As I am rereading Factfulness by Hans Rosling, I can’t help but think how relevant this book is to us designers.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
If I were going to take a few key points away from this book, it would be the same advice that I often give my mentees about our profession as designers.
1. Be mindful of data
This is the big one! Pay attention to context rather than numbers alone—correct interpretation and understanding of statistics is critical for finding solutions. Question what is being measured, how it is being measured, and how it is interpreted. Hans Rosling does a great job explaining how biases and our perception often distort reality, even when it’s presented to us in the form of numerical data. For example, in the chapter on the generalisation instinct, he dissects our tendency to stereotype—assuming entire groups behave or think the same way.
• Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories.
• Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant.
• Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies to one group applies to another.
• Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between.
• Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall, but they might be the exception rather than the rule. Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, In what way is this a smart solution?
For example: recently, instead of automatically thinking “Gen Z users love short videos,” I reminded myself to test this assumption first. I started talking to our grads at Optus. (Big thank you to Ethan, Em, Josh, Lachy, Lucy, and everyone else for your patience answering my questions 👏🏼). What was true for 60% of them wasn’t for the residual 40%. Yes, I could easily say that the majority of Generation Z loves short videos. While the statement would be technically correct, it would also lead to a vague perception of reality and a solution that may be usable for only 60% of our customer base—not the kind of majority my stakeholders would imagine.
In a nutshell, after re-reading Factfulness, I’m even more motivated to spend extra time understanding individual motivations, needs, and behaviors—not just grouping people by age or region.
Btw: if you’re too lazy to read the whole book, at least check chapter one on “The Gap Instinct” and chapter six on “The Generalisation Instinct.”
2. Design holistically
Approach design holistically—look for connections and always ask yourself how your solution affects everyone—not just users of your product, but also those who will not be using your product but will be directly or indirectly affected by your solution.
We live the way we do at the expense of those who don’t
Simply put, many of the products in developed countries should not exist. Not because they are not delightful, nor because there isn’t demand for them—obviously there is, otherwise they wouldn’t exist—but simply because they are building blocks of a lifestyle that is not scalable, neither sustainable, especially if everyone on this planet lived the same way.
In the chapter on the blame instinct Hans Rosling explains how we often blame poor countries for the global pollution even though data clearly indicates that their contribution to pollution is minor compared to ours in rich countries. Even worse, environmental damage in poor countries is often related to our exploitative behaviour. We extract resources to sustain our lifestyle from poor countries. Everything is connected. If we zoom out and see the whole picture, we quickly realise that our iPhones or Roomba vacuum cleaners are relatively cheap only because someone in Africa has probably died from the consequences of digging rare earth minerals which are necessary to manufacrure these gadgets.
CO2 emissions by income. Photo taken from Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Carbon footprint is one way to visualise and understand this proportionality of impact of our lifestyle has on polluting the planet when compared to people living in poorest countries.
Most of the human-emitted CO, accumulated in the atmosphere was emitted over the last 50 years by countries that are now on Level 4. Canada’s per capita CO, emissions are still twice as high as China’s and eight times as high as India’s. In fact, do you know how much of all the fossil fuel burned each year is burned by the richest billion? More than half of it. Then the second-richest billion burns half of what’s left, and so on and so on, down to the poorest billion, who are responsible for only 1 percent.
The conclusion, the poorest billion cannot live like us. The right thing to say is, “We cannot live like us.”
Our standard of living in developed countries such as Australia or most of Europe is taken for granted by its inhabitants, but for the rest of the world—which is about 6 billion people—it’s aspirational. They also want to live the way we do. The problem is that our “developed” way of life is not scalable, and unless we discover a new source of truly green energy or we sacrifice our standard of living, which nobody wants to do, our civilisation is doomed.
For example I went to the online environmental impact calculator by Climate Hero and tested myself. Result? I am a Climate Consumer producing 5.6 tonnes CO2e. You can try it by yourself. The result may shock you.
I’m a climate consumer 😏
Lesson for designers?
What we design is often outside of our control. We are nothing but the cog in the machine,” you might say. “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” I’m not suggesting you to quit your job just because you work on a product that people could easily live without. It would be nice, but we all need to make a living somehow.
Instead, Let’s start with awareness. Change of perspective. when you design something, consider the broader context— and broader doesn’t need to mean global. locally broader is a good start. Even the longest journey starts with a single step.
Design accordingly.
3. Focus on the root cause, not symptoms!
To be continued soon …
Actually, do you want me to continue? Leave a comment below 😅🙏🏼
A good hammer is valuable because it is useful, and not because it is well designed. Wait a minute. You might say, “Isn’t it useful because it was designed that way?” Yes, it was designed to be useful, but it’s valuable not because it was designed, but because it is useful. In other words, it would be valuable even if it wasn’t designed, and yet it was somehow, by accident, useful.
Assuming that the value or meaning of the object is derived from its usefulness and not from the fact that it was designed, there isn’t an immutable link between an object’s original design and its actual value.
But how about the Magic Mouse by Apple or Philippe Starck’s lemon squeezer? Aren’t those objects of design valuable because they were designed, rather than because of their actual usefulness?
If somebody came to you and claimed that their weight was a nice green colour, you would probably stop, double-check if you heard them correctly, and then wonder if that person was sane. What a piece of nonsense!
Just because something sounds like a sentence and has the structure of a sentence doesn’t mean it must automatically have meaning.
And yet, in the corporate world, we often hear busy white-collar professionals utter similar kinds of nonsense.
“Let’s dockerize the monolith to make it cloud-native.” Sure, and while we’re at it, let’s staple a horse to a spaceship to make it more agile.
Or when Mike from Innovation Labs calls for “leveraging blockchain to democratize synergy.” That’s just a pile of nouns desperately trying to form a startup pitch.
But in the entrepreneurial world of wannabe innovators, sentences like these get nodded at, printed on slides, and repeated in meetings without a hint of irony.
“We need to action this ask.” You mean… do the thing someone asked for? Why not just say that?
In linguistics, sentences like these are usually described as category mistakes (or category errors).
If you are like me, you must be familiar with that feeling of frustration when scrolling through the “infinite” list of your past conversations with ChatGPT, looking for the particular one you want to re-check again, just to realise that you can’t find it — at least, not quickly and without a significant effort. One summer afternoon, I started ideating on the concept of a better prompt archive management.
I asked myself: “How could we improve the usability of our beloved AI tool?”
There are many possible areas of improvement when it comes to software as young as ChatGPT was in 2023. This post is about of them — the better prompt archive management. I contemplated the idea of what if we gave users an option to organise their past conversations with ChatGPT somehow? Not just archive them but also group and tag them in meaningful-to-them ways.
Have you ever wondered why some logomarks resonate with customers while others do not?
We all know, that some logos are considered to be inspirational works of art while most of them are average at best. Recently, I wrote a short article on the proposition density in design and how it relates to memorability of famous logos (and other works of art).
In summary: I believe that the success of many well-known logos has a lot to do with the relationship between the elements they are made of and the meaning these elements convey — in other words, the proposition density, which could be defined as the amount of information conveyed in an object or environment per unit element.
Colour is one of the most underestimated yet critical areas of design, especially when designing with accessibility in mind.
Most designers are familiar with the colour contrast of texts on the background. However, there is much more to colours in relation to accessibility. We have rules for link colour vs text colour, focus state, adjacent colours for UI elements and interface elements that convey information, etc.
“Colour contrast is one of the areas where we designers can have a significant impact on accessibility. While accessibility is much more than that, a series of measurable variables make colour contrast one of the perhaps easier aspects to address.”
— Javier Cuello
The WCAG guidelines, while comprehensive, are not necessarily easy to follow. Luckily, we can learn from folks like Javier Cuello, who summarised the important colour-related accessibility requirements in a more digestible form.
In his article, Javier explains key considerations that designers should keep in mind when dealing with colours. The article is a good read for anyone looking for an easy-to-understand introduction to colour contrast and accessibility.
If I learned one absolute statement in the past 20+ years of practicing the craft of digital design is that anyone trying to make absolute statements about almost anything is doomed to be proven wrong at some point.
It’s important to remember that Elon Musk, for all his achievements, is still a human being like anyone else. Just because he’s been successful in business doesn’t mean he’s infallible or always right.
I agree with some of his ideas, and I think he’s done an incredible job popularising technology and moving some concepts forward—electric cars, for example, or a brain-computer interface. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the hyperbole and marketing theatrics he often engages in. Some of his claims venture into territory that brushes up against the limits of what’s currently possible—if not outright contradicting the laws of known physics, like the Hyperloop or the idea of colonising Mars.
While I understand the curiosity and ambition that drive his vision of the future, I also believe that any rational, critically thinking person should approach dreaming about the future with a healthy dose of skepticism. Elon Musk is not an exception. So when he behaves as if he were, I lose trust in him.
If we go to Mars simply out of scientific curiosity, that’s fine. In fact, I’d take the exploration of space any time over spending billions of dollars on wars and meaningless destruction. But the notion of finding a second home for humanity on Mars strikes me as deeply flawed.
It’s a romantic idea, but not a realistic one. The energy and resources it would take to make Mars even remotely habitable are staggering—and that’s before considering the psychological, biological, and technological challenges. Rather than seeing it as an escape plan, we should focus on fixing and preserving the planet we already have.
CO2 emissions by income. Photo taken from Factfulness by Hans Rosling
I’m a climate consumer 😏