You are a designer, an architect, a software developper – brief: You design products? Then do me favor: Stop it. The world doesn’t need more products. We are full of products. I proclaim the peak product. The world was never missing the nescafe nespresso cups, the E-bike, the new A Class, the iPad, the latest Airbus or the Selfstorage Houses, before these things were invented. I admit that of course I feel somehow attracted to good forms from a fixi bike, the iPhone and I was always dreaming of the hoverboard from “back to the future”. But honestly, it’s not the product, that makes the magic behind a nicely designed bike, iPhone or Hoverboard. It’s something else, which attracts people: Access. The bike helps me to access the streets, the neighborhoods and the city in a new emancipatory way, the iPhone (when it was released in 2007) brought the internet into the streets, it created an access to the world whereever you are. And the Hoverboard, well, is an access to a new body conscience. It makes the longlife dream of mankind come true: To fly. Access to the sky.
So it’s not about the perfect shape or the perfect color or the perfect user experience. Well actually it is of course a question of design, if you want to sell a product, but that’s exactly the point: Stop concentrating on selling things people don’t need, creating desires people didn’t have and branding products that causes damage to the environment. Stop inventing customer journeys, that brings people to knowhere but the cashier. Start to develop systems, not products. Begin to think in cycles, not in chains (Supply chains are the ugliest). Take over responsibilty, not market shares. Fight to protect random moments – not status quo structures. Release your ideas in beta Versions – not in the perfect alpha version (which is an illusion).
Don’t design products – design access. Access to the seven Ws: Water, Wisdom, Wellbeing, Warmth, Ways, Where you live and where our dreams go.