Four Virtues of Exceptional Design That AI Cannot Produce — Part Three: Harmony
The third virtue of design in this 4 part series is Harmony — significant cohesion between related systems. What constitutes a “good” design? Are there universal principles that can be applied to most, if not all, applications of design? In my personal quest to define good design, I have recognized four virtues that are manifest in exceptional design solutions. Read about the first two virtues, Utility and Clarity.
Harmony
“Everything is a system and can therefore be designed.” — Don Norman
What is design harmony?
A broad, yet sufficient definition of a system is “any assemblage or set of correlated members.”¹ Systems, or “assemblages,” come in all shapes and sizes, and they may overlap, nest, or exist adjacent to one another. A website is a digital system; so is a database. A company is a large system with subsystems called departments. Tupperware is also a system. Indeed, our entire world can be viewed as a series of disparate and messy systems.
Great designers have the ability to see a bigger picture, recognize patterns, and reframe problems to take into account a wider context of elements that may impact the systems involved. This allows them to form a pleasing and consistent whole by arranging related elements or creating new alternatives altogether. Removing dissonance creates order and balance, which leads to improved efficiency and unity within the system. This is what designer, author, and former Apple VP, Don Norman, meant when he said, “everything is a system and can therefore be designed.”²
The infamous Magic Mouse 2 is an example of dissonance in design. On its own, the Magic Mouse 2 was an excellent product that solved the important problem of waste and sustainability. Customers could recharge their mouse directly without the hassle and waste of batteries. However, it didn’t work harmoniously in every context. In order to charge the Magic Mouse 2, you had to flip it over, thereby rendering it useless while charging. A better design solution would’ve allowed for continuous and uninterrupted use during charging. A second subtle design flaw of the Magic Mouse 2 presents itself after extended use. Due to its lack of ergonomics, I develop a pain in my wrist after 2 weeks of daily use, so I have not been able to consistently use it with my desktop setup.
Some systems are explicit and can be fairly obvious, like a database. Implicit systems may not be easily inferred because their correlation may not be apparent without careful inspection. Consider a set of Tupperware. It is in itself a system for storing food. However, it lives in the larger system of a kitchen. When you take into account a more holistic view of Tupperware, you may come to realize that the overall design is inadequate. Sure, your Tupperware may work well for storing and reheating food, but very few Tupperware sets have a harmonious relationship within the larger context of the kitchen while not in use. Most people I know, myself included, have a drawer or cupboard of disheveled Tupperware sets with mismatched lids. When examined through this lens, we might agree that most Tupperware solutions are poorly designed.
Both examples illustrate how the context of the solution is immensely important because context reveals value. Using a mouse while it charges turns out to be very valuable to people, judging by the amount of criticism Apple received for the Magic Mouse 2 design. Conversely, an organized cupboard of Tupperware may not be as valuable to consumers since there is little demand for alternative Tupperware solutions. Exceptional designs solve a much needed problem (see the post about Utility) and they also live harmoniously within the many other systems in an individuals’ life. The only way to understand the potential relationship between solutions and systems is to have a holistic view of the customer. This need to understand context will take designers on a journey of surprising breadth and depth in order to see the big picture and recognize new patterns. Many times it will also lead to innovative and exciting new alternatives.
Research and even simple observation are essential to the designers toolkit. As Bill Buxton said in Sketching User Experiences, “To adequately take the social and physical context into account in pursuing a design, we must experience some manifestation of it in those contexts (the wild) while still in the design cycle — the earlier the better.”³
World renowned design firm IDEO has long championed a formula of three components to make a successful product: feasibility, viability, and desirability. The goal is to bring together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO said, “A competent designer will resolve each of these three constraints (feasibility, viability, desirability), but a design thinker will bring them into a harmonious balance.”⁴
A designer expends a tremendous amount of effort to create harmony in the domain of product development. They will spend time with the customer to understand their wants and needs in depth. This provides them with insight into the desirability of a potential solution. They will explore new solutions and work with engineering teams to flesh out the feasibility of the technology available. Lastly, they work with the product manager and other stakeholders of the business to consider the cost and sustainability of the product or feature. It can be a daunting balancing act, but exceptional designers proactively insert themselves within each of these areas, which are commonly divided into three separate teams or departments. As mentioned before, teams and departments are really subsystems of the overall organization. If the designer finds that the subsystems of an organization are operating in silos, they will use the virtue of Clarity, discussed in the previous post, to bring awareness and alignment between the teams. The result could be a new cross-functional team (subsystem) to address the deficiencies of the siloed workflows. Balance and harmony prevail in pursuit of the desired outcomes.
Why is harmony important?
A successful business needs solutions that work well but they also need to exist in an increasingly complex world. A solution that provides utility in one area of a customer’s life, but creates dissonance in another can quickly be discarded in favor of several alternatives. When a solution solves a difficult challenge and is in harmony with the tangential systems of the customer, it creates a synergistic benefit that is perceived as greater than the sum of its parts. This is what is meant of a “sticky” product, or providing “delight” to the customer. Harmonious solutions become so embedded in the lives of the customers that they develop a whole new meaning, insomuch that they become part of the customer’s identity. The result is a fiercely loyal customer base that borders on cultish.
Kitchenware company OXO is the №1 kitchen gadget company in market share and has a loyal customer base that approaches cult status. Consumer recommendation giants, Wirecutter and America’s Test Kitchen both tout long lists of OXO products. Even chefs and culinary experts admit their infatuation with the brand. Helen Rosner, the New Yorker magazine food writer confessed to Slate, “I’m absolutely obsessed!”⁵
How did OXO garner such a devout following? Beginning with a potato peeler in the 90’s, OXO developed a knack for identifying pain points in everyday objects and finding clever ways to eliminate them. The Good Grips potato peeler is equally comfortable for people with or without arthritis to use. This philosophy became known as Universal Design and the raison d’etre for all OXO products. POP containers keep dry foods fresh for longer, but can also be stacked to save space. Their square corners allow for easy gripping with one hand. The salad spinner can also be used with one hand and was inspired by a children’s toy. Lastly, the Conical Burr Coffee Grinder came about when the OXO team observed coffee aficionados consistently using a grinder and scale separately to make fresh cups of java. People love OXO products because they feel like OXO truly understands them and the context of cooking at home. Drawing on inspiration from totally unrelated industries, (like children’s toys) and combining 2 separate gadgets into one cohesive whole (the coffee grinder and scale) are excellent examples of creating harmony within a system.
Companies that can create loyalty enjoy an ever-growing customer base and increased market share brought about by word-of-mouth sales. There is also the benefit of increased revenue from existing customers who are all too willing to purchase new products and features.
Apple is another company that enjoys a loyal customer base that borders on the cultish. There are several factors that contributed to the success of the iPhone. For one, it was sleek and easy to use. However, I submit that a large portion of credit belongs to the fact that the iPhone was the first to combine the somewhat disparate systems of a camera, music player, phone, and internet access into a single and virtually seamless system that fit in your pocket. The new iOS platform was just as important, if not more so, than the clear display and sleek hardware of the phone itself. Apple created a new system to combine several valuable and (up to that point) unrelated systems.
“Successful products are not only loved by your customers, but they work for your business.”⁶ Exceptional designers are capable of turning the design process inward on the organization itself to facilitate change. The computer programmer Melvin Conway coined an adage now known as Conway’s law: “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”⁷ In today’s fast-paced business environment, the ability to adapt and change to address customer needs is paramount. Conway’s law implies that your internal structure must adapt as well. Design researcher, trainer, and consultant Jared Spool put a new spin on Conway’s law. He said, “Your organization is perfectly optimized to produce the user experiences it currently delivers.”⁸ Exceptional designers recognize that it may be necessary to change the optimizations of the business in order to improve the final product for customers. Even the character Supervisor Dedra Meero, in the popular Star Wars spinoff, Andor, recognized that, “Systems either change or die.”
Consider another example from my own experience with a lease-to-own fintech. We couldn’t figure out how to speed up the leasing process. After several years of tweaking our system in typical startup fashion, we seemingly had no more room for improvement. Our lease application times were stagnant and simply not fast enough. One day, the product manager came to my desk and pulled up the online lease form in a browser window. “We need to trim this down so we can cut down the lease times,” he said. We went through each field one by one but could only remove one question. The rest were essential for approving a lease. One less input wasn’t going to give us the changes we were looking for. I stared at that form on my computer screen for hours. “How on earth can I redesign this form to reduce time?” I thought. I got out of my chair and spent a couple weeks with the processors in each department. I dove into the data and lease times. It took awhile but I was finally able to find a solution. In the fast-pace, startup environment we were operating within, a legacy protocol had stuck around and was sending a few specific statuses to infinitely route through our system until they were eventually deleted manually. This was keeping our average lease completion time high. What’s more. I discovered that the department that handled those specific statuses was no longer needed at all. Our proprietary algorithm for detecting risk had become accurate enough to stand on its own. The solution to restore harmony to the leasing system was to eliminate an entire processing team. I sent my supervisor a report and walked him through my findings. Over the course of several weeks, we slowly phased out the guilty protocol and reassigned the team. Lease times dropped and operation costs went down. Our customers were happy with the shorter lease times, the business was happy with the increase in efficiency and the reduction in costs. Even the processors were happy to tackle more meaningful challenges in other areas of the company. It became one of the most substantial design contributions I’ve ever made in my career, and I don’t have a single pixel to show for it!
What was initially presented to me as a problem with the lease form that lived in the system belonging to the interface, actually involved several seemingly unrelated systems at differing levels within the company. We were fortunate enough to persuade several internal teams to adopt our proposed changes in order to reach our desired outcomes.
There is an ever growing list of products and services that started out great, and provided real value to people, but ultimately were not financially sustainable. As a result, something less appealing, yet profitable took their place. Exceptional designers will resist the often easier solution to restore corporate harmony over exploring alternative solutions that benefit everyone. Erika Hall advises designers to examine the business in order to better serve people.
“If you are truly an advocate for humans, you will care about the business. Because only if user needs and business needs are truly, deeply intertwined are you going to be serving humans.”⁹
Finally, designers will consider what Don Norman refers to as externalities — unintended consequences of our decisions, outside our zone of focus. These extend from the mildly annoying, (think of the infamous charging Magic Mouse 2, or the untidy stack of Tupperware in your kitchen cupboard) to the more serious impacts on society and humanity. Design solutions may work well in a vacuum or limited context and timeline, but the best solutions work in harmony with the customer’s daily life over a substantial amount of time.¹⁰
One of the strangest examples of unintended externalities had to do with a trial program for organ donations. Behavioral studies have shown that programs that are designed to include opt-out mechanisms have greater enrollment because the applicant must consciously opt-out in order to not participate. This method yielded positive results in employee 401k programs by providing thousands of dollars to somewhat absent minded benefactors. However, there were mixed results when the opt-out design was applied to organ donor programs. Organ donor enrollment increased but contention arose among family members of deceased organ donors who felt the opt-out program was invalid. The solution worked as designed; enrollment increased. But it also caused inharmonious externalities within the social context of relatives that were not primarily involved. This dissonance ultimately impacted the true goal of the program which was to increase successful organ transplants. Perhaps an experienced designer may have sensed as much through research and ethnographic studies and reframed the problem in order to satisfy every person that would ultimately be affected.¹¹
The danger of not considering externalities can result in costly rework, loss of customers or even legal expenses for the business. The worst case scenario would be overlooked externalities that negatively impact the health of the people using your product.
How is harmony manifested?
Design harmony may be the most difficult of the four virtues to evaluate. As a hiring manager or outside observer, it is difficult to know what the related systems of a design might be. The onus is on the presenter to expose and articulate them in detail. If the designer conducted research or ethnographic studies, then there’s a good chance many of the learnings touch on deficiencies in harmony at some point along the customer journey. It is suspicious when a design solution is presented with no learnings, as if everything was successful on the first try. Not to say that such successes don’t happen; only that they are extremely rare. What is more likely is that the designer did not do enough to truly understand the context completely, nor did they evaluate the outcomes properly. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate harmony is by employing the fourth virtue, Causality. The final post in this series will cover causality in greater detail. In summary, you should see some of the outcomes presented in the examples above. An increase in customers and loyalty. Changes within your organization that led to increased revenue and/or a decrease in operation costs. Lastly, you won’t see any negative externalities caused by unforeseen circumstances that led to costly rework.
As with the previous virtues, the amount of context the designer can provide goes a long way in demonstrating how well they understood the customer’s point of view. The greater the knowledge and understanding of the intended audience, the more likely a solution will be successful and live harmoniously in the real world.
Harmony checklist for the designer:
- Present any research that was done
- Highlight any pain points or disharmony that were uncovered
- Talk about any efforts that were made to correct the inharmonious pain points
Conclusion
AI cannot predict what someone will like, nor how well a solution will coexist in a customer’s life. Human lives are nuanced. We are irrational and unpredictable. It takes careful observation and critical thinking to come up with harmonious solutions that work for a business and its customers. Not only that, exceptional design solutions work on multiple levels within the real world. AI simply does not have the ability to navigate the myriad of unknown factors and systems an astute designer will consider.
The following post covers the final virtue, Causality, and conclude this 4-part series on the virtues of design.
[1]: Definition of “system”. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/system
[2]: Norman, Don. (9/3/2010). Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product. jnd.org. https://jnd.org/systems-thinking-a-product-is-more-than-the-product/
[3]: Buxton, Bill. (2007). Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Elsevier Science.
[4]: Brown, Tim. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. HarperCollins.
[5]: Kois, Dan. (6/20/2020). How OXO Conquered the American Kitchen. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/business/2022/06/oxo-best-kitchen-gadgets-good-grips-history.html
[6]: Cagan, Marty. (2008). Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Wiley.
[7]: Conway’s Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
[8]: Jared Spool on X (Twitter): “Your organization is perfectly optimized to produce the user experiences it currently delivers.If you want to improve the user experiences, you’ll need to change the optimizations of your organization.This is the core of a UX strategy.” (https://twitter.com/jmspool/status/1424487424219025411?s=20)
[9]: 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/
[10]: Guyot, Rémi. (2023). 6 Uncomfortable Messages from Don Norman to Designers. Discovery Discipline. https://discovery-discipline.com/2023/10/20/6-uncomfortable-messages-from-don-norman-to-designers/
[11]: Schmidt, R. (2020). Strange bedfellows: Design research and behavioral design, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy–DRS International Conference 2020. 11–14 August 2020. Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.252
*Thanks to Alyssa Rock for help with editing this series.
