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Designing in an Age of Acceleration
How designers can keep up and still do good work
I recently finished Thomas Friedman’s Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. I found it to be one of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last few years. I highly recommend reading it yourself, but I’ll cover some of the highlights and how they pertain to our future as UX designers.
The book’s premise is that changes in technology, economics, and the climate are accelerating faster than they ever have. I used to believe this was all just the optics of our always-connected world, but Friedman convinced me otherwise with this central point: The exponential growth in computer chip speed (Moore’s law) has correlated to exponential growth in the potential and power of technology. As a result, we are not faced with linear evolution, but exponential growth.
Collectively, humanity will have to improve on how we handle this change. As designers, we will have to figure out how to navigate this accelerating world while still finding ways to do good work. We are already seeing great advancements in the design field, but with tradeoffs. Design systems are a great example. They provide ways of optimizing and standardizing design, but can come at a cost. Trends in design tool evolution, the flattening of the design community through communities like Dribbble.com, or even continuous development methodologies are all examples of movements that have amazing upsides but require serious exploration and soul-searching to ensure we continue adding value to the world.
In this overview, I use Friedman’s book as a backdrop to illuminate how accelerating technological advancements affect the world of design.
Designing with intent wins
Whether the robots take our jobs, or Airbnb makes an algorithm that can create an entire design system from scratch, or General Assembly renders your master’s degree worthless (that can’t happen, right? RIGHT?!), your value as a designer will be measured in how well you design with intent.
My career in UX started in 2004 with my first undergrad course in HCI and then proceeded into grad school where I learned (and relearned) key design principles. I read…
