Looks like Samuel Hulick has been reading up on Bucky Fuller. He’s particularly smitten with this keen insight, and so am I:

When [he] announced that the wind “sucked”, his audience usually laughed out loud. The statement certainly sounded funny, but he was serious. Talking about the wind “blowing” deflects [our] thoughts from what is actually happening. No force can push a huge parcel of air around Earth any more than you can push a flock of ducks into a barn. In any case, what could be doing the pushing?

Nothing is doing the pushing; wind isn’t pushed. When you face the wind, you have your back to its cause. A distant low pressure area pulls denser air to itself, just as a bucket of feed in the barn will bring in the ducks. A “northwest wind” is actually a “southwest suck”.

Hulick shrewdly observes:

As designers, marketers & strategists, we often talk about our work in terms of what should be made in order to get people to take the actions we want – sign up for a newsletter, upgrade their account, take a survey, tell a friend.

But the truth of it is, we’re completely powerless when it matters the most: that moment when someone, somewhere is actually putting our website to use. They will use it how they want, to do what they want. And if it doesn’t serve their purposes, they won’t use it at all.

Just something to think about today…