Design lessons from my 4 month old daughter

4 months ago, my amazing (I’m biased) daughter Frankie came into the world. In that time she has taught me some awesome life lessons. Important skills, like how to survive on 3 hours sleep per night. How to do many many things one handed whilst holding her, like cooking, or making the bed.

But in that time she has unexpectedly reminded me of some really important design lessons.

A story of tiredness…

A few weeks ago my wife and I followed some advice from a book we had read, which shall remain unnamed. It told us that our 4 month old daughter should be sleeping almost right through the night and they should self settle with no help from mum and dad. When we put her down at 7pm, if she had a dream feed around 11pm, she should then sleep until around 7am.

Prior to reading this established pattern, my wife had also chatted with some friends from our ante-natal class, who said things like. “Oh yeah our son is sleeping right through”.

Taking this pattern and anecdotes from friends, my wife and I had a quick crisis meeting and immediately set off on a path, it was so obvious now. Frankie had been waking up every 2 or 3 hours, we were feeding her twice or three times a night. She was definitely not self settling, requiring us to hold her for a time. We were both a little bit tired and on edge due to these issues. So we came to the only sane conclusion, that we were permanently damaging our daughter and setting ourselves up for long term failure!

Based on the insurmountable evidence in front of us, we made a change. We would now allow Frankie to self settle, no more night time feeds, she would be sleeping through….just like every other baby out there.

And what happened? Disaster….

We spent 2 weeks with Frankie waking every 30 minutes or so during the night, hungry, self settling was kind of working but was taking longer to get her down. Frankie became crankier and both my wife and I became more and more tired, stressed and falling out of love with our beloved daughter.

A more rational story

My wife and I had another crisis meeting — but this time over coffee, over a few hours, we took our time. This time we got advice from multiple sources; our Doctor, our lactation consultant, our parents, multiple books on babies sleep and we spoke to a wider group of our friends.

It turns out, that some babies will sleep right through, but not all. Feeding two or three times a night can be common and is certainly not an issue. Self settling was important, but best to introduce it gradually as it makes sense to you. Most importantly we were certainly not damaging our daughter.

We made a few changes, self settling remained as that seemed sensible, but we fed Frankie when she woke at night if we couldn’t quickly get her back to sleep. This all worked. Frankie has started waking only once per night for a feed and my wife and I are more well rested and happier, as is Frankie.

And so to design

But how does this relate to design? In a few ways.

Be rational

At the start, middle or close to the end of any project (Design or otherwise) it is easy to fixate on a single data point or anecdote and rush to the wrong conclusions. The confirmation bias runs strong in all of us, just like it did for my wife and I when we were tired, stressed and got new information. In the design world, it is especially easy to rush to these conclusions if you are behind schedule, or things are just not going well and it is tempting to go for a quick fix solution.

Don’t.

Take your time. Let any new evidence settle with you and the team. Try to get other viewpoints to get a balanced view of the situation. Validate your new found information with an A/B test, or by speaking to some customers.

Don’t blindly follow patterns

Established patterns can also be wrong for your particular use case. Sleeping through the night is an established pattern for some babies. In design, a UI element or pattern may work well on another site, but it may not work for you.

Don’t blindly follow so-called established patterns.

Patterns help us with consistent, familiar UI elements, but nothing can replace a well established design process. Take the pattern and apply it to your situation and then get qualitative feedback and data from how your customers are using it. See if it works for you, in your situation. If it doesn’t maybe you need to iterate on it, or maybe you need to move on.

Don’t copy

My wife and I tried to emulate our friends who had magically sleeping babies. In the design world it is easy to copy design, or just add on features because your competitor has them.

Don’t.

Just like an established pattern, a feature may not be applicable to your customers.

My daughter Frankie has taught me a few other design lessons, but I will save those for a follow up post.

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