The one thing nobody designs
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As design is a process for narrowing down the best solution, continuing to design means continuing to pursue better and better solutions. This is because design is a process, not an end result. People design interfaces, appliances, furniture, houses, CPUs, experiences, workflows, tools, etc.
But people do not design “designs”.
Furthermore, if you’re a designer, producing these artifacts is not what you do. It is a byproduct of what you do. The process of design is the process of Thoroughly Thinking Through something, and out the other end of this process falls an artifact which encapsulates the results of that thinking.
Oftentimes people will use the word “design” as a noun to describe the look of this artifact. I personally think words like “style”, “look”, “aesthetic”, “treatment”, or “appearance” are much better options. “Updated with a brand-new design!” becomes “Updated with a brand-new style!” In this case, “over-designed” becomes “over-styled”.
The danger in conflating the process with the end result — of calling the result the “design” — is a devaluation in the perceived role of the designer. What a designer produces might be shiny, but to call that shine the “design” miscommunicates the value of the process, and therefore of the designer.
That’s not to say design belongs to an elite group, either. An engineer might say to a designer, “I built this thing, but it’s ugly. I present this in an hour — can you design it for me?” The best the designer can do at this point is put a coat of paint on it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t designed — it was, but by the engineer. Just how Thoroughly Thought Through it was will depend on the engineer in question, but someone can be capable of producing a quality experience without ever having opened Photoshop.
That said, getting a good designer involved from the beginning means arriving at a more cohesive solution sooner. It’s taking a bird’s-eye view of a problem, working to understand the variables, and producing something that works well on all levels. Including style.
