I’ve found over my career that going off and creating a vision, with data tightly in hand or not, is not the best approach. In fact I loathe being in a Howard Roark-like vacuum of space where likely I’ve been tasked to generate an entire vision.

We need to dispel the myth of genius loner, especially in the realm of experience-related design. It’s not befitting of our own principles. As much as we should be talking to users, we should also be using our mentors/managers/senior staff to get micro direction through on-going conversations. This isn’t to say we take any feedback literally, but we gleam insight and challenge or confirm our own direction and also have conversations early on that may have an effect on the product vision.

That said the article touches on great points because in reality, there are still many companies that believe sending designers off to a metaphorical log cabin to do their work is the best method.

If you’re going to do that, can you at least pay us more, given such trust?