When I’m looking at things like #TwitchRecap, I try to think of the meetings, the engineers involved, and the product managers running it. Within that small group of people, there’s a dissonance with who they’re building this for.

It hurts because I used to be a part of this cycle. When I designed Whispers, there were very few people on my team that looked at what detrimental effects it could have on people. Why would you? Everything you build is awesome and everybody’s going to like it right?

Then I saw the flip side. The way vile ways this product was used. The casters harassed. And we rushed it out the door, for no other reason than “we can do a fast follow and iterate on it.” People talk about how much they hate the Whisper system and I worked for a year on it.

Somebody on the Recap team probably only saw the positive numbers. The good things. The HYPE trains. They took somebody like Bahroo, or Lirik and put them in as a test. Email looked great, image looked great. OF COURSE their numbers would be positive.

I talk about mindfulness in design now because of what I experienced in part, at Twitch. That -I- could’ve done something to prevent people from being harassed using a system that -I- designed. People had to be hurt in order for me to realize this. But, that’s the norm here.

People in this industry need to care more about the people they build for. Build better products. Build more mindful products. Take into account those who don’t fit the engineer’s perfect mental model, like in the case of so many Recap images where NEGATIVE values were shown.

We need to do better. With Altair, I’m -trying- to do better. Every director, every hire, every contractor, has to bear the burden of who they’re building for.

It’s the minimally viable thing to do.