1

Designers today tend to ask three questions about the user:

• How can we give them a smoother experience?
• How can we reduce the cognitive load?
• How can we incentivize someone to complete the experience, or lure them along through it?

The underlying model here—I think—is that people are lazy, stupid, and overcommitted. They are lazy so they need to be incentivized or teased along. They are stupid or overcommitted, so they need an experience that’s smoothed out, with low cognitive load.

And by default, in all of this, they are alone.

Stupid, lazy, overcommitted, alone.

2

It’s worth asking if this is true.

• Are humans stupid or lazy? I mean—among species, we have a lot to show for our efforts. We build cities, integrated circuits, and cathedrals. We write symphonies and decode whale songs. We start companies, clubs, and families. The average human reads and writes, works hard, and manages many complex tasks and relationships.
• Are we overcommitted? Perhaps when most of us were farmers, we were. And some parents with newborns certainly are. But the average amount of screen-time is Xh / day. Most people are wasting their life away with TV shows and social media. Seems we’re more bored than overcommitted.
• Are we alone? Well, there are seven billion of us.

So, then, we are not stupid, lazy, overcommitted, or alone.

Why, then, would designers, of all people—usually an empathic, pro-social, optimistic lot—tend to have this view?

3

Here’s what I think: they’re designing for a person who’s already in a bad situation.

And by doing so, they’ve given up before they started. They gave up putting the user in a good situation, and instead they leave the user hurting, and they make something that works even though that user is—temporarily—stupid, lazy, overcommitted, and alone within the design.

Instead of this (x) the opposite is this (y)

Y- people in a supportive environment can come alive, build relationships, and contribute.