Building Resilient (Over Scalable) Experience

In the world of crisis, resilient product and design matter even more

With COVID-19 pretty much deciding our fate for the next year, and maybe the year after, there’s a swift change to strategy as to how we build and design our product.

A long time ago when I started learning about web design, Dan Cederholm’s book “Bulletproof Web Design” was so appealing to me because it taught everyone how to code CSS in a “bulletproof” manner. Things like how a button would expand gracefully if you increase or decrease the text size, and how background images would still be sharp and noticeable in various screen sizes. Of course, this was limited to user interface design. This was an enlightening read for all of us designers back then because we’re so used to just “make it up as we go” or “putting out the fire” — meaning that whatever breaks, we fix it just for that very case or moment, without thinking the longer term. Basically, everything we did was not resilient to changes.

Then, there’s also resilient design in the world of architecture, where architects are cha…