4 Comments
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Stephanie E Buck's avatar

Fantastic essay. Beautifully written and made me think about design and interfaces and power in a new way. Thank you for writing 💕

Rachel Trebach's avatar

Thank you for reading!

Baird Brightman's avatar

Excellent essay, Rachel! 👏 For me, the killer line is

“She brought it to the people above her and they didn’t engage. Not because the evidence was weak. Because caring about whether government employees could navigate a webpage wasn’t something that had ever cost anyone anything.”

What gets incentivized gets done (and done and done). User-friendly design doesn’t seem to earn the designer many rewards these days. Sad.

Jay Coudriet's avatar

I adore this post. For me, it's about removing the affordance for the sake of what’s trendy or not, and understanding why they’re important. Also, these are the moments I love about design: discovering these unforeseen and critical scenarios and providing lucid information and actions.