It looks small against the force behind it.

Maybe that is why symbols like this feel so at home in the mountains. They remind us that not everything is in our hands.

But that thought becomes more difficult to hold when some of the forces around us are no longer entirely independent of our actions.

In August 2026, a collapse high in the Himalayas near the Nepal-China border sent ice, rock, water and debris almost 100 kilometres downstream. Hundreds of people were killed, many more are still missing. Scientists are still reconstructing exactly what happened, and it would be too simple to attribute one catastrophe directly to climate change. But the wider direction is less ambiguous: warming glaciers and thawing permafrost are making high mountain regions less stable.¹

We do not have to look as far as Nepal.

In May 2025, most of Blatten in the Swiss Lötschental was buried after rock fell onto the Birchgletscher and a large part of the glacier subsequently collapsed. The village had been evacuated days earlier. One person still lost his life.² The individual event had its own geology and sequence of causes. But Switzerland expects climate change to increase risks from unstable slopes, landslides, debris flows and rockfall in mountain regions.³

Mountains have always reminded us that there are forces bigger than us.

For centuries, what followed from those forces could be called nature, fate, perhaps even an act of God.

But climate change blurs that line.

The mountain may still fall on its own terms. The question is whether we can still think of ourselves as mere bystanders when we are changing the conditions that make such collapses more likely.

What can we still call fate when we have become part of the cause?

With Deutsche Bahn, a smooth journey does feel like a small success to me. Not because anything exceptional happened, but because nothing went wrong: no delay, no cancellation, no unexpected change. Just a “normal” journey.

Why does normal become something worth noticing?

There is some context behind that feeling: In July 2026, 52.6% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains met its operational punctuality definition.¹ A train counts as punctual when it arrives less than six minutes late.

Switzerland provides a different reference point: Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB) reported 91.8% long-distance punctuality in July 2026.² But the standards are different: SBB counts a train as punctual when it arrives less than three minutes late. SBB is not only stricter in its definition of punctuality, it also reports 1.75x the punctuality rate of Deutsche Bahn.

But the way we experience a service is not only shaped by what happens or how it is measured. It is also shaped by what we have learned to expect. Research on expectancy and satisfaction suggests that we evaluate performance relative to our expectations.³

A service does not only create an experience through its performance. Over time, it also shapes the anchor against which future experiences are judged.

Perhaps that is the nature of service experiences: repeated failures can lower the anchor, while consistent reliability can raise it.

When should experience designers shape the anchor, rather than only improve the experience?

Before the August 2026 eclipse, The Guardian reported that glasses which had sold for about £5 in London were being offered for £10, sometimes £20, as shops ran out. One shopkeeper said he sold 6,000 pairs between a 2.30am delivery and a 9.30am sellout.

Who profited?

The tempting answer is: whoever anticipated the shortage, bought early and sold late. But a high selling price is not profit. We do not know purchase costs, labor, failed deliveries or how many pairs were left when the sky returned to normal. Foresight creates the opportunity to capture value. It also creates the risk of holding inventory whose main occasion has passed.

This makes eclipse glasses look a little like options – and unlike them in exactly the interesting way.

A traded option has an underlying asset, a strike price and an expiry. Its premium can include time value; theta estimates how that premium may decay as expiry approaches, all else equal.

Eclipse glasses have no such contract or payoff. As the useful window shrinks, the price may still climb.

After the event, immediate use value falls sharply. But zero is too simple. The American Astronomical Society says compliant, undamaged viewers can be reused. The glasses may retain future-use, preparedness or souvenir value.

And then there is social value.

We had glasses. Some people around us did not. For a few minutes, possession gave us a temporary advantage. We could have protected it, maximized our own uninterrupted view or tested what someone else would pay.

Instead, we passed the glasses around.

One pair. Several views.

That is what the market price cannot measure. Exchange value peaks around scarcity. Use value peaks around the event. Residual value may linger. Social value can increase precisely when exclusivity is surrendered.

For those few minutes, the glasses were worth more passed from hand to hand than sold to the highest bidder.

People travel to Switzerland for its lakes and mountains. Live here long enough, and even this can become the background to somewhere else.

I took this photograph on a train from Geneva to Bern. Through the dining-car window, the landscape sat between departure and arrival – beautiful, present, yet easy to pass by.

We cannot stop at every view. Nor can we command ourselves to feel grateful every time we look outside. But if visitors can still see a destination where we increasingly see a route, perhaps they are noticing something we have learned to overlook.

How can the extraordinary survive becoming familiar?

That was the startup rule.

Everybody is a builder now. Generating code and designs are no longer the barriers they were. More gets built, faster. Including slop: things made because they can be, not because they should be.

The question moves from Can we build it? to What should we build for whom and why? Or, more simply: does this problem need a better answer?¹

Execution still matters. Yet when everybody can build, choosing what deserves to be built becomes the difference.

AI raises a stranger possibility: equality before the end.

But AI is only equalizing if access to it does not become another privilege.¹ If money buys the better tools, or politics decides who may use them, the old game survives inside the new one.

Death levels the field by ending the game.

Can AI change the odds while we are still playing?

The edelweiss belongs to the second kind. It became a symbol of alpine beauty and courage – and therefore something to pick, carry home and show. The flower was almost loved out of existence.¹

When Bergwacht Bayern was founded in 1920, its purpose was not mountain rescue but protecting nature. In 1925, Bavaria placed the edelweiss under complete protection.² What admiration had not prevented, law tried to stop.

Today, the flower is still specially protected and strongly endangered in Bavaria and fully protected in the canton of Bern.³ I took this photograph in Bern on the ascent to Wildhornhütte.

Most of us no longer need a sign to tell us to leave it where it grows. Not picking it has become part of what one does in the mountains. Or, more precisely, part of what one does not do. A social norm is only powerful while enough people share it.

When does protection become common decency – and when must decency be enforced?

Why should we not have any legally binding agreements on the services we offer? In the end, this is what our customers demand! Right? They want to be sure that their businesses – which are built upon our services – will run smoothly and delight their customers. They need insurance for that – ­they need an SLA.

No business will buy anything from us if we don’t give them some kind of technical service level agreement. Right?

Bollocks!

No SLA can compensate a business for its loss in customer satisfaction or loyalty. You cannot reimburse a bad customer experience. But you can design around it. So let’s design for this moment, this uncertainty: when your cloud goes dark,  your network goes down. Let’s design for that experience - and make it a good failure experience. Let’s turn the failure moment into a success moment.

Your customers don’t need an SLA. What they really need is an Experience Assurance (EA). They need someone who helps them to deliver a good customer experience despite a technical system failure.

…when driving on the highway before pulling over to the fast lane?

…when steering an organization into a transformation that fundamentally redefines its business?

As an individual or as an organization: knowing where you come from helps you to figure out where you should be headed.

A rear-view shows you what and who is behind you. Are they close? Are they following you? Are they trying to catch up? Can they follow you where you are going?

Rear-view means reflexion. Reflexion nurtures purposeful action.

So from time to time, take a look back before you shift gears and step on the gas.

The menu follows the availability of ingredients. Availability in this case is a function of the ferry schedule, the island consumption rate and the tourist presence. Service design this.

Local vegetable gardens and the trusty shotgun for hunting rabbits help to fill the supply/demand gaps. A timely harvest/kill to cooking workflow has the pleasant side effect of fresh and tasty food.

Om nom nom. Jia mas!

Availability is part of the service, not just the menu. How should a service change when its supply changes?