August 26, 2025

s20e06: Not About How it Looks

0.0 Context Setting

It’s Monday, 25 August 2025 and a hot, sunny day in Portland, Oregon. I got back late last night from a family camping trip (it was great, thanks!) which means I was away for the weekend. And away for Friday. Which will explain the thing that caught my attention.

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1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 Now About How It Looks

While I was out, Joe Gebbia, co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Airbnb, was appointed Chief Design Officer of the United States. Gebbia is now heading up the America by Design initiative and the National Design Studio. I will not be linking to these things.

Earlier today I was asked by someone for my reaction so ha, you all asked for it.

First:

Joe Gebbia is the co-founder of a company that grew to the size and influence it is -- an $80 billion dollar company -- because it ignored and ran roughshod over laws and regulations. Instead, its strategy was to grow big, fast, so it could dictate its own terms. It moved fast and broke things. Gebbia is now, like I said, the Chief Design Officer of the United States.

Second:

Airbnb is a private corporation.

Design is making decisions -- and Gebbia’s experience of making those decisions is in a business context. One predicated on growth, on achieving a monopoly, and so on. Those decisions include how to manage customer support and customer satisfaction.

Third:

If you’ve ever had a problem with Airbnb and needed to deal with customer service, then the co-founder of that company is now the Chief Design Officer of the United States.

Whether you were a guest, a host, a neighbor and you’ve had to deal with Airbnb’s customer service, its co-founder is now in charge of the federal government’s websites. (And not just the websites -- we’ll get to that)

Fourth:

I was asked if I had any reactions. My first one was “oh no, not again”.

America By Design dot gov has a manifesto on it, which... I would say that at best it’s mid. Wait, I changed my mind. It’s terrible. It’s overwritten and overwrought. It’s too long. It is many things. None of those things are “good”.

(The manifesto’s second paragraph has an ellipsis in it.)

“Oh no, not again”, because just one of the things that’s offensive about the manifesto is that it acts as if nobody has been trying to improve government services. At all.

As if government hasn’t tried to attract the best talent of our time. (Presumably this means anyone who has previously worked on this is not the best talent of our time).

Even more offensively, one of the examples of “government that exceeds your expectations” is “file your taxes”, of which I will simply say nothing at all other than well, it’s a good job the federal government has decided it’s not allowed to design any services allowing people to... file their taxes. See? I can ellipsis too.

The manifesto presupposes that nobody has tried, or even worse, that everybody has done a completely terrible job because, what, they just didn’t try hard enough? (There is an element of truth here, but it’s complicated -- the difference is in caring enough to change things).

In a way, I get it. It’s a new administration coming in wanting to throw out everything that’s come before it. You know the kind: like when someone comes in and wants to do Another Redesign for No Reason other than This One’s Mine.

The entire thing smells like cleaning house and wanting to put your own stamp on things and the reason for that is because it is exactly that. I would have more time for this if:

• the U.S. Digital Service hadn’t been disbanded (or even worse, used as some sort of host for a xenomorph parasite that would burst out of the framework USDS)
• 18F hadn’t been similarly destroyed
• there was any indication at all that the initiative wanted to learn why things are the way they are

Fifth:

The fascism smells.

I honestly think that one of the reasons why 18F and USDS got torn down and the reason why this manifesto has the tone it does is because they weren’t bombastic enough. This is an America First manifesto, that’s what it is.

Sixth:

No, wait. About that manifesto.

There is an argument that your experience of government shouldn’t “exceed expectations”. Down that route lies surprise and delight. I think that’s a distraction -- I’m not the only one. Government should just work. Simply, easily, clearly, and quickly.

For the record, I think it’s fucking stupid to say something like an experience you “look forward to when you pay off your student loan/move through TSA/renew your passport”.

You are high on your own supply if you think people will look forward to doing that even if the experience is well-designed. You think people look forward to booking a Genius appointment to fix their broken phone? You think people look forward to walking into an Apple Store to buy a new laptop? No, they’re looking forward to the new laptop, idiots.

The manifesto promises an Apple Store-like experience, with a “great user experience”. Presumably that means with all the call center and support staff that come with an Apple Store. Presumably that means the kind of Apple Store that has a small, curated (ugh) set of products for sale.

But government doesn’t get a choice about who it serves. No, wait. That’s an aspiration. It’s an aspiration that government serves everybody. It’s clear that this administration takes as a fact that government does not serve everyone. At all.

Seventh:

There’s an entire section of the manifesto that pines for the days of the NASA design manual. When NASA had that worm instead of the meatball. Fine, you want America to be Sans Serif apart from when it’s not, again.

There’s the other part where the manifesto is all about service design. Ish? The part that isn’t about design-is-how-it-looks but design-is-how-it-works.

Laws, regulations, policies are complex. I will be the first to agree that many are needlessly so. I will also point out that one reason is because of the U.S.A’s obsession with the devolution of power where everyone gets the chance to have their freedom and independence. (Design systems totally work with freedom and independence, by the way.)

If you want smooth experiences, you’re going to have to deal with policy. There are people who will say dealing with policy isn’t design, but they are wrong, because design is the making of choices in order to implement and put into practice. Those choices are necessarily policy decisions.

You want a simple form for, say, SNAP? Just give everyone the money. (This presupposes that you believe in our society nobody should go hungry. The GOP does not believe that). But you can’t give everybody the money because you don’t think government needs to serve everyone. So now you means-test. I mean, this was a bad example because clearly this government doesn’t believe food stamps should even be a thing.

Changing policies is easy, though. All it requires is political will: do it, and damn the consequences. This administration will do that. It doesn’t care. Congress isn’t interested in stopping it and clearly at the ultimate level, neither is the supreme court in any material manner.

Seventh:

Sorry, did I say the fascism smells? I mean, just look at Hugo Boss’s new website². Sorry, I meant the National Design Studio. Its mission is to “modernize the interfaces that serve everyday citizens”, so let me just quickly (sigh) take a look at that:

• citizens, not residents
• “modernize” is ambiguous. You know what’s modern? Subscription services.
• You know what’s modern? Customer service that isn’t accessible.
• You know what’s modern? Deceptive patterns.
• You know what’s modern? Gamification.

You also know what’s modern? Accessible design. I bet you won’t be surprised at what an automated accessibility test found. Ha. Ha. Did you bet over 250 accessibility bugs?¹.

Eight:

Fine, here’s some predictions.

Gebbia will be out within six to twelve months.

Some websites will look better but not work any differently.

There will be some new iconography, but unevenly applied.

There will still be a multitude of typefaces across federal websites.

A design standard will exist but be inconsistently and unevenly applied.

It would be hilarious if Gebbia had to talk about the progress of America First Design in a Temu-gilded White House location, but he probably won’t.

The White House will have launched a number of websites for a number of initiatives. They will not apply any new design standard consistently.

Ninth:

I’m going to have to do one more to make this an even ten so I’m going to cheat.

Tenth:

Look, “design” is everything. It’s the act of making decisions about things that happen in the world. It is business, it is policy, it is constrained by politics, it is constrained by economics. But all of those things are also human constructions, which means it’s not impossible to surmount them.

Design is delivery, design is implementation, design is compromise, design is prioritization, design is minimization, design is rendering invisible.

Design is also anything Gebbia wants it to be until he’s not allowed.

Design is being the Chief Design Officer until or unless Stephen Miller disagrees.

Design is deciding what will be the easy path and what will be the hard path, or the path that doesn’t exist at all.

Design is a manifesto is a threat is a signal of intention.

A design principle might be that the thing is for the people.

A design principle might be for Americans only.

A design principle might be President Trump going bigger than President Nixon[sic].

What is most disgusting about the manifesto is that it’s yet another manifesto from this administration.

Turns out technology isn’t just a tool, it’s an amplifier of values, too.

1.2 Things I Hate Doing

Casey Newton wrote about what he’s learned about productivity this year and this stuck out for me:

Thinking models have gotten surprisingly good at identifying potential sources — potentially academic ones. When writing about Grok last month, I wanted to talk to someone who had studied relationships between people and chatbots. ChatGPT led me to Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving, and suggested someone to talk to, along with their email address. I wound up interviewing them for the piece. The fact that thinking models can quickly analyze the academic literature about any subject and identify prominent researchers on the subject, along with their email addresses and phone numbers, is beginning to save me a lot of Googling.³

This sounds useful! If we’re talking about useful, we should also talk about the alternatives:

• have a black book of contacts already cultivated
• ask those contacts who to talk to
• and so on

Having more options is good! I’d be worried about who my network doesn’t know, and the biases of my network. I’d also be worried now about the biases of Grok’s knowledge. Maybe Grok (or whichever LLM) is less biased, or knows about more experts in whichever field? My gut feel is that Grok might “know” more experts, but that depends on who’s in your black book of contacts.

2.0 How People Work

Oh hey, it’s me again. It’s coming up to that time where people’s thoughts start turning to “what am I going to do with that professional development budget I have that will expire at the end of the year”, or at least the part of that budget, if any, that isn’t now mandated to be spent on generative AI.

Well if you are the kind of person that has that budget, then you should talk to your budget and talk to your boss about booking my How People Work workshop for you and your team. Learn how to make better relationships, become more influential, communicate better, and create (and follow through on) better strategy. Which sounds like they’d be helpful, no?

Get in touch by emailing get@verylittlegravitas.com and we can also talk about an end-of-year discount.

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Phewwwwwww.

How are you doing? I am mostly still mad about that manifesto, for everything it doesn’t say, and everything it does.

Best,

Dan

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