A few weekends ago, I was in Melbourne for a weekend break, doing what I consider essential research: eating good food, drinking good coffee, and window shopping at vintage markets.

On one of those mornings, my friend and I decided to buy a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich to split. I assumed this would be a simple thing. I had not finished saying “good morning” when the person working at the time pointed silently at the QR code.

Yes, to order this sandwich we had to scan a QR code, navigate through an online menu, complete a “prove you’re not a robot” captcha, wait for a verification code to come in, and finally place the order.

The easiest part of the entire experience was paying, just two clicks on your phone’s side button. Very efficient.

Thirty minutes before this experience, we had stopped by a small newish indie coffee shop and bought an iced matcha each. Ceremonial grade. $4

Only a few hundred metres from Southern Cross Station.

The owners were running the store themselves, and while making my drink, we ended up having a conversation about the vintage fashion popup show I was attending with my friend.

It certainly was not the fastest transaction I had that day, but I walked away knowing who had made my drink, and ended up walking back after the sandwich to get my long black for the road.

One experience had been optimised for efficiency. It’s certainly easier and maybe even cheaper for the sandwich shop owners to have an online menu instead of paying another staff member hourly to be in charge of customer service. But I still remember the name of the coffee shop I got that stunning matcha at, and it’s certainly a place I would recommend if someone asks me.

That morning, after boring my friend by complaining about how I’m tired of typing my email on multiple sites just to get some food, I started to wonder whether somewhere along the way, we (as a society) have neglected design thinking for efficiency.

Design thinking is about understanding people.

It asks questions like:

Who is using this?
What do they need?
How do they feel?
What problem are we actually solving?

Efficiency asks a different set of questions:

How do we make this faster?
How do we reduce costs?
How do we make this easier to replicate?

Design thinking focuses on the experience of the end user, while efficiency focuses on the production process.

Efficiency is not the enemy. In fact, I love efficiency. I don’t khow what I would do without my washing machine, and I think Microsoft Excel should be put on the list of greatest human inventions alongside cheese and the wheel.

My point is not that automation or efficiency are bad. It’s more that I’m asking if we are truly evaluating the things we choose to optimise. Is the goal really removing friction, or are we doing what is best cost-wise without considering the needs and the feelings of who we are offering a solution to?

Another example I had in mind, was in the way homes and living spaces are designed.

Recently, while doing what every financially responsible twenty year old does (fantasizing about houses I cannot currently afford), I realised that homes across the world were starting to look too alike. Many spaces are beautifully designed, but they often feel like they were created around an aesthetic rather than the people who will live there.

The homes I grew up seeing in Nigeria however, were designed around their environment. They considered airflow, shade, natural ventilation, and the realities of living in a tropical climate. Now, everyone seems to want to live in the same grey cube.

Modern architecture has brought incredible innovation, but it seems that we have adopted this appearance of modern and new design without preserving the thinking behind good design. This also extends into how we decorate those spaces.

We are increasingly encouraged to create spaces that are universally appealing and that photograph well. Always buy new, always buy beige. But in trying to appeal to everyone, are we creating spaces that represent no one?

I believe the same pattern exists in fashion. Clothing used to be something that grew with you and pieces were repaired, altered, inherited, and connected to memories. I still wear a jacket my father bought over a decade ago the first time he visited the UK. He handed it down to me because I moved to Australia in the winter, and every winter since then, I have worn it.

Today though, much of fashion operates around speed. Trends move quickly and garments are produced even faster. Clothing is made to be cheap, and disposable, while the handmade is now considered a luxury.

We have stopped asking for quality, and started looking for the next new thing. Surely I’m not the only one who remembers the great pandemic of 2020: Cow Print.

To reiterate, I do not believe we should reject efficiency or innovation. Technology can remove repetitive work and give people more time for meaningful tasks. But I do believe we need to be intentional about what we optimise. Yes, we started by optimising repetitive tasks so humans could have more room for creativity, judgement, empathy, and connection, but it feels like we have gone too far and tried to make everything become faster and cheaper.

The future of design should not just be about creating processes that work, It should be about creating things that work for the people that use them. Do you agree?