To be prepared for the future, develop Urgent Optimism
Since I’ve been without a work commute for over 2 years now, my podcast listening categories have shifted from productivity and self-improvement to stories and inspiration. Anyone else?
But I found time for a new episode of The Tim Ferris Show: Jane McGonigal — How She Predicted COVID in 2010, Becoming the Expert of Your Own Future, Trust Warfare, the 10-Year Winter, and How to Cultivate Optimism (#579)
McGonigal gives her title as “future forecaster” and is fascinating to listen to. She doesn’t just run simulations of the social, economic, and political possibilities and consequences of future scenarios, she offers practical solutions on how to prepare and not get totally depressed by the future.
My favorite practical tip when you’re feeling overwhelmed by one looming disaster after another on the news is to google “solutions for ______”, where the blank is anything big and scary: climate change, deforestation, plastic oceans, etc. The results will send you down a rabbit hole that ideally you will emerge from more hopeful than before. (I’m still worried about the world’s overflowing landfills, but at least this tip helped me find smart people that are doing something about it.)
Also in the podcast, they get into why 1 in 10 people could have a tick-borne meat allergy in the near future, so crazy!
UX design in 2022: make it accessible or don’t make it
Companies can no longer afford to ignore the accessibility of their digital products and properties. Consumers speak with their money, and companies and brands that do the right thing for their users are rewards.
An accessible design is better for everyone, and inclusive products are good for businesses.
Because of this, accessible design is not just a specialization but should be a requirement for designers in any role, in my opinion.
My recent Medium article, Designing accessible websites: guidelines that every UX designer needs to know, gives a practical guide you can reference throughout any project and focuses on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
In addition to reading up on accessible design, I recommend using and understanding some of the common accessibility tools (here’s a guide to the built-in tools for Mac). Just using the screen readers features for an hour or so for research for my article was enough never to want to force anyone to navigate a poorly developed site ever again.
To maintain hope for the future, start by visiting the dark side
I recently finished the book The Every by Dave Eggers, the sequel to The Circle (which is also a movie with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson). Both books are set in the near future and describe a world that is has been all but taken over by one company, The Every. The company produces digital products to surveil, track and “improve” everything from your steps, sleep, food intake, vocabulary, and laughter, to any ‘wrong’ action outside and inside the home (under the pretense of “solving” domestic violence). The book’s world is eerily close to ours, and it's clear from some of the characters’ monologues where Eggers stands on the regulatory issues facing tech companies when it comes to privacy, publishing liability, algorithms, and surveillance. In the book, people are perceived only as consumers, eager to abandon their rights, principles, and freedom for the convenience of all-knowing technology promising to improve their lives.
So why would I recommend such a depressing book? Because I think dystopian novels often provide a valuable lesson in considering the potential political or social consequences of our actions or in-action.
Seeing one author’s vision of how a society can gradually (or suddenly) end up in ruins of its own making might make us think twice about our participation in similar activities.
In a 2017 article about writing The Handmaid’s Tale and what the book means in the age of Trump, Margaret Atwood called her book an “anti-prediction.” She said, “If this future can be described in detail, maybe it won’t happen. But such wishful thinking cannot be depended on either.”
She describes her book in a way that I think represents the genre as a whole, calling it “the literature of witness.”
“Offred [the narrator of the book] records her story as best she can; then she hides it, trusting that it may be discovered later, by someone who is free to understand it and share it. This is an act of hope: Every recorded story implies a future reader.”
Buy it on Amazon (ironically supporting the powers Eggers cautions against) or read this thorough review on the Guardian.
Thanks for reading! I’m a UX designer and writer, and design-adjacent content writer. If you’d like to be featured in the next issue of UX Adjacent, send me a short bio and links to your website or profiles.
If you are looking for a way to help a Ukrainian family, consider donating to my friend Liza, a fellow Kentucky resident whose brother, his Special Olympics coach, and teammates are separated from their families in this terrifying war. Fundraiser page here - Sharkova Family in Ukraine