About Designing Impact
Impact that cascades
Most of what gets called “impact” isn’t. It’s activity that looks impressive until the person behind it moves on. The project stalls. The initiative fades. The language disappears from meetings.
This series is about the other kind. Work that grows beyond the people who started it. Change that finds its way to people the original team never imagined.
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What you’ll get
Each article explores a different dimension of what makes impact last — and what makes it fade — along with research that grounds the ideas. Stories from inside tech companies and far outside them. No jargon.
New articles publish regularly. Each one stands alone, but together they build toward something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: what separates work that lasts from work that merely ships.
Who this is for
You don’t need to be a designer.
If you lead a team, teach a class, raise a child, build a product, organize a community, or run a company, you’re already doing design work. You’re making choices about how things work for the people affected by them.
This series is for anyone who wants those choices to matter after they’ve left the room.
If you're looking for quick productivity hacks or "10 steps to influence," this probably isn't for you. If you're curious about how lasting change actually works, the patience, the craft, the messy parts, welcome.
Who I am
I'm Scott Hines. I've led transformational design initiatives at Amazon, Google, Meta, PayPal, and SoFi. Products used by billions of people, designed and built by teams I led.
But some of my most important teachers weren't in tech at all. They come from different industries, professions, and backgrounds, all around the world. I keep studying what they have in common, and what it reveals about designing conditions for lasting change.
This series is where I connect those dots and share what I'm learning along the way.g the way.
Join the journey
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