→ For a rigorous psychological and philosophical definition of values, look here. → For my online school on values-based design, which covers all this in more depth, and with more fun: The School for Social Design Our 3 month program equips you to anticipate the social effect of designs, and their deeper impacts on users' lives…sfsd.io What are Values? Values are ideas that guide us in action. In this, they are similar to plans, goals, fears, intentions, policies…

On the Dangers of Mindful Design, Well-being-based Design, Behavior Change, etc — Designers are growing more concerned with the lives of our users, and with supporting meaningful interactions. We need to face tough questions: What is a good use of the users’ time? Why would a user have an interaction, if it’s not a meaningful one? These are questions about human agency and…

We must face a deep challenge to design software for meaningful interaction and time well spent — In early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his number one goal for 2018 was to make Facebook “Time Well Spent”. That was exciting, because five years ago I coined this term. …

Why do bureaucracies of good people do bad things? Why do apps with good intentions cause bad social outcomes? Why do helpful innovations — like cars, single-family homes, and smartphones — lead people into isolated lives that don’t serve them? I’ve spent much of my life learning about values-misalignment, which…

☝️This is an excerpt from my textbook, Values-Based Social Design. My job is to help people design better social environments and systems, both online and offline. …

Steps towards radical redesign — Public debate seems like an important part of changing big systems. When modern nations formed, there was lots of public discussion and debates. In the US, for example, there were arguments in the newspapers about how the US government should work, later collected as the federalist and anti-federalist papers. It’s…

I am inspired by a political movement, going by the name Radical Markets. And yet I have reservations about its vocabulary and framing. I’ll briefly cover why I’m excited and what could be better. I’ve long believed in the radical redesign of institutions, and it’s exhilarating to see a movement…

This is part 3 of The Next Enlightenment (but it should read fine on its own). — Imagine, for a moment, two cartoon societies. In the first, each peasant tries to be a good peasant; each king, a good king; each father, a good father; and so on. They network with each other around their roles: so peasants and kings have a certain relationship; similarly with fathers…

Achieving my #goals. I thought it was what life was about. I brought my goals into every meeting and every relationship. I was insufferable. Much later, I began to understand my values. See, most people only have goals some of the time. At other times they “wing it”. A person…