63 Maxims for Digital System Design in the 21st Century
Introduction: All Models Are Wrong And Some Are Useful
Foundational Principles
Your Life as a Semi-Professional
Design as a Practice
Business Is a State of Being
Organizations Are Also Interactive Systems
(No) New Economy
The Maxims:
The business model is the grid
System design is intervention, not authorship
To design is to serve
The value of design depends
We always need more enough
The purpose of a system is what it does (Stafford Beer)
Your square mile matters
You are a business, friend
No one is stopping you from designing anything
Collective action is annoying, yet necessary
There’s no such thing as a blank page
Always carry canaries
Design is a conversation with the future
Anything designed can be designed differently
Art expresses, tools enable
Digital is material
User experience is neither
We can do better than luxury aesthetics
Ask not “How might we?” but “What gives us the right?”
There’s always more than one way to do it and more than one it
Screens screen
Mind the bodies
The problem is probably the problem
Thinking is not doing
All business is about making bets on human behavior
Bad theories destroy good practices
Funding is fate
Anyone who says they make decisions based on data, not stories is a lying liar
Everyone wants to innovate, no one wants to change
Only Apple is Apple, and not even Apple is Apple
The simplest ethical test is how much you have to lie and to whom (for your business to work)
Maintenance is the main thing
Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do
Describe to understand, measure to control
All prices are value prices
Who intends designs, who benefits depends
Design is only as human as fiduciary duty allows
Progress is a perspective
Platforms are power relationships
Tech is in the eye of the investor
Complexity hides shenanigans
An organization is the social context in which decisions are made
In-house design needs agency
A corporation is a tool for making money and evading responsibility
Stop, reflect, reject the framing
Soft skills as in software
Changing the conversation changes organizations
Knowledge about power is power
Real feedback feeds interactions
Asking questions is anti-authoritarian
Collaboration requires shared goals
Morality before conformity
All economics is home economics
Math is just another mode of storytelling
Nothing satisfies like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Significance is often unimportant
Transformation requires incentives and reinforcement
The triumph of the commons is possible
Certainty is absurdity so embrace uncertainty
Attention doesn’t always pay
Know your observations from your aspirations
Invite in the externalities
The rest is up to you
Conclusion
Bibliography