Does Design Matter?

Expected end October 2026

The technological obsession with quantifying our world has changed the way we interact with it. Many interface designers entered the field with a deep, humanist optimism: that design could leverage the flexibility of software to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Instead, designers find themselves leveraged; squeezed into creating a hostile digital environment that reduces agency, abstracts knowledge, and manipulates—rather than facilitates—the user’s intent.

As the tech industry races toward a crossroads and interface design feels more precarious than ever, Does Design Matter? reminds designers and users alike that the future is still ours to fight for. Part manifesto, part confession, this book is an earnest and personal appeal from the desk of a designer caught in the middle. 

On a journey from the basements of Silicon Valley to the forests of Switzerland in search of the heart of the human-computer interface, author Liam Spradlin combines design history, social theory, philosophy, and a decade of firsthand experiences building the interface at scale. Ultimately, this book reveals the root of the crisis interface designers find themselves in, and plots a hopeful path forward.

Text by Liam Spradlin, edited by Jarrett Fuller, with foreword by Silvio Lorusso, illustrations by Ingo Giezendanner and cover by Oliver Munday.