You can mark the maturity of a creative field by the appearance of two kinds of books: those meant to help novices become professionals, and those meant to help professionals become novices. Of the two, textbooks and training manuals are the more familiar; the latter includes books like Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit and tools like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.
Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future is a bit of both. Much of the book reads like something meant to inspire first-year students, which you might expect from authors Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter, the creative director and academic director, respectively, at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school). But it also aims to help experienced designers think anew about their craft—to identify and abandon habits that contribute to “runaway design,” where our creations outpace our ability to anticipate their harms.
The minute you move your data, ideas, or anything around in front of you with your hands, you activate your brain in a new way. New ideas will follow.
Doorley and Carter argue that technologies such as the internet, big data, AI, and CRISPR gene editing have launched an era “in which the things people make . . . tangle with our environment and emotions in unpredictable ways.” The first four chapters discuss the “intangibles” that feed runaway design, like short-term thinking and insufficient modesty about our perceptual and cognitive limitations. The second four focus on “actionables,” or practices that can help designers work differently to create a better future.
We can’t fix runaway design; after all, heroic engineers and ambitious designers helped create this mess. Instead, Doorley and Carter argue, designers must “choose to harness runaway design or get run over,” recognize limitations, acknowledge that even smart solutions have unexpected consequences, and design for healing. Instead of razing a neighborhood that city planners declare is a slum, think of projects that help residents fix what’s broken and improve what’s good. Recognize the value of repair and the creative possibilities in maintenance.
Assembling Tomorrow isn’t a manifesto; it’s more like a debut album in which the creators are finding their voice. For students who’ve impressed the world by being first to solve the problem or finish the exam, a book on the value of caution, reflection, and acknowledging what you don’t know can only do good. But it’s harder to redirect a discipline that, like all professional services, measures success in terms of big contracts and splashy projects, and whose clients are addicted to disruptive innovation and hockey-stick growth. Doorley and Carter offer a wise vision, but I would love to hear more about how to persuade brand managers and VCs to stop moving fast and breaking things. Perhaps the authors will answer that in a future book.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is a visiting scholar in history and philosophy of science and the author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Email him at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
