Beginning at the end
“To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” is a quote by the Herbert Simon that deeply resonates with me. It captures the reason why even non-designers influence design, and why the designer’s role, at the bottom of it all, is about making, defending & selling meaningful choices but also painting a vision of the world we wish to build, for our users and for ourselves. Starting at the end, allows us to speculate about this world, drum up excitement for it, have passionate discussions for or against, and eventually also measure our progress towards it.
Stories are data made memorable
The straight truth is that stories are sticky and data is forgettable– human minds work that way. And at the same time, data makes stories credible, compelling and rich. When they come together, you can have a winning formula. Whether stories of our business, our users and their lives (of which our products & services are often just a wee part), or our products, stories is how we make meaning and memories, and a shared vision.
Ideas are cheap, cultivate questions
Many people conflate creativity with ideas, but ideas are cheap– without the right channeling they are directionless, weak embers. Questions are beautiful– they store curiosities, opportunities, constraints, and so much more. They help create meaningful ambiguity, reveal our biases to ourselves and others, and most importantly, help challenge us to re imagine the status quo. Crafting and making space for the right questions at the right stages is a sign of a thoughtful designer, and a skill in itself.
The experience is not (just) the designer's responsibility
So often– and I’ve been guilty of this– the moment something fails in a product, we tend to think of the designers that missed acounting for the issue at hand. However, as many designer’s experience attests to, there are so many other decisions that influence the experience that people end up with on the other side– leadership or business mandates, technology decisions, org & team territories, business models, and so on. A good product culture acknowledges this and helps everyone feel the ownership over putting out a good end user experience in service of the customer.