Ingredients for automatically great design
The goal is to have a product that’s well designed, but getting there can be tricky. There’s a huge gap between wanting to be good at design, and actually being able to do it. I’ve seen a number of companies make this jump, and have noticed there are a few ingredients that have to be in place before great design happens automatically.
Talent — You need the right skills in house to do the actual work. That means you’ll likely need people who know visual design, interaction design, user research, copywriting, front-end development, and more. In most cases, you need more than a unicorn designer. You need a design team.
Data — Design does not happen in a vacuum. You need to be out talking to customers. You need to watch people use your product. Teams that get into a regular cadence of doing this kind of user research have the fuel to make great design decisions.
Culture – When entire teams understand how design works, the designers in that organization can be incredibly effective. There are a few core habits that help everyone work well together: critique, visual thinking, storytelling, and empathy. Everyone in your company should have basic design literacy.
Process – Design is real, serious, challenging work – every bit as demanding as engineering. Teams that realize this start to build process around how customer needs are discovered, solutions are designed, prototypes are tested, and how the engineers and designers collaborate to build the final product. Kaizen!
It’s tempting to just focus on the immediate design challenge in front of you. Can you hire a freelancer to get over a hurdle? Sure. Can you hire a design agency to redesign your product? Yep. But when you run into your next design hurdle, you’ll be searching for help again.
Build a company that continuously produces great design. It just takes a little careful crafting of your team, culture, and process. And if you get the ingredients right, you’ll have a company where great design happens automatically.
