Community

That is to say, our social groups, tools, situations, and, more broadly, environment have always served as a cognitive extension, networking our individual minds, allowing them to spill into each other and share processing tasks as a group. It’s as though our brains are aware of their own biohardware limitations. They naturally seek to form rings... See more

But these activities are all separate from the feelings needed to fully and sustainably participate: the courage, optimism, trust, love, intimacy, curiosity. The resilience to push through the inevitable feelings of fear, overwhelm, frustration, and hurt. The stamina to go through cycles of all of these feelings and more, again and again, and... See more

Ultimately, Agreements are a collective wish we make about how we might be in the same space together. That space could be a classroom, a sports team, a club, a conference, committees or boards, an organizing group. They reflect what we need to participate while feeling joyful, trusted, and brave.

But they also can be flimsy as hell.

From the return of co-living spurred on by the increasingly realized benefit of living close to friends and family, to the growing presence of grassroots community initiatives like Neighborhood Trade School, mutual aid fridges, and community gardens, it’s clear that we’ve begun to recognize the potency of solving problems with collective solutions... See more

In the design industry, I genuinely believe we need more communities, not tools. There are so many tools for designers but so few communities. Tools make our job easier. Communities make us better designers. And with the recent AI drama over Figma’s Config, this realization only becomes clearer.

InVision has fostered a strong community, not just... See more