Good Design Gets Out Of Your Way and Makes Stuff Simpler.

Sarah Redmond
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Last week, I was asked what I thought defined good design in the context of corporate learning. (Which was a good question to be asked as I was in an interview to be a learning designer)

I thought for a minute (I’m not a trained graphic designer, so I didn’t have a good one liner ready) and then said “Good learning design gets out of the way and makes sure that the core message takes centre stage.”

We went on to talk about other things, but the simplicity of that statement has stuck with me and I’m finding myself returning to it over and over in so many aspects of what I’ve been doing. Good design is something that allows you to see the “why” of something.

Why am I learning this? Oh, there’s the message — because I’ll be able to do something faster / better / with more understanding.

Why am I downloading this yoga app? Oh, there’s the message — because it has great teachers, loads of options and a simple UI.

Why am I choosing this cereal? Oh, there’s the message — because it’s low in sugar, doesn’t have stupid cartoon characters all over it and comes in a sensibly sized box so it stays fresh if I decide to switch to eggs for a few days.

Good design means that you can clearly and quickly know that what you are looking at can solve the problem or gap that you have, whether that’s finding a way to do yoga when your studio is closed, or presenting a product to your client which has the maximum chance of being used properly.

Good design starts with a good design process, bringing the idea of simplicity in to every stage of what you are doing. From the moment an idea becomes a piece of work that you dedicate your time, energy and money toward, keep the concepts of simplicity and functionality front of mind.

I was recently given a powerpoint deck for comment, from one of our team who was sick and tired of having to fix problems in the electrics of one of our products that was sent to a customer site unassembled. His plan was to go around the country teaching one or two people in each city how to troubleshoot when the customer had a problem with the product. He was utterly livid that “they” (the people trying to install the product with no training or understanding of what the box contained) were wasting time and money with perfectly good product being sent all the way back to the factory when there was nothing wrong with it and it was costing him all of his profit.

I didn’t look at the deck.

“Talk me through the entire process of manufacturing the product” which he did, in great detail.

“Okay”, I said, “Is there a way that we could send these out to site assembled?”

“Why?”

“Seems to me that the problem is that you have a whole lot of varied people assembling these things on site with absolutely no knowledge of the pieces you are sending them. They don’t know all the use cases for the different setups, and it isn’t going out with a detailed assembly guide, but you know what needs to be done from the order. So how about you assemble them here, then just send them out to be put in place? Make it as simple as possible for the customer…”

Design isn’t always fixing a problem where the problem lights up (in this case, on the customer site). A good designer, learning or otherwise, knows that adding to a problem is rarely the best way to find a solution to it.

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Sarah Redmond
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