This is Broken

I watched a speech by Seth Godin last night called “This is Broken.” The point of the video was him talking about how and why things are done incorrectly and not fixed. This is an idea I think about everyday. I am constantly running into things in my life that don’t work and there’s no reason they should be like this.

Mr. Godin is certainly no the best speaker I’ve ever seen but he’s relatable and that seems to be his strong point. He comes off like someone you know and stays that way throughout his speech. Often times I see speeches, especially on TED, from “gods among men” and they are difficult to relate with. Their intellects are staggering and their resumes are endless. But back to his topic.

In his speech he identifies a base seven reasons for why these things are created. These seven things are: Not my job, Selfish jerks, The world changed, I didn’t know, I’m not a fish, Contradictions, and Broken on purpose. Now the most glaringly apparent in everyday life are not my job, selfish, and I’m not a fish, which is personally my favorite and a serious oversight in most designs.

Without going through all the examples and essentially restating his speech, I’ll go through the important ones. Not my job is obvious in that if something doesn’t work well or is broken, if it’s not your job, who cares. Selfish is another easy one because everybody is familiar with using things that work horrendously just because it’s better for someone else. The, I’m not a fish isn’t so direct and basically means whoever designed it was not the intended market of the product. They never had to use it and therefore, never saw it’s flaws. This seems like something that should never be overlooked in the design phase, but apparently only a select few designers feel this way.

Now these all are horrendous reasons to ever make something work terribly, but it happens constantly. Personally if nothing else, Mr. Godin’s speech makes me feel like this kind of thought process should be present in the creation of anything. I should never put my name on anything without going through all the ways my product could be used, looked at, or judged and make sure on every level it makes sense. Releasing products that make anyone question its purpose or design is unacceptable, ever.