---
title: "On focus"
description: "I don't understand Google's mantra of \"Focus on the user, and everything else will follow\". It's a bunch of unhelpful Malarkey if you ask me. It's kinda like: \"Just do it\". It means nothing but you can read into it…"
author: "Ghaith Ayadi"
site: "Verbatim"
collection: "Hokum"
url: "https://verbatim.ayadighaith.com/hokum/on-focus"
date: 2023-01-11
updated: 2026-09-16
---
# On focus

I don't understand Google's mantra of "Focus on the user, and everything else will follow". It's a bunch of unhelpful Malarkey if you ask me. It's kinda like: "Just do it". It means nothing but you can read into it whatever you want.

Focus on the user? As opposed to focusing on the business or on the engineering, right? Well, business people must not focus on the user. They need to make the business work. Engineers must focus on engineering. It's only designers that need to focus on the user. Leaders have a design role inherent to their job, so sometimes they should do it too. Sometimes they should focus on accounting so as to not end up in a lawsuit. This is just the nature of roles.

But even designers themselves don't focus on the user mostly, and rightfully so. As a designer, I don't necessarily focus on the user because that doesn't mean anything. It's like saying: "Focus on your spouse, your marriage will work". Meaningless. It's like saying "Focus on going to heaven and your deeds will be good". Malarkey.

The challenge of not being a machine is that we need to redirect our focus in many different directions. One day we are indeed focusing on the user to try to understand their worldview for example. But another day we're focusing on a data structure to make it intelligible, the other day we're focusing on building a system that will allow us to build more things faster, then we're focusing on making sure that our team communicates well, and then we're focusing on how other companies are trying to steal our lunch money.

Is the ultimate goal to build something that brings value to people? Of course. But nobody needs to be told that. What other goal can one have? These unsophisticated corporate slogans kill brain cells.