The System Always Kicks Back

how design has become mass user-centered, driven by rules of optimization, efficiency and engineering.

I used this system to design self-documenting components that were easy to develop against, and allowed the rest of the team to build new and consistent UI without needing me.

As designers, we make choices that other people have to live with. Our responsibility as designers is to make those choices count. System thinking is one way of thinking about how we can make more ethical and holistic choices. A systems approach to designing needs strong partnerships to overcome complexity. Systems thinking is an approach that incl... See more

There will always be designers to design the Hummers and the bumper stickers, and there will always be designers to make websites to propagate the warnings and promises of David Foster Wallace. But a new generation of designers has emerged, concerned with designing strategies to subvert this “natural default-setting” in which each person understand... See more

Tools encourage default behaviors, they dictate patterns and golden paths. These represent the tool makers’ ideal user experiences. If following along breaks your back, then it’s not because you tried to lift too much, it’s because the tool applied pressure in all the wrong places.