Design lessons from my newborn son
This is a follow-up piece from my original post, Design lessons from my four month old daughter.
On the 1st May 2017, my 2nd child Buddy was born. I was fortunate to have 6 weeks paternity leave to spend at home with my growing little family. When my eldest daughter Frankie was born 2.5 years ago, she reminded me about a lot of important design lessons. Once again, I was struck by how many behaviours in my real family world were related to good design practice.
Lessons
Don’t react to everything
When Frankie was a newborn, whenever my wife Zoe and I heard her make a sound we would go in and see if she was OK. We would tiptoe around her trying not to make a single sound in case we woke her. We were borderline paranoid parents. Second time around with Buddy if he stirred or made some grumblings, we would wait. We would listen. We would ask each other when he was last fed. When we last changed his nappy. We were calm, rational, and would question the information in front of us. Only then would we decide if we needed to go and see if he was OK.
On any design project you will receive information from A/B tests, usability studies, qualitative research, plus many other data points. You’ll be overwhelmed by data. That data on its own is never going to tell you what to do. An inexperienced designer may jump at a particular data point or piece of feedback. “Quick, change the sign-up flow I saw one person fail during a usability test.”
Don’t react to every single data point you get. It’s important to weigh up all data points before acting.
Take your time. Triangulate the information you have and make an informed decision on how to proceed. Be data informed.
Learn by doing
I remember when I first held Frankie. I held her like I was holding a football! It wasn’t at all natural. This experience of not knowing what I was doing held true for most newborn experiences. Bathing. Changing nappies. Testing the temperature of milk. On and on. I felt like a bit of a failure most of the time. Despite the fact that I had read a lot about how to do all these things and had attended a bunch of ante-natal classes. This time around with Buddy, most things fell into place. Things felt familiar. I knew how to do most baby related things. I was more experienced.
The same is true for any design-related skill. I remember running my first usability testing session. I’d done a bunch of reading, my mentor at the time had coached me on how to run an in-person session. I’d watched her facilitate some sessions. Yet when it came to actually running my first session, I was a nervous wreck. I forgot key things. I didn’t know what to do when the participant said X or did Y. I made a ton of mistakes. One time, I forgot to plug the headphones into my laptop, my participant had been wearing them without recording anything!
After a while of actually running usability testing sessions, I became more confident. I knew what I was doing. That practice and all those mistakes, helped me to learn and become better at facilitating usability testing.
Whatever design related skill you are trying to learn, stop reading and start to learn by doing.
Know who you are designing for
When Buddy was born, both Zoe and I were conscious that it wasn’t all about our newborn son. We had a 2.5 year old to think about as well. As the eldest, Frankie was going from being the centre of our attention, to being a part of our attention.
Her world was about to change. To stave off the dreaded sibling jealousy we did a few things. Buddy “bought” our eldest a card and small present. (What a nice younger brother!) We made sure that we had activities planned for Frankie, like craft days with dad, or swimming with mum. We alternated pre-school drop-off and pick-up between me and Zoe. This ensured that Frankie didn’t feel neglected by one parent. We knew that whilst Buddy would need a lot of attention, he wasn’t the only person we needed to think about as our family grew.
When designing, it’s important to know who you are designing for. Who is your primary persona? Who is your secondary persona? How can you optimise this particular flow for a particular persona, but still consider the needs of other customers? What trade-offs are you making? If you get these inputs wrong, you could end up creating the right design… for the wrong audience.
Make sure you understand your customer(s) needs, wants and desires, as this will allow you to create better designs for them.
Inclusive design
When we were doing something with or for Buddy, and we didn’t include Frankie she would usually start acting up or become difficult. But once we started to engage her to help us with these activities she would become engaged and behave much better. For example, when my wife was feeding Buddy, we bought Frankie a toy baby and milk bottle, so she could sit with with my wife and feed at the same time. When we were changing Buddy’s nappy, we would ask Frankie to help by passing us wipes, cream, and a fresh nappy. When making dinner, we got Frankie to help so she wasn’t left by herself.
Design is a team sport. As a designer, if you go away for a few days or weeks by yourself to solve a problem, don’t be surprised if it’s hard to get the rest of your team (Product Managers, Researchers, Writers, Engineers, Analysts, Your customers) on board with your solution. They were not involved, so you will have to work hard to sell it to them. Your solution also risks being quite narrow, as you only involved your own expertise, opinion and bias in creating it. Being collaborative and involving your team will result in a better solution for your customers.
Individuals and teams want to be a part of the solution in some way, and its your responsibility as a designer to bring that together.
Design is not always what you think it is
When you have a newborn baby you likely have a picture in your head about what it involves. Feeding. Changing nappies. Burping. Bathing. Sleeping. Cleaning up vomit. Those are all true. But after Buddy was born and the family returned home, I actually didn’t spend my time on any of those activities. Zoe was breast feeding Buddy. So, my main role was to make sure Zoe was comfortable, cook food, keep the house tidy, keep the cupboards full, look after Frankie, plus a long list of other jobs. Of course I helped with Buddy, but Zoe primarily took care of those things.
Anyone who comes into design may think that their main role is to solve problems, sketch solutions, and use sketch to push pixels around a screen. But in reality the role can be very different to that. You need to work with and manage your stakeholders. You need to facilitate collaborative workshops. You need to understand complex sets of data and make sense of them for the benefit of your customer. You need to own the whiteboard. You need to advocate for the customer, their problems and the best possible solution. This often involves negotiation skills. You need to be able to do deep work, and multi-task. You need to present your work in a compelling way. You may even need to write some hacky code. Design is often not what you may think it is, although sometimes it is pixel pushing!
As a designer make sure you take the time to grow your soft skills. They can often help you be a much more successful designer.
Design is more than just pushing pixels (although that is important too). Our job as designers is to solve problems, work with people and help them through design. We have a unique skill that allows us to understand complex sets of data and bring ideas to life. We are accountable to create things that better our world, to humanise experiences and smooth people’s way through the world, whether it be work, play, online or off. When you are mindful and look around you, it’s amazing how many lessons and cues you can take to help you on that journey from non-design-related activities.
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