# Incomparable — Full Content Incomparable is a tiny product design studio based in Finland, partnering with teams across 5 continents and 17 countries. Founded by Paul van Oijen. Services: product design partnerships (embedded UX/UI, design systems, data visualization, optional full-stack development) and in-person workshops. Workshop alumni include designers and product leaders from companies such as Shopify, Unity, GetYourGuide, Coinbase, Hoxhunt, Insense, Workbounce, Focal, and Magic Eden. Over 1000 workshop participants delivered across 5 continents. This file contains the full text of every published post, book chapter, and workshop description. It is intended for LLM consumption. --- # Workshops ## Design Principles URL: https://incomparable.design/workshops/design-principles A live, full-day (8-hour) in-person workshop that helps teams define and apply design principles. Participants leave with a draft set of principles, a principle-writing rubric, and a rollout plan. Ideal for teams debating what 'good design' means, teams building or evolving a design system, and leaders who want design critiques to reference shared language instead of opinion. Delivered on-site by Paul van Oijen; tailored to each team during an intro call. --- ## Designing for Empathy URL: https://incomparable.design/workshops/designing-for-empathy A live, full-day (8-hour) in-person workshop teaching teams how to cultivate genuine empathy for users and translate that understanding into design decisions. Participants build empathy maps, run interview exercises, and leave with methods they can apply immediately. Ideal for product teams shipping features without qualitative user grounding, teams transitioning from persona-driven to empathy-driven research, and leaders who want user research integrated into everyday design work. --- ## Philosophical Foundations URL: https://incomparable.design/workshops/philosophical-design A live, full-day (8-hour) in-person workshop applying philosophical frameworks (from Plato's ideal forms to Heidegger's concept of being) to modern product decisions. Participants leave with a decision-making framework grounded in 2500 years of philosophical thought, applied to their own product. Ideal for teams making high-stakes product bets, design leadership setting long-term direction, and mature teams ready to move beyond tactical discussions. --- # Blog ## Dear (Future) Designer: Accessibility Is Not A Feature Category: Design Insights Published: Jan 14, 2026 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/accessibility-not-a-feature Dear (Future) Designer, At some point in your career, you will hear this sentence: > We will add accessibility later. It usually sounds reasonable. The deadline is close. The scope is full. The design already works for most users. Accessibility becomes a task parked somewhere between polish and cleanup. This is where things quietly go wrong. Accessibility is not something you add on top of a finished design. It is not a toggle. It is not a checklist you complete at the end. Accessibility is a quality of the design itself. Imagine designing a building with stairs everywhere, then adding a ramp as an afterthought. Technically, you made it accessible. Practically, you told some people they were not part of the original plan. Digital products work the same way. Color contrast, text size, focus order, keyboard navigation, readable labels, and clear hierarchy are not edge cases. They define whether someone can use what you designed at all. A button that looks beautiful but cannot be reached by a keyboard is not a slightly flawed button. It is a broken one. ![Donut chart showing a single highlighted segment and the label "32 million adults in the United States have visual impairments"](/blog/accessibility-not-a-feature/accessibility_stats.png) A common misconception is that accessibility is about designing for a small minority. In actuality, it is about designing for the real world. Taking the figure above, 32 million adults in the United States having visual impairments, that's just shy of 12% of the entire adult population of the country. That's very much a not insignificant amount. People use products in bright sunlight. With one hand. With aging eyes. With temporary injuries. With slow connections. With screen readers. With cognitive load. Accessibility covers permanent, temporary, and situational limitations. At some point, it covers all of us. When accessibility is considered early, it rarely compromises aesthetics. Clear hierarchy improves scanability. Sufficient contrast improves legibility. Predictable interactions reduce cognitive effort. These things make designs better for everyone, not worse. The real cost appears when accessibility is ignored. Retrofits are expensive. Engineering work increases. Design intent gets compromised. What could have been a simple decision becomes a negotiation. As a designer, you are often the first person to decide who a product is for. Every choice you make either widens or narrows that circle. Accessibility is how you keep it open. So future designer, do not ask whether something is accessible enough. Ask whether accessibility was part of the decision in the first place. Design as if everyone belongs there, because they do. ## Further Reading - [The Designer's Guide to Web Accessibility](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/web-accessibility-primer/) on Smashing Magazine - [Designing for Web Accessibility](https://www.w3.org/WAI/tips/designing/) on W3C Web Accessibility Initiative ## More in this series - [Dear (Future) Designer: Don't Learn How To Code](/blog/dear-designer-dont-code) - [Dear (Future) Designer: Understand Why Touch Matters](/blog/fitts-law) --- ## Where Are The Humans? Category: Design Insights Published: Jan 13, 2026 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/where-are-the-humans Design is fundamentally about two things. Just two things. Humans, and their experiences. Everything we do as designers, regardless of what form of the craft we practice, digital or physical, can be reduced to just these two things. It might be a tad reductionist, but I'd find it hard to argue there's a more foundational baseline for the practice that is design, than this. And yet, with just a literal couple of things to keep track of, we seem to be losing sight of one of them. **Where are the humans?** Where, in this landscape that seems to fervently hurl itself into a future driven by artificial intelligences, are the humans? The focus has seemingly shifted away from the person at the receiving end of the experience. And we're heading towards an environment wherein we craft and tailor experiences without considering who's actually engaging with them. If anyone is, at all. Modern design has an empathy crisis. ## Abstractions, and Reductions Before we hastily attribute our collective loss of focus to the artificial intelligence boom, let's pause and reflect. While the AI surge is undoubtedly buzzy and convenient to blame, it's not the exclusive culprit for our diminishing empathy. Beneath the surface, there's a pervasive practice that predates the rise of technologies like ChatGPT. A practice that silently undermines our connection with users. Enter the world of reductive research practices in user understanding and product development. Very early on in my now well over a decade long career, the idea of a persona was dogmatically instilled into my young designer brain. It's impossible, after all, to design for all users. Or so I was told, repeatedly, and so I believed. So what we do instead, is we take a handful of users, and attempt to identify a common set of traits among some of them. Then we take those common traits, draw a box around some subset of them, and another box around the remainder. And ba-da-bing ba-da-boom. We've got ourselves a set of personas. This is then the point where we pretend to have majored in Statistics, and declare that it is statistically likely for the majority of users to fall within either of these buckets. And the ones that don't are outliers. We don't care about outliers. But none of this tells us anything about the human that this is supposed to be describing. We're already severals levels deep into abstracting the person who's supposed to be benefiting from our work at this point. Not humans or people, but "users". And not just any users. No. Predefined, shoved-into-a box-that-meets-our-business-goals personas. Let's take my dad for example. My dad is male. A white male. Retirement-aged. Likes to work on computers in his spare time. Supposedly enjoys spending time with his children. Donates to charity where he can. Easy fit for a persona one might think. We can probably dig a little deeper to define it further, but we've got a good start. A decent amount of information to draw haphazard conclusions from, and present them to our executive stakeholders, showing them we know exactly who our users are, and what they want. Or is it? Because that persona just as well describes Bill Gates as it does my dad. And yet I've worked in many a product development environment where that doesn't matter. It's enough to base our decisions off of and move forward. Despite the fact that my dad and Bill Gates could not be more different in practice. ![Somewhere along the way, people went from being people to being generalized Post-It sized footnotes.](/blog/where-are-the-humans/humans_personas.png) ##### Somewhere along the way, people went from being people to being generalized Post-It sized footnotes. Because we can't stem the flow of features. We can't afford to spend time asking ourselves who we're actually designing for. That's not our job anymore. Because there's no empathy. We don't care for the human side of the experience. There's only abstractions and reductions. Traits and attributes carefully distilled to fit an existing mold. It's important to note that personas aren't inherently harmful. But the moment we allow them to stand in for real people, we give ourselves permission to stop listening. Artificial intelligence notwithstanding, we've been trained to do this. To not care. To design for the masses. For uniformity. Which is exactly why I believe this path we're going down is so perilous. ## The Ghost in the Machine Anyone who has spent any amount of time on social networks, online forums, or other forms of online social engagements, has likely noticed a disturbing trend. An increasingly large number of replies, or even topics, wasn't authored by a human at all. LinkedIn might currently be the most egregious example of this. A post that gains any amount of traction at all, is soon swarmed by bots pretending to be a real user. They'll jump into the replies and neatly summarize the key points of the post, before complimenting with a series of loosely cohesive adjectives. And then another bot might reply to the first bot, who in turn replies to said reply. And so forth. While these forms of "fake" communication and engagement are often still called out, the inflection point where bot-generated content and real user content are indistinguishable, draws ever closer. Which again, begs the question: **Where are the humans?** The tools that provide the foundation for these types of interactions don't care for the end-consumer. Not end-user, mind you, because that would be the person allowing the bot to write content on their behalf. No, the end-consumer is the person on the receiving end of the probabilistic calculation of nouns and adjectives. ## No Exit It isn't just social media platforms that suffer from the disappearance of humans either. Whereas the blame for this can to some degree be laid at the feet of users on these platforms, it's a far too common occurence nowadays to see companies, from startups to megacorporations, eschewing this human connection, in favor of a more mechanical replacement. Recently, I had the pleasure of needing to track down a package that was supposed to be delivered to me. Something I'm sure a larger number of our dear readers are all too familiar with. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that sometimes, a single phone call is all you need. Not so much in this case. You see, the not-to-be-mentioned carrier that was delivering my packages with their yellow-and-red livery, had opted to replace what seemed to be their entire customer service with a voice-activated directory. Not the ones I encountered many times in the past, where you enter a specific series of numbers to narrow down your query. This was entirely dictated by myself speaking to a computer-generated script. And it did not work. At all. "Could you repeat that?", "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that", and the phrase repeated ad infinitum that now haunts me, "Please tell us how we can help", formed 90% of the conversation. Not counting the immense frustration on my end that built up over the course of the call. If one can even can even really call it that. At no point, was I offered a way out. An opportunity to speak to a real, live human being. Someone who understood what I was trying to communicate without the confines of their narrowly-defined script. A person to whom "detail" was an actual word in their accepted vocabulary. I ended up driving to the nearest office location of the carrier, some one-and-a-half hours one way, in order to find out what had happened to my delivery. Because it was easier for the organization to place the onus of getting a delivery on me, rather than for them to actually offer a complete, end-to-end service. ![At no point was I offered an opportunity to speak to a real, live human being.](/blog/where-are-the-humans/humans_customer-service.png) ## A Way Out, and Forward All is not lost. But reclaiming what we've given up will require intention, not tools. If modern design finds itself in an empathy crisis, it's not because we lack frameworks or methodologies. It's because we've grown comfortable designing at a distance, buffered by abstractions, mediated by dashboards, and insulated from the people who actually live with the consequences of our decisions. The way forward starts with proximity. Not focus groups. Not surveys. Not personas refined within an inch of their lives. But actual conversations with actual people. Unscripted, uncomfortable, occasionally inconvenient conversations that resist neat categorization. Conversations that don't immediately map to a feature request or a KPI, but instead reveal motivation, frustration, context, and contradiction. In other words, humanity. This kind of qualitative research isn't efficient. It doesn't scale cleanly. And that is precisely its value. Empathy has never been scalable. It has only ever been transferable through attention and care. When we trade that away for velocity, we shouldn't be surprised when the results feel hollow. Designers don't have to do this alone. Some of the richest sources of human understanding already exist inside our organizations, quietly ignored. Sales teams, account managers, support staff, people whose entire role revolves around building and maintaining real relationships with customers. These teams carry stories, not segments. Detail, not averages. They understand why a customer hesitates, what they're afraid of, and what finally convinces them to trust. And yet, we rarely listen. Instead, we privilege artifacts over experiences, metrics over moments, and abstractions over people. We optimize funnels while eroding trust. We automate empathy and then wonder why our products feel cold, brittle, and interchangeable. Bringing the human back into design does not mean rejecting technology. It means refusing to let technology dictate the terms of engagement. It means designing systems that leave room for exception, for failure, for conversation, for exit. It means remembering that on the other side of every interface, every flow, every "user," is a person who did not consent to be reduced. The future of design is not artificial intelligence. It is not automation. It is not scale. **It is choice.** The choice to care. The choice to listen. The choice to design with humans, not merely for them. Because if we can no longer answer the question "Where are the humans?" then the problem isn't our tools. **It's us.** --- ## Dear (Future) Designer: Understand Why Touch Matters Category: Design Insights Published: Jan 12, 2026 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/fitts-law Ever heard of Fitts's Law? No, it's not the latest social media trend or a design buzzword. It's a simple, fundamental principle that packs a punch in the world of design. Picture this: You're navigating through a bustling city, aiming to reach a specific destination. Would you opt for a narrow, cluttered alley or a wide, clear path to your spot? It's a no-brainer, right? > The law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. > > — Wikipedia, Fitts's Law Fitts's Law is that wide, clear path in the digital world. It's a straightforward concept stating that the time required to reach a target area is determined by the size of the target and its distance from the starting point. In design, it translates to this: the bigger and closer a clickable area is, the easier and quicker it is for users to interact with it. Let's bring this theory into a practical, user interface context. Think of your mobile app's navigation bar. Larger icons or buttons placed closer to the user's thumb zone are easier to tap, reducing the effort required for users to select an option. ![A black screen displaying a music app](/blog/fitts-law/fitts-law_spotify.png) ##### Screenshot captured in Spotify. For instance, think of Spotify. Or any other music player app. In practically all of them, the "Pause" button is generously sized and strategically placed within thumb-reach at the bottom-center of the screen. It follows Fitts's Law by providing a larger and more accessible target, leading to quicker and more accurate user interactions. Likewise, Fitts's Law ensures higher accessibility, especially on touch-oriented devices. ![Various icons with colored touch areas highlighted](/blog/fitts-law/fitts-law_material.png) ##### Image by Google for Material Design Guidelines. Especially in elements like iconography, having a tappable area that is larger than the icon itself is key to making these components accessible to users. By embracing Fitts's Law, designers can create interfaces that not only look sleek but also work well. Remember, aesthetics matter, but so does designing for effortless interaction, making the user experience a smooth path from point A to B. Understanding and applying Fitts's Law is a useful principle in a designer's arsenal. It's not about simply making things bigger; it's about strategically enhancing usability and interaction design. So, future designer, let's champion user-friendly designs that make every interaction feel like a breeze. ## Further Reading - [Fitts's Law and Its Applications in UX](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/fitts-s-law-the-importance-of-size-and-distance-in-ui-design) on Interaction Design Foundation. - [Fitts' Law In The Touch Era](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/fitts-law-touch-era/) on Smashing Magazine. - [Fitts's Law: The Importance of Size and Distance in UI Design](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fitts-law/) on Nielsen Norman Group. ## More in this series - [Dear (Future) Designer: Don't Learn How To Code](/blog/dear-designer-dont-code) - [Dear (Future) Designer: Accessibility Is Not A Feature](/blog/accessibility-not-a-feature) --- ## Case Study — Shopify Category: Case Study Published: Jul 21, 2025 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/store-differentiation import { StoreDetailsCard, ShopifyPlusNav, CustomizeStoreModal, FlagEmojiScatter, StoreListAbbreviated, AbbreviationRules, StoreSettingsMockup, StoreDifferentiationMetricsCard } from "@/app/components/CaseStudy"; ## Setting the Scene Imagine you're a merchant selling gym clothes and exercise equipment under the brand name **Titan**. You started with a single Shopify store serving Canadian customers.
Business is booming. As a Shopify Plus merchant, you're now expanding into new markets: the US, Europe, Australia. Each region needs its own storefront with localized pricing, currency, and fulfillment. You've hired developers who need sandbox environments to test new features without breaking production. Your ops team wants a staging store to preview holiday campaigns before they go live. And your B2B arm? That's a separate wholesale channel entirely. What was once a single store is now a network of **20+ Shopify stores** you manage daily. Each with their own domain, admin panel, and team members logging in and out.
See the problem? This was the challenge we tackled alongside Shopify's product team. ## The Navigation That Wasn't Helping
This was the Shopify Plus navigation at the time. Your stores lived in a flat list at the bottom of the sidebar. Identical icons, no visual hierarchy, no way to distinguish production from staging at a glance.
This wasn't an oversight. It was a consequence of Shopify's origin story. Unlike Amazon, which built top-down to serve big box retailers and massive conglomerates with tens of thousands of SKUs, Shopify focused on the little guy. Mom and pop shops. Vendors with two products and a dream to build something of their own.
Stores were never meant to span regions, operate across countries, or support the kind of development workflows that enterprise teams demand. One merchant, one store, one dream.
But Shopify Plus changed everything. Suddenly you're managing 20+ stores, switching between them dozens of times a day, and every single one looks identical. One wrong click and you're editing prices on your live Canadian store instead of staging. That mistake has real consequences.
We spoke to **120+ merchants** from across the globe. San Diego to Santiago, Amsterdam to Cape Town, and across as many languages, writing directions, and character systems as we could find. The goal was to gather a truly multi-national, multi-cultural dataset. How do merchants in Japan think about store organization? What mental models do German teams use? How do right-to-left languages change the way people scan a navigation? From this research stemmed a series of experiments in wayfinding. One early direction: let merchants customize how their stores appear in the navigation. Give them control over abbreviations, emojis, even custom images to create instant visual differentiation.
The emoji picker was particularly interesting. Flags became an intuitive way to represent regional stores. A Canadian flag for Titan Canada, a US flag for Titan US. No reading required, just instant recognition. But emoji proved problematic in ways we hadn't anticipated. First, the practical constraints. Emoji didn't fit Shopify Plus's carefully constrained color palette. For accessibility reasons, the platform relied on specific color combinations that ensured sufficient contrast and readability. Emoji render differently across operating systems and browsers, making contrast ratios unpredictable and impossible to control at the platform level. More fundamentally, emoji carried [cultural baggage that varied across regions](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181211-why-emoji-mean-different-things-in-different-cultures). A clapping hands emoji 👏 might signal applause in some contexts but carry very different connotations elsewhere. The thumbs up 👍 that feels casual in North America can land poorly in other cultures. What seems like a universal visual language is anything but. Flags presented their own minefield. National representation is never neutral. It privileges some identities while erasing others. Which flag represents a merchant serving the Kurdish diaspora? What about regions with contested sovereignty, or communities whose identities have been systematically suppressed? Flags flattened complicated ethnoracial identities into neat national boxes that many of our merchants didn't fit into. The emoji experiment taught us something important: simplicity that ignores complexity isn't simplicity at all. It's exclusion wearing a friendly face. ## The Power of Three Letters We kept circling back to one option that initially seemed too boring to be the answer: simple letter abbreviations. Two to three letters. No colors. No cultural symbolism. Just text. What abbreviations lacked in visual flair, they made up for in practicality. They were scannable at a glance, worked in any color palette, and carried no hidden cultural meanings. "TC" for Titan Canada. "TS" for Titan Staging. "TX" for Titan Experimental. More importantly, abbreviations were *shared*. Unlike personal emoji choices that might differ between team members, abbreviations were synchronized across all admin users on a store. When Sarah in Toronto and Priya in London both saw "TS", they knew they were looking at staging. No ambiguity. No miscommunication. Yet there was still room for differentiation. Merchants could craft their own conventions, using numbers for sandbox environments, letters for regions, or any system that matched their mental model. The constraint of three characters became a creative canvas rather than a limitation.
The navigation transformed from a wall of identical icons into a scannable list where each store had its own identity. Production environments stood apart from staging. Regional stores were instantly distinguishable. The cognitive load of context-switching dropped dramatically. ## The Rules Behind the Letters Of course, "just use letters" sounds simple until you try to systematize it across tens of thousands of merchants with stores named everything from "Bob's Bikes" to "クラシルセレクト公式通販". We developed a rule system that automatically generated sensible abbreviations while remaining predictable and consistent. At launch, the system accepted A-Z, numbers, and accented characters, covering Latin scripts and their variations.
The rules were designed to extract meaningful abbreviations from store names of varying lengths. Single-word names took the first three characters. Two-word names combined the first letter of the first word with the first two letters of the second. For three or more words, we took the initials of the first, second-to-last, and last words, capturing both the brand identity and the store variant. For merchants operating in mixed-language environments, like Japanese stores with romanized brand names, the system intelligently extracted Latin characters while gracefully handling the rest. And for stores named entirely in non-Latin scripts? We fell back to a simple store icon, acknowledging that forced transliteration would only create confusion. In subsequent releases, we expanded the rule system to support additional character sets under slightly more restrictive guidelines. Cyrillic and Greek alphabets were added, along with select characters from other scripts that maintained clear visual distinction at small sizes. The goal was always the same: provide enough flexibility to feel personal, with enough constraint to remain scannable. ## Live in Shopify Plus Today This three-letter abbreviation system is the configuration that shipped, and it's still accessible in Shopify Plus today. Every merchant with multiple stores can customize their internal store name and identifier through the store settings.
The "Internal store name and identifier" setting lives right below the customer-facing store name. It's a small distinction with significant implications: merchants can keep their public branding clean ("Gymshark Finland") while their admin teams navigate using whatever shorthand makes sense internally. ## Measuring Success How do you measure whether people are clicking on the right store? This question haunted us through the entire project. Traditional metrics didn't quite fit. We couldn't track "accidental clicks" directly. There's no way to know someone's intent when they navigate to a store. Task completion rates were too coarse. User satisfaction surveys felt too subjective and lagging. We went in circles for weeks, building increasingly complex instrumentation proposals, before taking a step back and realizing the answer had been in front of us all along. **Bounce rate.** Specifically: how frequently were users navigating to a store URL or tab, then navigating away again within five seconds? A bounce that quick strongly suggested they had landed on the wrong store, realized their mistake, and corrected course. Before the rollout, this bounce rate sat at **21%**. One in five store navigations was immediately abandoned. For merchants managing dozens of stores with dozens of team members, that's thousands of wasted clicks every month. Thousands of moments of confusion. Thousands of opportunities for someone to accidentally make changes to the wrong environment. Six months after launching the three-letter abbreviation system, that bounce rate had dropped to **under 4%**. A reduction of over 80%. Not through forcing new behaviors or adding friction, but by making the right choice easier to see at a glance. The abbreviations worked exactly as intended, creating just enough visual differentiation that merchants could trust their navigation without second-guessing. What started as a research question about wayfinding became a foundational piece of the Shopify Plus experience. A quiet improvement that thousands of merchants use every day without ever thinking about it. That's the goal of good design work: to solve problems so thoroughly that they stop feeling like problems at all. ## Our Role Working closely with Shopify's product and engineering teams, our team led the design research and UX strategy for this multi-store wayfinding initiative. Our product designer drove the user research across 120+ merchants globally, while our team collaborated on prototyping, testing, and iterating on the abbreviation system that shipped to production. --- ## The Art of Disappearing Tech Category: Design Philosophy Published: Mar 26, 2025 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/disappearing-tech Most of our devices shout for attention. It's refreshing to consider a perspective that cuts through the noise. Martin Heidegger was a 20th-century German philosopher who wrote about how we relate to tools, spaces, and the rhythms of daily life. He challenges us to rethink our relationship with technology. He wasn't interested in flashy features or buzzwords. He cared about how tools become part of our daily grind, almost like old friends who just get it. Heidegger’s ideas push us to look beyond the screen and consider how technology fits into our lives. His philosophy isn’t about turning devices into relics of the past; it’s about designing products that quietly support us, almost like a trusted sidekick on a wild adventure. This approach has serious implications for how we design. Making sure that our tech isn’t just smart but feels like an extension of who we are. ## The Vanishing Act of Technology Heidegger talks about “ready-to-hand”—a state where a tool is so intuitive, you barely notice it. Think about that moment when you’re riding your bike, and you’re not thinking about the pedals or the gears; you're just moving. That’s the kind of smooth interaction we’re talking about here. Great design shouldn’t scream for your attention; it should be there, reliably in the background, letting you get on with your day. When technology achieves that level of invisibility, it stops being a distraction and starts being a genuine aid. Imagine an app that’s so effortlessly easy to use, you hardly ever notice it’s there, yet it’s always ready when you need it. That’s the magic of designing with Heidegger’s ideas. Creating products that blend into your life like a well-worn leather jacket, always there without ever being in the way. ## Embracing Your World At the heart of Heidegger’s philosophy is the idea of “being-in-the-world.” This isn’t some lofty, abstract concept—it’s a reminder that our lives are deeply connected to the spaces and moments we live in. Every interaction you have with your environment, including with technology, is part of a bigger picture. It’s not just about the gadget in your hand; it’s about how it fits into your day-to-day adventures. ![Screenshot of the Waze app showing real-time traffic updates and route suggestions, adapted to the user's current location.](/blog/disappearing-tech/heidegger_waze.png) ##### Waze transforms the navigation experience by adapting to the user’s environment, whether it's the chaos of city traffic or quiet rural roads, making it a smooth, context-aware tool for the drive. For product designers, this means crafting experiences that resonate with real life. Whether it's a navigation app that intuitively understands your local shortcuts or a smart device that adapts to your routine, the goal is to design technology that feels right at home in the world you live in. When products are designed with an acute sense of place, they don’t just function. They enhance the very texture of your daily experience. ## Crafting Real Experiences Heidegger’s notion of “dwelling” isn’t about building houses—it’s about creating spaces where you truly feel at home. In digital design, this idea translates into crafting experiences that aren’t cluttered with needless distractions. It’s about building interfaces and apps that invite you to relax, to pause, and to interact on your own terms, without overwhelming your senses. Imagine a meditation or wellness app that doesn’t bombard you with pop-ups and relentless notifications but instead creates a serene digital space where you can just be. It’s that kind of authentic, human-centered design that makes technology feel less like a taskmaster and more like a friendly companion. By focusing on genuine, tailored experiences, designers can help users carve out pockets of calm in an otherwise hectic digital world. ## Breaking Free from the Data Trap One of Heidegger’s more pointed critiques is how modern tech tends to “enframe” our lives, squeezing our rich experiences into neat little data points. This isn’t just a philosophical gripe; it’s a wake-up call for anyone designing digital products. The risk is turning technology into a relentless taskmaster that monitors every move, rather than a helpful tool that supports your flow. The antidote? A healthy dose of mindful minimalism. Instead of stuffing products with every possible feature, aim to strip back the clutter and focus on what really matters. Design with an eye toward simplicity and clarity, so your technology becomes a trusted partner rather than a controlling overseer. It’s about giving users room to breathe and engage with the world on their own terms, without the constant digital shove. ## Down-to-Earth Design Takeaways So, what does all this mean when you’re staring down at a blank canvas for your next project? First off, aim for those invisible interfaces. Build products that are so naturally intuitive, they blend into the background of everyday life. When tech works that smoothly, you’re not forced to think about it. It just happens. Next, keep your design grounded in the user’s world. Think about where and how your product will be used. Is it meant for a bustling city commute, a quiet home office, or maybe on the go in the great outdoors? By understanding the context, you can create experiences that truly resonate. ![Photo of a Nest thermostat displaying the current temperature and an automatic adjustment based on user habits.](/blog/disappearing-tech/heidegger_nest.png) ##### The Nest thermostat blends into daily life by learning and adapting to your routine, automatically adjusting the temperature to match your habits, creating comfort without conscious effort. And finally, embrace a minimalist approach. Resist the urge to pile on extra features. Instead, focus on making your product a reliable, unobtrusive companion that enhances life rather than complicating it. ## A Fresh Look at the Future of Design Heidegger’s philosophy isn’t about rejecting technology—it’s about reimagining it. It invites us to see design not just as a way to solve problems, but as a means to enrich our daily experiences. By focusing on context, authenticity, and mindful interaction, we can create products that do more than just work. They make life a little bit better. In a world that often feels overwhelmed by digital noise, designing with Heidegger’s insights can be a breath of fresh air. It’s about creating technology that supports you without getting in the way, that feels like a natural extension of who you are. And in doing so, we might just find a way to navigate our increasingly complex digital lives with a bit more ease and a lot more soul. **More in this series** - [From Plato to Pixels](/blog/plato-to-pixels) - [Cultivating Virtue in Design](/blog/cultivating-virtue) --- ## Cultivating Virtue in Design Category: Design Philosophy Published: Sep 23, 2024 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/cultivating-virtue Many years ago, when I was deep in the halls of academia, Aristotle, a Greek philosopher from the 4th century BCE, stood out as one of the most practical thinkers in a sea of abstract thinkers. His philosophy wasn’t about contemplating unattainable ideals or engaging in intellectual exercises divorced from real life. Instead, Aristotle concerned himself with how we could live a good life by cultivating virtue. Fast-forward to today, and that same Aristotelian focus on practical wisdom can guide us in an unlikely domain: digital product design. Tech products increasingly dominate our lives. Designers often focus on user engagement, efficiency, and aesthetics. But what if we could use Aristotle’s philosophy to design products that do more than just meet immediate needs? What if our products could help people live better, more virtuous lives? ## Living a Good Life For those unfamiliar with Aristotle’s philosophy, his concept of *virtue ethics* is key. Aristotle didn’t think that living a good life meant following rigid rules or simply aiming for personal pleasure. Instead, he believed in developing *virtues*, positive habits that help us find a balance between extremes. For instance, courage lies between the extremes of recklessness and cowardice, and generosity sits between stinginess and wastefulness. According to Aristotle, living a good life requires practicing these virtues in a balanced way, a concept he referred to as the *golden mean*. Virtues, for Aristotle, are not innate but learned through experience and repetition. The more we practice a virtuous behavior, the more it becomes part of our character. His philosophy teaches that real happiness and fulfillment, or what he called *eudaimonia* (flourishing or well-being), come from developing and practicing these virtues over time. So, how does this ancient wisdom apply to product design? If we design with an Aristotelian mindset, we’re not just creating products that solve surface-level problems or satisfy immediate desires. We’re creating products that help users build good habits, support balance, and promote their long-term well-being. ## Building Habits, Not Addictions Aristotle would argue that the best products aren’t those that keep users hooked through addictive engagement loops. Instead, they are products that encourage users to grow and cultivate virtues, helping them find balance in their digital lives. Many products today focus on capturing attention and maximizing engagement, often leading to addictive behavior rather than self-improvement. Take the app **Forest**, for example. Rather than promoting endless scrolling or attention-draining notifications, Forest encourages users to develop focus and time-management skills. The app works by allowing users to “plant a tree” when they need to focus. If they stay on task, the tree grows; if they leave the app or get distracted, the tree dies. Over time, this simple, gamified system promotes the virtue of *self-discipline*, helping users develop healthier work habits and find balance between productivity and distraction. In an Aristotelian sense, Forest helps users practice moderation, finding the balance between the chaos of constant distractions and the rigid overemphasis on productivity. It’s a product that cultivates virtue, enabling users to improve themselves, not just engage for the sake of it. ## Designing for Long-Term Fulfillment At the heart of Aristotle’s philosophy is the idea of *eudaimonia*, a deep, long-lasting sense of fulfillment that comes from living a virtuous life. It’s different from pleasure, which is fleeting, and focuses instead on living in a way that promotes growth and well-being. In product design, this means shifting the focus from short-term rewards to encouraging users to take actions that lead to long-term fulfillment. Consider apps like **Duolingo**, which guide users through the challenging but rewarding process of learning a new language. Instead of offering instant gratification, Duolingo emphasizes steady, consistent effort. Through features like streaks and daily practice goals, the app encourages users to develop the *virtue of perseverance*—sticking with a difficult task over time to achieve real progress. This approach reflects Aristotle’s belief that mastery and growth lead to true fulfillment. ![An illustration of Duolingo's language learning app, featuring its iconic mascot and 5 other people.](/blog/cultivating-virtue/aristotle_duolingo.png) ##### Toeing the line between addiction and habit-building, Duolingo reinforces the concept of the virtue of perserverance, encouraging users to stick with the difficult task of learning a new language. Similarly, fitness apps like **Fitbit** go beyond tracking daily steps. They encourage users to cultivate *moderation* and *self-care* by setting reasonable goals and promoting gradual improvements in health and fitness. By helping users strike a balance between being too sedentary and overexertion, these products guide people toward healthier habits, ultimately promoting their long-term well-being. ## Practical Design Implications: The Golden Mean Aristotle’s idea of the *golden mean*—finding the balance between extremes—has clear implications for product design. Many digital products either overwhelm users with too many features or oversimplify to the point of frustration. The ideal product, like Aristotle’s virtues, strikes a balance between functionality and simplicity. ![An illustration of Duolingo's language learning app, featuring its iconic mascot and 5 other people.](/blog/cultivating-virtue/aristotle_notion.png) ##### Notion's large selection of templates illustrates its flexibility. Users can engage with as little (or as many) of these features as they need. A great example of this balance is **Notion**, a popular productivity tool. Notion offers a robust set of features for note-taking, planning, and organization, but it’s flexible enough for users to choose how much or how little they want to engage with. It doesn’t burden users with too many preset templates or limit their creativity. Instead, it allows them to shape the app to meet their unique needs, encouraging the *virtue of autonomy* by giving users control over their workflow while fostering discipline in organizing their tasks. ## Encouraging Growth and Virtue If we apply Aristotle’s teachings to product design, we should aim to create products that go beyond helping users achieve surface-level tasks. They should help users grow. This might mean designing experiences that promote reflection, support genuine interactions, or guide users toward healthier, more virtuous habits. For example, **Headspace**, a popular meditation app, doesn’t just offer quick stress relief. It helps users cultivate important virtues like mindfulness, patience, and calm. These are traits essential for living a balanced and fulfilling life, and Headspace encourages users to practice these virtues regularly, leading to long-term personal growth. Aristotle would likely appreciate how the app fosters *eudaimonia* by helping users find inner peace and clarity through daily meditation. By integrating Aristotle’s wisdom into our design philosophy, we can create products that not only serve users’ immediate needs but also contribute to their long-term well-being. When we focus on helping users become better versions of themselves, our designs gain deeper meaning and impact. ## Designing to Flourish In the fast-paced world of product design, it’s easy to focus on quick wins, features that boost engagement or trendy visual aesthetics. But Aristotle reminds us to think beyond the immediate. By designing products that encourage users to cultivate virtue, find balance, and pursue long-term well-being, we can create a richer, more meaningful digital experience for them. Next time you sit down to design, consider Aristotle’s teachings. Ask yourself: How can I design a product that promotes balance, encourages growth, and helps users flourish? By incorporating these enduring principles, you might just find that your product not only meets user needs but also helps them lead better, more virtuous lives. ## Further Reading - [Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8438/8438-h/8438-h), is available for free on Project Gutenberg. - [Cultivating Virtue in Design](/blog/cultivating-virtue) - [The Art of Disappearing Tech](/blog/disappearing-tech) --- ## From Plato to Pixels Category: Design Philosophy Published: Sep 2, 2024 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/plato-to-pixels A long time ago, in college, I studied philosophy. And I absolutely loved every single second of it. Yet the reality is that philosophy does not a career make. At least, not for most people. So life took me down a different path. All the while though, I have been looking for connections between my love for (often ancient) philosophical wisdom, and the practicality of my day-to-day job. Which isn't as far-fetched as you might assume. In the ever-evolving world of product design, where every pixel is meticulously planned and every user experience carefully crafted, it's easy to get caught up in the latest trends, tools, and technologies. But what if the key to truly innovative design lies not in the newest software or most popular aesthetic, but in ideas from over two thousand years ago? This might sound unlikely, but the philosophy of Plato, an ancient Greek thinker, offers surprising ideas that can guide modern design practices in practical ways. ## An Ideal World For those who may not be familiar, Plato was a philosopher who lived in ancient Greece around 400 BCE. He is one of the most influential figures in Western philosophy, and his ideas have shaped many aspects of thought, from politics to science to art. Central to his philosophy is the concept of "Forms" or "Ideas," not the kind of ideas we have when brainstorming, but a deeper, more fundamental notion. Imagine every object you encounter: a chair, a smartphone, a coffee cup. These are all specific instances of a general category of objects. They are "copies" or "shadows" of a perfect, ideal version that exists in a non-physical space. This ideal version is what Plato called a "Form." According to him, all the chairs in the world, no matter how different they are, share something essential that makes them "chairs." The Form of a chair is this essence, the perfect, unchanging blueprint that all real-world chairs try to emulate but never quite achieve ![Two chairs of different design. One Eames lounge chair, and one Ikea set.](/blog/plato-to-pixels/plato_chairs.png) ##### To Plato, despite their different designs, these chairs all aspire to the same ideal or "Form". Plato believed that our physical world is a reflection of a higher, more perfect reality, and that true knowledge comes from understanding these perfect Forms rather than just their imperfect manifestations in the real world. In a similar way, modern designers can think about their work not just as a response to immediate user needs or aesthetic trends, but as an attempt to get closer to some ideal version of their product, a perfect, enduring design. _Interesting. So, how does this ancient philosophy apply to product design today?_ Great question. Here are a few practical implications of Platonism that can inform and inspire your approach to creating products: ## The Pursuit of Perfection Plato’s philosophy encourages us to strive for an ideal form, a perfect version of whatever we are designing. In the context of product design, this could mean aiming for a product that is not just functional or aesthetically pleasing, but one that perfectly balances both qualities in a way that feels enduring and universally appealing. Consider Apple products, for instance. Apple’s design philosophy is often seen as a pursuit of perfection, a Platonic ideal of technology. The design of the iPhone or MacBook is not just about the latest trends; it’s about creating something that feels simple, elegant, and intuitive. Apple’s commitment to minimalist design and usability reflects the Platonic idea of striving toward a perfect form, a product that is not just good for today but remains relevant and desirable over time. Or, in furniture design, we have the famous Eames Chair, seen above. This chair is celebrated for its balance of form and function, combining high-quality materials with ergonomic design to create a piece of furniture that is both beautiful and comfortable. It’s an attempt to create the ideal chair, one that satisfies aesthetic desires while meeting the practical need for comfort. When designing a product, ask yourself: What would the perfect version of this look like? Consider not just the current needs and preferences of users, but what would make this product fundamentally excellent. This might lead to different design choices, ones that prioritize longevity, simplicity, and clarity over flashiness or trendiness. ## Where Form Meets Function Plato’s theory of Forms emphasizes that the ideal version of an object combines perfect form and perfect function. This balance is crucial in product design, where usability and aesthetics must work hand in hand. A beautiful product that’s hard to use is just as flawed as an ugly product that works well. The ideal product seamlessly integrates both aspects. Approach your design with a dual focus: aesthetic beauty and functional efficiency. For instance, consider the principles of Material Design, which integrates tactile elements and visual cues that mimic real-world behaviors to create intuitive user experiences. Or [Shopify's recent revamp of its design system, Polaris](https://ux.shopify.com/uplifting-shopify-polaris-7c54fc6564d9), which saw a greater focus on a simplistic, tactile, real-world inspired direction. It’s not just about looking good. Every design choice serves a functional purpose, making the user experience both beautiful and effective. ![A Braun Control calculator, designed by Dietrich Lubs and Dieter Rams.](/blog/plato-to-pixels/plato_calculator.png) ##### While Dietrich Lubs' and Dieter Rams' rounded buttons may seem old-fashioned now, there's something to be said for the longevity of the calculator design in itself. It has no embellishments, no unnecessary details, not sacrificing function over form. Similarly, we could think of Google’s homepage. It’s famously minimalist, a single search bar on a blank white page. This design hasn’t changed much in the decades since Google's first entry onto the world wide web, and that’s because it gets to the heart of what the product is: a search engine. The design doesn’t distract from that core function, making it a kind of Platonic ideal of a search interface. ## Meaningful Experiences Plato believed that true fulfillment comes from engaging with higher ideals. For product designers, this means thinking about how a product can create more than just a functional interaction, but a genuine experience. What higher purpose does your design serve? How does it enhance the user’s life in a significant way? Think beyond the immediate use case of your product. Consider how it fits into the larger context of your user’s life. Does it make their day easier? Does it connect them with others? Does it help them achieve a goal or learn something new? A product that contributes to the user's higher needs, like community, growth, or well-being — will resonate more deeply and be more valued. It's a fundamental reason why social networks, regardless of their particular niche, are such an incredibly sticky product. A great example of this is meditation apps like Headspace or Calm. They are designed not just to be easy to use or visually appealing, but to genuinely help users find calm and clarity in their daily lives. This aligns with Plato’s idea that true value comes from engaging with higher, more genuine purposes. By embracing some of the foundational principles of Platonism, product designers can lift their work beyond the constraints of current trends or technological limitations. Instead of merely responding to what users want today, designers can strive to create products that reflect a deeper, more enduring standard of excellence. This approach can lead to designs that are not only more enduring but also more valuable to users. So, next time you sit down to design a new product, ask yourself: What would Plato do? How can you strive for the ideal, balance form with function, and create something that truly enhances the human experience? By thinking in these terms, you might just find that the path from Plato to pixels leads to a whole new way of thinking about design. ## Further reading - [The Republic, by Plato](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h), is available for free on Project Gutenberg. - [The Art of Disappearing Tech](/blog/disappearing-tech) - [Cultivating Virtue in Design](/blog/cultivating-virtue) --- ## Dear (Future) Designer: Don't Learn How To Code Category: Design Career Published: Jun 6, 2024 URL: https://incomparable.design/blog/dear-designer-dont-code Let's dive straight into it. The world of design often dangles the coding carrot in front of you, promising a brighter future if only you could become the master of all codes. But hold up, let's pause and take a closer look at this narrative. In today's design landscape, it's not about becoming a coding virtuoso but about conversing fluently in the language of the digital world. Understanding the basic syntax of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript can indeed be an asset, yet the real power lies in comprehending the foundational concepts behind these languages. Imagine this scenario: You're sketching out a captivating user interface, crafting each visual element meticulously. You then discuss the layout with your engineering counterpart, aiming for a harmonious translation of your vision into the digital world. Suddenly, a terminology mismatch blindsides you both! You're describing the same elements, but using different dialects, your visual designs versus the technical language of development. Now, here's where the magic happens. Knowing that the button you've meticulously designed in Figma and the `