I was going to write a blog post about NFTs for some time now. I wanted it to be a long post that looked at NFTs from two different lenses - technological and artistic. Instead, it will be a short one, in part because much smarter than me people already wrote on the subject or made videos about it. But also, because there is not much to talk about them anymore. There is only one concept that I haven't seen yet discussed and I think is important to point at.
There is this one central idea in designing things that is equally important for anything humans create. It is true for architecture, software products, gardening, cooking, composing music, making chairs or spoons. The idea is in order for something to be long-lasting, it needs to make our lives more fulfilling. The idea is that a good design takes the user and the user's needs into account. A good design makes a product useful. A good design is timeless. A good design is like Mother Nature herself - "transforming existing states into preferred ones". A good design can't be explained logically, it needs to be felt and lived.
NFTs don't fulfill this requirement. NFTs are supposed to be designed first and foremost with the artist in mind, yet every artist I talked to said one thing: "NFTs have made my life miserable". This is the opposite of good design.
My bet is that in 10 years NFTs will be gone. When a bad design is created from the start, nothing can be built on top of it that will fix those bad fundamentals.
“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people.”
There is this one central idea in designing things that is equally important for anything humans create. It is true for architecture, software products, gardening, cooking, composing music, making chairs or spoons. The idea is in order for something to be long-lasting, it needs to make our lives more fulfilling. The idea is that a good design takes the user and the user's needs into account. A good design makes a product useful. A good design is timeless. A good design is like Mother Nature herself - "transforming existing states into preferred ones". A good design can't be explained logically, it needs to be felt and lived.
NFTs don't fulfill this requirement. NFTs are supposed to be designed first and foremost with the artist in mind, yet every artist I talked to said one thing: "NFTs have made my life miserable". This is the opposite of good design.
My bet is that in 10 years NFTs will be gone. When a bad design is created from the start, nothing can be built on top of it that will fix those bad fundamentals.
“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people.”
— Dieter Rams