Designing Complexity

The point is that there is no ‘easy energy future’. We’ve got to stop trying to sell people the idea that there are obvious ways to deal with the kinds of complex systems that govern both our social and environmental lives. It is often expressed that it is the task of designers to “make things simple for people” – which I find patronising and counter-productive. If anything it is the task of designers to show how *complex* things are, and to help build tools for dealing with that complexity (which is the basic function of the perceptual systems we are endowed with anyway!).

- Usaman Hague. from Networking Overload, with Potplants, “an Interview with Usman Hague about the Natural Fuse project”, from “Thresholds 38, Edited by Orkan Telhan, MIT School of Architecture & Planning”, found on Matthew Fuller’s website.