(Design != Pretty)
Design is being mindful and thinking deeply about who you are designing for not “creating something pretty”
Design is not about making things pretty. Design is about mindfully building things that are useful. You must design for context, culture, function, message, usefulness, for one or multiple activities, and shared mental models. Design is hardly ever done correctly. Most firms say they are designers but they don’t understand what design means. They had the dream to colour things in, they should have been artists.
A designer should be deeply skilled in understanding people and environments. You are an artist if you are building with you in mind; simply making designs with your style. Some companies look to hire artists that fit their brand. Rather than designers that are there to design it to fit.
Being a designer is having an outer focus, an ethnographic mindset, that draws inspiration from empathy. Most [enter discipline (graphic, web, product)] designers think much too selfishly. And the others are too fearful to tell the client that what they want is certainly not well designed for their user. Selfish clients need to be educated on the user centred perspective, and you as a designer should feel that it is imperative that you get that across. If they don’t get it, then prove it, if you can add the metrics to support it. If not, find a new client.
Your largest client is not worth being unhappy with your work and not feeling purposeful as a consequence.
A designer is humbled by empathy and outspoken about the user’s needs and wants.
You don’t design poorly because the client made you. You design poorly because you are not thinking deeply about what you are building and why you are building it. If you know this, then you should feel it is your job to educate the client. The client should veto only with arguments that make sense, not because he decided his favourite colour is not that colour, you must explain that you choose that colour based on cultural preferences and how your users would feel about it. Can’t prove it, validate it. The client can only override if he/she can prove that it would be better for the end user, and the environment in which they experience it.
So have a bias towards action, and show them why. Design two versions without asking permission, then split test them. Prove your point, or learn something in the process.
Pretty is subjective, if you focus on the end user and the client’s needs, and dig deep, pretty is usually the consequence. But pretty is cheap, shoot for beauty. When we talk about beauty we are usually talking about more than the outer layer, this is thinking deeply about every piece of the result. Focus on becoming the user, and love your design from that perspective, don’t stop until you do.
Design things that matter. Design mindfully. Design because you’ll love what it can do for others. Design for the world.
Find me elsewhere:
www.linkedin.com/in/christianramsey
Social Scientist @ ESP Collective
I’m an ethnographer and apprentice anthropologist doing “corporate” ethnography to inform and shape products and services as well as an apprentice conducting ethnographic fieldwork on celebrity and local status systems.
