Posted on 5th January 2024
Design for humans, by humans
Even a tiny change to a user interface, to the labelling for example, could give users more time back in their day. Or it could help them fulfill a task they otherwise might have abandoned. Getting it right requires human interaction. This stuff cannot be thought of as "the icing on the cake", it is literally worth billions in lost or gained revenue. If nothing else I say here convinces some people, maybe that alone makes it worth investing in design.
The culture of under-investing in design and over-investing in technology
We seem to be investing huge amounts of time, energy and money trying to build solutions which require less human input. The tech industry is awash with grifters touting AI as a way to transform people's lives with the promise to eliminate the monotony of human labor. Despite chat-bot interfaces regurgitating only superficially 'intelligent' conversation, LLMs failing to materialise much meaningful change and the huge costs associated with them, it seems like the hype will persist. At least for a while, as the industry digs in with sunk-cost induced tunnel-vision.
Of course every new development in technology has its potential for positive change, but with it also a potential for harm. There are many forms of AI, both emerging and established, that can help achieve goals in ways that otherwise would not be possible in specific fields. But we keep building new stuff, thinking it is solving wider problems. When more problems are created by it, we build more new stuff to try to solve those problems. Perhaps instead of building more things we should take a minute to think about what we are building, for whom and why?
The destructive impact of 'failing fast' can often be underestimated. For example, consider the morale of a workforce that is repeatedly exposed to a fire and re-hire culture, where a company's mission and its employees are selected at the whims of megalomaniacs like Elon Musk. Or the price that customers must pay as a result of increasing numbers of products or services with a short-term lifecycle.
Despite having knowledge and interest in it, I don't want to talk about AI much at the moment. The conversation has become pretty boring to be honest. I'm happy for the homogenous group of people who are still thirsty for this stuff to to duke it out in the pursuit of building complex products (which will probably still give biased, misleading and inexplicable results). I might use AI, or evaluate its role in a particular task, from time to time myself. But I'm not particularly interested in contributing to the hype.
And of course AI is just the latest trend. There will be others that are equally hyped and over invested in, just as there have been before, but this doesn't mean it is a cycle that has to perpetuate indefinitely.
Design opportunities are a growing market
I really want to help people understand how exciting a time it could be for investment in design. The opportunities for transformative change by designing better products and services with the technology we already have are huge. It seems that at every turn of our digital lives we are frustrated by poor design. What this means is not only do organisations have a lot of potential to improve their existing digital offering, there is potential for the very kind of 'disruption' that Silicon Valley loves to throw money at.
But any investment needs to recognise the value of people and design over products and services.
Fixing the developer experience by investing in design
Putting my coding hat on for a while here's just one of many challenges illustrating the problem: We have some great tools for developing websites and software. But ask any developer what their main frustrations are and I guarantee one of them will be the tools or technology stack they use getting in their way. Even supposedly lightweight technology stacks now seem more akin to a precariously arranged tower of megaliths, than a sleek building with a solid foundation. Onboarding is slow, developing is constrained by so many compromises and swapping out one part of the stack is like playing a game of jenga with the devil. The answer has to be better than "build a new framework" or "build an AI assistant to help with that". It's a problem crying out for less technology as part of the solution, not more!
If this challenge isn't tackled with proper design thinking, the struggle to fill developer roles and skills shortage in the industry will continue to get worse. On the flip side if this challenge is taken up by those who place value on the real life experiences of developers and they focus on genuinely designing a better experience for them, it could result in huge productivity gains and eventually mobilise a larger workforce.
Opportunities for growth
I don't think the next race in tech should be to build the next 'big thing'. It should be to find people and build teams who can think creatively about helping to achieve people's goals. And creating an environment where getting our existing technology to work better, for longer, is a priority.
Of course new development may be required but not at the scale and speed that the industry has been operating. As in the example of developer tools, while we may have to transition away from existing technology stacks, we should avoid building something equally complex to replace them. We need some friction and conscious decision making involved in what we build and when. We also need to place more value on design and effictively managing digital change.
Now would be a great time for businesses to invest in design. Empathetic, thoughtful and creative proposals for change, that can provide measurable improvements to the health and wellbeing of people and the natural world are desperately required. This kind of change can only be brought to bear by people working together, focused on delivering solutions for the commons, with agency and accountability.
Better design is how you give people back their time, better design is how you know what to build and better design can provide a framework to determine if it actually works. Better design for humans, by humans could revolutionise our economy and our environment. And it can be done one discrete step at a time.
Footnote: How does this 'design revolution' take place?
As I hinted at the start of this post, sometimes small changes really can make a huge difference. Just considering the impact on the end-user of what we are working on is important, but also discussing it with others and most importantly the very people you are creating something for.
Beyond that there are many levels at which design thinking and the vast strata of disciplines in design could be injected into businesses, projects and individual's daily working life. But I think the most obvious concrete step is for organisations to invest in the recruitment of people with design experience and the training of those without.
Ultimately we need to be thinking about budgeting for design and the parity with budgets for development of projects, regardless of their size. I'm not saying as much necessarily should be spent on design as development but that, much like when commissioning an architect for construction works, in technology design costs should be factored in as a proportion of the cost of building or changing any product or service.
In order to facilitate this shift in the financing of digital change, strong proposals with as much evidence as possible for the benefits of enchanced design are needed. The argument must be framed in such a way that investing more in design and less in development doesn't diminish the impact of the work and can lead to a better outcome overall. And along the way the design process needs to produce deliverable artefacts that contain valuable insight and assets.
I don't have that many answers but I do think at some point we lost sight of the stake individual people have in our work and how they are affected by it, and this is fundamentally what needs addressing.
In broad strokes this is where I'd like my career to go.