Four Virtues of Exceptional Design That AI Cannot Produce — Part One: Utility
What constitutes a “good” design? Are there universal principles that can be applied to most, if not all, applications of design? As a professional designer with 15 years of experience under my belt, I’ve often thought about these two questions. I was first intrigued when my own career meandered from the graphic design discipline into product and UX design. I am also a great admirer of adjacent design disciplines, like industrial design and architecture. You could say most of the colleagues in my field are fans of “good design.” But what does that really mean?
A subtle pattern began to emerge as these questions percolated in the back of mind year after year. I read a lot of design books. I also gained experience on a dozen different design teams, and subsequently led and managed my own teams of designers. During the course of building a team from scratch, I had the opportunity to look through a lot of portfolios and meet with a lot of designers. There were certain characteristics I began to seek in candidates that were difficult to define at first. To a certain extent, it felt like I needed to read between the lines in order to uncover a handful of seemingly intangible traits.
Eventually I identified and formed a list of these qualities I call the virtues of design. After mulling them over for the better part of a year, it is time to introduce them publicly in a 4-part post. My goal is to provide other designers with a slightly new way to look at their work — one that focuses on the qualities of design in a broader sense. I also hope to make these benefits salient to non-designers and business leaders who may have limited experience working with design teams.
The four virtues of design I’ve identified so far, and believe to be present in all quality design solutions, as well as understood by all good designers are:
- Utility — satisfactory solutions to real problems
- Clarity — immediate comprehension at every interaction
- Harmony — significant cohesion between related systems
- Causality — evidence-based results via measured outcomes
Utility
“Form follows function” — Louis Sullivan
What is design utility?
The first step to measure design quality is to remove subjectivity. Design is distinct from art. John Maeda, author of The Laws of Simplicity and former President of the Rhode Island School of Design said, “Artists make questions and designers solve problems.”¹
Massimo Vignelli, the famous modernist and hero of many a graphic designer said, “Good design is a matter of discipline. It starts by looking at the problem and collecting all the available information about it… It’s really more about logic than imagination.”² He is also known for claiming, “design is utilitarian.”
The number one thing great design does is solve a problem — any problem. The bigger the problem, the greater the value of a satisfactory solution. Utility is about understanding value because it is the ability to satisfy a want or need.³
Utility is the fundamental unit upon which the entire field of economics is based. And I believe there are benefits to adopting a similar definition:
“Economics starts with one very important assumption: Individuals act to make themselves as well off as possible. individuals seek to maximize their own utility, which is a similar concept to happiness, only broader.”⁴ — Charles Wheelan
At the heart of design is a search for economic utility — to create solutions that people yearn for because they’re better off with them. They also coexist harmoniously with the other systems in their life. Lastly, they are financially sustainable.
What types of things provide utility to the population? Global consulting firm Bain & Company did an extensive study to understand what people value.⁵ They essentially categorized and ranked utility among consumers. Cross-referencing their list with the type of design work I’ve done and am familiar with in the industry, I came up with a hybrid hierarchy of values:
- Informational
- Functional
- Emotional
- Well-being
Informational
To begin, the communication of information is the foundation of the value pyramid. Bain & Company placed “Info” as a single element within the Functional category but I believe it plays a more central role in the design industry. The entire profession of graphic design is dedicated to solving information and communication challenges. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed graphic design work is featured in the publication Communication Arts annual, which has been printed and distributed for over half a century.
Functional
Next are functional design solutions. These are objects or software that were made to do something, like tools. They simplify tasks, save us time and allow us to be more efficient in whatever goal we’re trying to achieve.
Many times functional design satisfies needs not wants. I would argue that a lot of B2B work happens in this space. It doesn’t always need to look good or have meaning, so long as it functions properly.
Emotional
There are quite a few things happening in the emotional value space. I believe a lot of consumer design falls in this category. Consumers are notoriously picky. Due to automation and abundance, consumers have seemingly endless choices. The solution they choose must function properly but it must also satisfy them emotionally. It must have meaning and provide reflective delight, as NNGroup calls it.⁶
There are also social aspects to consider. Trends, tribes and social acceptance affect consumer choices. Enter brand identity and design. Successful entities reflect the social and emotional identities of their customers through brand identity, including voice and tone.
Well-being
The highest value in the hierarchy is well-being. Identity and belonging are important but not as important as the innovations that directly impact a person’s financial or physical well-being. As a result, solutions for health and wealth are in the most dubious position. I believe all the values are required to build a successful well-being solution. It must convey the proper and correct information. It must function properly. Finally, it will need to successfully make meaningful emotional connections as well.
Behavior designers are an emerging field that tackle these problems. Behavioral scientists, or economists also concentrate in this space, but their approach is slightly different. I believe there is meaningful overlap between the two, and enormous potential to work collaboratively in this space. But that is a separate essay or conversation.
How does the hierarchy help us? Well, a solution that improves well-being is worth more, has more utility or value, than a solution that provides information. More utility points go to the design solutions that have a bigger impact. I appreciate a beautiful poster but it simply does not have the same utility as the Apple Health app. One tells you when and where a concert will be held. The other is improving physical well-being for millions of lives.
This also serves as a guide to teams. Are you getting hung up on informational challenges when you really ought to be focused on Emotional or Well-being solutions? Prioritize for impact. Prioritize for utility.
Why is utility important?
In 2001, the Segway was announced with much fanfare. Jeff Bezos publicly said it was going to revolutionize transportation. Even the visionary Steve Jobs speculated future cities would be built around it. Not only were some of the smartest people in the world singing its praise, the Segway also boasted revolutionary technology created by a genius inventor and had the backing of legendary investors with an impressive track record. And yet it was a commercial disappointment.⁷ Among a list of potential reasons why the Segway flopped was the fact that the actual value it provided simply didn’t justify the price (around $5,000). This seems particularly evident when you consider the many satisfactory alternatives to transportation that already existed.
In the last few decades, the lack of product-market fit has been one of the main reasons startups fail. Businesses exist to create value. Many times, “[Companies] focus on the technology being offered rather than the value being delivered.”⁸ “But [traditional businesses] also believe they can create solutions that customers will truly value without their input.”⁹
Great designers mitigate these pitfalls by taking a human-first approach and challenging organizational assumptions. Whereas many companies approach problems from a technology standpoint, designers are trained to understand the customer first, and work backwards from their perspective. Once the designer has identified the wants and needs of the customer, they have a better chance of proposing a solution that will be well received.
That’s not all. “Successful products are not only loved by your customers, but they work for your business.”¹⁰ Great designers are not only interested in the utility of customers, they are also interested in value to the business. As Erika Hall said, “The business model — the underlying exchange of value — is the new [design] grid.”¹¹ Design solutions cannot be of any enduring success unless there is an equilibrium of value between the business and the customer. If the customer enjoys a product or service that is not profitable, it won’t be long before the business self-corrects and a more profitable, albeit less desirable, product or service is put in place. And vice versa. If a profitable solution loses demand, it will be dropped.
Designers are taught to systematically collect feedback from customers. This feedback can help determine what customers really value, which in turn, informs the team what to build and where to focus their time and energy. Many times designers are brought on to help implement a predetermined solution. During the course of the design process, a designer may uncover new information that challenges the utility of the initial approach. For this reason, designers prefer to be involved earlier in the process to help identify and confirm the value to provide.
How utility is manifested?
Many of the arguments UX/UI designers tend to carryon about have very little bearing on the overall value or utility of the design. The greater the importance of an objective to customers and the lower their satisfaction with existing solutions is the formula to determine the valuation of a potential solution.¹²
When evaluating the designs of a potential design hire, or reviewing the portfolios of design students, it can be difficult to understand the true utility of a design from screenshots. The UI presented may look very impressive but it doesn’t give me any indication whether the intended audience found it valuable or not. The converse could be true. I may harshly judge a UI that I consider to be crude but in actuality, it provides an enormous amount of value to the customer. Typically, I will need a glimpse into the designers process to judge whether they had a good grasp of the customer needs through interviews, or other feedback methods. Also, a project will typically be tweaked after new information is uncovered to increase the value delivered. Describing what was learned and how it changed the project is a good indication that a designer was maximizing value.
Lastly, a designer that had an impact on the business by realigning value is perhaps the most impressive because of the degree of difficulty.
Utility checklist for designers:
- What is the problem to solve?
- How valuable is the potential solution?
- What solutions already exist and what is their level of customer satisfaction?
Conclusion
Exceptional design is involved in solving real problems that are important to humans. This goes beyond aesthetically pleasing interfaces, or cool looking gadgets. It is becoming easier to replicate visual design alone. However, AI can’t predict what we will value in the future. Humans are irrational beings and our tastes, preferences, wants and needs are constantly shifting. Only thoughtful discernment can detect the context in which a solution may be perceived as valuable or not.
In the posts that follow, I will go over the remaining design virtues and how they overlap and manifest in one another. Read about the next design virtue, Clarity.
[1]: Been, Rachel. (03/21/2019). A New Religion for Designers. Google Design. https://design.google/library/john-maeda-interview-new-design-religion
[2]: Pires, Samantha. (01/02/2021). Design Is Not Art: Uncovering the Brilliant Logic Behind Massimo Vignelli’s Famous Designs. My Modern Met. https://mymodernmet.com/massimo-vignelli-design-is-not-art/
[3]: Shaikh, Saqib. Utility: Meaning, Characteristics and Types | Economics. Economic Discussion. https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/utility/utility-meaning-characteristics-and-types-economics/13594
[4]: Wheelan, Charles. (2002). Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science. Norton
[5]: Almquist, E., Senior, J., and Bloch, N. (September 2016). The Elements of Value. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-elements-of-value
[6]: Fessenden, Therese. (11/27/2022). Three Pillars of User Delight. NNGroup. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pillars-user-delight/
[7]: Goeldi, Andreas. (1/15/2022). Does innovation need hype? The case of the Segway. Innospective. https://innospective.net/does-innovation-need-hype-the-case-of-the-segway/
[8]: Moesta, Bob. (2020). Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress. Lioncrest Publishing.
[9]: Kalbach, Jim. (2020). The Jobs To Be Done Playbook. Two Waves.
[10]: Cagan, Marty. (2008). Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Wiley.
[11]: Merholz, P., and Garret, J.J. (10/27/2020). Episode 20 — The business model is the new grid, and other mindbombs (ft. Erika Hall). Finding Our Way. https://findingourway.design/2020/10/27/20-the-business-model-is-the-new-grid-and-other-mindbombs-ft-erika-hall/
[12]: Olsen, Dan. (2015). The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback. Wiley.
*Thanks to Alyssa Rock for help with editing this series.
