Aza Raskin

So that gets us to principle number three.

Design for genuine thriving.

In some sense, this is the simplest to explain because it's also the most personal.

You just have to ask yourself, do you actually feel like you're thriving when you're using a piece of technology?

When you put your phone down, after an hour of spending time on it that you didn't mean to, do you feel better or worse?

Or the morning after you...

went to bed late because you were scrolling all night and slept poorly and woke up with your book unopened beside you, did you feel better or worse?

A tool that's designed for genuine human thriving will leave you stronger when you put it down than when you picked it up.

It'll give you a better sense of purpose, a better sense of agency.

You'll know that it's designed for thriving when you actually are more connected to the people around you after you use that piece of technology.

But of course, that's not how most of today's tech is built.

Because technology companies generally don't have a sense or way to measure or they don't get money from humans feeling more agentic and thriving.

Just one example is that the obvious thing you'd want your apps to do and your phone to do would be to optimize for what you did when you put it down.

That is, it's not what you do on your phone.

It's all the incredible things with your friends in the world that you get to do when you're not using your phone.

And the app should be optimizing for what you do in real life.

But how could they possibly measure what you're doing in real life?

And so the only thing they can optimize for is something which actually isn't good for you, good for your community, good for your neighborhood.

It's a different product.

It's a different way of thinking about building.