Hello, it's been a while. Since I last wrote Subconscious wound down and I've embarked on a new adventure (TBA). WizardChess is progressing (somewhat asymptotically) towards release. Stay tuned for more updates. In the meantime, I've been reflecting on design and its role in the future.
Our world is made of mirrors. Every object reveals something about the subject observing it. The tools we use, the spaces we inhabit, the media we consume, everything out there echoes back something familiar from within. As designers, we're not just crafting "objects" or "interfaces"—we're creating experiences that invite people to see themselves anew. It takes a keen eye and a delicate hand to shape the surfaces that transform perception itself.
I once thought design had mostly to do with the explicit content you put into a piece of work. The concrete decisions you made, the reasoning behind it, or the layout on the page or in the world. As I design larger, more ambitious systems and experiences I've becomes obsessed with the basic question of what makes something feel good to use? Why do the same songs keep us coming back decades later? Why does your favourite mug improve a beverage? The image becomes... abstract.
Good design feels right, as if it anticipates your needs before you're even aware of them. Your attention flows through a well-designed experience like a landscape guiding streams to the sea. Never forceful, merely nudging awareness towards new possibilities. The most masterfully designed experiences encode a silent teacher into the work, reflecting back aspects of ourselves we might have otherwise overlooked. But this cannot be a rigid process. As users wander through the spaces we create they leave desire paths behind for us to study.
Ultimately, it's about how your creation fits into a person's life. How they'll feel the moment that they start interacting with it, how they'll be guided through it and how they'll feel at each moment during their interaction. Then, going beyond that one interaction, how does this person's relationship with your work develop over months and years? There's no such thing as designing for a fixed target. Every interaction that someone has changes them and changes the way they'll interact with future experiences.
As my ability to notice these patterns has developed, what "design" means has grown in scope. It now seems to encompass multiple levels of abstraction stretched across various scales of time and space. When people interact with our creations, our work will (directly or indirectly) shape the systems and frameworks through which their perception and our collective culture evolve. Unfortunately, this awareness brings with it a sense of responsibility. Skilled designers are capable is distorting our view of reality so profoundly that we spend hours a day "doomscrolling" despite knowing the damage it causes.
How will your work fit into a good life for someone, whatever form that takes? What are you showing people about themselves, and how are you biasing their perceptions ongoing? This ethical dimension is inseparable from the creative process.
When it comes to designing with LLMs (or other "AI" models) these questions take on a new gravity. What does it mean to "design a personality"? Coming from game development this isn't a totally foreign question, but the depth and capability of these new technologies will reveal powerful new techniques. To trust our tools we must be able to reason about them, but how can we reason about a mirror who's surface seems to be endlessly shifting to show us exactly what (we think) we want?
Mirrors have the power to reveal or distort, to catalyze evolution or stagnation. If the computer is going to speak back, what should it reflect?
Ben ✌️