I find it disappointing that your interesting and very sensible premise (which to me sounds like a mix of human centered design and environmental awareness, with the Jobs to be Done framework at the top) is held back quite a bit by the arrogance and judgment displayed towards the industry. I know it’s a somewhat familiar sentiment of many university teachers, I’m used to that. But you claim to ask “why”, yet I get the feeling that you look at a lot of products with disdain without asking why.
I find this quote above particularly annoying. It sounds like selfies and like buttons and the color gold have been invented by soulless designers at evil corporations in a race to infinite growth. No like button in the world could encompass as much judgment as this quote.
The first one, selfies, is the perfect example. Selfies were not created by capitalists in an effort to maximize profitability. Selfies in their current form have been around for maybe 15 years (well, the word can be traced back to 2002), while front-facing cameras on phones have only been mainstream for maybe 5 — 6years. Why are selfies a thing? Because people like creating them. They are not an invention by corporations; they are an invention by people who turned their cameras around and took their own self portraits. Yes, nowadays companies try to profit off that habit — hence the creation of the idiotic selfie stick — but selfies are inherently a thing because people felt a need for them. Now, I am skeptical of them myself, I don’t like the way they have transformed many people’s vacation photos into narcissistic self portraits with merely varying backgrounds. But in some scenarios they are indeed more intimate than other types of photography. They are popular with friends trying to capture the moment of their being together, for example. Could there be better alternatives? Possibly! But I don’t think you can seriously criticize them without trying to understand why they are a thing. And it’s just not because of corporations or profitability.
In my opinion gold is a color just like any other. Companies offer that option, some people prefer it. In the 90ies the color was often called “champagne”. I’m writing these lines on an iPad in rose gold. I don’t see the pretentiousness, and I don’t see the relevance to design.
Like buttons are a more interesting discussion. There are a lot of problems associated with them. I’d even argue that by now they can be called a failed concept — I don’t think they were meant to be judgmental, but in practice they often are. But I think they were an honest take at the problem of how to communicate in digital spaces. I think the extension to more expressions on Facebook is a good idea, though I don’t know if they are enough to fix the concept. It’s quite ironic by the way, that the article ends with this line: “Like this? Click the little heart and move on to: […]” (probably automatically generated, but still.)
Overall, I think your article is unnecessarily contrarian and disapproving. What you are proposing — from the human and environment centered design to the jobs-to-be-done-style of asking why/what might be problems to uncover, to the emphasis on experimentation — are great ideas, but I think they fit in perfectly well with already existing disciplines like interaction design and experience design. No need for obituaries yet.
(Not out of spite but of actual interest, I did tap that heart button and effectively “liked” the article.)
