A scary but liberating aspect of web 2.0 is that it is going to force designers to start relinquishing control. I like that. The relationship between the designer and the user strikes me as very similar to the relationship between the author and the reader. And it has long been understood in literature that the story belongs to the reader and his or her interpretation of it. Once written the author relinquishes all control.

Although I have absolutely no empirical evidence for this, it seem like some of the most successful authors write with this in mind—they write to relinquish control. Designers on the other hand still seem to be greedy for ever more control. We still obsess over pixel perfection.

Perhaps its time to think of ourselves more as authors, and loosen up our need to control. Perhaps we need to think of creating many potential experiences, and more abstract paths to them. I’ve recently started to try this in my own work. It’s difficult for sure, but I feel that this approach can really open things up in terms of innovation.