From UX Expert to Systems Weaver
Shifting from optimizing interfaces to engaging with the systems they shape.
Focus: Understanding and intervening in complex systems.
Design has long focused on solving problems in isolation. We make desirable products in one area, but often ignore the repercussions in another. We build better and better tools to help people cope with broken systems, rather than addressing why those systems are broken. Each solution can become another band-aid, leaving the underlying network problems untouched.
System weavers expand the frame beyond products and pixels to the ecological, economic, and social systems those designs touch. They trace root causes instead of patching symptoms, and they ask who benefits, who is excluded, and what long-term effects may emerge. Their goal is not to simplify complexity away, but to help people live responsibly within it.
(this archetype was originally called System Explorer. The update to “weaver” was based on community feedback around the colonial connections of the word “explorer”)
