Why-driven design
The value of intentional decision making in the design process
The power that designers have is not on knowing tools and frameworks, but on being critical about a challenge. Yet, designers are also human, and that is why we need to fortify ourselves to not be misled by the illusion of a creative process when all we are doing is to follow the steps of a framework. To start avoiding this trap is important to acknowledge it.
The quality of our outcome depends on the quality of your questions. Not from the steps of the process you followed.
We are tired
We, designers, are tired. We are human, after all. Our work domain demands intense decision rationalization. Discovering product possibilities requests that we wipe clean our previous knowledge to relearn how things work, from the bottom up, so we can rethink them.
Even when we are doing a mechanical task like copy and pasting design components between one experimentation and another, we need to be aware of the possibilities of a whole context where a small piece of interaction lives. For making good designs, small decisions must come from critical thinking.
Like the other product development disciplines (such as software engineering), our daily effort fights the human predisposition to avoid spending too much energy thinking. To keep sanity, it’s necessary that the human brain optimizes when to really think and when to react. We delegate decision-making by context.
Using the same terms the behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman uses in his book, Thinking: Fast And Slow, we have two decision-making systems: System 01 and System 02. The first is responsible for intuitive action-taking and for saving energy, the second, otherwise, takes the hard work to process consequences before reacting.
We, designers and developers, must use the second system a lot. Right? We are tough decision-makers.
But it’s visible from what we consume about UX design, in the shape of articles and cases, how we let the decision-making process under System 01 encompass more than we realize. Have you ever asked someones’ opinion and got as an answer a completely generic approach to design? Usually suggesting frameworks and tools: “we should use framework X for getting to these answers’’ and that’s it. Ok, but why?
Frameworks and tools are like sugar
It’s important to know that when we react using System 01 we believe we are actually thinking. But the truth is that we scanned our memorized heuristics and convinced ourselves that there is a safe path there.
To use this decision without acknowledging the risks is like eating something sweet: the hunger goes away but it will probably return faster than we imagine. Our design problem will appear as solved when in reality we are not thinking about the problem — we are filling steps of a framework for getting to any solution.
Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing.
Jeff Bezos
This essay aims to remember the value of being critical about our decisions on the design process. It is a provocation about being aware of the “why” when choosing paths to designing a product, and not just fulfilling framework steps.
Creating from the principles, not about the principles
Richard Feynman was a renowned physicist and teacher. Known for his approach and critiques towards Science’s educational process. Feynman had the amazing ability to think from the Physics principles, not about them.
This ability is illustrated by a situation he experienced. When on vacation, he forgot an important book for his studies and, because of that, deducted all the formulas and Physics laws that were necessary at that moment on his own. He understood what constitutes Physics so well that he recreated the principles by deductions. His students, on the other hand, were only able to learn the formulas and apply them — never to explain why things are like they are.
Looking in retrospect, wearing the superpower lens to understand the discipline principles, Feynman would have wrote on a blackboard:
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”
By sharing this frustration with the formula-based way of thought — that exists from Physics to product development disciplines — it’s necessary to comprehend what it would be to think from the principles when designing.
What is it to think from the principles?
Designing from the principles is the ability to abstract a given scenario to a level that it gains many branches. The design process to solve a problem can be treated as this branched asset: there are many ways to achieve a goal.
If we just tie ourselves to pre-seted steps during the problem-solving moments, we would be just filling a form on “how-do-design”. The ideal scenario is to comprehend the goal of each step of the process. This knowledge may ensure a process that is solving a real problem.
Starting with a question opens more branches than starting from a framework.
We think from the principles when applying processes tailored by the business constraints and to the team’s context. Considering that what matters is the desired outcome of each design step, not the tool applied to get to it.
That’s the designer’s job: the comprehension of which outputs are useful to create something that fits a market. The path to that may be linear (but most likely is not), it can involve our guts, research skills, and the ability to consult our business colleagues’ expertise. Thinking from the principles is to know how to identify the inputs to keep things going, when and how to use them, and not how to make a type of matrix.
When we just repeat work models we think about the principles. We can feel or simulate a path of thought because some frameworks are storytelling, but what we are actually doing is showing we know that these steps are important — not necessarily looking from the right angle to fit an opportunity for a solution, we would just be looking from an angle that explains the process.
The way to overcome our human nature and not to look for ways to think about the principles, but from them may start at the intentionality of our choices. The choosing to explore a problem heuristic, method or tool should be a rationalized and grounded decision — as articulate as our UI decisions.
Inquisitive decisions — why as a habit
When it comes to learning from rationalizing, there is a fascinating example of the world champion poker player Maria Konnikova. Also a New Yorker reporter, she learned poker for writing a book about decision-making and ended up a world champion.
There are two main interesting points for her learning process:
The first is that, as in product disciplines, poker has many miraculous formulas and math frameworks for winning;
The second is that Maria learned poker and became a champion not because of any of these formulas, but by studying the principles and also by having a mentor who always was asking: why did you did this move?
Konnikova was mentored by Erik Seidel — also a poker world champion. The mentorship was based on thinking out loud and answering questions. After a few sessions hearing “why did you do that?” about her decisions, Maria started to anticipate the specialist-mentor questions and think how she would explain their decisions to him before she played, and by doing so, taking rational moves.
Maria also studied the formulas and “poker math”, but never saw them as a restriction or a given path — they were never meant to be used without a reason. If she simply had learned about the principles and was only able to replicate them, how could she subvert the game to become a winner?
[…] The problem is the restrictions that show up at the beginning of the project that is biased. To pick a process before knowing why is a biased restriction.
(A note published by Fabrício Teixeira, at the Blog de AI in 2013 after a presentation made by Luke W.)
Why-driven design process
It is possible to win the game approaching design process decisions and choices as Konnikova does her plays — asking why to follow that decision. This practice avoids the production of empty steps of a process, and ensures a design process tailored to the context.
The control over the process comes with intentionality: only choosing a technique after having an expected outcome. Applying this intentions demands the effort to dodge out of our process biases and use the designers’ ability to relearn.
The ones with kaleidoscope eyes — the ability to pick a angle
The point that ties all the points together is that we, the ones that create solutions, must be eternal learners.
Is also part of human nature to see the world from trained lenses. When examining a patient, a doctor has an algorithm in her head: a checklist for what to look for possible diagnosis. Her lens is well trained and may not find anything beyond what she is looking for.
We, designers, need to overcome human nature and, more than just changing lenses, to wear kaleidoscopes and look at possibilities from several points of view. Then, synthesize one of these on a solution.
This synthesis is only possible if we understand where we want to get, even if we are in the middle of uncountable possibilities — not the path, the destiny. The solution, this summarized way to look to a problem, is only useful if it attacks its roots.
When we own our “whys” we turn the lenses around, filtering between the possibilities. The kaleidoscope itself will never dictate our angles, just offer then. This must be the frontier of how models can help us. And, of course, they can.
“All models are wrong, some of them are useful”
As the quote above, from the British statistician George Box, indicates, frameworks and methodologies can be a useful starting point, or even used to find heuristics that clarifies the design process when there is too much for our brains to take in or to share with peers. We can always use them with caution (and intentionally).
Next steps from the principles
Design from the principles is a distinguished ability in professionals that work with digital products. The value of deeply understanding why we make our decisions is what will keep us seated at the strategic table we dreamed of — our discipline will be recognized as well-articulated and innovative, as no one can abstract and synthesize possibilities as we can.
We must always approach formulas, tools, and models with precaution. Ask why we are considering using them: is there a barrier to communication with stakeholders they can help us solve? Maybe we are stuck in a process phase and they can help. The only prerequisite is the why.
Afterwords
It took a long time to write this piece of content. All because during the process I asked myself if this reflection was valuable if it was worth it. Sometimes whys can be defeated by your design guts. If it’s important to take something to the world, don’t wait so much to know the whys upfront — share with the community and learn it by doing.
References
- Thinking: fast and slow;
- And a text about behavioral economics value in design context;
- Get to know Richard Feynman, I did it by reading his autobiography;
- Maria Konnikovas’s interview for The Knowledge Project Podcast, where I knew her story;
- The book The Three Laws of Performance, where I read about the lenses we use to see the world;
- All models are wrong", from Farnam Street;
- First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge, from Farnam Street;
- There are many references for re-framing problems, the one that I liked most recently was also an episode of the Knowledge Project, with Adam Grant this time.
Special thanks to
Marcela Mothé, my favorite why-driven product designer (that read almost every version of this essay), and to Rodrigo Jesus that shown me so many references. Also Rhebeca Martins, Pamela Candido, and Davi Costa for comments and review.
