The Design of Invisible Things

Designing a business, especially two new ones, is an exciting and somewhat unexpected position to find myself in after many years in the wilderness . Right now, along with my co-founders, we’re designing the structure and services of these businesses and the more tangible aspects: the software, branding, website(s), and overall user experience.

Most people mistakenly think design is what it looks like. Making it look good is not what we think design is. The business’s organisational structure, services, and market approach are just as important, even if they’re not as immediately noticeable. Design is how it works, how it feels, the intangibles, the invisible.

Not The Design of an Everyday Business

It’s easy to think about a business in terms of organisational charts, revenue models, forecasts, and marketing strategies. But what if we approached the process like designing a physical product (or service)? What if we created a more intuitive, user-friendly, human-centred company? Well, now’s the time, so let’s see…

Your company is a product. It’s the thing that makes the products (or services); therefore, it should be your best product.” — Jason Fried

Drawing on the principles outlined by Don Norman in The Design of Everyday Things: using affordances, signifiers, feedback loops, and a transparent conceptual model, we can develop a natural, empowering and progressive culture, a company that is easy to use.

1. Affordances: Building a Business That Invites Action

Affordances signal how an object can be used. For example, a door handle signals whether to push or pull—or, as you’ll read later, the UK’s train operators do everything they can to disregard these basic principles.

Similarly, in business design, we should create systems and structures that clearly indicate how employees, customers, and partners should interact with the business.

• Role Affordances: Employees should understand their scope and have the autonomy to deliver their work—they should be free and trusted to self-manage.
• Inviting Workspaces: One of the things we certainly got more right than wrong at Orange Bus was the physical environment—most of the credit for this has to go to my co-founder, Julian and later others who adopted and adapted his penchant for the late ’80s and early 90’s pop culture. This time, we’re a remote-first company, utilising digital systems that allow everyone to stay on the same page and take ownership—there’s no big brother with excessive oversight. We use an office when we need to collaborate, much like with meetings—have them when it makes sense—it’s the same with where you work.

2. Signifiers: Signaling the Right Actions

Cues that guide users toward the right action. Signifiers are the tools and processes that direct how work gets done in a business.

• Minimal Meetings: Meetings are reduced to those that add value. A culture emphasising written communication or collaborative documents instead of meetings signals that team members should prioritise deep, focused work.
• Transparency and Information Sharing: We’re starting with radical transparency and will look to extend this as we scale. Our strategies and goals are co-created and openly shared, baking in a culture of accountability, transparency, and agency. We’re also supporting one of our portfolio companies in retrofitting this (more about this when I announce what the companies are actually designed for—their purpose).

3. Feedback Loops: Ensuring the System Works

A business should have feedback loops that ensure the system functions efficiently.

• Continuous Feedback: We’re not at the stage or size to require traditional elongated feedback loops or formalised annual or quarterly performance reviews, nor should we ever fall into that trap—let's allow for course correction in flight rather than retrospectively.
• Project-Based Feedback Systems: Encouraging decentralised, self-managed teams. Employees receive direct feedback on their impact by organising work around straightforward, outcome-oriented projects rather than fixed roles. There’s nothing worse than being labelled or put in a box, and the very best people have a habit of escaping and operating at the edges.

4. Mapping: Aligning Workflows with Outcomes

Mapping refers to the relationship between controls and their effects. It ensures that the organisation of work in a business corresponds directly with the desired outcomes.

• Maker/Manager Schedules: Borrowing from Paul Graham , the business separates deep work (for makers) from shorter, flexible coordination periods (for managers). At the moment, we’re all managers of one, and this fits.
• Outcome-Oriented Teams: As founding partners and entrepreneurs, it’s natural that we’re goal-orientated and outcome-focused; there’s no need for micro-management. Can we extend this so there are no supervisors or heads of departments? Can we remain agile, self-organising and have people decide what teams to join and what to work on?

5. Conceptual Models: Helping Everyone Understand the System

A business's conceptual model is its culture and operational philosophy, which should be clear and intuitive to everyone.

• Culture as a Conceptual Model: Built on autonomy, trust, and minimal rules. We are trusted to make decisions, work to our own schedules, and contribute to meaningful projects aligned with the company’s goals—shared meaning.
• User-Friendly Structures: The operational systems (how projects are managed and information is shared) should be intuitive, reduce friction and empower us to act confidently without constantly seeking permission or clarification.

6. Simplicity and Minimalism: Doing without

Striving to never implement the rules and regulations that set about suffocating a business. Put simply—doing more with less.

• Few Rules, High Trust: Ricardo Semler’s approach to running a company with almost no rules aligns perfectly with my utopian view. By simplifying process, we can focus on meaningful work and innovation. We’re free to design our own jobs; more freedom means better decisions, which we’re automatically accountable for, ultimately leading to a happier and more motivated workforce.
• Efficient Communication Tools: Tools that support asynchronous communication and minimize interruptions are at the core of how we operate. Sometimes, they are real-time, but most of the time, they are asynchronous.

The Wrap

Is it a one-shot pass? Design it, and they will come—Absolutely not! Like anything, it’s trial and error: a little bit of this, too much of that. Still, like our products and services, we need to test, refine, and debug, for there are no products without bugs and no businesses that get everything right. We can’t do everything, nor should we attempt to, but as long as we get more things right than wrong, things will be just fine.

The Epilogue

We’re all influenced by our own experiences and those around us, and in my case, working for others, building and selling a successful business, co-founding and exiting early-stage start-ups, and attempting to change in my small way a struggling giant.

This won’t surprise anyone who knows me—books and the thinking of others I’ve never met have played at least an equal if not more significant part in how I think about things, and a lot of what I’ve proposed here is very clearly shaped by: Don Norman — The Design of Everyday Things, Ricardo Semler, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Paul Graham and his seminal essay — Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, and for the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants — I’m grateful, wether my co-founders and those that will come later in the journey will be just as appreciative; only time will tell.

We’ve all managed to work from home on a Sunday evening, but very few of us have learned to go to the movies on Monday afternoon. — Ricardo Semler

A Public Transport Diversion/Announcement

The Anti-Affordance: toilet doors on UK trains. A story of when the cues we rely on just aren’t there.

I have a friend (who I’ll not name) who is terrified of the toilets on trains. He was desperate on a return trip from London to Newcastle, so I encouraged him to use the toilets: “ It’ll be fine.” So off he went, returning shortly afterwards with a horrified expression.

Me: “What’s up?”

Him: “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you and gone to the toilet.”

Me: “How come? You didn’t get caught with your pants down?”

Him: “No, but when I opened the door, some poor lady was sitting on the toilet with her pants down!”

He didn’t return to the toilet that day, and as far as I know, he never has.