DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

I've had the opportunity to learn through experience and from some great minds in design, research, technology, and business. This learning has led me to some particular ideas about how products are designed and made.

Everyone is a Designer

Of course, not everyone is technically a designer, but at some level everyone makes decisions about how to organize the world around them. There is some logic in the ways they organize - even if it's not a conscious decision to them. This can make being a professional designer a bit more difficult at times, but it's also a big opportunity! As designers, we can bring others into the process. We can find common ground and expand everyone's thinking about the problems we get to solve.

Win / Win / Win

I've been using that UX/Tech/Business Venn diagram to describe how I try to balance out various needs in a product design for a really long time. I work to design for the center of that diagram. I know there is a solution to every problem that wins for all three of those facets and that solution is going to be the one that thrives over the long term.

Useful, Usable, Desirable

If you've driven on smaller state highways, you've likely encountered that one small gas station out in the middle of nowhere and thought, "How does that place stay in business?"

It's pretty simple...what they sell is useful to the people in the area. If it's the only gas station around, selling something useful may be all they need.

As soon as another gas station opens nearby, the new station will have an advantage if it's easier to use - pay at the pump, more pumps, lower prices - the first gas station will need to improve their usability to compete.

The two stations may compete back and forth on the usefulness and usability fronts. People then tend to choose the station they like more - maybe for loyalty points or a better logo or cleaner bathrooms!

In the end, usefulness, usability, and desirability all matter as people weigh the decision of which station to use.

Digital products aren't really much different. Sometimes tech companies make the mistake of thinking they've cornered some market because they do something unique. They get lazy and sacrifice usability or a more desirable experience and a competitor swoops in.

Useful, usable, and desirable - great products are all three!

Discover…Define…Design/Develop…Deliver (Repeat)

It's a fairly simple process that gets packaged up under all kinds of names...design thinking, double diamond, the 4D design process...lots of alliteration.

  1. Understand the problems at hand as well as you can from multiple angles (Discover)

  2. Put some guardrails on the specific problems or parts of problems you're actually going to try to solve and map in what you've learned (Define)

  3. Get your ideas out for potential solutions. Start making things. Get those things in front of others to see how well they might work. Make adjustments. Keep refining and improving. (Design/Develop)

  4. Make the thing. Get it into people's hands. Make sure it goes into the world in the most effective way possible. (Deliver)

  5. Do it all again. That thing you made will change the problems at hand. It may create new, different problems. It will need to be improved. Go back to Step 1. (Repeat)