Why you need to ditch your Design Values — and what to replace them with
From the dawn of time, as I imagine it, there were a bunch of designers tasked with making really beautiful things for people to enjoy. At some point, the Creator of the Universe probably stood before their team during a morning stand-up and said something like,
“Listen guys. You’re getting a little sloppy. Your poison ivy looks a lot like spinach. How will people know which one to eat?”
“You’re right,” said one of the UX designers, “We should come up with a set of Design Values to guide us as we work. Things like: Keep it simple. Get rid of clutter. Design with people in mind. These values will help ensure consistency, integrity and familiarity with our product, the Universe, so that people never want to leave it!”
“Not even when it’s flooding?” asked some guy named Noah.
The point is, Design Values — defined as a set of shared values amongst a team that influences design decisions — are not unique. They are universal, instinctual and should come as second nature to any good designer. From day dot, designers have known that simple is better. That putting the user first is non-negotiable. You can re-skin the words “user-centric”, “lean,” and “minimal” as many times as you like, until you’ve rehashed them into a set of the coolest design values the world has ever heard. But simply agreeing on a set of values, and articulating them in a memorable way, neither makes for good design, nor actively helps change the behaviours that could. Sure, Design Values may help inspire us or provide motivation when we lose sight of what’s important, but in that sense, they are just a cue. What they are missing is a routine; something that will turn them into habits.
The Habit Loop
And why your Design Values aren’t working.
Over 100 years ago, an advertising exec named Claude Hopkins started the tooth-brushing habit in America. How? He figured out how to make a product into a daily habit by finding a cue (something that would trigger the consumer into needing or wanting the product) and a reward (something they would crave). In between this is the routine — the behaviour itself.
“The reason why these cues and rewards are so important is because over time, people begin craving the reward whenever they see the cue, and that craving makes a habit occur automatically.” — Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
Design Values may serve as a really great Cue; something that triggers us to make the right call, to guide us where we need to be. But without an actual routine in place, there is no behaviour that we’re changing; no way of turning those idealistic Design Values into actual habits.
We need more than just Design Values (the Cue). We need a reward to crave, and a routine to drive new behaviours.
Design Mantras can solve this problem.
Trading Design Values for Design Mantras
You are what you Ommmmn.
On what was one of the most unusual nights of my life, I found myself in a cold brick-house in New Zealand, sitting in a circle of women, chanting mantras and eating ice-cream with a communal spoon. That’s when I realized I was in the wrong house, but I stayed anyway.
What I learned that night was that mantras are often thought of as little seeds that energize intentions. They are words, or affirmative phrases, that you repeat to yourself over and over again. As you do this, your mind gathers focus and you can actually reprogram your subconscious to deliver on your intentions. When chanted in a group setting, you can align your mind and energy with those around you to work towards a common goal.
Let’s think about how the habit of chanting mantras works. A mantra is a cue. You start saying “Ommmmn” and you immediately crave the reward at the end of your meditation session; complete Euphoria. This craving is what fuels your routine. You continue chanting and meditating until you reap your reward. Every time you see or think of that cue, you repeat this routine, until it becomes a habit.
What can we learn from this? By swapping our Design Values for Design Mantras, we can create cues. Those cues can set off a routine in which we start to change our behaviour. At the end of this routine, there should be a reward that encourages us to keep repeating the process. Habits will form. What were once values will become the natural way of things.
Step One: Decide on a reward.
What are you craving?
The habit loop works by stimulating a craving for a reward. Without that reward, there’s no motivation to continue the behaviour.
Everyone in your team may have a different reward that they’re stimulated by. For some, it may be the satisfaction of a job well-done. For others, it could be peer recognition or a chocolate from the candy jar.
Send out a Google survey, start a Slack thread or hold a good ol’ fashioned meeting and ask everyone to come up with their own reward that will fuel the habit-loop. You don’t all need to be motivated by the same end-goal, but you do need to have a clear idea of what that end-goal is.
Step Two: Turn your Design Values into cues.
Take a long hard look at your screens, and point out all your flaws.
It’s easy to want to change a bad behaviour, but why would you want to change a good one?
One of my concerns with Design Values is how idealistic they can be. If we want them to serve as a cue, we should pinpoint things we’re not good at — not things we know should guide us.
To identify your cues, run a What do we suck at? workshop.
1. Lay down the rules:
Be brutally honest with yourselves — spare no feedback
Don’t get defensive — this isn’t personal, it’s teamwork
Stay focused on identifying roadblocks and problems; do not anticipate solutions
2. Revisit your Design Values
Take a good hard look at each of your Design Values and ask yourselves if you actually suck at some of those things. If you do, keep the Design Value for now (we’ll turn it into a mantra in the next step).
3. Sticky-note what you suck at
In 5 minute blocks, ask everyone to write down what they think the team sucks at when it comes to each major pillar of your department: Design, User Experience, Copywriting, etc.
4. Find your cues
Once you’ve compiled all the stickies and have argued and agreed upon the most pressing issues, you’ll find a set of 5–10 glaringly obvious things that you guys suck at.
These were ours:
Communicating — to each other, and the wider business. We rely too heavily on Slack.
Putting copy first — we’re still getting used to having a Copywriter on the team & looping her in early enough.
Not going AWOL — we’re so bold sometimes that we risk straying too far from what’s tried and true, or from the path the rest of us are trekking.
Empathizing — Sometimes we put beauty before empathy, or forget to empathize altogether.
Making them feel the love — we could always try harder to delight our users with every single interaction, instead of just the bigger picture.
Getting rid of clutter without sacrificing function — we’re still searching for that perfect balance between form and function.
Now, turn your cues into Mantras.
Make them roll off the tip of your tongue.
Now for the ridiculously hard part: Try to condense each one of those things you suck at into one teeny tiny word or phrase that will become a Design Mantra.
Your Design Mantras should roll off the tip of your tongue, because the easier they are to remember, the more likely they’ll stay top-of-mind.
While I don’t advocate forcing words and content just to be clever, it certainly would be helpful to try to give your Design Mantras an acronym.
For example, we landed on Ommmmn:
O — Overcommunicate
M — Make them smile
M — Make your mark
M — Minimize without sacrifice
M — Master empathy
N — Never use Lorem Ipsum
Then, give each mantra a story.
Stories, or it didn’t happen.
Short and sweet is nice, but without context, the Mantra risks having little to no meaning. No meaning means no buy-in. No buy-in means no practice. No practice means no habit, and no habit means no change!
That’s why I recommend backing your Mantra up with a short story, or even just an inspirational quote — something that brings a clear picture of how to live that mantra. This will help commit the mantra to memory.
Here are ours:
Overcommunicate — Cut them some Slack and go talk face-to-face
Make them smile — Build it and they will come; delight them and they will stay
Make your mark — Don’t reinvent the wheel; make it spin differently
Minimize without sacrifice — Stop when it does the thing you want it to do, and looks good doing it
Master empathy — Walk a mile in their shoes before designing them new ones
Never use Lorem Ipsum — Find the right words from the start, or just find your copywriter
Step Three: Find your routine.
Now sit in a circle and hold each other accountable.
The routine is easily the most important part of the habit loop; it’s what gets you the reward.
You may decide on your own way to take your Design Mantras from cue to routine, but incase you need some inspiration, here’s how we do it:
The Daily Stand-Ommmmn
Summary:
- Pick a new Mantra to focus on each morning
2. Consciously look for ways to apply that Mantra to your work
3. Share stories, daily and as often as possible, with your team about how you practiced your Mantra
This one can be incorporated into your existing daily stand-up. Simply create a deck of cue-cards or business cards with the Mantra on one side and the Story on the other. At the start or end of your stand-up, have each person pick a card at random. Whichever Mantra they choose is the one they have to focus on that day. Making sure this happens daily at roughly the same time, in the same place is key to stimulating the new habit formation.
At the next day’s stand-up, have each person share a story about how they successfully practiced the previous day’s mantra. Constantly sharing and listening to these stories will not only inspire each other to live these mantras in new ways, but will also deliver immediate gratification and reassurance that you are improving as a team.
When you’re done telling your story, pass your card counter-clockwise so everyone has a new Mantra to practice each day.
Step Four: Continue fueling the habit loop
In subtle and not so subtle ways.
Once the habit is in place, it needs to be encouraged, both consciously (by the efforts of you and your team)and subconsciously (by subtle reminders).
Subtle
Last year, we made posters for each of our Design Principles and hung them on the wall as a constant, yet subtle reminder to let those Principles guide us.
You can do the same thing with your Design Mantras. Screensavers, mousepads, t-shirts or even physical storyboards are other great ideas for surrounding yourself with subtle reminders that can help fuel your new habits.
Not so subtle
Remember how we talked about this whole thing being driven by a reward? Why not make that a little more obvious.
A monthly Ommmmn Awards Ceremony can help recognize your efforts and progress. Send a Google survey out a week beforehand, asking your team to match each other to the Ommmmn they best represented over the past month.
This is an excellent way to strengthen the habit loop. Team members will feel accomplished and will set their mind on a new goal (a different Design Mantra Award for next month). And so the habit loop continues.
Is it really time to say goodbye to Design Values?
Probably.
What do I even know about Design Values? I’m not a designer. Explains so much, right? (like the 10 minute read time and lack of visuals in this post).
I am a writer, and it is my job to bring the story out of our designs. So when I see a set of Design Values hanging on the wall looking pretty, I get frustrated, knowing they’re on the cusp of an incredible journey.
Without the right routine, Design Values can be more dangerous than helpful. Passive by nature, they encourage clinging to a set of ideals instead of forcing us on a journey and giving us stories to tell and share and learn from. Remember that good design can prevail even in the absence of clearly defined Design Values. It cannot prevail without change.
So, should you ditch your Design Values? I think so. They are about as useful as giving any human being a manual on how to be a good person. Trust that your designers know what it takes to design well. Trust that they are aligned to your company’s values. Trust that, with the right habit loop in place, they can smash through whatever’s standing in the way of what you all instinctively know is good design.
As we’ve all learned from Mark Zuckerberg, there’s only so much space in our brains for the things we need to focus on. That’s why he doesn’t waste time choosing which shirt he’ll wear each day, and you shouldn’t waste time thinking of the millionth way to say, “Put the user first.”
Focus instead on what you suck at, and chant it from your stand-up desk.
