[A few interesting quotes](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/07/should-we-fear-the-end-of-work.html) from [Cornell’s recent Employment and Technology roundtable](http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ICS/InsightsAndConvenings/EmploymentSustainabilityInitiative/). As a new father this is even more interesting to me than it used to be…
The likely false hope of everyone moving to “creative” jobs in the future:
> If you’re talking 100 years, there’s no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future — some of our children will be alive in 100 years. – [Hod Lipson](http://lipson.mae.cornell.edu/)
And the thought of what careers would even support 8 billion people all working:
> I have a question for those of you here that are more optimistic about the future. What specifically do you think might be the future economic domains in which there might be large-scale employment? I’m not interested in the cases where there’s a cool new job that really, really smart people who read Wired magazine can do. What I am interested in are new occupations that hundreds of thousands of people could do, in game-changing ways like when the automobile industry once opened up. – [Gary Marcus](http://garymarcus.com/bio/bio.html)
I’m with the skeptics–it’s hard to imagine a world where technology continues to advance and people still have jobs. The question is whether we can steer society more toward [The Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture) and away from [Player Piano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)).
This comment has stuck in my head for years…and seems to become truer each day:
> With Google branching into so many fields, one day you’ll [drive your Google](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car) to [the Google](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17VHr6rsPAw) to buy some Google to eat while you [watch Google](http://www.youtube.com) on [your Google](http://www.google.com/tv/). – [TheGatekeeper on Slashdot, 2004](http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126072&cid=10555532)
Guess we’ve got to get cracking on that edible Google.
Russell Davies collected several good examples of [how creative work is often not complicated, just hard](http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2013/01/its-not-complicated-its-just-hard.html).
More evidence [piles up](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5060)…
> If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that’s one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it’s not our fault if we can’t do something as good.
> I’m not saying there’s no such thing as genius. But if you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right. – [Paul Graham](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html)
To which I’d add that if you think you’re a genius, you’re probably just being lazy and [too impatient](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5060) to do things the right way.
Great design is both extremely simple and incredibly difficult to achieve.
Simple, because it requires only a very few activities–observing people and expressing ideas–and those are not very complicated to perform. There are certainly tricks of the trade, and more or less efficient ways of doing these things, but the core actions are not complex.
Difficult, because the energy and dedication required to do these activities broadly, deeply, and thoroughly enough to find the right design solutions is hard to achieve. Most people don’t have the patience to get there; instead, they settle too early to avoid the discomfort of not “knowing”.
I still believe the most important thing I do as a designer is tolerate ambiguity. And it’s still the hardest part of my job.
I wrote up the following questions to help a friend at work think about his design needs:
* Do you know the core user you’re designing for, and the top 2 or 3 ways your product will improve their lives? Do you think that combination will make a successful product? Could you [design the launch advertisement](http://www.designstaff.org/articles/opinionated-product-design-marketing-first-2012-03-16.html) today? Does everyone on the team agree on these things?
* If not, you need a *product* designer. Lots of explorations around a variety of opportunities & a process to decide on them. At the end you’ll have decisions on your target user, key benefits, and “unique selling points”.
* Do you know how those features will work: how they will be accessed and controlled, in what order, how they fit together, and how someone interacts with it?
* If not, you need an *interaction* designer, someone who can design a system that works elegantly and flexibly. You’ll get things like wireframes, interactive prototypes, flow diagrams, and page layouts.
* Do you know exactly how the product should look, all the way down to fonts, colors, and animations? Do you have pixel specifications for all these things?
* If not, you need a *visual* (or *industrial*) designer, possibly with motion graphics or video experience. You’ll get pixel-perfect specifications and design assets that are ready for production.
* And if you don’t have any of these things, you’ll need all of these people. They build on each other, but I’d start at the beginning with the product designer, who will understand the rest of the process. It’s very rare that one person will do all these things at a high level, however.
See also: [What I talk about when I talk about design](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=4367)
> But six [human skills] will survive, say Messrs Brynjolfsson and McAfee, no matter how fast and smart computers become. Those skills are: statistical insight; managing group dynamics; good writing; framing and solving open-ended problems; persuasion; and human nurturing.
[Sounds like a challenge](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2c70abc-8d4a-11e1-9798-00144feab49a.html#axzz1tuW6HMJB).