2022 Resilience Tech Report for SXSW Preview

John Maeda
3 min readMar 8, 2022
Howdy! Back in 2015, I started sharing everything I’d recently learned into a kind of “music album” of knowledge to drop at SXSW. It’s a side project that hasn’t left my side, thus far — I guess it saves me time so I don’t have to write another book :+). In a nutshell, the science of resilience turns out to be as complex as the science of design. This is my first crack at decoding it.

Ahead of SXSW on March 11 I’m sharing the TOC and front page information to get a feel for what will appear in the report. Thanks for tuning in! —JM

NEW (March 9)

Adversity ↔ Resilience Ambigram by CMU design alum Chavelli Tsui that I commissioned for the #ResilienceTech Report

Four Things That I’m Thinking About Resilience

  • Form and Function are the cornerstones of classical design. As adversities continue to trend upwards, Fear is a natural reaction that triggers the amygdala’s Fight or Flight response. Resilience is about choosing Fight.
  • Change is constant. Controlling how one reacts to it is a learnable skill. Design is the craft of introducing desirable change; designers know how to present change in your environment that minimizes your fears.
  • We’re wired to face our own mortality with fear. It’s always there, deep in our minds. It keeps us alive. Keeping the “why we live” separate from “how we might expire” strengthens one’s resolve to be resilient.
  • Businesses face hazards that can affect their own mortality on a by-second basis. In the past, leaving everything to chance was all that anyone could do or plan for. With hazards of all kinds rising…

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John Maeda
John Maeda

Written by John Maeda

John Maeda: Technologist and product experience leader that bridges business, engineering, design via working inclusively. Currently VP Eng, AI Platform @ MSFT