Many designers are feeling a deep fracture right now. Our professional identity was always built on a simple promise: make the world better through design and technology.
But looking at the US tech landscape today, I see how perverted that mission has become. You know the examples:
→ Social Networks, once designed to connect us, now optimize for addiction to maximize ad revenue – undermining our democracies in the process.
→ Services like Uber disrupted traditional industries – but left drivers in precarious gig work and created new monopolies, cities scramble to regulate.
→ OpenAI began as a non-profit to democratize AI, then restructured for investor returns and became part of a huge bubble.
Enshittification – a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow – is the pattern by which digital platforms first treat their users well, then degrade the service to please business customers, then degrade it further to extract value for shareholders, before collapsing entirely.
The people we design for have often become the product for investors.
I hear this from former colleagues and classmates all the time. Many of them are now moving to what feels like the last frontier for meaningful design work: government and public sector roles – a shift I wrote about in starting as an executive director.
Others are exploring alternative models like steward-ownership – but let's be honest, these aren't exactly what climbing our industry's career ladder looks like yet.
So what's the way out? My take:
Let's not abandon the economy to the Silicon Valley broligarchy. Let's confront it – confidently – with a design-driven counter-vision:
💡 Real value for people and systems as the primary metric
⏳ Long-term thinking over quarterly pressure
🌱 Healthy growth over profit maximization
I see this as an opportunity: this could become Europe's differentiator in the global tech scene. A continent already practising what Silicon Valley forgot – patient, purpose-driven institutions that build resilience over hype. (See antifragility in innovation for the deeper argument.)
I'm convinced this approach isn't just better for our societies – it's one that designers can genuinely identify with. And when we build with purpose instead of pressure, we create with more joy, more conviction, more staying power.
Will this be slower than disruption-at-all-costs models? Absolutely.
But it will be more stable. More sustainable. More meaningful. Take Zeiss or the Bosch Foundation, for example – nearly a century of impact, built on purpose, not hype.
Design can still shape the economy for good. But only if we stop playing by rules that were never written for us.
What's your take – where do you see design making a real difference today?
Read next:
- Deutsche Bahn as a systemic thinking example — why deep systems work beats surface-level design fixes
- Design translates technology into culture — on the cultural role designers play beyond interfaces
- Between sustainability and greenwashing — how to tell the difference and act on it
FAQ
What is enshittification?
Enshittification is a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow to describe the pattern by which digital platforms first treat their users well to grow, then degrade the service to please business customers, then degrade it further to extract value for shareholders, before finally collapsing. It is the dominant decay pattern of platform capitalism – and the reason so many US tech products feel worse every year.
What is the European approach to design?
The European approach to design puts real value for people and systems ahead of growth-at-all-costs, favours long-term thinking over quarterly pressure, and treats healthy, sustainable growth as a primary metric. It draws on a long tradition of patient, purpose-driven institutions – from Zeiss to the Bosch Foundation – that have built impact over decades rather than hype cycles.
Why does the European design approach matter against enshittification?
Enshittification is a structural problem of platform capitalism, not a moral failure of individual designers. Countering it requires building products, services, and institutions under different rules: stewarded ownership, public-sector technology, and longer horizons. Europe has a cultural and institutional head start on these patterns, which is why this could become a competitive differentiator globally rather than a nostalgic footnote.
How can designers fight enshittification in their own work?
Anchor design decisions to outcomes that matter to people and systems rather than to engagement or growth metrics. Choose employers, clients, and ownership models whose incentives align with long-term value. Invest in systemic thinking so the fix goes beyond the screen. None of these are easy inside a quarterly-report culture, but they are the only durable counterweights.
Who benefits most from a European approach to design?
Citizens, public institutions, and the designers themselves. Citizens get services built for their benefit rather than their data. Public institutions get technology partners who think in policy cycles, not funding rounds. And designers get work they can identify with – built on purpose and craft instead of pressure and churn.