Designers are also Superheroes.

Carlos Lastres
Bootcamp
Published in
3 min readSep 29, 2022
Photo by Marjan Blan | @marjanblan

Design is everywhere and in everything. Take a look around you as you sit at home reading this, the phone in your hand, the chair you are sitting on; it was all thought out and designed by someone. We take these things for granted because if you are a person who is not in the design world, that attention to detail would probably never cross your mind. It’s the designer’s job to know what the consumer wants and to use their superpowers to make it happen.

You probably wonder what I mean when I say designers have ‘superpowers.’ Okay, so they can’t fly or lift a car with one hand, but they have a whole other set of tools to make sure whatever they create is successful. If you are someone getting into this industry, we recommend you look at the four essential ‘powers’ a designer needs.

Shape-shifting

It is not just enough to know what the consumer wants and to be able to read into them. A designer must know what it is like to be in the consumer’s shoes and create a product or service that is customized just for them. While I was working for Kaiyan, I needed to create the design for an application for people suffering from chronic back pain. I had back pain myself and then studied the other team members with similar conditions, and I tried to mimic their methods. It was because of this that I was able to make a successful and useful application.

X-Ray Vision

Sometimes the customer just doesn’t know what they want. They may have suggestions on improving an already existing product, but they don’t think about the possibilities beyond it. Take, for example, cell phones. Before the introduction of the touchscreen, the vast majority of people would never even imagine getting rid of the buttons; they would have suggested just making them larger and easier to press.

The designer looks at a phone and thinks of a new way to innovate and use it, to see through what the costume wants and go past it. Just like having x-ray vision in a way, they can see directly into the needs and preferences of a consumer. It’s digging deep inside that can bring out the best ideas.

The ability to make others superhuman

Designers have the chance to give other people their own superpowers or at least help them focus on their strengths. One of the ways they can do this is by assisting people in staying in their ‘flow.’ Flow is, for example, when someone is running in the morning, listening to music, and pushing themselves to the limit, only having to stop when a song is interrupted. You don’t want people to break out of their complete concentration with whatever task is at hand.

You want to offer a design that will allow them to continue working or creating and be with them from start to finish. Think of a tool or service to help a writer write or a surgeon perform surgery more easily. Using the other two superpowers previously mentioned, you can create something that will ensure this flow state will not break easily.

Superhuman sensory perception

So design is not just limited to being anything digital or involving an online interface. Although that is a lot of what today circles around, seeing that we do live in the digital age, the human part of us is still very important. The part of us that feels emotions, love, fear, and so on really needs to be able to connect with our creation.

In this instance, take a bracelet that was designed for women, containing an emergency button on it that could be easily pressed in a dangerous situation. The bracelet would then contact friends, family, or authorities to help the woman in question. This is a great example of a design that recognizes most women’s fear when walking the streets alone at night. So remember, it’s not all about applications and websites; a good designer understands what makes us human and our senses and emotions.

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Bootcamp
Bootcamp

Published in Bootcamp

From idea to product, one lesson at a time. Bootcamp is a collection of resources and opinion pieces about UX, UI, and Product. To submit your story: https://tinyurl.com/bootspub1

Carlos Lastres
Carlos Lastres

Written by Carlos Lastres

MBA | Sr Product Designer | Software Engineer | TEDx Speaker

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