Design for emergence

Design for emergence is a design paradigm that aims to address the long-tail user-need problem: while we can design for the most common needs, how do we design for the long-tail of diverse and individual needs?

Design for emergence (of user needs) is essentially about very open-ended design where the user has almost limitless options how to configure the tool. Notion can be a good example from today's software.

This paradigm is in contrast to User-centered design – in UCD, the user is studied to extract desired outcomes from them and then the tool is designed for those. Designer is in control. In design for emergence, users are given much more control.

"Design for emergence is composable"

This type of design should not require extensive technical knowledge. Code is composable but not accessible. Design for emergence should make it easy for people to get started, offer many different paths but also accommodate possible high complexity.

It's not completely new to 21st century as Christopher Alexander's work (especially in A Pattern Language) offers a good foundation.

Tags: design process product design

ID: 2022-0817-0602

References: https://rhizomerd.substack.com/p/when-to-design-for-emergence?s=r