Don’t handle with care

Working on climate adaptation means seeing countless pictures of storms, wildfires and their consequences. It makes me feel anxious, overwhelmed and wanting to watch Netflix with ice cream.

I believe that fear does not drive action. Imagining a better world does. Like many other designers, we want to create a better future. We do so by making things easy, seamless and predictable to drive adoption and satisfaction. This is not necessarily always a good thing.

Reading the book Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I discovered that designing things that follow the exact planned course with as little deviation as possible makes them fragile. Unline fragile things, which break when put under stress, antifragile items actually benefit from random events and adversities.

Some examples include:

• Vaccinations expose the body to the virus or bacteria and stimulate the immune system to respond and protect itself against the disease.

• Small forest fires cleanse the ground from the most flammable material so they don’t accumulate. Preventing fires at all costs can lead to one big incontrollable fire.

• People can experience post-traumatic growth after a negative life event and strengthen their appreciation for life and relationships.

I learned that nature is full of antifragile mechanisms. We can take inspiration and design services & systems that withstand random events and even gain from them.

I’m excited and hopeful about the possibility of designing antifragile services, companies and lives.

I’ll write more on that soon, but if you are curious you can read more about antifragile system design principles here.