One essential truth of being a designer that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve realized over the past 15+ years of practice \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with startups, large corps, and agencies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really about the the design itself. Of course, you are totally expected to deliver a well-crafted, thoroughly thought-out, and deeply empathetic or contextualized solution that speaks to business goals (i.e., metrics and OKRs). That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply a given, in terms of the deliverables and outcomes produced. <\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the job.<\/p>\n
But the implicit \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue greater \u00e2\u20ac\u201d value of a human-centered designer on a cross-functional durable team is how that professional is striving to deliver against a deeply personal aspiration, which involves constant, patient, alert-in-the-moment collaboration with non-design peers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Engineers, Product Managers, Sales, Marketing, Support, etc. <\/p>\n
Those collaborations inevitably involve sensitive, perplexing, and outright fraught conversations\u00e2\u20ac\u201d i.e., conflict! Ugh.<\/p>\n
But this is where the designer serves a profound complementary role. Not as some 11th hour savior with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153magical solution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (umm, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fun myth) but instead as (a) an interpreter of various projected perspectives (borne out of organizational or personal agendas) and deeply felt values or beliefs (i.e., a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153point of view\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) via aptly communicative forms (sketches, diagrams, prototypes) for iterative deliberation of latent assumptions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and also as (b) a therapist (!) facilitating volatile dialogues that expose animosities, misunderstandings, contradicting beliefs, even bad (read: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153counterproductive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) approaches per years of misguided habits. <\/p>\n
The point in this case is deeply listening to the grievances exposed, while enabling the teammates to reflect a little bit themselves in a hospitable manner. Often they just need to air it all out in a group session, away from emails and Slack channels! Yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s indeed a therapeutic activity, helping them see a better way, coaxing them along a messy journey, assuring them things will indeed work out (i.e., their goals will be achieved\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6if they work together for shared aims!) \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6And the designer can\/should support them towards cultivating team trust or rapport, optimism and hope for a better way, and belief in the value of a humanistic approach that everyone can benefit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One essential truth of being a designer that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve realized over the past 15+ years of practice \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with startups, large corps, and agencies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really about the the design itself. Of course, you are totally expected to deliver a well-crafted, thoroughly thought-out, and deeply empathetic or contextualized solution that speaks … Continue reading “Designer as interpreter & therapist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}