The fun part
April 7th, 2026
I find it hard sometimes to give feedback. Bad feedback specifically. Perhaps I'm just involved in too many projects and sometimes I don't actually know what's behind what I'm disliking, or I don't want the conflict. The procrastination is the worst outcome — either the project doesn't move forward or, worse, it moves forward in the wrong direction.
I would not have guessed that my growth as a design professional would mean delegating so much of the fun part. Today my day started with dealing with a water supply problem that forced us to close the Porto Campus for the day. The reality is that even stakeholder management became more transactional and less creative and meaningful. Perhaps that's the industry. Perhaps it was the main behavioural shift from Covid forcing us to go remote — with that came efficiency and systematization, which allowed for more workload and multitasking. What was once creative, craft-based and experimental — in the sense of trial and error and actual experimentation — became colder, more optimised, with the need to be right straight away.
Perhaps AI can help with that, release us from some of the repetitive stuff. But I'm mostly seeing it releasing us from the fun stuff. I'm no longer exploring the possibilities of the instrument — I'm orchestrating multiple instruments at the same time, sometimes instruments I'm not fully proficient on, whether in the form of AI agents or people running projects. I guess one can only do that after a certain experience, and that's exactly why I am doing it, and why I am doing it now. Still, I miss the fun part.