If requirements define the problem, how can a designer succeed if the problems they are supposed to solve are poorly defined or the wrong ones?
If the person writing requirements knows nothing about good design, why would anyone expect good design to be a possible outcome?

It's like someone who has never cooked writing a recipe.
Requirements:

- car that goes 1000mph
- lasts 1000 years
- cures cancer
- creates world peace
- makes selfish people generous for 10mile radius
- easy to use
Requirements:

- it must be really big
- but also small
- it must be fancy
- but also cheap
- It has to be simple
- but have every feature

• • •

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More from @berkun

14 Apr
1. When people say "innovations happen faster today than ever before" ask:

Does this person know anything about the history of innovation?

It's an impressive sounding statement rarely challenged since we like to hear it. But it's misleading in several ways that I'll explain.
2. The pace of change is not the same as scale.

For example:

The shift from hauling water on your back to indoor plumbing is HUGE. The shift from iPhone 10 to 11 is SMALL.

Have there been shifts as transformative to your quality of life as plumbing recently? I doubt it.
3. We love Amazon for Prime delivery and consider it a breakthrough, but in 1900 Sears had the same business model: huge catalog + ship anywhere (thx to new railroads).

You could order an entire kit for a house and thousands of Americans did.
Read 9 tweets
13 Apr
1. The fallacy of "seat at the table" is often decisions are made before the table meets. I know this because much of my career was controlling tables.

The more people at any table, the more the real action goes elsewhere. Why? I'll tell you.
2. The design of a conversation about a big decision works best in the small. 3-6 people. Every leader calls on advisors, individually or together, to sort out what they're *really* going to do.

Look around. If your "table" has 10 or 20 people, you're not in that group.
3. Any meeting of 6+ people has performative elements. People can't speak as frankly. They can't respond as directly.

Yes ideas are raised and heard, but you won't get as much of the truth as 1-on-1 or in a small group.
Read 11 tweets
13 Apr
1. It feels terribly trivializing that with everything going on debates like this happen and a reminder of how tech is never neutral, because tech culture isn't either.

nytimes.com/2021/04/13/tec…
2. Of many puzzling things, is this tech group using low tech community practices.

"The IETF... measures consensus by asking factions to hum... assessed by volume/ferocity. Vigorous humming, even from only a few, could indicate... that consensus has not yet been reached."
3. “We have big fights with each other, but our intent is always to reach consensus,” said Vint Cerf

But whose consensus? What if they have no obligation to think about who isn't in the room? What is it a consensus of then?
Read 5 tweets
6 Apr
"Legitimate political change doesn’t come from one person, even a superpowered just person making decrees. Legitimate change comes from a broad base of popular support, things like that. We don’t know what a comic book about that would look like."

nytimes.com/2021/03/30/pod…
"[superheroes] can be problematic... how are they using their power?...is a story about reinforcing the status quo, or about overturning the status quo? And most popular superhero stories are always about maintaining the status quo." - Ted Chiang
"Superheroes, they supposedly stand for justice. They further the cause of justice. But they always stick to your very limited idea of what constitutes a crime, basically the government idea of what constitutes a crime." - Ted Chiang
Read 4 tweets
5 Apr
We are sadly going to see dumb regressions where we fail to learn the best lessons of remote work:

Why should a boss care about about naps, breaks, socializing, etc. if the employee does their job well? The answer is they shouldn't.

wsj.com/articles/youre…
Smart managers should always say:

"I will trust you to nap, take breaks, take time off for personal things, or other ideas you have, provided you do your job well."

Everyone wins. If trust is broken that's one thing, but not to even try makes for a foolish manager.
There is a paranoia in management around change.

So much is justified by "this is the way we've done it" which is among the worst arguments there is.

Our forced remote work experiment of 2020/21 is one of the greatest opportunities ever to question assumptions about work.
Read 5 tweets
31 Mar
1. The irony of being an expert:

You spend years studying, practicing, and developing deep skills to qualify for a job as an expert.

Then you discover work is often w/ people with none of your expertise but the power to ignore your field at a whim as if it didn't exist.
2. The joy of being an expert:

Your insights are needed in thousands of important places and situations and you are one of a small group of people who has the potential to make great things happen. The rewards from solving problems the way you can are rare in the working world.
3. The surprise of being an expert:

Is at first you think it's advanced knowledge that matters most, but you learn the real problem that holds progress back is mostly people who have never heard of your field or don't know the basics.
Read 5 tweets

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