The Best Interfaces We Never Built - Christopher Butler
Every piece of technology is an interface. Though the word has come to be a shorthand for what we see and use on a screen, an interface is anything| www.chrbutler.com
President Trump’s appointment of AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia as “Chief Design Officer” of the United States is a sickening travesty. It not only| www.chrbutler.com
Every good piece of design has at least one detail that is the “key” to unlocking an understanding of how it works. Good designers will notice that| www.chrbutler.com
Why we became designers is not what will keep us in the practice. There are four skills that must become the substance of our craft. I am a| www.chrbutler.com
What we lost when everything became a phone, and when the phone became everything. In 2001, I took a train from Providence to Detroit. What should have been a 12-hour journey stretched into 34 when we got caught in a Buffalo blizzard. As the train sat buried in rapidly accumulating snow, bathrooms failed, food ran out, and passengers struggled to cope with their containment. I had taken along my minidisc player and just three discs, assuming I’d spend most of the trip sleeping. With nothing...| Christopher Butler
Success is subjective. It means many things to many different people. But I think there is a general model that anyone can use to build a design career. I believe that success in a design career should be evaluated against three criteria: compensation, edification, and recognition. But contrary to how the design industry operates — and the advice typically given to emerging designers — these aren’t equally important. They form a hierarchy, and getting the order wrong can derail a career...| Christopher Butler
A new book. First pages are always hit or miss. I cannot unsee the face in the building to the left. Peeking face is not me, but Nostradamus. The doom signals of 2025 are many and unrelenting. They can’t all be true, so it’s clear someone wants a frightened people. Still enjoying the exploration of tiny collages. Most of them in the past few batches are no larger than 4”x6” — the book pages themselves are 5.5”x8.5”. The size is the challenge.| Christopher Butler
We must not give AI bodies. If the researchers who created AI are right, our future existence depends upon it. If you have been keeping up with the progress of AI, you may have come across the AI 2027 report produced by the AI Futures Project, a forecast group composed of researchers, at least one of whom formerly worked for OpenAI. It is a highly detailed forecast that projects the development of AI through 2027, then splits into two different trajectories through 2030 based upon the possibi...| Christopher Butler
I’m not saying that “Agentic AI” will “never” replicate all tasks that workers are currently paid to complete, but I strongly suspect that current agents have an extremely limited task scope. As exhibit A, I submit this podcast episode, in which Agentic AI is sold on the basis of “solving” tasks that have long been solved and for which very few are paid. Seriously: one guy says, “Okay, what else do people do in their jobs? What are other tasks in the economy?” and the respon...| Christopher Butler
When I was a young child, I would often pull books off of my father’s shelf and stare at their pages. In a clip from a 1987 home video that has established itself in our family canon — my father opens our apartment door, welcoming my newborn little sister home for the first time. There I stood, waiting for his arrival, in front of his bookshelves, holding an open book. From behind the camera, Dad said, “There’s Chris looking at the books. He doesn’t read the books…” I’m no...| Christopher Butler
The next evolution of personal computing won’t replace your phone — it will free computing from any single device. Like most technologists of a certain age, many of my expectations for the future of computing were set by Star Trek production designers. It’s quite easy to connect many of the devices we have today to props designed 30-50 years ago: The citizens of the Federation had communicators before we had cellphones, tricorders before we had smartphones, PADDs before we had tablets, ...| Christopher Butler
For the past twenty to thirty years, the creative services industry has pursued a strategy of elevating the perceived value of knowledge work over production work. Strategic thinking became the premium offering, while actual making was reframed as “tactical” and “commoditized.” Creative professionals steered their careers toward decision-making roles rather than making roles. Firms adjusted their positioning to sell ideas, not assets — strategy became the product, while labor became...| Christopher Butler
Many Grids I’ve been making very small collages, trying to challenge myself to create new patterns and new ways of connecting form and creating space. Well, are we? The last page in a book I started last year.| Christopher Butler
Catching Up| Christopher Butler
Great design comes from seeing — seeing something for what it truly is, what it needs, and what it can be — both up close and at a distance. A great designer can focus intently on the smallest of details while still keeping the big picture in view, perceiving both the thing itself and its surrounding context. Designers who move most fluidly between these perspectives create work that endures and inspires. But there’s a paradox at the heart of design that’s rarely discussed: th...| Christopher Butler
Before users can meaningfully act, they must understand — a principle our metrics-obsessed design culture has forgotten. Today’s metrics-obsessed design culture is too fixated on action. Clicks, conversions, and other easily quantified metrics have become our purpose. We’re so focused on outcomes that we’ve lost sight of what makes them valuable and what even makes them possible in the first place: order and understanding. The primary function of design is not to prompt action. It’s...| Christopher Butler
Something is starting to happen. As of right now, 3D Printer ownership is niche. Many know what it is, but very few people have one. This will change rapidly over the next few years. Plenty of contemporary sci-fi have depicted futures where everything is “printed.” The exact recipe of the “ink” is very much TBD, but the idea has taken hold. But I’ve been waiting for the consumer-level signals. I just saw one — an article about how Philips, the maker of my electric shaver, will...| Christopher Butler
Many Small Ideas Are Worth More Than One Big One When it comes to thinking, we’ve been sold a high-risk investment strategy. Our cultural narratives around innovation celebrate the breakthrough, the paradigm shift, the disruptive, revolutionary * concept that changes everything overnight. We romanticize the lone genius with the world-altering epiphany — the risk-taker who bets everything on a single, volatile stock rather than building a diverse portfolio of ideas. There are few of those,...| Christopher Butler
Screens are good, actually. Screens get a lot of blame these days. They’re accused of destroying attention spans, ruining sleep, enabling addiction, isolating us from one another, and eroding our capacity for deep thought. “Screen time” has become shorthand for everything wrong with modern technology and its grip on our lives. And as a result, those of us in more design and technology-focused spheres now face a persistent propaganda that screens are an outmoded interaction device, holdi...| Christopher Butler
Let me begin with a disambiguation: I’m not talking about AI as some theoretical intelligence emerging from non-biological form — the sentient computer of science fiction. That, I suppose, can be thought about in an intellectual vacuum, to a point. I’m talking about AI, the product. The thing being sold to us daily, packaged in press releases and demo videos, embedded in services and platforms. AI is, fundamentally, about money. It’s about making promises and raising investment based ...| Christopher Butler
Our world treats information like it’s always good. More data, more content, more inputs — we want it all without thinking twice. To say that the last twenty-five years of culture have centered around info-maximalism wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I hope we’re coming to the end of that phase. More than ever before, it feels like we have to — that we just can’t go on like this. But the solution cannot come from within; it won’t be a better tool or even better information to...| Christopher Butler
How elimination, curation, and optimization can help us see through the technological mirror. Technology functions as both mirror and lens — reflecting our self-image while simultaneously shaping how we see everything else. This metaphor of recursion, while perhaps obvious once stated, is one that most people instinctively resist. Why this resistance? I think it is because the observation is not only about a kind of recursion, but it is itself recursive. The contexts in which we discuss tec...| Christopher Butler
Back in 2012 when my first (and only) book was published, a friend reacted by exclaiming, “You wrote a book?!?” and then added, “oh yeah…you don’t have kids.” I was put off by that statement. I played it cool, but my unspoken reaction was, “Since when is having kids or not the difference between one’s ability to write a book?” I was proud of my accomplishment, and his reaction seemed to communicate that anyone could do such a thing if they didn’t have other priorities. Thi...| Christopher Butler
On the Ambient Entertainment Industrial Complex “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Pascal’s observation from the 17th century feels less like historical philosophy and more like a diagnosis of our current condition. The discomfort with idleness that Pascal identified has evolved from a human tendency into a technological ecosystem designed to ensure we never experience it. Philosophers and thinkers throughout history worried about ...| Christopher Butler
Rethinking AI through mind-body dualism, parenthood, and unanswerable existential questions. I remember hearing my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time during a prenatal sonogram. Until that moment, I had intellectually understood that we were creating a new life, but something profound shifted when I heard that steady rhythm. My first thought was startling in its clarity: “now this person has to die.” It wasn’t morbid — it was a full realization of what it means to create a ...| Christopher Butler
How to Achieve UX Clarity By Making Tough Decisions No interface operates in isolation. Everything we make, however contained we may think it is, actually has porous, paper-thin walls between it and the vast digital ecosystem around it. Those walls may be enough to keep our information contained, but they do nothing to prevent the constant bleeding and blending of attention from anyone we hope will look at it. Our interfaces, no matter how well-designed, receive just a tiny portion of the att...| Christopher Butler
Check out the light in my office right now 🤩 . When the light comes through the window like this, the sun’s rays hit different surfaces and edges in ways that seem different to me every time. Of course, the sun follows a consistent path throughout the year, and my house isn’t moving. But my noticing is not nearly so consistent. That reminds that all systems — natural and artificial — operate through patterns of connection and influence. Our job as designers isn’t just to...| Christopher Butler
We will never agree about AI until we agree about what it means to live a good life. Current debates* about artificial intelligence circle endlessly around questions of capability, economic impact, and resource allocation – not to mention language. Is AI truly useful? What will it do to jobs? How much should we invest in its development? And what do we mean by AI? What’s the difference between machine learning and large language modeling? What can one do that the other cannot? What happe...| Christopher Butler
Every piece of technology is an interface. Though the word has come to be a shorthand for what we see and use on a screen, an interface is anything| www.chrbutler.com
Every day I see a new thinkpiece on “the post-screen future” or “UI-less design” or “the end of the click.” I even used to write things like that.| www.chrbutler.com
Technological entitlement, knowledge-assumptions, and other things.| www.chrbutler.com
I often find myself contemplating the greatest creators in history — those rare artists, designers, and thinkers whose work transformed how we see| www.chrbutler.com
When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, the notion of an “everything device” was universally celebrated. A single object that could serve as| www.chrbutler.com
I’m a firm believer in text labels. Interfaces are over-stuffed with icons. The more icons we have to scan over, the more brain power we put| www.chrbutler.com
All of the entries posted on Christopher Butler tagged Log| www.chrbutler.com
Imagine designing and building a home while its residents continued living in it. What you create is highly customized to them because you observe| www.chrbutler.com
All of the entries posted on Christopher Butler tagged Essays| www.chrbutler.com
We have only 5 years left to do something about climate change. Depending upon how you define “do something,” we have even less time, possibly only| www.chrbutler.com
While you're here, make the world your own.| www.chrbutler.com
On building a personal collection of reference imagery, with a few examples from my own.| www.chrbutler.com
This is the office. My wife and I work here, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. Our children play and create in here just as often. It’s where we| www.chrbutler.com
A lifelong fascination with technology begins with a single object. Think back to when you were a child, to when you first encountered something| www.chrbutler.com
Most of the time, we’re content to simply know that information exists; we lack the interest and patience to actually know the information itself.| www.chrbutler.com
Whenever I review design documentation, there are a few things I look for in the first few seconds. All of them have to do with how scannable a page| www.chrbutler.com
Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by layout. I didn’t know to call it that before I studied design; I just knew that I could look at| www.chrbutler.com
I just published an essay on how anchoring the most important information on a web page to the Y-axis will help viewer’s focus on it and pay closer| www.chrbutler.com
It’s 2023 and I’m still frequently asked by clients about scrolling. I understand why. Every design comes with assumptions about how much content| www.chrbutler.com
Something like eight or nine years ago, I funded a Kickstarter campaign for a clock that Scott Thrift was making with a neat idea behind it — its| www.chrbutler.com
In the month before the pandemic shut everything down, I was in the midst of some research on how designers — and other kinds of creative experts| www.chrbutler.com
When I advise that a webpage — like a service detail page — have a maximum main body word-count of 150 words, I’m really recommending that it ask a| www.chrbutler.com
