Fast Company on the Design in Tech Report ? Edition

For context on Hartmut Esslinger, check out this article on him via the Verge, or visit his portfolio on Behance.

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Wow, you know things are at peak ? when one of your heroes like Hartmut Esslinger is coming after you …

Dear John @johnmaeda you know that I like and respect you, but lately you are floating in ever more murky waters – and this requires a public answer. There are designer posers – e.g. "design thinkers" – but WE REAL ONES HAVE A SEAT AT THE TABLE. https://t.co/6WBpXV35GK

— Hartmut Esslinger (@frogmut) March 23, 2019

Hartmut Esslinger is the visionary founder of international design consultancy frog. I did a book review for the WSJ on his book alongside the Jony Ive book back in 2013 — if you’d like to read up more about Hartmut and how he introduced industrial design (aka “product design”) to the tech industry via his early work for Apple.

As a result, I’ve shared with Hartmut a pointer to my real response. It appears he may have only read the clickbait headline from Fast Company. Twitter tends to bury important details …

Hi Hartmut, I've been listening to the many reactions to what came from a short telephone interview — that as you know does not get to reviewed by the interviewee. For that reason I prefer to not do too much press. My thoughts are posted on my blog: https://t.co/MBFd2SDzTm

— John Maeda (@johnmaeda) March 24, 2019

My guess is that the next few weeks will be about hearing from more consultancy folks because there was a big design event in Singapore recently. So let’s see how far this all goes …

In the meantime, I can see that an alternative viewpoint is rising right now as well. Like with Hartmut, Lex Roman is one of my new heroes, too, so I’m curious where this direction will lead. It’s what the FastCo interviewer interpreted me as saying — and I didn’t say that exactly but I thought Katharine gathered a variety of my ideas in a professional, concise, and cogent piece not unlike late FastCo writer Linda Tischler could do so effortlessly back in the day.

“Ultimately, Maeda believes that when designers do get more power than their developer counterparts, they build weaker products.”

I totally agree with you @johnmaeda. I worked at a design-led company and designers are burning that place to the ground.https://t.co/Qvd8Qxrw8a

— Lex Roman (@calexity) March 23, 2019

Hmmmm. Now Mike Monteiro’s adding gasoline to the ? …

Ok, let’s deal with this @johnmaeda thing. TL;DR: He’s right about the symptoms but his diagnosis is off. He’s right that designers aren’t prepared to face the problems they encounter in the world today. The interesting thing to ask is: who prepared them?https://t.co/2XpPLC1HE8

— Mike Monteiro (@monteiro) March 24, 2019

Mike’s got an important point about the education industry — which is something I’ve been pointing to since the 2016 Design in Tech Report.

I’m actually writing something for Quartz right now that addresses this point, in part. I attribute it to the lack of a Bauhaus moment like we experienced back in the early 1900s. Let me get back to writing that piece up ….

By some weird coincidence, right now I am writing a piece that gets close to the heart of Mike @Monteiro's take on a recent short interview I did. It's hard to beat cosmic serendipity … https://t.co/K29TJK4AtK pic.twitter.com/Ot9lDk9txc

— John Maeda (@johnmaeda) March 24, 2019

My best answer to a lot of what is being said out there online is the book I’m trying to finish right now. It’s called How To Speak Machine — and I realize that if I answer every person online I’ll never get to finishing it.

So please excuse me while I switch modes. And feel free to add a comment to this blog post or onto this Twitter strand (so I don’t lose it — because Twitter can be like Slack where I can’t keep track of all the messages). Thanks! —JM

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