A Product Design Mindset
The most impressive designers that I’ve worked with, have in common an ability to be introduced to a problem, gravitate directly to its heart, and begin to identify solutions with playful creativity at one moment and ruthless utilitarianism the next.
What makes these people brilliant, is their ability to listen, synthesize and respond in flow. They’re tuned into the logic enough to see weaknesses and impracticality, but also flexible and uninhibited enough to suspend disbelief and take the right idea for a walk.
What are these sensitivities, and how, as a designer do you develop them?
Designers develop their skills through a process of learning about and applying theory to practice and reflecting on the outcome. This pursuit, over time develops a mindset where a reliable tacit knowledge can dial-in sensitivities and prompt creative reactions from a point of spontaneous truth. When a balanced and finely tuned mindset is developed, decisions and questioning come into focus more naturally, and creativity can play on more reliable ground. Formal design skills and creative instincts converge to become knowledge that can be applied from the gut. The job is still hard, but the challenges become a matter of purpose — not process.
Nurturing this mindset is the most valuable investment in developing the skills of a good designer, and designers and their mentors should craft learning experiences that contribute to this end.
Frameworks to develop a Product Design Mindset
In product design today, the abundance of theoretical activity is phenomenal. Though for many designers, theory often remains superficial, reduced to a set of cheat sheets for the right words to say, rather than conceptual frameworks to conduct hard, creative, critical thought within.
An innovative, or even satisfactory outcome doesn’t emerge from following a 6-step process. A mindset must be developed and engaged, to inhabit the theory and sense where to push and pivot, based on signals from the material exploration.
Theoretical frameworks are a means, not an end. They can be a tool to help develop a design mindset because they provide boundaries and a common language to work within.
The Double Diamond
The Double Diamond model is a simple abstraction of the design process representing a sequence of two ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ phases of thinking. Divergent phases widen the field of potential problems to solve or solutions to address the problems. Convergent phases seek to refine the field of opportunities and pursue the most valuable solutions.
Incorporating these defined phases into your process is a good place to start, but it’s not until you’ve gone through the process numerous times with different types of design challenges, that you begin to see the power of the process as an adaptable mindset for problem solving.
A designer who has built a mindset based on the double diamond framework can effectively recognize when their divergence is wide enough or the convergence is narrow enough. They will be able to predict the kinds of inputs convergent phases will require to ensure prior divergent phases generate them as outputs. Most significantly, they will be able to adapt the process to micro and macro contexts, whether it be a small design problem for one person in a few hours, or a large, complex project for a team over many months.
‘Balanced Breakthrough’ (Desirability, Viability, Feasibility)
The Balanced Breakthrough model describes three interrelated lenses through which to consider a concept more holistically: Desirability, Viability and Feasibility. Assumptions proven false in any of these areas can lead to the failure of the entire idea, so the more critically each domain can be examined the better.
At a basic level, this framework can be a checklist of considerations, which is a useful exercise for fleshing out any product idea. However, the framework can also be seen as a representation of a complex system, the critical aspect of which is its ability to identify emergent effects from the relationships between the different domains. For example, the way the pricing strategy (Viability) can be implemented (Feasibility) and how it reinforces the value proposition (Desirability).
With a mindset supported by an understanding of these interrelated domains, designers can more effectively collaborate across disciplines and design systems whose domains compliment each other. Each domain has its unique problems to solve, but with the right mindset designers can see more novel, harmonious connections.
How a design mindset can be developed by mentors
Simply by doing the work of planning a design project, creating a satisfying composition, refining a research insight or collaborating with an engineer, designers naturally learn from the effects of their actions. Whilst this does eventually build habitual behaviours and a repeatable design process, it can be a difficult, ambiguous journey.
Design leaders and mentors can facilitate the development of other designers’ mindsets, to be effective across different problem spaces.
Mentors may start with teaching the key concepts of relevant frameworks. The theory provides the language and logic. Then designers and mentors can plan a design project together, based on the framework. This planning process maps theory to practice, translating the thinking into a real world scenario before actually doing the work.
Once work begins, the language and concepts from the framework can be used as the basis of critique sessions.
Good design is difficult in many of today’s work contexts, which are full of distractions, competing interests and urgencies and organizational complexity. With the honed senses of a product design mindset, it becomes easier to cut through the noise and more naturally apply creativity to the most valuable problems and opportunities.
Published with other bits and bobs at Tip Studio
