DRMacIver's Notebook
Principles of (Social) System Design
Principles of (Social) System Design
I think the following two points are under-appreciated when designing systems for people:
- Everything works well in high trust environments where people are personally invested in the goal of the system.
- Nothing works well in low trust environments or where people are opposed or indifferent to the goal of the system.
Therefore when designing systems the most important questions are:
- How can we eject bad actors?
- How can we retain trust in the system?
- How can the system help people to achieve the things that they already want to do?
I have found this to be very true when designing systems for myself (skipping the first step - I may be a bad actor, but I can’t eject myself). I don’t have enough practical experience at group system design to say for sure it applies there, but just based on what I’ve observed of other systems’ failure modes I’m pretty confident that it does.