It’s hard to violate the 80/20 rule. If you’re a business, 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. So do 80% of your problems, although thankfully not from the same customers.

Although this rule is pervasive, there are exceptions.

“Designers spend most of their time designing products and services for the 10% of the world’s population that already own too much, when 90% don’t have even basic products and services.”
- Alice Rawsthorn, Design Editor, International Herald Tribune
Excerpt from Objectified

Usually, when 80/20 breaks down, it’s in the other direction. Resources even out. Attributes homogenize over groups. So why this exception?

Economics explain most of the divide. The 80/20 rule is approximately true. 20% of the world’s population control just over 80% of the wealth. The lucky 10% at the very top enjoy not only wealth, but the attention of the biggest product designers.

So… designers suck. A lot. They go beyond normal wealth distribution and focus their talents at benefiting the elite. They are arrogant, they encourage exclusivity, they follow money, and they steepen a divide that should be leveled instead.

And we worship them. We shop at CB2, scoff at PC, and make links to the people of Walmart.

Then, worst of all, we hole up in our apartment, launch illustrator, and design more junk to feed our landfills.

-Guest post by Ptango.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 1:29 am and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.