Category: General Stuff

Being a designer is not for the faint-hearted, as I’ve often said to my former class and elsewhere on this blog. It takes a certain fortitude of sprit, conviction of purpose, and sharpness of intellect to handle the volatile, sometimes brutal, mix of politics, constraints, opinions, and schedules in any situation–agency, corporate in-house, or freelance.

But what is a designer’s toughest challenge (other than seeing a client / team trash a design while struggling to maintain a calm demeanor)…?

Value conflict. In other words, when you are in a situation of producing or defending a design that you know, in your heart of hearts, you cannot possibly stand behind, that contradicts your own professional expertise/judgment/sensibility. Where someone other than you is dictating a direction of fundamental disagreement (your boss, or the client, etc.). In short, it’s a difficult emotional and cognitive place whereby the design is an affront to your own integrity as a designer and all that you believe in and represent as a bonafide professional.

Perhaps the design reeks of humdrum mediocrity, or lacks functional simplicity or is a mere copycat of a competitor’s product, an ink blot upon an otherwise pristine portfolio of offerings.  Whatever it may be, the reasons vary for each designer yet evoke similar responses. It is an agonizing moment of disappointment, dread, despair. It prompts self-doubt and forces that always profound, critical question of ” is it worth it?” or “What the heck am I doing?” It becomes the most intense of existential crises for a designer, causing one to wonder…should I throw it all in and do something else?

Yet such a value conflict can become the central defining moment of clarity to realize just what it is that makes you want to design, what gets you up in the morning to slug it out and fight those battles for what matters most. It crystallizes priorities and can establish that foundation upon which a designer rests a vital, necessary belief system that propels you to do your best work.

How should a designer respond when confronted with such a deeply personal, intense conflict with professional consequence? There’s no easy answer but reflection on the situation, conditions, consequences, and how to balance that with your beliefs may lead the way. To put it bluntly, borrowing the central tenet of The Bhagavad-Gita, “you must only do your duty” even in the direst of situations. You intuitively know (but may not be able to articulate) what drives you and your values. Making decisions in support of that is the best, perhaps only, path forward, no matter how difficult it may be.

No one said being a designer is easy. The toughest moments can help ensure you are being authentic as a designer.

This past week we held internal product design training sessions for our product managers and engineers. It was quite eye-opening to see firsthand the difficulties of bringing someone from outside the design “way of thinking” into, in their view, a radical notion of reality based upon idealism, humanism, visualization, and (gasp) making mistakes!

This prompted me to have this somewhat obvious yet sublime epiphany: as designers, we need to empathize with product managers and engineers. Ok, maybe it’s a bit blasphemous for those exhausted from fighting daily protracted (often losing) battles with product peers ;-) After all, they often fight back on design requests, and we frequently devolve into dithering about tedious issues like using Photoshop, not GIMP for slicing images, etc.

But at the end of the day, if we want design to be propagated, sustained and applied effectively through a complex organization of peers, as designers we have GOT to understand their perspectives on what makes design mysterious or difficult to perform.

Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

* Engineers and PMs are raised in a tradition of “pick the right answer” and “execute faithfully (literally)” based upon “scientifically validated facts”. This is radically different from the design-oriented posture of “try and iterate and fail and try again” based upon “patterns, principles, examples, and one’s own inspiration”. There’s a greater degree of risk, ambiguity, and even chaos that designers comfortably enjoy.

* Generating ideas based upon real people and real stories is very tough, without actual examples and material artifiacts to stimulate understanding (photos, videos, recorded snippets, transcripts, etc.) Too often PM’s and Engineers will revert to their comfort zones of code and requirements and market demographics, divorced from real people’s issues.

* Actively listening to sample users’ stories during live interviews is very hard for non-designers. Again, has to do with training and posture of stepping out of their comfort zones (code or profits). Designers have to help direct attention to what matters and what doesn’t.

* An engineer’s default approach is to focus on the code efficiency due to their quarterly bonus goals. A product managers’ default posture is to focus on profilt/loss metrics for similar reasons. It is EXTREMELY difficult for them to take a “try and fail” approach otherwise!

* Drawing is very hard. Yet PMs and engineers naturally do it :-) My hypothesis is we ALL have a natural instinct for drawing/sketching/mark-making as an innate human thing (think of Picasso’s famous quip about all children are artists) , but disciplined sketching of solutions that map to requirements is very hard to do. Scrawls on a whiteboard help but not sufficient. It takes practice and effort for everyone alike.

* PM’s and Engineers are under constant difficult pressure to deliver against absurdly misinformed schedules. As designers we need to keep pushing forward but be mindful of the greater forces that impact their often criticized decision-making. We should assume everyone wants to deliver an amazing product experience; it’s just a question of how to get there.

 

 

 

 

Recently had a lively, thought-provoking lunch with a design candidate, exploring a wide range of issues from “what is user experience” to “design evangelism”. The latter in particular caused me to reflect more deeply afterwards on what it means to be a design evangelist, if that’s even the proper phrase. As my lunch partner suggested, this can be a troublesome concept charged with elitism and arrogance, appearing pedantic and condescending when in fact you are simply trying to help outsiders recognize and support the benefits of good design in their world. Certainly, it’s a loaded phrase that may rub non-designers the wrong way — how comes there’s no “Finance evangelism” or “Logistics evangelism”? — and thus has to be handled carefully ;-)

If pressed, I’d articulate “design evangelism” is the passionate advocacy, education, and coordination of people/principles/practices throughout an organization, using various levers and switches (social, political, economic, technological, etc.), while respecting people’s needs and goals. It’s a human-centric thing, naturally ;-) To delve a bit deeper:

a) Advocacy: Like a public defender that is an advocate for someone wrongly accused, there is a sense of “representing” and “clarifying” the purpose for doing good design, getting non-designers to recognize design’s benefit. There’s cheerleading, showmanship, and passionate argumentation, all emphasizing the role of design…and why it matters, as Robert Brunner articulates in his acclaimed book.

b) Education: Like a good, strong teacher helping an uninformed person learn, understand, and appreciate how design happens, there is a critical need to educate in a helpful, altruistic manner. This includes process, deliverables, tools, practices, patterns, even how to critique a design. All about helping provide the tools to enable Bob in Sales apply design thinking to his job, etc. Be a guide and mentor to help advise, cultivate lasting trustful relationships, and so forth. Goes back to the ancient saying: “Teach someone to fish…feed them for life.”

c) Coordination: Definitely on product-based projects (or other situations too, like helping HR or Finance), you should help coordinate the resources, tools, checkpoints, schedules, so as to demonstrate your passion and DEDICATION to truly making design happen and helping others get their sea-legs to make design operate as a positive habit in their worlds. Offer to facilitate discussions, capture notes, hand-hold some follow-ups but all the while you are teaching (b) and advocating (a). It all fits together nicely ;-)

I believe this trifecta of advocating, educating, and coordinating makes “design evangelism” more palatable in suspicious environments and gives it credibility / utility / focus beyond mere pontificating of trendy buzzwords about design thinking. It’s a strongly existentialist posture, of taking real action (not just talking!) and building on the collaborative potential of sharing / listening / learning in complex team situations.

From Paul Kunkel’s Apple Design, c1996:

“As Apple designers we will continue to deliver power, ease of use and functionality  second to none. But the fruit of our work will be shaping the perceptions of those who use our products. The more we learn about our customers, easier it will be to reach that goal. Ultimately, the pursuit isn’t differentiation for it’s own sake, it’s value. Value is defined by usable, engaging and emotive solutions.”

Continuing: “We’re tired of restyling computers. The very act of styling distracts the designer from trickier issues of meaning. Differentiation has never been a goal at Apple. It has been a consequence, the result of an ongoing effort to humanize technology, understand what it means, and convey that meaning to users everywhere. Our goal at Apple has never been to look or feel different. The goal is to be better.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself ;-)

Actually this reminds me of what Steve Jobs said recently at the iPad 2 unveiling about the intersection of liberal arts and technology: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”

Or when Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design coined the firm’s famous slogan, “Form Follows Emotion”: “Things don’t stand alone but for us. For human beings with a history and the need to realize themselves in objects.”

Ultimately design is about enabling the fundamental humanism of ourselves and our lives, not the objects or the technologies.

 

 

 

This recently came up in an email convo at work, of how to effectively convince or at least strongly suggest the relevancy of aesthetic experience to business personnel and product managers–who are often furiously focused on marketing demographics and cost efficiency metrics. Who among them has time to worry about the “aesthetics of a product/service”, right? ;-)

Well, from my perspective the aesthetic power of integrating Style + Utility + Performance + Story is highly relevant to business managers in a few ways:

1. An aesthetic POV helps form a complete value prop and marketing message that speaks to users’ emotional needs, beyond silly slogans or incomprehensible feature lists but actually connects to everyday goals and behaviors. It’s simply the “why” that drives a product’s purpose, it’s raison d’etre, the cause that makes a customer want to believe in its value.

2. This approach enables the consistency and clarity of a company (and product) brand, delivering an integrated aesthetic (the “voice”) that a user identifies as distinctive against similar competitors. It’s basically what separates a Dyson from a Hoover, for example. The aesthetic character of the Apple iOS brand versus Google’s Android is starkly apparent as well. Any business manager must be well aware of their own voice, spoken to potential customers to ensure proper targeting and conversions (to purchase).

3. Cultural critic Virginia Postrel in her book “Substance of Style” cites various facts & figures that demonstrate the “rise of aesthetic consciousness” in business, with increased profits/market share/margins, etc. As well as Pine & Gilmore in their classic “The Experience Economy”. And by the way, Apple is as of this writing worth more than Microsoft! Just a hint about the financial power of aesthetics ;-)

At the end of the day business managers can either deliver a congested list of incremental features and cost-efficient widgets (a losing battle of price-cutting wars) OR a total aesthetic experience that customers gladly pay a premium price for and truly deeply madly care about with viral affection–thus, enhancing the company/product market valuation and mindshare. Using the classic Boston Consulting Group matrix, the product offering can either be a “dog” or a “star”. Having an integrated aesthetic experience makes it a superstar! No business manager can afford to ignore the tremendous potential of that.