Design Principles: Class 4

Hello again,

This week's Design Principles class takes a step away from the actual design process and, instead, focuses on SELLING what you've created. This could be communicating your product to your coworkers, boss, board, or - gasp! - the customer. The last thing you want is for them to be yawning mid-pitch. Half of selling your product is realizing that it's not really about the product. It's about the result. After all, who actually wants a vacuum cleaner? What we want is a clean room. The vacuum is what makes that happen! Learn more here!

Anton

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What I’ve read

• You’re not that good - Seth Godin

• Zoom Burnout Is Real, and It’s Worse for Women

• Wait But Why - Mailbag #2

  Particularly thought about this answer:
  
  What conspiracy theory do you think is most probably true? – Maja (Ottawa, Canada)

  One that I’ve been considering (only a hunch, no actual info) is that big alcohol companies (Anheuser-Busch, etc.) are the new big tobacco companies (Philip Morris, etc.). And instead of trying to suppress evidence that cigarettes are disastrous for your health, the big alcohol companies need to keep all the other fun drugs stigmatized and illegal—and with tens of billions of dollars at stake, they’ll spend billions of dollars to keep the status quo the way it is.

  When I grew up, the rules were clear: if a party is a cool party, it has alcohol at it, and if you’re a cool person, you drink alcohol. If your party doesn’t have alcohol, it’s not a cool party, and if you don’t drink alcohol, you’re not a cool person. If you take a step back and think about it, that’s kinda weird. This one particular drug, of so many, has been deemed A) the socially acceptable, non-stigmatized one, and B) the definition of cool. Meanwhile, alcohol is just an alright drug—probably a below average one—while also being one of themost dangerous and harmful ones. It makes no sense—until you remember that cigarettes made no sense either…