Designers Are Disappointed Optimists — and That's the Point
C. Wodtke argues that all design is behavior change, often in service of shareholder value, creating an unsolvable 'cursed problem' for designers who want to make the world better. Drawing on a tech worker survey showing designers are the most exhausted and least likely to recommend their career, she explores why designers are 'disappointed optimists' and offers practical tactics for those who stay, including translating user concerns into business terms, keeping an 'ethical debt log,' and embedding cultural outcomes in OKRs.
AI lowered the floor of what anyone can produce, but it didn’t raise the ceiling of what’s good.
- JSR_FDED
Clear-eyed description of the reality of corporate life. Designers feel this pain, as does anyone (like sw devs) who has a sense of “I could make this better” but isn’t given the support to do it.
- 0trip
i am sorry but this gave me a pessimist vibe...what was the message here exactly?
- n4r9
> A cursed problem, in his definition, is an unsolvable design problem rooted in a conflict between two promises that can’t coexist. You made both promises, on purpose, and they contradict each other, and no amount of clever tuning gets you out. You can only cut through it and give something up.
> His example is a free-for-all fighting game. You promised players a test of combat skill, and you promised them a game worth winning. But the way you win a free-for-all is politics — alliances, betrayal, ganging up on the best player — so the two promises eat each other. You can’t fix it with a patch. You can only decide which promise to sacrifice.
Is anyone else confused about this? I'm not sure exactly how these promises contradict. Is the idea that politics makes a game less "worth winning"?