Intro: My perspective on design
There are hundreds of definitions of what design is and what it’s not. Instead of defining the ultimate definition of design I’d rather try to explain my context of design and what I am aiming for when designing.
Happiness: Design and Tech
For the last 20 years I am focusing on how design makes people happy or at least a little bit happier when using tech. How can design solve user problems and how can it offer new perspectives and new opportunities. Often taking into account a service design approach, based on research and product insights we define with other stakeholders which problems should be solved and which ones should be prioritized to ensure the best for the company.
Design Org and processes: Design is NOT the centre of the company’s universe
For a long time a lot of experts thought that UX/ Design should be in the centre of the company’s reality. But since user experience is not only defined through the UX team it should be quite obvious that UX is not supposed to be in the center of the company.
As mentioned before it is the way how Design and research interacts with the rest of the company. Is there a Design Quality assurance process between design and front end development? Are User Research insights accessible for any stakeholder? There are many books, courses even tutorials about how to design and how to conduct user research but the synchronization within the company needs to be “customized”,
Validate Design: OKRs and other metrics
I am fan of metrics as OKRs which are a great help to measure and define design successes. Oftentimes I have seen that OKRs are leaving design out focusing on any other area as products, growth, marketing, HR etc. I am strong believer that design success can be measured and therefor the design’s impact on the company’s business can validated.
Design can be [partly]automated
When it comes to efficiency in design processes the world keeps yelling AI but before adding our voice let us talk a bit of the power of design systems. The creation and maintenance of a design system can be the first step towards an optimized and more efficient design process.
“ A design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels.” (Nielsen Norman Group, Design Systems 101).
As most people probably remember Google’s Material Design (or even before this Bootstrap UI elements) and atomic design by Brad Frost the automation of design still sounds as something incredibly new. As a fact I still see companies -especially startups- which struggle with the creation of a design system. It can be said that creating design systems with the use of Figma or Adobe XD and especially when defying and using Tokens was never easier then today.
Design Org and processes: First class design results from confident design teams and solid design processes.
There seems to be something mystic when people talk about creativity or intuitive design. People wonder why some design look better then others. Where do these companies as Apple, Google or Meta find these incredible design talents? All these companies acknowledge the power of design and therefor they empower designers as decision maker when it comes to design. It seems to be obvious that the expert should take the responsibility of her area of expertise but yet many companies let developer or product manager decide about design. Since design is part of something bigger obviously any stakeholder’s opinion should be taken into account but if you want great design you have to have confidence in your design team. Designers need to be trusted and they also need to trust others.
Design roles need to be clearly defined, what are liberties, responsibilities, what are the expected soft skills. What is the team’s culture and how does this culture sync with the company’s culture? Especially in startups which are about to create a design team these roles need to be defined.
In many years of experience I found that aside internal design processes it is crucial to define how design interacts with the rest of the organization. Of course there are many “agile workflow processes” out there but a simple “copy/paste-approach” can be very painful. These design org and operation structures set the quality of your product’s or service’s design.