much wider.
**Here is my point:** in Europe (at least), people suffer from systems that deliver truly poor experiences. Systems developed by public institutions. Systems that, for administrative or technical or legal purposes, have been de-humanized. And therefore, people learned to live with them by adapting their lives around those systems: citizens, companies, and even service officers working for those organizations are struggling every day because of inherent bad design and de-humanized decisions.
And let’s be clear: it’s not about digital transformation, nor it is about the user experience of some visible parts of those institutions such as websites and other platforms. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with technology. **It’s about how at its core, people think about what they do, how they do it and for whom they do it.**
### Experiences Matter
Take for instance ecology. In Switzerland, there is a strong emphasis on this topic for years: renewable energies, recycling, etc. The cantons and cities are incited (obliged) to provide recycling and sorting collection points, and citizens are taxed depending on how much waste they’re producing.
As a human living on a spaceship with limited resources (aka Earth), I feel necessarily concerned with this subject. As a citizen, I feel motivated because –well– more I produce waste, more I pay. But when some towns implemented this system, they probably looked at criteria such as:
- Complexity
- Immediate costs
- Maintenance costs
- Etc.
Based on those criteria, some concluded it does not matter if people have to take their cars and travel about 5 km away in a joint collect center that serves different towns, to properly sort and recycle their waste. Interestingly, in Switzerland, public transports are really well developed and you can go almost everywhere without a car.
And the funny part is, there are already several underground containers for unsorted garbage bags in my city. I just have to take my bags, walk a few meters and put them in the container. So, why do I have to take my car, go on a 5km trip to recycle, while in the meantime, it is so easy to not recycle at all, and put everything directly in the trash?
> Nothing absurd here… *😒*
Surely, I will pay more by doing so (and it’s bad 🙈 😠), but still, **it requires less effort**.
### The Human-Centered Thinking
What if someone has told them that there are approaches that guarantee more success in behavior change and provide real benefit to the human experience?
Nielsen Norman Group
These approaches, such as **Design Thinking** and **User Experience**, provide tools that help understand the current state of use of a system and therefore help us better decide *where* and *how* to act in order to generate the intended behavior.
I personally like the [Fogg Behavior Model](https://www.behaviormodel.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to explain and influence people behavior. The model is quite easy to understand: *for a behavior to occur, a subject should have the motivation AND the ability to perform it.* For instance, if you have a high motivation but very low ability, the behavior will fail to occur and vice-versa. The threshold is represented by the “action line” in the chart.
The Fogg Behavior Model
Here, motivators can be defined into two categories: internal and external. *Internal motivators* could be money, self-interest, well-being etc. while *external motivators* could be social acceptance/rejection for instance. [Dr. B.J. Fogg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.%5FJ.%5FFogg?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) devised some larger themes for motivators and I really recommend you to take a deeper a look into this model.
Now, if we go back to my example on ecology using the Behavior Model, what can we say?
My Motivation (vertical) vs my Ability (horizontal): in red my current experience, and in blue the one I wish I had.
Objectively, my motivation (for both internal and external motivators) is high and my ability is far from being optimal. However, I do take my car to properly recycle, but it’s clearly an effort I would prefer not to take.
> Why the hell ecology should be painful?
## Conclusion
Public institutions should realize the experiences they create, and therefore should take more carefully the human experience aspect of it. There are great approaches that can be really beneficial to these organizations as well as the people that undergo their decisions.
There is a trend within some institutions to invest in Service Design and Design Thinking approaches. However, it seems far from being a priority in most European countries.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### On Myths & Beliefs in Business — Part 1
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-myths---beliefs-in-business---part-1/
Last updated: 2018-12-03T00:00:00.000Z
Unsplash
## Humans are Rational Beings
This concept comes from the past century and is perfectly illustrated by [the ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*“homo-economicus”*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com): *humans are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested and usually pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally*.
Just like this caricature, this myth comes from a school of thought largely shared amongst economists and was a cornerstone of *liberal capitalism* at this time.
Not surprising tho that it has become a popular belief within organizations and amongst business people, and still is today. When something (like this belief) becomes a prism by which people tend to see a part of their world, we can call it a [**mental model**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental%5Fmodel?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**However, psychology and neurosciences tell otherwise.** We are led by emotions and influenced by our environment. We take –more often than we think– objectively irrational decisions and [we unconsciously persuade ourselves that we’re logical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization%5F%28psychology%29?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “Every living being looks for balance within its environment (autopoiesis). Thus, behaviour emerges or results from a recursive process between perception (sensory organs), action (movement) and environment (in a broad sense) in which the being finds itself.The attitude of an individual is guided by the principle of autopoeisis which is understood by the relationship between the subject and the means it disposes of (perception/action) in its environment.”
> — [Francisco Varela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco%5FVarela?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) on the concept of “Embodied Cognition”
Interestingly, this means that [we can influence people by analyzing how they behave and changing specific elements of their context and/or their ability](https://www.behaviormodel.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) to do so.
Fogg Behavior Model
Despite the fact that it’s hard to prevent the [cognitive dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%5Fdissonance?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) which occurs between a pre-existing mental model and a divergent concept, business and product people should see here a real opportunity to make [better products, services](https://strategyzer.com/canvas/value-proposition-canvas?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), and [even business models](https://strategyzer.com/canvas/business-model-canvas?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
> “You Don’t Design Customers, You Understand Them (Or Not)” — [Alex Osterwalder](http://twitter.com/AlexOsterwalder?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I know the discomfort of business and product people when talking about this subject: *after all, if we are not rational and if our model is wrong, this leads to uncertainty*. And our brain doesn’t like uncertainty (nor business do).
And this is where lies the beauty of being modest about what we know and starting to learn from people by observing and asking questions: only then you realize all the opportunities that were “hidden” right in front of you. For that, you can be certain.
*Thanks for reading!*
---
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### The Execute / Innovate Paradox in Large Organizations
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/the-execute---innovate-paradox-in-large-organizations/
Last updated: 2018-11-21T00:00:00.000Z
Hi [Steve Davis](https://medium.com/u/bbfa8a7f942f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), thanks for this article!
What you are pointing out is very interesting: large companies have to live with a paradox in order to be both good at what they are doing and good at innovating *(a.k.a.* [*incremental vs disruptive innovation*](http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)*)*.
What do you think of [Alex Osterwalder](https://medium.com/u/557c2c577ab5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)’s approach which consists of saying: okay, not so many companies are able to embrace this paradox so why not instead change the organizational structure and split the company into two different branches: one for the current business model and another dedicated at turning innovative ideas to new business models.
Personally, I think it enables a consistent approach to innovation and prevents two different cultures and mindsets to collide.
Source: [Strategyzer](https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/1/29/why-execution-and-innovation-are-fundamentally-different?ref=designcriticalthinking.com), [How To Build Invincible Companies](https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/1/8/how-to-build-invincible-companies?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### On Power Poses and body language
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/on-power-poses-and-body-language/
Last updated: 2018-10-31T00:00:00.000Z
Great article!
Regarding the power poses, I would not recommend this as proof of anything. The study has been proven scientifically wrong. [I link you back to a discussion on another article around that topic.](https://link.medium.com/dQNI9e49sR?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
I would say that our body language is more a reflection of our state of mind, meaning that it is influenced by the later and not the reverse. As always, we should be careful with correlations: **it doesn’t mean causality.**
Anyway, thank you for sharing!
### Non-verbal and emotional control: the “homo economicus” complex
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/non-verbal-and-emotional-control--the--homo-economicus--complex/
Last updated: 2018-08-30T00:00:00.000Z
### Why to dismiss advices on body language control
Usually, the problem with these advices on “the gestures you should avoid”, when your “body language is becoming problematic” and that you want “to fix them” is that it implies that 1) some gestures should be avoided; 2) your behaviour is problematic; and 3) “control” is a mean to an end: change this problematic behaviour. It reminds me the naïve vision of the *rational man* [portrayed in the “homo economicus” theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
I will try to show you that none of these are true and some are even impossible.
### Introduction
I prefer to keep a **critical thinking** especially when things are presented in a way it might be easily taken as “absolute truth”.
Besides, I always find quite disturbing the amount of articles on the subject of non verbal communication which never quote any sources or put any references. And that’s one of the main issue with this topic: full of myths and beliefs.
It’s clearly easier to use an [**argument from authority**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument%5Ffrom%5Fauthority?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). After all, why questioning the claims of a coach or a professor? 🤔
### Contextless. Meaningless.
Non verbal analysis makes sense only with context. To give a meaning to a specific gesture without taking into account the context in which people are communicating is incorrect. At least in the systemic approach of non verbal communication analysis.
According to Gregory Bateson (1904–1980):
> “Gesture is not independent from the context in which it is produced.”
In the fifties, he gathered a group of theorists and multidisciplinary academics, known as the Palo Alto group. They successfully imposed the notion that communication (verbal and non-verbal) is a system.
Edward Hall (1914–2009) also pointed out the importance of context in human communication. More recently, Francisco Varela (1946–2001) supported the concept of “embodied cognition” with his work in neuroscience & neuromimetics, refuting the “universal nature” of an individual’s communication objects (e.g. gestures).
According to F. Varela:
> “Every living being looks for balance within its environment (autopoiesis). Thus, behaviour emerges or results from a recursive process between perception (sensory organs), action (movement) and environment (in a broad sense) in which the being finds itself.The attitude of an individual is guided by the principle of autopoeisis which is understood by the **relationship** between the subject and the means it disposes of (perception/action) in its environment.”
Based on this approach, the meaning of the (in)famous “crossed arms” really depends on all previous and next non verbal items (gestures, facial expression, tone of voice, speech and movement speed, etc.) of all the people interacting in an environment in order to be defined as “defensive”. **In other words, we need the context.**
In the “embodied cognition” paradigm, the concept of control would make little to no sense: if the context conditions your behaviour as much as your inner thoughts, therefore you have to control the context. This reasoning is clearly unsustainable and may lead to some extremes (e.g. “Lord Business” in [the Lego Movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) 😅).
### Attention span and brain limitation.
Non verbal communication is mainly unconscious process: by the time you may realise a certain gesture, it already occurs. In fact most of the brain “process” are automated for our convenience.
The reason is pretty simple: free our mind of thinking to all the actions and decisions, it has to take every seconds. Attention is one of our most precious resource and our brain tries to optimise everything all the time.
> Interestingly, emotional responses to a contextual stimuli [occurs many seconds before you’re even aware of it](http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide?ref=designcriticalthinking.com).
**But the brain is limited.** For instance, we’re pretty bad at giving attention to multiple things at the same time. **That’s not my opinion**, but [well known fact in psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention%5Fspan?ref=designcriticalthinking.com). For more information this subject, please check this funny exercise:
So now imagine: you’re in a conversation with someone and you’re giving your attention to your body and your gestures at the same time. Will you really be focused on what’s happening, on the quality of your interaction? Will you even follow the conversation? Or will you be focus on yourself, your body and what you should do or not do?
If you did watch the video, you know the answer.
### You’re in control… are you?
Controlling your body usually leads to jerky movements and loss of fluidity due to muscle contraction, alteration of speech flow/clearness and therefore leaks of non-verbal clues that you are trying to control your body language. Which is creepy and suspicious. **Because who the hell would like to put so much effort to control his body language except someone who has something to hide?** 🤔
### Conclusion
Seeking to control unconscious processes is totally meaningless. At the opposite, being aware of and embracing your emotions, feelings and mindset is a much deeper and interesting exercise.
It may seems less effective at the first hand, **but truly changing your behaviour requires you to change your mindset**. It’s not about avoiding or forcing yourself doing some gestures.
> If it doesn’t feel natural, it’s probably not.
We’re not [rational ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[*machine-like*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[ beings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%5Feconomicus?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) which can control their body and mind. Neurosciences disproved this concept years ago. **We are irrational complex beings, led by emotions.**
Thanks for reading!
### Startup success formula, UX reduces business risks, UX artefacts to gain alignment and more…
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/startup-success-formula--ux-reduces-business-risks--ux-artefacts-to-gain-alignment-and-more-/
Last updated: 2018-05-07T00:00:00.000Z
Unsplash
A handpicked selection of interesting articles for design, business and tech people. Enjoy!
---
### Startup success formula
There are patterns common to all the San Francisco’s successful startups.
[**The Formula Behind San Francisco's Startup Success - Crunchbase News**](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/formula-behind-san-franciscos-startup-success/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Why has San Francisco's startup scene generated so many hugely valuable companies over the past decade? That's the…*](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/formula-behind-san-franciscos-startup-success/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[news.crunchbase.com](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/formula-behind-san-franciscos-startup-success/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### UX Artefacts: gain alignment within teams & companies
> “Focus on how you’ll show value alignment visually to engage others in you organization in a conversation”
[**Tomato/Tomato: The Language of Design Artifacts**](https://medium.com/adventures-in-ux-design/tomato-tomato-the-language-of-design-artifacts-7afe45af61f5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Issue 28*](https://medium.com/adventures-in-ux-design/tomato-tomato-the-language-of-design-artifacts-7afe45af61f5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/adventures-in-ux-design/tomato-tomato-the-language-of-design-artifacts-7afe45af61f5?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Business Odyssey: Story of a designer who became entrepreneur
Some great advices on how to become an entrepreneur.
> “Who cares if your product affects 5,000 or 500,000? You’ll leave the world better than you found it. You *can* influence your surroundings. Creating something that wasn’t there before, the playful enthusiasm and perseverance of building things, that is entrepreneurship.”
[**Design × Entrepreneurship**](https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/design-entrepreneurship-1a770a8ca3f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Ever wanted to build a startup — and get a Masters degree for it?*](https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/design-entrepreneurship-1a770a8ca3f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com](https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/design-entrepreneurship-1a770a8ca3f?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Quantity vs. Quality in design decision
Having multiple design directions doesn’t guarantee the quality of the end-result. Instead, a good research at the base help narrow the the possibilities to a clearer viable design solution.
[**You don’t need multiple design directions**](https://uxdesign.cc/you-dont-need-multiple-design-directions-dcc1d077836b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*You need multiple points of research.*](https://uxdesign.cc/you-dont-need-multiple-design-directions-dcc1d077836b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[uxdesign.cc](https://uxdesign.cc/you-dont-need-multiple-design-directions-dcc1d077836b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### UX research reduces business risks
Embrace uncertainty.
[**Users Don’t Hate Change. They Hate Our Design Choices.**](https://medium.com/@jmspool/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-our-design-choices-86151866eff4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*A message appeared to users at the top of the screen that was deep in the administration system for Google’s G-Suites…*](https://medium.com/@jmspool/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-our-design-choices-86151866eff4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/@jmspool/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-our-design-choices-86151866eff4?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
*Why this reading list? Too often we stay in our comfort zone and reduce our vision to what we already know: Designers read design stuff, business folks read business articles. Makes sense? But in reality things are not so divided and domains of knowledge overlap all the time.*
Thanks for reading!
### Company culture experience, Human memory limitation, UX Strategy and more…
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/company-culture-experience--human-memory-limitation--ux-strategy-and-more-/
Last updated: 2018-05-05T00:00:00.000Z
Unsplash
A handpicked selection of interesting articles for design, business and tech people. Enjoy!
---
### You need a UX strategy. Here’s how.
UX strategy helps the business solve its problems through an interlocking set of choices that coordinates UX activity for a desired experience.
[**UX Strategy Blueprint**](https://experiencinginformation.com/2014/08/12/ux-strategy-blueprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*How do we consistently create UX strategy? Tough question. Part of the problem is in the fuzziness of the term…*](https://experiencinginformation.com/2014/08/12/ux-strategy-blueprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[experiencinginformation.com](https://experiencinginformation.com/2014/08/12/ux-strategy-blueprint/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Case Study: Setapp — A quest for market fit and how it founds its customers
> “We didn’t know if our sales predictions were good or bad. Five hours into day one of public release, after months and months of planning, private and public beta, we started to see some small signs of traction. Early numbers indicated that our growth predictions were very wrong. \[…\] We could only conclude that we had launched the product with positioning that was too generic, and that our goal — to convert all Mac users around the world, instantly — was too broad.”
[**In Search of Product/Market fit: How Setapp Found its Customers - Mind the Product**](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/04/search-product-market-fit-setapp-found-customers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*I joined Setapp as a product manager in January last year, at the same time as the company was launching its main…*](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/04/search-product-market-fit-setapp-found-customers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.mindtheproduct.com](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/04/search-product-market-fit-setapp-found-customers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Human memory limitation and how to overcome it in design
Our working memory helps us handle current tasks, but too often the interfaces we’re using ask us too much effort: this is “cognitive overload”. In this new NNG’s great piece of work, understand the working memory limitation and how you to overcome it in your design.
[**Working Memory and External Memory**](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/working-memory-external-memory/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*When people use websites or other user interfaces, a frequent cause of difficulty is that they forget information from…*](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/working-memory-external-memory/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/working-memory-external-memory/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Company culture experience abandon
Too often overlooked, company culture is rarely treated as a whole thing. The difficulty resides here: everyone is a “guardian” of its benevolence. This means everyone can impact it positively and negatively. Far beyond the social role, there is more and more an obvious need of ethics. Sounds like a job for a designer?
[**How Nike’s Toxic Workplace Hurt Its Bottom Line**](https://medium.com/fast-company/how-nikes-toxic-workplace-hurt-its-bottom-line-2671c65cd99e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Nike’s toxic workplace culture not only hurt the women at the company, but also its customers.*](https://medium.com/fast-company/how-nikes-toxic-workplace-hurt-its-bottom-line-2671c65cd99e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/fast-company/how-nikes-toxic-workplace-hurt-its-bottom-line-2671c65cd99e?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Design thinking misconception
Trends come and go. But is design thinking just that? When people misunderstand its value or misuse its application, it is common to judge things as useless. Here is an interesting article from [UX Planet](https://uxplanet.org/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com) that highlights common misunderstandings and shows the two-sides of the design thinking: t**he process and the mindset.**
[**Design thinking is not doomed — it’s misused**](https://uxplanet.org/design-thinking-is-not-doomed-its-misused-cda1cf8948e1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*As design thinking continues to evolve into 2018…*](https://uxplanet.org/design-thinking-is-not-doomed-its-misused-cda1cf8948e1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[uxplanet.org](https://uxplanet.org/design-thinking-is-not-doomed-its-misused-cda1cf8948e1?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### UX Metrics: Measure your work
Just. Do. It.
[**Quick Resource Guide to UX Metrics**](https://medium.com/@jcoronado1/quick-resource-guide-to-ux-metrics-a97cf7727b2b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Product teams in many organizations want to make sure that they are delivering the right features and results. However…*](https://medium.com/@jcoronado1/quick-resource-guide-to-ux-metrics-a97cf7727b2b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[medium.com](https://medium.com/@jcoronado1/quick-resource-guide-to-ux-metrics-a97cf7727b2b?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Product design : the superhero dilemma
With great power, great responsibility
[**Using Habit-Forming Technology for Good by Nir Eyal - Mind the Product**](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/05/using-habit-forming-technology-good-nir-eyal/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Summary: In this ProductTank NYC talk, behavioral designer Nir Eyal examines the ways in which product design can…*](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/05/using-habit-forming-technology-good-nir-eyal/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.mindtheproduct.com](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/05/using-habit-forming-technology-good-nir-eyal/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
*Why this reading list? Too often we stay in our comfort zone and reduce our vision to what we already know: Designers read design stuff, business folks read business articles. Makes sense? But in reality things are not so divided and domains of knowledge overlap all the time.*
Thanks for reading!
### UX alignment tool, Meeting misery, The technology trap, JTBDs applied and more…
URL: https://www.designcriticalthinking.com/ux-alignment-tool--meeting-misery--the-technology-trap--jtbds-applied-and-more-/
Last updated: 2018-05-01T00:00:00.000Z
Unsplash
A handpicked selection of (hopefully) interesting articles for design, business and tech people. Enjoy!
---
### Company’s alignment tool: Service Blueprints
Use this UX tool when creating and/or improving products. A Service Blueprint is a useful tool to map or anticipate all the interactions between a customer and the company.
[**Service Blueprints - Communicating the Design of Services**](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/service-blueprints-communicating-the-design-of-services?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Service blueprints were first described by Lynn Shostack, a banking executive, back in 1982 in the Harvard Business…*](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/service-blueprints-communicating-the-design-of-services?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.interaction-design.org](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/service-blueprints-communicating-the-design-of-services?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Case study: The Jobs To Be Done applied
A great example of creating an MVP in a customer-centric way using the Jobs To Be Done approach.
[**The JTBD Research Process We Used To Build Our MVP for Userlist.io**](https://jtbd.info/the-jtbd-research-process-we-used-to-build-our-mvp-for-userlist-io-e300025ab487?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*When Jane Portman, Benedikt Deicke and I decided to join forces on Userlist.io, none of us wanted to start a company…*](https://jtbd.info/the-jtbd-research-process-we-used-to-build-our-mvp-for-userlist-io-e300025ab487?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[jtbd.info](https://jtbd.info/the-jtbd-research-process-we-used-to-build-our-mvp-for-userlist-io-e300025ab487?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Feed your mind: great onboarding examples
A user onboarding flow is not just an entry point, it helps the user during its very first steps into a new product and understand its value.
[**3 Awesome User Onboarding Flows for Web**](https://uxplanet.org/3-awesome-user-onboarding-flows-for-web-c8b1ec6a508a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*This is not going to be yet another “best practices” article because there is no definitive best user onboarding. User…*](https://uxplanet.org/3-awesome-user-onboarding-flows-for-web-c8b1ec6a508a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[uxplanet.org](https://uxplanet.org/3-awesome-user-onboarding-flows-for-web-c8b1ec6a508a?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Today’s business odyssey: the technology trap
> The real risk of technology is not its proliferation, nor its complexity, nor its uncertainty, but its distraction. It’s easy to get seduced by new technologies. \[…\] It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that technology in and of itself doesn’t make money – business models do.
[**Technology Doesn't Make Money, Business Models Do**](https://www.fahrenheit-212.com/boiling-point/technology-doesnt-make-money-business-models-do?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Disruption of the financial services sector is unlike anything the market has ever seen. This shift in market forces is…*](https://www.fahrenheit-212.com/boiling-point/technology-doesnt-make-money-business-models-do?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.fahrenheit-212.com](https://www.fahrenheit-212.com/boiling-point/technology-doesnt-make-money-business-models-do?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Designers & developers: make love, not war
Hard time working together? Guess what: It’s like any relationship, you need passion, trust, respect and active listening (like you’re really trying to understand the other), this in both direction.
(ﾉ>ω<)ﾉ :｡･:\*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:\*:･ﾟ’☆
[**Working Together: How Designers And Developers Can Communicate To Create Better Projects**](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/working-together-designers-developers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*Among the most popular suggestions on Smashing Magazine's Content User Suggestions board is the need of learning more…*](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/working-together-designers-developers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[www.smashingmagazine.com](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/working-together-designers-developers/?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Invention ≠ Innovation
Innovation is not driven by technical prowess but by value. When R&D budgets increase, they don’t necessarily generate innovations unless new technologies are embedded in great value propositions and business models.
[**Don't Mistake Increased R&D As More Innovation**](http://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/4/25/dont-mistake-increased-rd-as-more-innovation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*I'm reading a lot about increased investment in R&D and how it can generate innovation inside large companies. It's a…*](http://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/4/25/dont-mistake-increased-rd-as-more-innovation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[blog.strategyzer.com](http://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/4/25/dont-mistake-increased-rd-as-more-innovation?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
### Make meetings great again
> It’s common to hear people say that meetings are a “waste of time“, but this is an overcorrection. **Meetings aren’t inherently bad**. Bad meetings are miserable. You can turn the dial down on meeting misery if you give these three things to meeting invitees.
[**How to save your team from meeting misery**](https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-save-your-team-from-meeting-misery-b3d335f65139?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
[*It’s common to hear people say that meetings are a “waste of time“, but this is an overcorrection.*](https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-save-your-team-from-meeting-misery-b3d335f65139?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)[betterhumans.coach.me](https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-save-your-team-from-meeting-misery-b3d335f65139?ref=designcriticalthinking.com)
---
*Why this reading list? Too often we stay in our comfort zone and reduce our vision to what we already know: Designers read design stuff, business folks read business articles. Makes sense? But in reality things are not so divided and domains of knowledge overlap all the time.*
Thanks for reading!