A Design Comedy #1: Inferno
A Designer’s Trip From Design Hell to Salvation
Weirdo Alarm!! This is mediaeval Italian poetry applied to product design, this is your cue to escape if it’s too weird for your taste 😆.
Midway through their career, a product designer finds themselves in a dark place after all the hurdles they had to face. So they run away to escape all the bad feeling about themselves. But the path is blocked by three beasts:
- Incontinence — Businesses’ Insatiable Need for Profit
- Violence — Toxicity & False Constructive Feedback
- Fraud— Imposter Syndrome & Alignment with UCD principles
And as Beatrice, the symbol of divine love, sends Virgil to help Dante through the Inferno, I will tell you what to do if you end up in Design hell, step by step. Let me be Beatrice, and let my words be your Virgil 😌.
Don’t “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
There’s an escape. The Journey begins.
We must go deeper into greater pain, for it is not permitted that we stay. other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.
1. Be true to your principles, or accept a life in Limbo
If you recognise bad, find fixes and propose them to those who have the power. If it’s rejected make it very clear that you do not approve and meanwhile find an alternative.
The first sounds in Dante’s inferno are sounds of those whose loyalty is always for their own interest. They take no sides, commit to nothing. In design, it’s the designer who does anything for the sake of a salary. Have you read Ruined by Design? it will give you some perspective.
I know life is hard and money is important, but the contrapasso will be a lifetime of feeling like a weak human with no convictions.
2. Let hatred eat itself, violence will only make it worse
O blind cupidity, O wrath insane, That spurs us onward so in our short life, And in the eternal then so badly steeps us!
The worst part of design is that it gives power to everyone to mercilessly shred the designer under the name of “design feedback”. Giving design feedback is an art, very few master it.
So when you feel continuously defensive because of false “constructive” feedback has been mindlessly thrown at you, remember that you do your job as best as you can, and their hatred is none of your business. How many visionaries were hated by the very people they were trying to help?
3. Be true to those who trust you. And remember we are all figuring everything out as we go.
“Of every malice that earns hate in Heaven,
injustice is the end; and each such end
by force or fraud brings harm to other men.”
The ninth circle of Dante’s hell is reserved for the treacherous. And how often do we feel like a design requirement is the absolute opposite of human centered design! The trick here is to learn how to negotiate and use data to influence the decisions. It doesn’t always work, though. That would be the time to look for an alternative mission to serve.
As for impostor syndrome, I think it’s the most frequent question I get in mentoring sessions. The answer is: nobody knows anything. You can bet that every single person you meet knows something you don’t but you also must know something they don’t!
- Practice everyday.
- Learn new practices, new technologies. This will greatly improve your self confidence.
- Make informed design decisions. Don’t slack.
I feel like a fraud everyday. I lose energy & slacks sometimes and there are so many new technologies I don’t know about. Still, I’m doing my best, and it helps to know that.
And so we emerge from design hell, to a slightly brightening sky. You’ve reached Purgatorio.
WEIRD! I know. But this is the same girl who writes about Russian fiction’s connection to Quranic verses, you’ve been warned 😂 I am not apologizing though. To thine own self be true, right?
Next up is the journey through purgatory, where those who escaped design hell but did not quite make it to salvation dwell. Stay tuned.
‘Till next time, lots of love and #keepdesigning
