Design and the infinite game
Sometimes designers and design orgs get caught up in who “owns” a decision, or over-rotate to process rather than collaboration. Ownership and process can be good tools for providing clarity and moving work forward, but when over-used, ownership and process can set us up to be opponents of the very people we need to work most closely with. In this post, I’ll discuss what an infinite game is, and how it can help us be more effective as designers.
One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Albert Einstein: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” I find that I’ve said that a lot since moving into the executive ranks of user experience. What I recently found out, though, is that there is more to the quote, which makes it even more relevant to design. The full quote is: “Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
As user experience professionals, we edit, we simplify, we progressively disclose, and we create something from nothing, with the intent that if our work is successful, it will likely be invisible to those who use it. So where is this “difficulty” I speak of?
A few years ago, I was on a panel of professionals talking to a class of grad students. One of the questions the professor had asked us to prepare for was, “What is the hardest thing about being a UX professional?” I had a small stack of post-its with me, where I’d written some thoughts, in preparation. On this post-it, I only had two words: “the people.” By that, I didn’t mean users or customers, but colleagues of all sorts: managers, peers, stakeholders, and reports. In my experience, the UX work itself was fun; it was the process of working with others that I found more challenging.
Art might be something that only takes one person to create, but in the work world, design is a team sport. And for those of us who have been in organizations that were traditionally engineering-led, such as enterprise software, the notion of a “design-led organization” seems dreamy.
But wait a minute.
Why does an “engineering-led organization” not fill our lungs with the same relaxing breath as a “design-led organization”? I mean really. Is it about complexity? Is it about finally getting that seat at the table? Is it about respect, and being treated just as well as our PM and engineering partners? Maybe. And maybe it’s more.
How do you think “design-led organization” sounds to engineers? To PMs? Are either of those terms — engineering-led or design-led — helpful or productive? No. Because no group just wants to be led by another group. Which brings me to the title of this post.
So what is an infinite game?
The term was new to me when I first heard it in January. At my company, we are in the thick of a transformation to SaaS, and as part of that, the notion of the “infinite game” has entered our vernacular. We use the term infinite game to describe the lifecycle of SaaS and subscription, but it has other connotations. Simon Sinek wrote a book by the same name in 2019 and has a great talk about the infinite game online. But even before Sinek, the notion of the infinite game was introduced by the philosopher and Professor Emeritus from NYU, James P. Carse, in a 1986 book titled Finite and Infinite Games.
Carse writes that “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” Finite games have known rules and an end, at which point there is a winner and a loser, such as football. Infinite games are played for the sake of living to play another day, for the purpose of continuing the game. One such example is the Cold War. Another could be reducing carbon emissions. In either example, there can be no winner, and no set rules — the rules of engagement are flexible and adapted as needed to “play” another day.
Sinek points out that a system is stable when all the players agree that that they are playing a finite game. And a system can be stable when all the players are playing an infinite game. The problem comes when one player thinks they are playing a finite game, but another thinks they are playing an infinite game.
Now what does this have to do with design?
I will suggest that we and the people with whom we work are in an infinite game — regardless of what happens today or tomorrow, we want to come back to work, and keep the game in play. However, sometimes we find ourselves engaged in a project where one or more of the players is playing to win. And this is where that term “design-led” doesn’t help us. It can set us up to be seen as an opponent, rather than a partner. For decades, design kept asking for a seat at the table, but neither the term “engineering-led” nor “design-led” connotes partnership — rather, they assert a position of sitting at the head of the table, which is why many of us have moved on to “experience-led”. For us to be successful, to build relationships that last and products that last, we need balance. We need stability. We all need to be playing the infinite game.
How do we play to continue the play rather than to win or lose?
Hoa Loranger, a former Nielsen Norman Group VP wrote a fantastic article titled UX Lessons I wish I’d learned in School. In her video by the same name her three big takeaways are: Don’t aim for perfection, consider the business needs, and being effective is more important than being right. What does that last one mean and how can we get there? She provides several practical tips including “camaraderie should not be underestimated”, “trust is earned”, and “show empathy towards team members”.
It’s common for people from different backgrounds and silos to have disagreements or mistrust one another. For example, UX folks often complain about developers and vice versa.
When conflict arises, take the time to uncover the root cause. Sometimes it’s ego, but other times it is technical feasibility, pressured deadlines, how output is measured, or differences in communication and learning styles.
If you take a step back and consider the situation from the other person’s perspective, you will often discover good ways of compromising and keeping the team cohesive.— Hoa Loranger
As I told Elizabeth’s grad class, the people are the hard part of being a user experience professional. And reflecting on that quote from Einstein that I started this article with, we, as designers, thrive in that space where we can find harmony from discord and simplicity out of clutter. But where we sometimes struggle is seeing the opportunity in the difficulty. In addition to getting that seat at the table, we need to learn to thrive in the “people” space, where things are difficult and messy. We all need to lean into our cross-functional relationships and to play, not to win, but to continue the play.
#winning
Sinek suggests that an infinite mindset is about becoming better players ourselves, and that an integral part of playing the infinite game is by building trusting teams. Carse says that, “where the finite player plays to be powerful, the infinite player plays with strength.” And while there are only a few people in power, anyone can be strong.
For us to achieve the balance of Don Norman’s three-legged stool, all the legs of the product triad need to be equal. Because when PM, engineering, and design are spending all our energy focused on building great products that we can deliver quickly to market, the customer wins, the business wins, and we live to play another day.
