Back to Basics — A Designer’s Perspective

The author, Viktor Teodosin, is a student of Visual Communication Design at Aalto University and a Design Trainee at Dot. During his time at Dot., he has been responsible for the visual identity of the Legal Design School in addition to client projects.

Whenever people come up with new ways of doing things, there is first a period of exploration. The implications of the new way are thoroughly looked at and codified into principles and methods. Then, the concept is named. If there is excitement for the new way, people will talk about it and weigh the different possibilities for applying the established techniques. As the names of the concept and its methods get repeated in a maelstrom of hype, the underlying substance fades away and is lost. They become buzzwords. Design Thinking and Legal Design are such buzzwords.

But behind all buzzwords, there was once substance. They were all birthed from some fundamental insights that changed the way we do certain things. Improved them so much that they were worth the weeks and months spent in the messy and wasteful process of innovation.

So, the fundamental idea behind design thinking and legal design is this: If you are making something for someone else, you should involve them in the process.

One of the first things I did when I started as a design trainee at Dot. was read the most up-to-date draft of Antti’s (Antti Innanen) book on legal design. Reading its first chapters, I realized something. I did not know what design thinking was. I thought I did, given that I am in a design field, but it was never clearly explained to me, nor was I ever asked to explain it to someone else.

It was one of those terms that you hear thrown around, and over time you infer its implied meaning from contexts. You have an unclear conception of it, and if you see it often name-dropped in seemingly shallow situations, you instinctively dismiss it.

Design thinking was one of those terms that you hear thrown around, and over time you infer its implied meaning from contexts.

At the core of design thinking — ignoring all the hype and the marketing-speak — is a focus on end-users of projects. You are doing or making something for someone else, or more likely, many other people, all of whom are not you. At best, they are similar. But to build something that they want or need, you cannot rely on your existing knowledge. At the very least, you should not. Not even if you have done the same sort of work thousands of times. Not even doctors, who are highly respected as experts in their field, can diagnose a patient without asking them their symptoms and observe their recovery.

You just cannot assume that your knowledge is sufficient to solve someone else’s problem. Sure, you must start somewhere, but the road does not end where your knowledge gets exhausted. It ends with the people who must use and live with what you have built.

You just cannot assume that your knowledge is sufficient to solve someone else’s problem.

For me, that is what design thinking is. It is an interaction between you and your users, your clients, your customers, your audience. You are asking for their help to solve their problem. All the techniques and methods under the same umbrella should be in service to this core idea. But if they are not, if you are implementing design sprints or user testing as mere formalities, you are missing out.

If you can keep the basics in mind, you will notice situations where the usual routines are not the best fit for discovering or solving a problem. You will be more open to different possible solutions. After all, the goal is to serve people. The specific methods are secondary. And the results speak for themselves. Show, do not tell.