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this is personal
Not many people in the field realize this, even over the span of a career.
Around friends, I often say: choose a product if it speaks with you.
When I close my eyes and imagine the pantheon of products I have lived with, I see products that stay great no matter the time or place.
***
Welcome to the cult of everyday change. The age of vibe coding.
Too many things around us now are things we do not want to experience, but have to. That’s what happens when anyone can pass for a developer, an engineer, or a designer.
Software is bloated with motion, while task completion gets slower. The bells and whistles get praise, then morph into complaints about friction.
Feels like a bad time to be a designer, because too little is made to be remembered.
***
In my pantheon, there’s the Bic pen. The iPod Nano. The SP-404. They are all incredibly flawed, but they got the combination right.
It starts with the idea. Why should the product exist?
Someone cared enough to ask that question seriously. Understood what the thing was for, and what made it possible. Then came the look and the feel.
Someone was a great product designer, no matter the formal title.
And I think: I want to be like them.