Chad Dickerson of Etsy - Business is Personal: Putting people and planet before profit

Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, spoke at the RSA about placing people and planet at the center of the business. He speaks to the shift in mindset that's occurring due to the information revolution, he quotes E.F. Schumacher, "The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds.If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic." The internet allows us to read anyone's ideas from anywhere in the world. These ideas include the stories of people's living and working conditions. We empathize with these stories and we feel our interdependence. We've realized the harm human commercial activity has caused around the world.

Dickerson argues for building a better mindset in order to build a more human world, specifically from "the conscious utilisation of our enormous technological and scientific potential for the fight against misery and human degradation – a fight in intimate contact with actual people, with individuals, families, small groups, rather than states and other anonymous abstractions" (E.F. Schumacher). I think he means leveraging our new mindset, due to new technologies, to place human work-life activities at the center of business. The examples he provides are about leveraging technologies like the internet and new corporate structures like the B-corp to create an inclusive, socially aware, and sustainable society. This shift in mindset should improve the quality of life while also creating sustainable businesses.

My Reading List through Design Grad School

These are some books and articles I've found to be useful in figuring out what design used to be, where design is going, and how ideas from other fields are mingling with design. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.


Online Articles, Papers, and Essays:

• The Hannover Principles, Design for Sustainability by William McDonough
• In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm by David Segal
• Design Thinking Won't Save You by Helen Walters

Cognitive Science/Neuroscience:

• On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
• Mind Time by Benjamin Libet
• The Vision Revolution by Mark Changizi
• Supersizing The Mind by Andy Clark
• The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks

Interactive and Digital Design:

• Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
• Persuasive Technology by B.J. Fogg
• Affective Computing by Rosalind Picard

Social Dynamics:

• Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics by Smith and Berg
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman
• The Courage To Be by Paul Tillich
• Engineer Culture by Gideon Kunda
• The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin
• The Skilled Facilitator by Robert Schwarz

Fundamental Concepts in Design:

• Exposing the Magic of Design by Jon Kolko
• The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
• Emotional Design by Donald Norman
• The Design of Future Things by Donald Norman
• Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
• Design is the Problem by Nathan Shedroff

Business:

• The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries
• Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder

Anthropology:

• The Silent Language by Edward T. Hall
• The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall
• Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

Storytelling:

• Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks

Visualizing information/conversations/etc:

• Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

Revisiting Design's Value to Business

About two years ago, when I first started studying human centered design, I began articulating the value design adds to business. Re-reading my old blog post reminded me of my own inexperience with the matter, and now with two years of graduate design experience and a year's worth of experience in the internet startup world, I'd like to provide another round of analysis about design and business. These views are bound to change again in the future as I apply the design process to more business related problems.

When working as a human centered designer with a company, either as a consultant or an employee, the work the designer does begins and ends with people - their needs, their wants, their problems and challenges. The designer observes, interviews, and documents people to discover their needs and challenges. From there, the designer prototypes in response to what they've learned in order to test assumptions and iterate as needed. At the end of the day, it's about understanding people and creating meaningful services, systems, and products that meet the needs of the company's end user.

Now what that means for the internet startup (the community I've been a part of for the past year in Philadelphia) is that the human centered designer can help to understand, communicate, and refine the systems the startup's a part of, the people they're reaching out to, the services or products they're creating, and conveying how they all fit together. The role I've begun to fill is that of a thinker, a researcher, and a maker - and collaboration is the at the root of everything I just said.


You may also enjoy reading:

• Reflections on Design Research: Framing the Problem, Part 2
• Reflections on Design Research: Framing the Problem
• Simulating the Future of Political and Cultural Forces
• Creativity: Combining and Recombining
• Persuasive Technologies and the Spectrum of Responsibility: A Metaphysical Exploration of the Ethical Capacity of Computers
• From Neuroscience and Philosophy to Design: Some Thoughts on Thinking and Solving
• The Shopping Mall and The Design Process
• Explaining Design to Non-Designers
• Revisiting Design's Value to Business
• Design vs Business: What Value Does Design Add to Business?
• Design Research: The IDEO Way
• Fourth Order Design: The Underlying Structure of Communities and Moral Obligations of Designers