Rule 2: Design is Everywhere.

This second rule is so obvious, I had considered making it Rule 1.  But the very fact that the first rule is so effective that causes this second rule to be forgotten.

If good design is transparent, then it's easy to overlook how prevalent design is.

Stop what you're doing right now (reading) and look around the room (or where ever it is that you like to compute).  Look at every light, table fixture, chair, sofa, box, and thing that you can see.  Pick one.  Like that weird lamp sitting off to the right of you.  No, not that one, the other one.

Deconstruct it.  Well, in your mind.   It's not very practical for you to take it apart right now (although, at some point, maybe we will).  The base of the lamp was made a certain way, a certain radius, a certain weight.  The plugs are positioned off of it in just a certain way.  The light is made a certain material, the stand is so many inches tall, the light itself hangs just a certain way and shines the light at just a certain angle.

Someone consciously (hopefully) made all those decisions.  That's essentially design.

Look at another object.  Someone designed that.

And that other one cluttering up the room?  Someone designed that too.

Every time you bang your knee on a table leg, that's someone's design at work.

Every item you interact with that occupies space or even if it just occupies a portion of your mind has a design.

Design is everywhere.