My connection to the problem becomes too diffuse.
The object of my attention becomes the system itself, rather than its interactions with a specific context of use.
This leads to a common failure mode among system designers: getting lost in towers of purity and abstraction, more and more disconnected from the system’s ostensible purpose in the world.
I experience an enormous difference between “trying to design an augmented reading environment” and “trying to design an augmented version of this specific linear algebra book”.
When I think about the former, I mostly focus on primitives, abstractions, and processes.
When I think about the latter, I focus on the needs of specific ideas, on specific pages.
And then, once it’s in use, I think about specific problems, that specific students had, in specific places.
