Digital garden

“In systems thinking, design is a creative act that attempts to estimate how alternative sets of behavior patterns would serve specified goals.”

“Taste is the ability to make choices that fit a purpose, consistently enough that the result feels like it came from one point of view.”

“As we navigate through the world, we are changed by a variety of experiences. Of special note are experiences of three types: (1) we observe what is happening around us (other people behaving, sounds of music, instructions directed at us, words on pages, images on screens); (2) we are exposed to the pairing of unimportant stimuli (such as sirens) with important stimuli (such as the appearance of police cars); (3) we are punished or rewarded for behaving in certain ways.”

“So eventually the products develops a character through what its makers pay attention to, what they decide not to do and what they keep working on after it technically works. I sometimes think of this as the soul of a product. You feel that someone cares about how the whole thing comes together.”

“Across culture, bright flashes of all things opaque, ornate, and difficult have been emerging as a visual and conceptual pushback against the slick, smoothed-out realities of our 21st-century condition.”