Beauty and simplicity
For about a year, the thought is that simplicity can be sophistication, and that digital work should be able to show that something is organic and alive. Designers must defend beauty. People feel it when it is there, but they often fail to give it weight when it is gone.
In an interface, simple means the work of cutting the extra so only the essence remains. That order can feel like beauty. The hard open question is how to keep the other kind of beauty — — in an interface, if that is possible at all.
Everyday objects
Mature design fields often honor everyday objects: . They try to make a known object better. Digital product design often tries to make something new. It often looks down on products that already exist, such as a weather app or an alarm clock. Dieter Rams and Olivetti also worked on objects that already existed. When we refuse to work on known things, we often make nothing.
A good digital object is a , not a new category invented for its own sake. We would rather solve small things, simply. A weather app whose forecast is a small paragraph. Enshittification is extra chrome, extraction, and haste on top of the thing itself. We run from that.
Design as thinking
Design is thinking. Design is . If you automate that work, you leave the intention out. Then the result is not design. You can build an application or a service by automation. You do not design it that way. Design needs awareness when you make a decision.
, such as a design system in Figma. That frees room to think: flows, information architecture, how a thing must behave, the problem in front of you, and the look you want to send. Lazy people and lazy teams will only work less. People who want to make products will use the extra time to think. The large risk is that haste, plus a wish to avoid hard work, will make products of very low quality. This is the view as things are now.
Natural animation
A good animation feels natural when it is easy to predict. Familiar motion feels better. It approaches smoothly rather than stepping. Natural motion should .
Fill the gaps between states. Do not switch an object to another in an instant. A smooth blur can hold the two as one element. Speed should not stay even along the path. In the real world, things do not move in a stable way.