Hi, Kevin here.

I've recently published an essay for the Design & Critical Thinking community on the future of design in a transitioning economy. I invite you to read it, either on D&CT's website or on UX Collective's Medium publication.

Making Under Finitude: Designing Interactions That Resist Enclosure
The future of design in a transitioning economy
Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard

In this essay, I expand and connect three different but complementary theses:

  1. That our economic system and governing rules are changing, from a liberal capitalism to a neo-mercantile capitalism. I explore what the potential consequences are for design and designers when what is valued and how this is measured shift.
  2. How platform capitalism, that is, a capitalism dominated by digital platforms owned by merchants, precipitated this neo-mercantilism and enabled a new form of "friendly fascism": it advances through technocratic bureaucracy, corporate control, culture-war monetization, and AI-driven aestheticization that makes cruelty look normal, pretty, or ironic so people won’t resist it.
  3. Finally, astrocapitalism, born from platform capitalism, that is, the platformization of earth orbit, goes far beyond simply privatization of "access to space" by transitioning power as key infrastructure. In convergence with neo-mercantile paradigms and neo-fascist (soft authoritarianism) ideas, it institutionalized anti-science ideas through culture-war governance in favor of political influence and capital.

This essay builds on a recent exploration with the community of a new philosophy for our modern design challenges: the trioptic design. Trioptic design is not a framework, but rather a scaffolding mindset to approach design practices, by connecting three lenses (hence trio-ptic) or dimensions: the social, the political, and the aesthetic.

  • the social make sense of the worldviews in a landscape;
  • the aesthetic articulates the mediums;
  • the politic enacts an intent about the future.
The aesthetics of the mediums we interact with are codependent on the message they convey. It uses social languages that support certain ideas, or sometimes, subvert them. The message is politic, in the sense that it enforces a worldview, a directionality, an intent, about how the world should be.
Community update: New channel, exploring the trioptic design, and thoughts on the challenges of designing for AI
Design is social, political and aesthetics; New challenges are old challenges.
Design & Critical ThinkingKevin Richard

Anyway, please read these two pieces for more context.

What I want to do here, in shorter format, is to explore the recent announcement of the US National Design Studio, the "America by design" statement, and the "Improving Our Nation Through Better Design" executive order through both the trioptic design and my essay's core arguments, because this echoes many points raised in my essay.

First of all, a small disclaimer: I live in Switzerland, in Europe (but not an EU member state), and so there is a obvious outsider-view and euro bias to this analysis.

Trioptic x Finitude

We are transitioning from liberal competition to a neo-mercantile regime where state–platform blocs secure chokepoints, seek allegiance, and normalize bureaucratic violence via a “friendly” aesthetic. For design, that redefines “good” toward compliance, throughput, and lock-in, unless we counter early in the decision stack with provenance, recourse, assembly, and enforceable rights

1) AmericaByDesign.gov

Social. Language frames residents as guests in a national hospitality experience and “the nation” as a brand to be properly presented. That centers those who can be routed through standard funnels and signals allegiance-seeking service rituals.

Aesthetic. Visual-national symbols (flag), luxury-retail metaphors (“Apple Store”), and a retro lineage to Nixon’s “beautification project” fuse usability with patriotic polish. The presence of an “America First Legal” logo on the page functions as a partisan-coded aesthetic marker inside an otherwise “.gov” frame. This is design language working as a brand signal, not just UI polish.

Political. The pitch is executive-led redesign at nation scale. Under the finitude lens, this is where polish can legitimize enclosure if provenance and recourse are not built in. The narrative puts presidential authority front and center (“President Trump… Executive Order”), and positions design as a tool of national projection and administrative repair. Calling the nation “the biggest brand” foregrounds image power, not only service outcomes. This aligns with Rancière’s idea that politics turns on what is made visible and sayable, who gets to appear as a “proper user,” and which forms of speech count as feedback.

Finitude. This reads as allegiance-seeking UX: the nation as the “biggest brand,” interfaces as discipline that channel citizens through vertically integrated stacks. If liberal UX prized optionality, this pitch leans toward standardization and stability as civic virtue. The risk is enclosure by aesthetics: hospitality as a consent surface for rule changes deeper in the stack. Counter-move: bake provenance and recourse into the very services being “beautified” so polish cannot launder harm.

2) NDStudio.gov

  1. Social. A hub model that convenes talent and agencies “nationwide,” with a simple line of mission and an X account. It signals a network that could coordinate high-impact service fixes.
  2. Aesthetic. The site is spare and declarative. That austerity suggests “we are a platform,” not yet a portfolio. The minimalism works as a credibility move while the identity is still forming.
  3. Political. NDS is described as created “by Executive Order” and “leading America by Design,” which implies central coordination and agenda-setting from the Executive Office, not only guidance. In Rancière’s terms, this can reset the “distribution of the sensible” for federal UX: which problems count as high-impact, which styles count as “usable and beautiful,” and who is invited into the design conversation.
  4. Finitude. This is a proto-gatekeeper: a central studio that can either open or close possibilities. In a mercantile turn, studios become chokepoints where definitions, taxonomies, and hiring pathways decide who appears and on what terms. The work product to watch is not only UI but also decision artifacts: templates, standards, and vendor criteria. Counter-move: make those artifacts legible and forkable, with edit history and public comment as first-class fields.

3) Executive Order

  1. Social. The EO names the public’s time burden as harm and mandates “initial results by July 4, 2026,” with talent pipelines, USWDS updates, and 21st-Century IDEA compliance as levers. That is a service-delivery mandate plus standards and staffing.
  2. Aesthetic. The policy goal is “usable and beautiful,” and the metaphor of “digital potholes” gives aesthetic repair a civic-infrastructure feel. Directing an update to the USWDS elevates visual and interaction language to a nationwide standard. Aesthetics here are not ornament; they are codified as governance.
  3. Political. The EO creates a National Design Studio inside the Executive Office, names a Chief Design Officer, sets a 3-year temporary organization, and preserves OMB and agency authorities. It centralizes direction while keeping legal guardrails, which is classic White House convening power applied to design.
  4. Finitude. In my thesis, this is where the rotation shows up as law: the “real client” becomes a state–platform bloc, and “good design” gets redefined in statute and procurement. Metrics shift from NPS to compliance, throughput, provenance, and burden reduction. That can be emancipatory if provenance and contestability are enforceable, or enclosing if “beauty” launders administrative violence.

Takeaways

The three texts recast everyday governance as managed experience. The different lens adds that, under finitude, this often seeks allegiance and stability over plurality. Design rituals must therefore expand from “delight” to “assembly”: who can gather, dispute, appeal, and repair inside the service.

Aesthetic norms are treated as infrastructure. The essay warns that “friendly” aesthetics can normalize harm by turning violence into paperwork, humor, or brand calm. Antidote: use aesthetics to witness hidden costs, surface provenance, and show labor and risk at the artifact level.

The initiative centralizes power to reset standards. In both Trioptic design and Finitude frames, that is the decisive layer: decision artifacts set the distribution of the sensible before pixels exist. Redirective design means contesting definitions, thresholds, and process flows upstream, not only polishing interfaces downstream.

Conclusion

As the story still unfolds, I think it will be interesting to see how this progresses. I might be wrong, but the recent nomination of Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia as chief design officer and director of the NDStudio is an indicator of the overall trajectory. 

Regardless of how impressive Gebbia's background is, Airbnb is far from being a staple of good public design, deepening inequalities, disrupting housing market and affordability standards throughout the world, and, on the contrary, is a prime example of platform capitalism and now neo-mercantilism.

Beyond that, it is interesting to see how design is moving into an explicit support role.

Thanks for reading!

Kevin