Lessons on Design

What design does is take math, something inhuman, back to something human. Design is the human element. And as humans, we tell stories. Math couldn't evolve until we told the stories.

The present should be a beta of the future we want to live in.

If we all work together on creating value, but if we really keep in mind the values of the work that we do, I think we can change the work that we do. We can change these values, can change the companies we work with, and eventually, together, maybe we can change the world.

Translation can be a creative, transformative act. Instead of replacing one story with another, we can learn from and revel in the many versions that exist and the many that have yet to be written.

Allow the language to suggest or suggest forms for other things.

Put hot triggers in the [existing] paths of motivated individuals.

Reflective competence is when you're able to take the extraordinary skills that you have mastered, and you are able to connect those and relate to other problems outside of that area of mastery—that you're able to teach people, and that you're able to continue to learn. We have to really decide in an active, intentional way, whether or not we want to be in our current stage, which will eventually lead to complacency, or if we want to take an active world view and reach reflective competence. When we're able to translate the very strings of design, we don't have to solve the problems ourselves, but we have to be active in those conversations.

We tend to think of creativity as the work of a soloist. Interestingly, virtually all acts of greatness are the work of an ensemble.

Great design is about meeting the needs of the five senses.