Star Wars vs. Star Trek

What world do you want to live in?

On a daily basis, design choices around new platforms, products and services are made. Behind such design choices, hides a bigger choice: what kind of world do we want to design? Recently, I heard about an interesting comparison: we can design to live in a Star Wars universe, or we can design to live in a Star Trek universe. What differences do you see when you look at the following two pictures?

If one would make a word cloud to describe the universe of the Star Wars trilogy, one could use the words ‘improvisation’, ‘incremental design’, ‘repairing-things-on-the-go’ and ‘a world full of diversity’. The other way around, Star Trek is more about ‘smooth design’, ‘comfort’, ‘user-friendly’, and ‘modern’.

While the latter Star Trek design of products sounds like the ultimate goal for a designer, there is an ultimate pitfall beautifully described in both movies. In Star Trek, interactions are extremely awkward. People are slightly indifferent. Moreover, there is no room for improvisation and cooperation. Systems take control while emotions and individual expression are limitedly allowed, otherwise the same system might fail.

In Star Wars, even systems have emotions (i.e. C-3PO), things are designed to support the needs of the characters in the movie and the characters need to repair their spaceship on-the-go to survive and fight the enemy: The Dark Side.

Interestingly, In Star Wars, The Dark Side tries to convince people that living life on their side is more easy, more simple, smooth and more comfortable. Yet, one should never forget that such simplicity of design also means that one gets in disarray with emotions, individual freedom and individual control over life.

In our own universe, we can balance both Star Trek and Star Wars. While some people like to endeavour and improvise, others seek for more safety and comfort. Yet sometimes, the balance seems missing. One can see this also at a political level. In some countries (e.g. China), one uses social credit systems to create a smooth and comfortable world, yet individual freedom seems to lack priority. In the US, credit card points based on credit history do exactly the same.

Also, in product design one can see this choice: Apple has created a great competitive advantage by offering simple and smooth products. At the same time, many others choose for Windows or Android to stay more in control of their software and individual preferences. Here again, it is a balance between having freedom and comfort.

My questions to you are the following:

• What do you think does this mean for designing services and products? Should products be user-friendly?
• Is there also a downside to user-friendliness and comfort?
• And in a broader context: should governments implement policies that create a smooth, comfortable and safety-focused life or is there also a dangerous side to such developments?

And of course, what universe do you want to live in? In Star Wars or in Star Trek?