Systems within systems

Lyft (where I currently work as a designer) recently unveiled its three-year vision to the company in an internal all-hands. It was inspiring, it was aspirational, it was everything a vision should be. And yet I was left feeling a sense of indifference and dismay, almost as if it was pointless. The vision was to unify the extremely fragmented transportation offerings in the US under the Lyft brand while offering a consistent, hospitable, and welcoming experience to all Lyft customers. This is actually really cool stuff. I’ve always scorned at the mournful state of transportation in this country and working at a place that is tackling those challenges to design better solutions should be inherently exciting to me. Why, then, am I so apathetic to it?

One reason is because at the end of the day, the challenge feels so daunting that we won’t be impact it in a way that tackles the root cause. If you open your Lyft app today, you might see an option called “Get your car serviced” in the side menu. This is where you can register your personal vehicle and take it into Lyft hubs for maintenance and repairs. Yeah, Lyft’s long-term vision is to eliminate car ownership and yet it’s offering products to car owners. Why? Well, it’s because the vast majority of vehicle miles traveled today in the US happen in a personal vehicle (rideshare is a very very tiny slice of it), and a significant majority of Lyft riders own cars. The idea is to build brand recognition of Lyft’s hospitality and customer-focused experiences through personal vehicle servicing with the hope that consumers will eventually look to Lyft for more transportation needs beyond utilizing their personal vehicle.

This is a perfect example of what I mean by “systems within systems.” My partner used the phrase a few weeks ago to explain why she’s so disillusioned by the state of sustainable design in interior architecture (she’s an interior designer), stating that everything that’s designed today has to exist in a larger framework that doesn’t necessarily play by the same rules. The construction industry touts accomplishments in sustainable design but does little or nothing to incentivize new buildings to be sustainable. At the end of the day, it all comes down to costs, budgets, and timelines, so trying to sell a client on a sustainable design almost always feels like a lost cause since it’s almost guaranteed that they care more about turning a profit faster on the investment rather than ensuring that a café in the building is made entirely out of sustainably sourced materials.

Another example is all the “wellness” solutions for mental health out there today, like Modern Health, Calm, Headspace, and Thrive. All of them are arguably offering what’s very needed at this moment in time — a way to zone out and relax in the chaos of the world we find ourselves in today. But again, there are only tackling the symptoms and not the root cause. People feeling burnt out, overworked, tired, and frustrated are the direct result of living in a capitalist society that values profits over basic welfare programs, in turn forcing citizens to prioritize work over wellness and avoid doctor visits for fearing that it would be “too expensive.” It’s been exemplified even further as we find ourselves in a climate crisis, a global pandemic, and an explosive unveiling of socio-cultural issues like rising inequality and racial injustice. Meditating for an hour every day or turning off notifications from your phones is the equivalent of coming across a raging inferno and emptying out your water bottle into a small corner of the charred landscape expecting it to make a dent in the larger problem. These companies have no option but to exist in the larger system of capitalist dystopia which is causing the very problems they’re addressing. In perhaps the most ironic twist, some of them are publicly traded companies whose primary goal now is to increase shareholder value.

Back to Lyft: we can’t solve the transportation problem without working within the infrastructure that exists in the US. Designers at Lyft have very utopian ideals of what the “perfect” world of transportation looks like: autonomous vehicles coming to pick you up while commuters on bikes and scooters freely roam in the middle of the streets. But this only works in urban high-density environments. Most of the US is a suburbian expanse with lots and lots of highways and roads. The transportation solutions for cities don’t work in rural or suburban areas, and a significant portion of the population that uses their personal vehicle for transportation lives in these places. It’s the classic case of consumers not being aware of a better, faster, cheaper, and more convenient way of getting around unless they’re shown what the new way to do it is.

So for now, Lyft is stuck for the next several years tackling the problems of personal vehicle ownership in suburbs before they get to the longer-term solution of eliminating car ownership. This can sometimes feel like whiplash for those who were excited by Lyft’s vision and joined the company to try and solve that problem, only to realize that several other problems need to be solved to create the market conditions that are favorable to solve that problem that they were excited about solving. Lyft absolutely has to work within the massive network of roadways and interstate highways that exist today, because that is the transportation infrastructure of the United States today. It was built several decades ago now and it’s what we’re still using today. And it will take several decades until Lyft’s vision of eliminating car ownership is truly and fully realized.

Lyft’s offerings have to work within the larger sphere of transportation, which is shaped by lawmakers and public policy decisions. How much impact does Lyft really have in those things? How long will it take for the correct policies and laws to be enacted so that the utopian vision can be realized? There’s so many other changes happening in the transportation industry ranging from fleet electrification to autonomous mobility to emission reduction. How will all these different things play out in the foreseeable future? Lyft’s offerings and products are trapped within the larger systems that are at play here.

Perhaps this is why I’m left feeling with a sensation of “meh” even after I see an exciting, inspiring mission. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like my job a lot and treat the problems I’m solving every day with a great degree of importance. I still can’t help but take everything in the larger context of systems that those before us built with very short-sighted ambitions and profits in mind, and then feel hopeless that we’re forced to work within those systems to bring new products or offerings to market. And we seem to be making the same mistakes again with no hope of improvement. Is it any wonder, then, that everything has taken on a sense of general pointlessness in the grander scheme of things? I’m not sure if I’m excited by any company or organization’s mission anymore. I just know that I like working on things that make technology or life simpler, easier, more convenient (but not at the cost of privacy), and more accessible for people, so I’m making a pledge to just focus on that for now and not get too swept away by grand visions of the future that have very little possibility of manifesting in the chaotic world that we find ourselves in today. Happy holidays.