 |
|
|
|||||
Prediction markets are all the rage right now. Weekly trading volume on prediction platforms just surpassed $2 billion, and apps like Polymarket are being treated as the next big thing in consumer finance and entertainment. These platforms are designed to gamify uncertainty by exploiting the same cognitive biases as gambling and day-trading, quietly pushing users toward overspending, emotional volatility, and compulsive checking. Its easy to see why people are drawn to them. Prediction markets feel smarter than reckless betting, more dynamic than typical investing, and more objective than punditry. For example, users are able to watch the odds move in real time, making it feel like theyre seeing the truth of a situation, whether its a political outcome or whether the CEO of Coinbase will drop the word AI on their next earnings call. Young users are particularly vulnerable, with a 2025 TransUnion study finding that 34% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials are actively participating in betting. Meanwhile, monthly debt payments for millennials and Gen Z have surged 20% and 27% respectively, drastically outpacing inflation (6%) and wage growth (8%), so these small, repeated losses can quickly snowball into real financial strain. Gambling, Cloaked as Investing This isnt a new playbook. First, it started with sports betting, then 0DTE (zero days to expiration) options, and now there are prediction markets. If you were to open any major prediction platform today, the parallels to casinos will become drastically obvious. Both interfaces are fast, have charts that flicker, and use prompts that urge rapid entry and exits. Users are being wired to double down after facing a loss, overrate their intuition, and assume moving prices reflect real information. These are classical behavioral traps that are just being applied in a new environmentand because it has the faux appearance of investing, all the risks feel legitimate. For instance, a user may place small bets on multiple elections simultaneously, checking and adjusting their choices every few minutes. However, even if each bet is only $1 to $5, the constant engagement can cause stress, disrupt focus at work, and eat away at savings, all without the user truly realizing whats happening. Small Bets, Big Consequences One of the most misleading narratives around prediction markets is the idea that the bets are small and, subsequently, inconsequential. The danger isnt the size, its the frequency, repetition, and compulsive checking. Your brain is constantly chasing endless hooks as the market continues to move every few minutes. Users are experiencing a psychological cycle in which they overestimate their ability to predict outcomes, fall into the just one more trade cycle, and experience emotional swings that are spilling into their daily livesaffecting their focus at work, sleep patterns, and interactions with family and friends. Prediction markets are playing on the idea that users are making informed predictions rather than calling it what it isgambling. The rationalization of this behavior is part of what makes it so enticing to users. Theyre convincing themselves that theyre learning about markets, politics, and economic signals, when in reality, theyre being tricked into a loop. And most of the time, theyre not noticing the true cost until it hits their wallets or their well-being. The Overlooked Cost The fun side of prediction markets is often what is highlighted in the mediatheyre showcasing the clever traders, the unexpected outcomes, and the viral probability swings. Whats not highlighted? The stories that actually matter the most, like the real households absorbing small but continuous financial losses, the compulsive checking that mirrors day-trading addiction, and the lack of guardrails in a gray zone between wagering, entertainment, and finance. On their own, these losses may seem insignificant. But as a whole, they add up. When you combine mass adoption, financial stakes, and algorithmic nudges, the risk profile changes dramatically. What initially looked like a fun forecasting tool is now an invisible drain on both your wallet and your well-being. Were setting ourselves up for a generation where financial prudence goes out the window, an influx of personal bankruptcies is inevitable, and the mental health crisis gets even worse than it is today. How to Participate Without Losing Yourself Prediction markets arent going anywhere, nor should they. They can be interesting and even useful, but users need to approach them differently. You should think of them like speculative trading or gambling at a casino. Things like betting only what you can afford to lose, avoiding impulse reactions, tracking the gains, losses, and time spent, all help prevent compulsive cycles and preserve mental health. These practices are especially important for Gen Z and millennials, who are driving the growth of this sector and are on track to spend more per capita on prediction markets than any other generations. At the end of the day, these platforms arent just forecasting future outcomes, theyre also forecasting, and influencing your behavior. Recognize the signs and take control before both your wallet and well-being become the most predictable outcomes of all.
Category:
E-Commerce
Inflation likely remained elevated last month as the cost of electricity, groceries, and clothing may have jumped and continued to pressure consumers’ wallets.The Labor Department is expected to report that consumer prices rose 2.6% in December compared with a year earlier, according to economists’ estimates compiled by data provider FactSet. The yearly rate would be down from 2.7% in November. Monthly prices, however, are expected to rise 0.3% in December, faster than is consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal.The figures are harder to predict this month, however, because the six-week government shutdown last fall suspended the collection of price data used to compile the inflation rate. Some economists expect the December figures will show a bigger jump in inflation as the data collection process gets back to normal.Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, are also expected to rise 0.3% in December from the previous month, and 2.7% from a year earlier. The yearly core figure would be an increase from 2.6% in November.In November, annual inflation fell from 3% in September to 2.7%, in part because of quirks in November’s data. (The government never calculated a yearly figure for October). Most prices were collected in the second half of November, after the government reopened, when holiday discounts kicked in, which may have biased November inflation lower.And since rental prices weren’t fully collected in October, the agency that prepares the inflation reports used placeholder estimates that may have biased prices lower, economists said.Inflation has come down significantly from the four-decade peak of 9.1% that it reached in June 2022, but it has been stubbornly close to 3% since late 2023. The cost of necessities such as groceries is about 25% higher than it was before the pandemic, and other necessities such as rent and clothing have also gotten more expensive, fueling dissatisfaction with the economy that both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden have sought to address, though with limited success.The Federal Reserve has struggled to balance its goal of fighting inflation by keeping borrowing costs high, while also supporting hiring by cutting interest rates when unemployment worsens. As long as inflation remains above its target of 2%, the Fed will likely be reluctant to cut rates much more.The Fed reduced its key rate by a quarter-point in December, but Chair Jerome Powell, at a press conference explaining its decision, said the Fed would probably hold off on further cuts to see how the economy evolves.The 19 members of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee have been sharply divided for months over whether to cut its rate further, or keep it at its curent level of about 3.6% to combat inflation.Trump, meanwhile, has harshly criticized the Fed for not cutting its key short-term rate more sharply, a move he has said would reduce mortgage rates and the government’s borrowing costs for its huge debt pile. Yet the Fed doesn’t directly control mortgage rates, which are set by financial markets.In a move that cast a shadow over the ability of the Fed to fight inflation in the future, the Department of Justice served the central bank last Friday with subpoenas related to Powell’s congressional testimony in June about a $2.5 billion renovation of two Fed office buildings. Trump administration officials have suggested that Powell either lied about changes to the building or altered plans in ways that are inconsistent with those approved by planning commissions.In a blunt response, Powell said Sunday those claims were “pretexts” for an effort by the White House to assert more control over the Fed.“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditionsor whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.” Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
The convergence of brand work and entertainment is set to be making significant leaps and bounds this year as a result in a flurry of activity in 2025. Large brands of consequence have made serious investment in in-house entertainment studios over the past few yearsLVMH, AB InBev, Nike, and Dicks Sporting Goods, among them. Now, sports retail and gaming giant Fanatics is partnering with OBB Media to launch Fanatics Studios. The new division will be led by Michael D. Ratner, founder and CEO of OBB Media, and will operate as another pillar of Fanatics overall business, alongside retail, collectibles, and gaming. The goal is to independently create, finance, produce, and distribute content at the intersection of sports and culture. [Image: Fanatics Studios] This isn’t Fanatics’ first foray into content. Back in 2023, the company launched Fanatics Live, a QVC-style digital content platform for its sports collectibles business featuring trading card breaks (like unboxing), and limited product drops. OBB Media and Fanatics originally began business together as part of a 10-year deal to produce Fanatics Fest, the company’s annual sports fan event and conference in New York City. “This new content business is a great connective tissue that can sit across (Fanatics’) larger platform and really pull fans closer than ever into their favorite players, leagues, teams and events,” Ratner tells Fast Company. “This venture is going to uncover so many new opportunities to create deeper connections across sports and culture and share stories that have yet to be told.” At launch, the new entity has a slate spanning films and documentaries, unscripted and scripted originals, live event specials, and digital series. It’s now the official content partner for all WWE digital shows, as well as leading content production for the LA28 Olympic Games. A deal with ESPN covers a one-hour special on Fanatics Fest, as well as producing the 2026 ESPYs awards show. Its deal with Major League Baseball is for an official global partnership to produce original content, like a 2026 World Baseball Classic docuseries, produced alongside Box To Box Films. And with NFL legend Tom Brady, Fanatics Studios is producing the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, first-of-its-kind round robin tournament featuring three teams of current and retired football players and athletes, including Brady coming out of retirement to make his flag football debut, broadcast live on Fox in March from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Theres also a doc series called One More Drive, following Bradys preparation for that flag football tournament, and potentially competing for a roster spot on Team USAs inaugural Olympic flag football team at LA28. Ratner says Fanatics Studios revenue will come from ancillary businesses from the IP, premiums from distributors, and production company fees. “We will also leverage the entire vertically-integrated Fanatics ecosystem, to expand these IP franchises across ancillary businesses merchandising, collectibles, and beyond,” he says. “All of these projects are both revenue generating on their own, and fuel growth across each of our core businesses.” Ratner will be the CEO of Fanatics Studios while still leading OBB Medias separate businesses. Prior projects from OBB Sports that predate the venture and will remain separate include Cold as Balls with Kevin Hart, Speed Goes Pro with IShowSpeed, and a recently announced Kevin Durant docuseries for Netflix.
Category:
E-Commerce
If youre a Slack user, youre probably familiar with Slackbot as a good-naturedif annoyingassistant that delivers notifications, reminders, and keyword-based automatic responses within the workplace chat app. But for organizations with paid Slack plans that have AI features enabled, Slackbot is receiving a bit of a brain transplant. The company has rebuilt the humble bot as an AI agent that can help bring you up to speed on workplace discussions and priorities, pull in data from other software your organization has integrated with Slack, help draft reports and Slack canvas documents, and even help schedule meetings with your colleagues. Its part of a push by Salesforce-owned Slack to move from being simply a tool for chatting with colleagues to a hub for coordinating with both humans and bots. Slack already supports more than 2,600 third-party apps, and the new Slackbot is expected to increasingly integrate with specialized AI agents and software tools. The way that we think about Slack today is as the conversational interface, if you will, for what we call the agentic enterprise, where humans and agents are all working fluidly and seamlessly together to get work done, says Rob Seaman, Slacks chief product officer and interim CEO. Already, Slack has offered AI tools to help craft canvases, the apps freeform collaborative document format, and search through data in connected software like Google Drive, Box, Microsoft Teams and, of course, Salesforce. And now, users will be able to send plain language requests to Slackbot, similar to the kinds of inquiries handled by general purpose AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. [Image: Courtesy of Slack]Slack isnt the only company giving its chat-powered tools a dose of AI smarts. Amazon has developed a generative AI version of Alexa, Apple has announced plans for a supercharged Siri, and AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic regularly update their bots with upgraded language models. And office suits from companies like Microsoft and Google have also integrated chat-powered AI tools. But a powerful advantage of using Slackbot, says Seaman, is that it can harness retrieval-augmented generationthe technique of giving AI contextual information to help it answer specific questionsto act as a personal agent based on information already stored in Slack or linked apps. We think that that deep organizational context is really what makes us immensely powerful, Seaman says. Another advantage is simply that the bot is accessible through Slack, meaning users wont have to toggle between apps as they chat with coworkers and with the bot. Still, talking to the bot will be a bit different from querying a colleague: Slackbot is designed for users to interact with it one-on-one through a dedicated app panel rather than inside Slack channels or multi-person conversations, though users can collaboratively edit bot-generated materials like canvases. Already, the tool has found widespread use at Slack and Salesforce, along with around 50 other organizations whove been given early access. Seaman says Slack product managers have used the new Slackbot to synthesize information from Slack channels gathering feedback on product features and ultimately turn that information into drafts of documents like sprint planning materials or meeting agendas. The bot can also create documents in the style of an individual user, though Seaman says its sometimes helpful to prompt it to use, say, a more formal tone than what the bot can model after informal Slack discussions. Like Slacks other AI tools, Slackbot only has access to what a particular user already has permission to access in Slack and connected apps, which means companies shouldnt have to rethink privacy settings when the bot comes online. The software will begin with access to a limited set of external tools, including some calendar integrations, though more are likely to be added soon, including support for scheduling calendar events. It also doesnt have the ability to search the web, though Seaman says thats also in the works for the near future. [Animation: Slack]And for organizations with old school Slackbot customizations, whether those are weekly reminders to clean out the office fridge or keyword-triggered reminders of the guest Wi-Fi password, those will remain available, Seaman says, though theyll be sequestered from the new Slackbot in Slacks interface. Were going to move those notifications over into Activity and out of Slackbot, and then that way, Slackbot becomes this dedicated, personal agent, Seaman says. At Salesforce, the majority of employees are already regularly using the new Slackbot, says Ruth Hickin, VP of workplace innovation. Salespeople can save hours every week using the tool to quickly pull data for calls, rather than manually rooting around in documents, and other employees have been able to work with Slackbot to generate project retrospectives and future plans, she says. Salesforce staffers are regularly coming up with new use cases for the bot and, naturally, sharing them on Slack. We have 80% of employees using it, and they are coming up with use cases and sharing them internally, she says. And really with any new genAI tool, we do not know all of the impacts, so we cant possibly know all of the great use cases. Salesforce workers have even started using the bot to help draft their annual employee self-evaluations, since it has ready access to information about what theyve accomplished over the past year, says Ryan Gavin, chief marketing officer for Slack.
Category:
E-Commerce
During President Donald Trumps first administration, he left hundreds of government designers, across half a dozen or more agencies, to do their jobs. But that changed the second time around, in January 2025, when a reelected Trump wasted no time turning the official White House website into his personal blog, deleting resources for topics ranging from reproductive rights to the contributions of Navajo code talkers in World War II. Then in February, Trump took a sledgehammer to the digital infrastructure of the U.S. when he enlisted Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a vast cost-cutting initiative, DOGE destroyed half a dozen of the governments digital design agencies. Hundreds of talented people recruited over decades lost their jobs, according to the best estimates of former government designers. The teams who launched everything from healthcare.gov to that handy site for ordering free COVID-19 tests were decimated. Now the design of America has been entrusted to one person overseeing the skeleton crews that remain. In August, Trump appointed Joe Gebbia as the countrys first chief design officer. Joe Gebbia at the 2025 Breakthrough Prize ceremony in Santa Monica, California, in April [Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Images] Gebbia is in charge of the America by Design initiative, and under Trumps order has opened the National Design Studio to improve how Americans experience their governmentonline, in person, and the spaces in between. We’ll be guided by the best user experience, Gebbia tells Fast Company. It doesn’t matter who you voted for or what side of the spectrum you associate with or believe in. Everyone can agree that government websites are underwhelming, and they would enjoy a better design, better user experience, and faster page load times. Its an attractive promise, made by a man who, in many ways, appears to be a great fit for the job. Gebbia is the billionaire design cofounder of Airbnb. He graduated from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Hes a fast-moving, private-sector creator of one of the most popular digital services of the past 20 years. His CV is exactly right for America by Designs mission, which is to make chores like applying for your citizenship or filing taxes something you actually look forward to. Its a Silicon Valley mantra thats overused and overly optimistic, but its also fundamentally hard to argue with. Yet in speaking to a dozen government designers and experts for this pieceserving across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrationsits clear that Gebbias biggest challenge isnt making the drudgery of navigating government services delightful or even easy. Its navigating the inherent tension of doing so in an administration thats actively undermining basic human rights. You can’t talk about people losing their Medicare and have a slick website, says Paula Scher, partner at the celebrated graphic design firm Pentagram. It just doesnt go. Gebbia, who promised his fortune to the Giving Pledge in 2016, has recently positioned himself as a MAGA Republican who challenges vaccinations and has promoted the idea on X that immigrants should lose their green cards. Still, his ideologically opposed peers continue to believe that the power of design triumphs over all. That includes his Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky, who defends Gebbias position and the good he can do as a pure digital practitioner. A call to cancel green cards, retweeted by Gebbia [Screenshot: x.com] As you think about it, the way that most people interface the U.S. government is through an app or a website, says Chesky. If those apps or websites were easier, so you could visit a national park, pay your taxes, get your benefits or Veterans Affairs stuff, thats a good thing. Its not inherently political. But the work has been political. Months into his appointment, Gebbias promise to fix the UX of American services is far from realized. Instead, the Trump administration has traded several flawed but human-centered government design agencies for a red-pilled web 2.0 propaganda czar. In his time as chief design officer, Gebbia has launched half a dozen websites that dont so much repair the online experience of the U.S. government as promote Trumps projects like Kickstarter campaigns reskinned in vintage Apple typefaces. The high-gloss websites for Trump Accounts and the Genesis Mission might give the appearance of an Apple Store-like experience, but Gebbias designs have also gone live with hundreds of accessibility violations. [Screenshots: trumpaccounts.gov, genesis.energy.gov, trumpcard.gov] At best, the work has been cringe (have you seen the Trump gold card?). At worst, it has distracted from an erasure of human rights, as trans resources and even practical words like disability have been purged from government websites this year. Still, many of the people I spoke with exhibited a certain envy for the position Gebbia finds himself in. Its an unprecedented moment in which design has been elevated to the top of the country, backed by an executive order to get things done. With the assistance of Musk, Trump razed Americas design services as we know them, leaving nothing in Gebbias way to build anew. He’s inheriting the blank check kind of environment . . . [so] according to the laws of physics, he should be able to get a lot done, says Mikey Dickerson, founding administrator of the United States Digital Service (USDS). But if the things that he’s allowed to do, or the things that he wants to do, are harmful, then he’ll be able to do a lot of harm in a really short amount of time. Redesigning the government In January 2025, Josh Kim was working for the State Department through a private contract agency, building the departments updated digital accessibility standards. A dashboard tracked all the pages the government needed to modernize, from passport applications to adoption pages, to ensure everyone could access them. Following Trumps reelection, the administration sent out a memorandum to end DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) projectswith a mandate to cancel all related private contracts. Kim says he was told by management to erase every mention of disability and accessibility from his work immediately, before his firm was audited or asked to do so. There was definitely this wave of fear that the consultancies were kind of like, Oh shit, they’re going to cancel our contracts if we mentioned any of these things, Kim says. His experience was far from isolated. In the early days of the Trump administration, similar erasure happened across government design agencieswith much of the work documented on GitHub. It wasnt just words that were lost in this purge. One week after the memorandum, the Veterans Affairs site relabeled Accessibility at the VAa webpage that allows disabled veterans to flag interface issuesto 508 Compliance (accessibility). The code refers to the law for IT accessibility, but sounds like a plot twist from Stranger Things. While the page still exists, its the kind of update that obfuscates information to many of the people who need it. A third of veterans rely on the VA for disability benefits, and the update fundamentally damages the feedback loop between the government and the people it serves. Its but one example of how government design services readied themselves for an invasion, and an invasion they got. In February 2025, Musks DOGE team arrived in D.C. and began cleaning house. By March, hundreds of government designers were gone as the most powerful design agencies inside the government were functionally dismantled. The (sometimes necessary) pangs of democracy Modernizing UX has been a big initiative of the government since President Barack Obama launched the Office of Digital Strategy in 2009 to connect the White House to digital channels. He then established a Presidential Fellows program in 2012 to recruit a new wave of technologists to public service. To date, 250 people have joined for 12- to 24-month tours of duty, including product leads on the Nest thermostat, Nike+ FuelBand, and talents who had worked at Disney. Even with this added technological firepower, government services still needed more day-to-day design support. That arrived in 2014, when two critical internal agenciesthe USDS and 18Fwere created out of one of the biggest digital failures in U.S. history, the botched launch of healthcare.gov. On the day healthcare.gov launched in 2013, 250,000 people tried to purchase health insurance, only to find a website that was unusable, with dozens of problems ranging from account registration failure to frequent crashes. It was so bad that only six people were able to sign up for healthcare coverage on the day of launch. Mikey Dickerson recalls arriving from Google to found what would become USDS. His first job of fixing healthcare.gov was done in just two months, from October to December 2013. Healthcare.gov on October 1, 2013 [Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images] I mean, that was approximately a miracle, honestly, he says, noting that entrenched government employees got a wake-up call from a disgraced Obama administration. This was a very rare case where doing nothing was going to have consequences, because doing nothing meant that this very visible policy failure wiped out all of their careers. Both the USDS and 18F doubled down on longer-term, private-sector recruiting. These two organizations alone recruited 18 people from Google, along with talents from Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and the popular Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator. Nikki Lee, a former product manager at 18F, created the stylus interaction used by Windows 10 and 11. The recruiting effort was enough to catch the attention of OpenAI cofoundr Sam Altman in 2015, who called the talent grab on par with the best Silicon Valley startups. Its a recent history that Gebbia has entirely ignored when promising to build a dream team of the best talent of our erathe best designers, the best software engineersas if thats a new concept for the government. (A government initiative called Tech Force launched in December 2025 to address the governments loss of talent under DOGE.) When I ask Gebbia about his thoughts on the USDS and 18Fand whether he thought these groups were overrated and needed to be rebuilthe shrugs off the topic as before his time. Without knowing too much about the groups you mentioned, I do know that the air cover and the urgency around design is in a place it’s [never] been before, he says. Whether Gebbia acknowledges them or not, USDS and 18F offer precedent for America by Design. The agencies were designed to work across different parts of government. USDS was a crisis agency focused on triage. 18F was an internal design consultancy built for longer-term digital solutions. Combined, they had an approximately 350 head count at their peak with a combined budget of around $40 million (though the USDS received a $200 million grant in 2022 to invest in tasks like modernizing Social Security IT and getting low-income Americans online). Its easy to frame the progress across a constellation of government design services as too slow, too bureaucratic, and, most of all, too unusable. No one recognized these issues more than the government designers working to address them. It is not like a corporate setting. It is not like a nonprofit setting. It is not like higher ed, says Rachael Dietkus, the first social worker hired at USDS, who describes her first two years of working for the government as very difficult. The learning curve is absolutely massive. It can be very confusing. There is a lot of hierarchy. These agencies werent perfect, but they represented progress. Yes, they still had to operate around entrenched government employees who werent always motivated to move fast. But the bigger obstacle was often legislation the government had already decided upon. Sixty percent of why the design of things sucks is because the policy sucks, Dickerson says. If you wanted a SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] application to be really simple, like, you could absolutely do it. You could do it the same way we did the [free] COVID test. When the government sent out free COVID-19 tests in 2021, policymakers decided that they could be available to anyone who requested them. We’re not going to go around checking whether you have the money. If you wanted to do that exact same program but you want to do it means tested, where I have to prove that I can’t afford my own COVID tests? Well, guess what? Now youve got an application process that is nine months long. And we’ll have an appeal, and an appeal to the appeals, Dickerson says. Her point mirrors what I heard from many government designers: You cannot have simplicity in government services in the face of eligibility verification, legal due process, and the ability to apply for services without a computer. Thats ultimately why many digital services arent as simple as the public would like. Clare Martorana, who was appointed chief information officer under President Joe Biden, left the role alongside that administration. She updated legacy systems that had been infiltrated by China and Russia, launched IRS direct file with 18F and others to sidestep the TurboTax ecosystem, and responded to the pandemic with the aforementioned COVID-19 test site (developed alongside the U.S. Postal Service by a handful of designers) that simply made tests appear at your door, no questions asked. But a lot of Martoranas job was simply keeping projects moving, and to circumvent old, dated policies that perpetually impeded her work. I received numerous emails from [managers] asking me, There’s a guy here in our team that won’t move forward with this thing because of this 1995 e-government [policy]. And can you please write me back so I can share that, from your vantage, sitting under the president, your interpretation is that this is no longer the primary regulatory thing that someone should focus on? she recalls. But you know, we over-indexed in adding new rules and regulations and never did the housework of cleaning our closets. As an optimist who began in the private sector, she believed DOGE could do a lot of good in removing this calcified bureaucracy. Instead of hyperfocusing on trying to run these inefficient structures more efficiently by cutting head count, she believed Musk would bring in blue sky thinking. Instead of fixing broken systems, Musks team could have simply built a better, cheaper version of things that existed. These systems could have duplicated old public servicesalbeit through modern technology that proved out its own benefits and cost savingswithout breaking anything. Elon Musk in the Oval Office in May 2025 [Photo: Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Thats what I thought Elon Musk was going to bring to the party, Martorana laments. I don’t think he built SpaceX by mimicking NASA. No doubt, government design systems were too bureaucratic and needed a shake-up to move faster. But DOGEs approach did nothing to build resilience or retain the governments design progress of the last decade. I’m not ashamed to say, like, Yes, I absolutely covet the blank check that they were handed. If I had that in 2014, I could have gotten a lot of shit done, says Dickerson. But if Donald Trumps administration were to say, You can be the new Elon Musk, I’d still pass on that job. Because what they’re trying to do is destroy everything. Lobbying for the job Of course, one designer wantd that job. And he lobbied hard for it. Gebbia joined DOGE in February 2025, two months before Musk’s departure from the organization. His government work under that team began with his takeover of a multiyear initiative to digitize the paper-based retirement system of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). He claims that in six months, his team evaluated the work, threw out all the code, and launched a new system thats operational more than a year ahead of schedule. Ashleigh Axios, founder of the consultancy Public Servants, served as creative director and digital strategist under Obama and later worked on OPM digitization under her former firm, Coforma. She cautions, As with many long-running federal modernization efforts, its common for new administrations to spotlight progress that began under earlier contracts. In any case, those efforts garnered the attention of several Trump Cabinet members: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Kelly Loeffler of the Small Business Administration. Gebbia met with them to discuss the work. It was really these conversations across the government where I started to dream a little bit, he says. I started to think, Wow, there is actually a real demand here for this. I started to think . . . The government’s kind of like a design desert, and everyone’s reaching out asking for a glass of water. I know how to find . . . a cold glass of water for them. But Gebbia says he wasnt simply offered a job. Rather, the entire pitch process was more like fundraising in his Silicon Valley days. In May, he began a three-month lobbying campaign to create the National Design Studio. He started with a traditional Keynote presentation, before learning that the government preferred big foam-core boards. He ended up carrying 20 of them at a time. I remember the first day, going to a Secret Service checkpoint, and I put [the pile] through the X-ray machine. And the whole thing was a mess. And I’m like, Oh man, I gotta make a case for these things, he recalls. I custom built this foam-core casejust this big white case. I’m kind of walking around D.C., walking around the White House compound. After meeting with enough agencies and Cabinet members, honing his pitch along the way, he eventually got an audience with Trumps chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Gebbia calls that meeting one of the best pitches of my life. A week later, he had the ear of the president, who greenlit the vision. As of August, Gebbia was operating as chief design officer, reporting directly to Wiles. It [had] to be a presidential initiative for this to work at scale. And that was really one of the only ways that I was going to stick around to do this, Gebbia says. The whole architecture of this . . . was done in such a way that we’re one foot away from the president. Gebbia wastes his blank slate When Gebbia first took the job, he connected with Scher of Pentagram and discussed the position, noting his excitement for the possibilities to get a lot done. [Trumps] an autocrat. That’s the best corporate client you can have, says Scher. Just one opinion, and you’ve sold the damn thing. [Screenshot: trumpcard.gov] The problem is that Gebbias governmental work thus far has been shallow at best, and fundamentally hypocritical at worst. While hes promised to improve usability to core government services that serve a majority of Americans, his most visible projects have been little more than advertising campaigns for the Trump administration. These efforts include sites like trumprx.com, trumpaccounts.gov, and trumpcard.gov. The gold cards embarrassing. The typeface is hackneyed. If I were judging a design show, thats what Id say about it, Scher says, examining the websites before offering a more nuanced criticism. But it isnt terrible. . . . Theres nothing wrong with it particularly as a piece of design except I think its incredibly inappropriate. [Screenshot: trumpcard.gov] Should Americans be excited about a 12 Days of Design advent calendar, published as their healthcare premiums have quadrupled from Trumps elimination of Obamacare subsidies? Should the Americans whove lost food securityas the Trump administration refused to release earmarked funds to provide food stamps during the government shutdown in 2025be excited about the new food pyramid telling them how to eat? These projects read as promotion of Gebbia’s glossy vision for government design, rather than an American government resource, with little to no actual service attached to it. A screenshot of the National Design Studio site, where prints of the new Food and Drug Administration guidelines sell for $47 [Screenshot: ndstudio.gov] [Trump] wants to make it look like a business. Its not a business, Scher says. The government is a place that creates laws and programs for societyits not selling shit. Silicon Valley sells innovation by default. Overzealous promises and jokey 404 errors are just part of the vibe of move fast, break things culture. But designers who worked at design agencies across the government call out how that sort of easy breezy Valley perspective misses the point of public servicethat you are often supporting people in the worst moments of their lives, and theres a level of decorum you need to exhibit in consolation. My grandfather passed away a couple years back. We filed VA forms to have him buried in a VA facility. Thats a whole process, says Axios. I don’t expect that to be delightful. I’m grieving. Gebbias Valley-inspired work is evident in other sites, too. His design for genesis.energy.gova new federal AI research initiativeborrows the sans serifs and black backdrops of modern Apple ads. Viewed in full, it lands as any stereotypical technology site, full of servers and glowy sci-fi nonsense (though the presentation was enough for Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian to proclaim this is awesome). [Screenshot: genesis.energy.gov] Perhaps if the Trump administration hadnt gutted Americas university system, reduced National Institutes of Health research grants, and ostracized its pipeline of overseas talent thats driven a century of innovation in our country, a government AI program might feel like progress. Instead, lets call this what it is: not much more than a Squarespace page glossing over an unprecedented rollback of federal funding for scientific research across the U.S. But Gebbias page for the National Design Studio is the most unintentionally apropos. The logo features a black-and-white flag with three stripes and no stars: an attempt at modernism that lands closer to looking like a country in mourning. These criticisms are largely superficial. But so is the work. Gebbia has referenced solving real UX pain points for Americans. Weve yet to see him do more with front-end design than posting bold mission statements and offering a few data collection forms. When I flag these early projects as simple, Gebbia offers a fair retort. Are we going to reimagine a hardcore corner of the government in eight weeks with a brand-new team? he asks. [Or] are we going to pick some quick wins and learn how to work together and ship some things so that we understand what’s involved with deploying great code? Still, these randomly branded, stand-alone sites further bifurcate an already confused system of government services. Critics I spoke to point out that even with pared-back designs, they feature sloppy code, large download sizes, and fail reasonable accessibility standards. (Gebbia claims accessibility has been addressed. Anna Cook, an accessibility expert and designer at Microsoft, notes some fixes have been made, but most of the core issues identified earlier remain unchanged.) These sites also introduce more risk of malicious parties spoofing government resources. Most of all, they are inherently more concerned with how America looks than how it works. When I point out that much of his work seems to prioritize storytelling over functionality, Gebbia replies with a touch of exasperation. I dont know, should it be boring? I guess it’s sort of the bar at the moment, he says. You go to a government website, you kind of feel like you’re on a government website. I don’t know, can it be a little more magic? Because Americans deserve more than that. Veneer, however, is easy for any designer. Its untangling government services thats hard. Unless you’re actually delivering services to the public, youre [not] simplifying the digital experience, says Martorana. [Image: courtesy Pentagram] Before leaving with Biden, Martorana wanted to simplify the cacophony of digital services with a visual system that would unite all government websites under USA.gov. While the project ended with the Biden administration, the proposed brand featured a logo from Pentagram, with a stoic U and A, but a stylish, energetic S in the middle. Its simple brilliance was that it could then be paired with every seal used across the government, coalescing many government services into a more ideal entity. And it didnt simply ignore the existing network of 450 agencies that provide ongoing services to the American public. [Image: courtesy Pentagram] Martorana laments the feature creep in which the government added more and more websites, even before Gebbia, when in fact the top nine government websites represent 160 million visits every month. Those sites should be getting the most immediate attention, she argues. And getting people to the right one, faster, could be the best thing we can do immediately. Gebbia shares that his team is, indeed, currently charting out a strategy for updating some of the largest government websites, and is entering the research phase now. That work could hold significant promise, and any single one of those projects would dwarf the National Design Studios efforts thus far. But hes choosing to keep the work secretive, in what appears to be the setup for a larger, more dramatic reveal than we typically see in publicly funded government projects. What you’ve seen so far are short stories, and we started on the novels, Gebbia says. Let’s just say that. The great undoing Gebbia believes deeply in the power of design to better the life of everyone. He has promised to fund the teachings of his design idols Ray and Charles Eames in perpetuity, the midcentury designers who first inspired him to take up design, and brought good taste to America through mass-produced furniture. Yet he does not share their ideals. According to Eames biographer Pat Kirkham, the Eames definitely had liberal politics as Democratic donors who quietly backed many of their Hollywood friends during McCarthys Red Scare. Ray Eames went so far as to buy corsages for children whose parents had been jailed for their leftist beliefs. The duo did contribute to the Federal Design Improvement Program under President Richard Nixonan initiative that Gebbia has cited as a precedent for America by Design. But if Trump had asked the Eames to help the government today, or take on a chief design officer role for his administration? My sense is that the Eames might have said, No thanks, Kirkham says. I just think that [Trumps politics] would have appalled them, really. Gebbia remains an excellent storyteller who has mastered the art of the promise. But when asked questions on specificsfor example, could his own hypothetical Gebbia version of the VA site use the word disability instead of section 508he dismisses the point. I havent been involved in this. I cant speak to it, he says. Or when asked if hed rebuild IRS.gov after the Trump administration pulled the working platform from 25 states, he replies, Before my time. Gebbia says his unwillingness to engage in the politics of design is in service of design itself. I think that at the end of the day, our focus is just [to] make the best user experience, he says. Yet this is one of the most dangerous narratives coming from Gebbia and some of his Silicon Valley peers. These new government technologists believe that the politics at play right now do not really matter, and that a strong design sensea core understanding of UXcan repair the loss of government resources. It makes me very proud of our country for a moment. . . . Having this role, and it being an executive order, that the president has ID’d as important is probably the best way to signal to all people [working on] these experiences there should be intentionality, says Katie Dill, who led experience design in the early days of Airbnb and is currently head of design at Stripe. At its core, design is intentionality. If design is the manifestation of intent, then good design can be born only from good intent. Gebbia’s intent as a designer is directly tied to that of the administration for which he worksone that has been systematically dismantling the rights of the people it is meant to serve. Given the administration’s current priorities, it seems unlikely for Gebbia to execute positive design on a wide scale. For now, many designers are eyeing Gebbias position with a mix of fear, envy, and patience, waiting for the political tables to turn so they can continue their work again. Silicon Valley’s really getting trend-based. Everyone’s swinging to Trump. But there’s a greater than 50% chance that the next president will be a Democrat. That’s just how it goes, says Chesky. I do think the country has needed the chief design officer. I think it’s a good post. And I hope when a Democrat is presidentwhenever that isthey keep the position.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] next »