Designing (or not) for community
Is design standing in the way of me showing up in community?
I recently saw a post from The Nap Ministry that said:
“Hey, here to say you don’t have to start a project, club, new invention or initiative as we focus on community, connection and the analog world. You can just hang out with your friends, say hello to your neighbor and spend more time offline.”
The post struck a chord in me. I’m often the first to create a themed party or a logo for an event. I love a well-designed gathering with intentional activities and plans. But reading the post, it also made me think about all the times where I got stuck in the planning phase and never got to actually “doing” the thing I was planning in detail because I ran out of time or energy.
As much as curated spaces, planned interactions, crafted products, and intentional takeaways can enhance experiences and deepen connection, could too much design also stand in the way of us building and engaging in real communities?
What really happens when we overly design our communities?
When we overly design, planning halts action.
Planning the perfect event or building the perfect structure can feel productive, but it often becomes a stall. We wait until the idea is polished, until the branding feels right, until the schedule lines up, until we can justify gathering people around something that looks “enough.”
We often say that design is about iteration, but in practice, the planning and polishing can take over. The more we perfect something, the further we drift from the natural rhythms that actually allow community to form. Real connection needs space to unfold in ways we can’t predict. We don’t know what will happen — and that’s the point.
Community doesn’t usually grow from perfection. It grows from proximity. It grows from repetition. It grows from the very ordinary act of being around each other without needing a grand reason.
Sometimes a simple “want to grab a coffee?” is more powerful than a six-part series with a mission statement. Sometimes sitting on the couch while someone cooks dinner does more than any beautifully crafted activation. Sometimes an unplanned walk with a neighbor teaches us more about connection than a structured meetup ever could.
Starting small keeps the door open. It lowers the stakes. It reminds us that community isn’t something we architect; it’s something we practice. And the more we practice, the easier it becomes to move from idea to action without needing the perfect design as permission.
If we want more community, the answer is often simple: start where we are, with what we have, and with whoever is already nearby.
When we overly design, ordinary engagements can become exclusive clubs.
There’s a difference between creating supportive structure and shaping something so tightly that only certain people feel welcome. Over-designing can quietly turn everyday engagements into exclusive clubs, even when the intention is inclusivity.
I recently read the article We’ve Squeezed the “Life” Out of Civic Life by Sam Pressler for Connective Tissue, which explores how professionalism can stand in the way of true civic life. He writes:
“When we create ‘spaces’ or build ‘fields’ — as we’ve done throughout the social sector — we end up professionalizing and specializing sets of activities. And when we professionalize and specialize these activities, we signal that these activities are only for some people and not for everyone else. Professionalization and credentialization can help increase the ‘quality’ of practice within a field, but this is done by intentionally erecting barriers to that practice. These barriers show up through the training and credentialing activities themselves, and through the creation of insider cultures, languages, and networks.”
Pressler describes this as “professionalized management,” but it’s also another way of thinking about overly designed community spaces. We build structures to optimize and make things efficient, but when it comes to relationships, those same structures can quietly become obstacles for the dedicated people who were showing up and putting in time from the start.
He continues:
“The creeping professionalization of civic life has shifted the everyday democracy responsibilities of community membership and participation to the domain of nonprofit management. As credentialed managers assume the roles once held by ordinary citizens and neighbors, formal programs take the place of informal groups and activities, and participation and membership become experiences that are channeled and controlled rather than seen as holistic ways of being.”
When we professionalize or overly design the spaces meant to bring us together, we risk losing the informal, everyday participation that community depends on. Work shifts from ordinary neighbors to credentialed managers. We move from organic connection to structured programs and in the midst of it all, we loose sight on the natural rhythms of relationships. To keep engagement open and alive, we have to leave room for the unpolished, the unplanned, and the people who show up simply because they care.
When we overly design, we limit surprise and magic.
Many social clubs now have robust brands and curated activities that look more like shopping experiences than the social gatherings we used to know. In the article What We Lose When Optimizing Community, community builder Elise Granata explores what we lose when we “Shopify” our social lives.
Run clubs, social retreats, and book clubs use polished online presences to attract members and entice participation. These experiences are meant to support us in the loneliness epidemic, but Granata highlights how their branded, tightly designed nature can create a barrier. We start to feel like we need to know exactly what we’ll get out of something before we go. We scan social accounts and websites to decide if it’s for us. The element of surprise disappears, and we show up expecting an outcome — or as Granata says, “We lose the feeling that comes with a little mystery and a healthy amount of risk.”
“When we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, you know what happens? We get to be surprised.”
— Elise Granata
This focus on expectation can get in the way of simply being with what is and letting curiosity and surprise guide our next moves.
Priya Parker says every gathering needs a purpose. While I agree in some ways, there’s also a magic in the unplanned spaces that emerge from the natural rhythms of relationships. Reading a book while a friend watches reels. Crafting while someone is cooking. “Time together” might be the purpose, but does it really have to be predetermined?
Sometimes the purpose only emerges after the event has already happened. The people who show up create the purpose together rather than blend into a pre-determined one. Pre-determined purposes can end up placing expectations on what something is and isn’t.
Finding the balance
One of my guiding practices in design these days is to not only ask how might we but also at what cost. This helps mitigate unintended consequences. Sometimes the thing we want to design for becomes the very thing we design against if we’re not careful.
Community, relationships, and connection are messy, unpredictable, and unpolished — and that’s where the magic happens. If we want real connection, we have to leave space for magic to unfold as we just hang out with our friends, say hello to our neighbors, or spend more time offline.
Designing (or not) for community was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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