Above & Beyond: Magnus Göransson asks “Has design become boring?”
Our previous Above & Beyond talk with Max Björverud had us thinking a lot about childhood, so it was a lucky coincidence that we were most recently joined by Magnus Göransson, former Design Director of the Creative Play Lab at LEGO and host of the Swedish TV adaptation of Lego Masters. Considering his previous affiliation with the infamous Danish toy giant, surely we were bound to continue our explorations on the intersections between childhood, play, and design, right?
Wrong. Beyond being the “LEGO” guy, Magnus has also been a designer for 20 years. Since he’d be speaking to a group of fellow designers (and design adjacent engineers, developers, and salespeople), he wanted to spend the hour discussing an idea he’d been toying around with. In particular, how he felt that design had become boring and predictable over the last decade or so.
Before we delve into how telling a virtual room full of designers that design has become boring went down, we’ll recap what Magnus meant. He explained that he felt design — specifically for cars, electronics, and websites — had become so “well-designed” that there wasn’t room for innovation within these categories. In fact, the design factors had become so formulaic, it was hard to tell different brands apart
According to Magnus, the magical design spark in these categories has extinguished because of three factors:
🧐 Cross-functional teams killed the singular “Genius”
The first was the replacement of the “genius” designer with cross-functional teams. Genius designers, like Phillipe Starck, were allowed to get away with a certain level of irrationality, like creating a rather inefficient lemon squeezer that was less than optimal at squeezing lemons but great at starting conversations. But, in the last decade or so, having a multiplicity of ideas and perspectives provided by cross-functional teams has replaced the omnipotence of singular genius. The consensus afforded by cross-functional teams is just better at creating successful designs…if the marker of success is based on profitability.
👥 Making design “user-centric” generalized the user
The second was the rise of user-centered design that — while well-intentioned — ultimately generalizes users. While the increasing importance of user research and user-centered design points to some aspiration of inclusivity within the field of design, we also know that humans are deeply complex and nuanced individuals. In this sense, the “user” we design for will always be a generalization of that complexity and nuance. More often than not, the generalized user we design for will reflex the majority of need (i.e. people who want a device to efficiently squeeze lemons) while ignoring niche or outlier needs (i.e. people who want a device that squeezes lemons semi-decently but always starts a conversation with dinner guests).
📱 Tech made us lazy
The third — and most controversial — is that technology has enabled us to become lazy, both as designers and consumers. The mass embrace of machine learning over the last decade has transformed how we use technology in our design tool kit. In many ways, we can let the machines do much more of the thinking for us than previously possible. As consumers, we tend to write off anything we don’t understand as bad design. But, some things simply can’t be explained away through some well-crafted icons and cheeky copy. If that were the case, then we’d all be the foremost experts in astrophysics or understand what Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” was actually about. Technology is a powerful tool, but, in many ways, has enabled our most lazy tendencies, including how we approach design work.
Needless to say, Abovers had plenty of their own opinions to share about design allegedly becoming boring. While many disagreed with Magnus’ take on the current state of the design field, they overwhelmingly appreciated the discussion and reflection such a controversial opinion sparked.
In this regard, the true beauty of Magnus’ decision to share his opinion was not that it encouraged fruitful discourse but rather that it forced everyone to reevaluate some fundamental truths that they likely hadn’t considered in a very, very long time. When you work with something day in and day out for years, it’s easy to lose sight or gloss over the core values that influence your decision-making process. Furthermore, in an ever-evolving field like design, there are few fundamental truths. A lot of what we learn is relative to a lot of contextual factors, at least compared to the natural sciences where truths are not context-specific and almost always absolute.
Regardless of whether anyone agreed that design had become boring or not, the provocation forced us to look back at our field and the work we’ve done to see how it compared to the points Magnus brought to the (virtual) table. Ultimately, we feel these low-stakes provocations need to happen more often to keep us on our toes or — as Magnus would put it — from becoming lazy.
So, has design, indeed, become boring? Is the creative process we’ve tinkered with and perfected for decades so formulaic and predictable that we’ve maxed out all possibilities for innovation? The reflections are almost always more exciting than the answers to these types of questions, so we want to hear your thoughts!
Above & Beyond events are held internally for the Above team. The learnings and take-aways are written by Renee Semko Gonzalez and edited by myself. I can only hope that this article (and every other article we share) offers you as many ideas and inspiration as it has our team.
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