More Interesting Things…

Brad Frost is not to blame for this. This is not a criticism of him. He was just the last guy who wrote the piece I saw this line in last (go read it!). It’s the common refrain of

[design function] would be freed up to focus on more interesting aspects than simply [allegedly boring task that will be automated away].

that I come across a lot. It pops up in almost every think piece that tells us something we do now will or should be going away for good. It’ll either be handled by a much smaller team, AI will do it for us or it’s just no longer valuable.

I agree with it, in principle. I don’t think everything that people say will go away will happen, or as quickly as they prophesise, but it makes sense. When we don’t have to do that anymore, we’ll have time to do something that’s more valuable/interesting/fulfilling (I won’t comment on the outdated compulsion to “fill time” at this point).

But I’m yet to see anyone put their cards on the table and point out what those things are.

Let me say that I don’t think that’s the point of Brad Frost’s article, so I’m not pointing a finger at him here, but if you aren’t going to at least outline what some of those things are, I’m not sure why you’d even include it. There are already too many books that tell us what should happen. I’m tired of them. Focusing on the shoulds is at best a space filler and at worst an exercise in self-congratulation.

No more. It’s time we, as designers, start thinking about what those “more interesting things” are before someone decides for us, and let’s be real, we’re going to have to think about the commercial value we can deliver.

Presearch

Not a typo. This might be my QA background coming out, but being freed from the drudgery of building interfaces in Figma, we can shift the focus from problem solving to problem finding.

The QA’s mantra was that the earlier a defect is found, the cheaper/easier it is to fix. Most designers already have the skills to think about problems, and by embracing systems thinking and futurism, we could quickly pivot to finding potential problems.

It’s helpful that presearch can be sold in more than one way. There’s the creative act of finding opportunities, but there’s also the loss prevention of helping businesses see when they’re heading into stormy waters. Early validation of strategy could save a lot of investment. It’s worth paying for someone to tell you “this isn’t a good idea” too.

Discovery can, and perhaps, should be shifted to earlier in the cycle, even to before the point that businesses realise they need your help.

Plain ol’ ideation

I cannot lie. My favourite part of my job is ideation, for myself and bringing others along. There’s nothing more exciting than throwing off the shackles for a day and dreaming up new possibilities, and if I’m honest, I enjoy refining them and bringing them back to reality just as exciting.

I wish designers would be more excited about ideation. I’m not sure if it’s the risk of being seen as unserious or utopian (and I don’t think they should be seen as bad things) that pushes designers to spend their lives researching and validating painfully familiar ideas, but I wish it was a pattern we could break.

The most excited I see teams get is when they get to work on something they’ve thought of themselves. If you want enthusiastic, fulfilled and motivated teams, let them imagine what they’d want to work on.

Signature Moments

You can thank Tylen St Hilaire for this one that he shared with me recently.

This is the concept of ideating on and crafting differentiators for organisations that are looking for more than off-the-shelf experiences can deliver.

Inevitably with shared libraries, or AI doing the work, it’s probable that experiences, digital or otherwise, will converge even more than they already have, and will lower the barriers of access to those that previously lacked the ability to compete with bigger players.

Standing out in this already crowded field will need emotional signature moments that push users to become brand advocates, reaching that most valuable ~20% of users rather than going all in on ineffective mass appeal.

Try something weirder

No, I’ve never read the book that is ubiquitous in every physical bookshop’s “design” section, but I can imagine there are some similarities.

Let’s take some of that spare time and just come up with something strange. I want to see visual rebuilds. I want to see radical new ways that might work. I want more “worst possible idea” workshops (which are by far my favourite workshop, especially when nudging non-designers into ideation mode).

Not everything is going to be marketable, and that’s the point. Free yourself from UCD for a spell. Every once in a while, you’re going to come up with an idea that might be. That’s the one you take forward and begin to validate. That’s the spark of something novel.