Let us understand John Maeda's perspective

There are phenomena and there are perspectives. 

Phenomenon is something that will be there whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not and whether you know about it or not. It is just there and it works a certain way. 

Perspective is an ability to see something in a certain way. It is an outlook or attitude towards something. 

Recently John Maeda spoke at SXSW 2019 and Fast Company covered it here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90320120/john-maeda-in-reality-design-is-not-that-important

Apparently he said,

"in reality design is not that important".

When we just see that statement under a magnifying glass, it may get on your nerves, especially if you are a designer and you fought/fighting for a seat at the table. It is like all your decade of hard work is pulled down in a few seconds by your own clan, that too the most respected and influential one. It can be devastating. It took me 3 night's sleep to understand what he said.

John Maeda shared his perspective about design fitting best as a support role when in tech. While he could have used better words to articulate the point, i will live with what we have for now.

The phenomenon is imagination has no top line and no bottom line. On the other hand, building/engineering stays between a top line and a bottom line only. How far is the gap between both the lines, that is how far engineering can go. It is a phenomenon.

In that light, design is directly proportional to how technology grows. Imagineering will be propositional to our execution ability only. In that sense, design in tech is limited by how far tech can go. Always that will be the case. 

So the tipping point is decided by tech and not by design. In that light, tech should lead the way and design should only support them. If design leads the way, tech will be crushed and will be made looked very small as thinking an abstract system on paper vs building the system are two very different things. Whether we like it or not, this is how it works. 

"A chain can only be as stronger as its weakest link".

Metaphorically, our weakest link for design in tech is tech and not design. So Maeda is being sensible when he says design should be a supporting role and not a leading role. 

I have worked/working with the fortune 10 tech giants. When I start the user experience work my first question to them is “how good is your tech team?”

The meaning of this question is: “how much can design push tech”?

Sometimes i hear "we have the best techies in this team" but in reality how far can we go together is the real question.

If i give a super intuitive, awesome, wow factor filled, simple user interface, remember the tech should be able to get that done. The more simple the interface is, the more work it is for tech behind the scenes. To achieve that we need a world class design and tech teams. I can imagine a lot of things in my paper as a designer but making that paper drawing a reality needs skills and competence + capacity by technology.

My version one typically goes through a number of iterations and the final version is an user interface that is viable, feasible, desirable. Hands-down it is always smaller than my first version.

If design and engineering teams can understand the phenomenon clearly, we could have saved a lot of time, money, emotions and brought in a lot of efficiency from day-one. The ego war, the time-scope-resources war, how big is design vs tech war need not have happened in the first place. This is what UX maturity is all about.

It is hard to get any good design done in an organisation that has low UX maturity. Now it is on the designer to get the best done with low/no support is very draining.

75% of tech organisations are like that and it is only 5% of designers who survive that roller-coaster.

Understanding each teams in depth and going by what we have and upgrading within the constrains to create beautiful solutions is what we must aim at.

Maeda was an educator and then became a practitioner. I am the other way around. I was a practitioner all along and now i am an educator. I see where he comes from.

What we teach in design schools is creativity, imagination, innovation, pushing boundaries, aesthetics, art etc. But if you go to industry directly with that, only thing that is guaranteed is frustration. The reason I say that is the systemic aspects of the industry is different from how we are taught at schools.

We don't teach our design students how the industry functions, how to think in the industry boundaries, how to facilitate conversations, how to negotiate better, how to inform decision making, how to manage the egos that will fly in the rooms aka emotional intelligence, how to communicate thoughts-opinions-facts and yet be grounded. No wonder Maeda is changing his perspectives now.

My take away is couple of things:

1. We need a design education that is pragmatic and real while we also keep the creativity high for our designers. It is a delicate balance we must achieve. It is hard work. We cannot rage on perspectives and loose sight of phenomenon.Without big think we cannot move forward. So allow designers to imagine. Let us execute what we can. We need to understand each other and collaborate.
2. Push where you can and pull back where you should. That is what our leaders are supposed to do. They must make better decisions, foster great culture and push the envelope forward.
3. If we can move away from tech led, design led, management led bullshit, we can get better faster. The idea at the center is more important than who leads it.
4. If we can focus on skills and not on roles and titles, we will go a long way.

Let us get better together!