Oh the inheritance—after design is dead

The death of design (if you believe it) shows our waning design capacity.

While looking at the headlines around ‘Is design dead?‘ in many articles, social media posts, and discussions, I was thinking of the survivors.

When something dies, it leaves behind the survivors and some inheritance as well. It applies to humans, to the trees, and to our cities as well. It is true for the experiments too—we can smell it in a Chemistry lab, and in a CMS lab as well.

Ryan Rumsey have put together a well-structured design cemetery (see their Notion space). Unlike traditional human cemeteries that are designed away from a neighborhood, the design cemetery is right in the middle of a city, the city named DC—Design Capacity.

What survives after design is dead

Back to the goal of this post, let’s see what survives.

Sign up

When design dies, it leaves behind a legacy of what marketers and engineers love doing—not caring for the design.
I have not even started writing it and Airbnb design says that my password is weak.

Doctors only

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing some examples.
You are either a doctor or nobody, says MyGate.

Onboarding

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing an example of empty state design in a product.
AI created a new account in beehiiv and this is what I see when I first sign in. (See related tweet)

The criteria

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing some examples.
Tracking our work by keystrokes and mouse movements?

No architect quotes for designing a house for number of bricks—they care for the building, and not the number of bricks. (My comment on a Medium post.)

Our sign up forms

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing some examples of sign up forms and onboarding.
When marketing designs the sign up forms.

The Invasion

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing some examples.
The story of invasion as a design tool, fittingly.

Special characters by special engineers

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing some examples.
Special characters in their engineering team designing the sign up forms

The parameters

What survives when design is dead, writes Vinish Garg, sharing an example of Google Kit.
Design parameters showing in their engineering parameters—Google

The death of design (if you believe it) shows our waning design capacity.

Our Design Capacity

We saw what survives after design (part of this inheritance was building even when design was thriving but we shall see more of this building very quickly, sometimes wrapped in the vibe design containers).

The city, DC is responding to build this inheritance positively. We have left ample space in the middle.

Marketing should be delighted and engineering too—no turf wars now. Content strategy and content design are the only saving grace—massive responsibility and up to the task.

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Vinish Garg

Vinish Garg

I am Vinish Garg, and I work with growing product teams for their product strategy, product vision, product positioning, product onboarding and UX, and product growth. I work on products for UX and design leadership roles, product content strategy and content design, and for the brand narrative strategy. I offer training via my advanced courses for content strategists, content designers, UX Writers, content-driven UX designers, and for content and design practitioners who want to explore product and system thinking.

Interested to stay informed about my work, talks, writings, programs, or projects? See a few examples of my past newsletters—All things products, Food for designInviting for 8Knorks. You can subscribe to my emails here.

Vinish Garg is an independent consultant in product content strategy, content design leadership, and product management for growing product teams.