When I get deep into various discussions about design, this answer keeps coming up. People often misunderstand the answer as meaning the designer being asked is inexperienced or incompetent, but the opposite is true.

So what’s the answer? It’s not 42. Here it is;

It depends.

There it is. It’s frustrating I know. I understand. But there it is.

Which is better, flat design or skeuomorphism?
Should I design for mobile or desktop first?
Should I follow design trends?
What colour palette is best for the X industry?
How many fonts should I use?
Which button colour coverts better?
Which browsers should we support?
Which devices should we support?
Should we use Bootstrap, or Foundation, or a custom framework?
Which CMS is best?
Should I use Photoshop or design in the browser?

This is a tiny sample of the questions that get asked of designers every day. These are just some of the questions that budding designers will ask on blogs and forums. The answer to all of them is the same; It Depends!

The truth

It’s great that people care enough and are curious enough to ask these questions. Asking these questions and seeking the answers is a huge part of developing yourself as a designer. These questions mean that design is valued and has a purpose.

The truth is, the answer will always be different. It will be different for every project, every client, every designer. There is no right answer, there is no wrong answer. There are only some answers that work better than others.

Our job as designers is to arrive at answers that we think will work best for the task at hand.

So how do we find the answers?

Listen. Empathise. Research. Learn.

Listen to your users, listen to your clients, listen to everyone.

Empathise with them. What are the pain points? What do they have trouble doing? What do they want to do with the website? Why isn’t it working?

Do your research. Find out more about your clients and users. What makes them tick? Read blog posts, read books. Looks for solutions other people have tried and try to find out what worked and what didn’t.

Take all of that information and try a solution. Come up with an answer, then learn from it. What worked with your design? What didn’t work? Learn from every single thing you produce. If you don’t look at your old designs and feel embarrassed then you aren’t learning!

If you ever stop doing any of these then you might as well have retired. The design world is much like the internet itself; constantly changing and evolving. Doing these things over and over again is what we call “experience”. The benefit to getting a lot of experience is that you can make better decisions, and you can make them faster.

What does this all mean?

My point is, that it’s great people ask these questions, but just remember that there is no right answer. Thinking about the questions and coming up with our own solutions is what makes us designers.

Growing as a designer means learning from every answer you give, every solution you design. Never stop asking questions, and never stop seeking the answers.

If you ever ask a designer a question and they reply “It depends”, they probably know what they’re talking about.

Image credit: Deep Thought by Bruno Murai