Thread by @MrAlanCooper

It’s so sad to read UX professionals contorting themselves into ridiculous postures to somehow find a path between human-centered design and the pathological world of runaway tech capitalism. 1

There is simply no there there. You can’t appease that monster. 2

Sherlock Holmes* said, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

*Arthur Conan Doyle 3

The impossibility of REAL UX having a place in rampant tech capitalism is obvious to anyone who will raise their sights out of their screens and take a good hard look at the systems we have allowed to run our world. 4

So, by eliminating the impossible choices from our world, it leaves us with only the improbable path of changing the systems that run our world. If that doesn’t scare you, you’re not really paying attention. 5

I’m pretty confident that we’ve arrived at this difficult, frightening choice by exhausting all of the more palatable alternatives. Which means that I’m confident that it’s the correct choice. 6

UX professionals (devs, too) opine endlessly about how they might change to adapt to the unworking and unworkable context. Contrarily, there is also much written about how to change the enclosing system, but so little of it is written by tech practitioners. 7

That is, I see a lot of appeasement and self-blaming in the UX community. Also, a lot of misguided attribution of the existence of runaway capitalism to some goofy idea that it’s a natural law. 8

It’s not natural that we erect systems that oppress us. It’s not right. It’s not required. We can change these systems. We just have to acknowledge that it is necessary to do so, that we have the power to do so, and that we can muster the will to do so. 9

Are you with me? 10