Tragic Design

Foreword

Much of what Shariat and Savard Saucier write in this book, I might not have fully understood at all if I’d never left the academy. Leaving wonderful places like MIT and RISD to join the world of industry isn’t what good, pure “thought leaders” normally do, but all of my interactions with the new kinds of designers emerging in the technology industry made me think my thoughts weren’t really good enough anymore. So I’ve been busy filling up my brain with the many new experiences that I’ve gained by working in Silicon Valley at a thankfully late stage in my career. I say this with gratitude because I would have hated to have lived my entire life in the untouchable Ivory Tower without knowing what I do today. What have I learned about the future in Silicon Valley working in venture capital and advising technology companies? That the impact of Moore’s Law—the doubling of computing power every 18 months—is still making its way to people around the world. But the mitigating factor for technology’s real impact in people’s lives isn’t a technical one of speed, scale, or power. It isn’t a matter measured in gigahertz, terabytes, or nanopixels—it is instead the pursuit of satisfying human needs for comprehensibility, ease of use, and emotional fit in our digital experiences today. It is a matter of purposefully designing superior solutions with technology that can empower and support humans.

Where are the designers for these new directions to be found? I find that a lot of them are ...