#18 Tools of the 21st century design trade
Clues: Intelligence, psychological safety, and intellectual bravery
Author Alina Wheeler once wrote, “Design is intelligence made visible.” I have it on my desk as a stark reminder of a truth I firmly believe in. I am just not convinced the rest of the world agrees as much. I couldn’t quite articulate this hypothesis as good as I’d wanted to, so naturally I looked for other sources to support my views.
In a recent podcast episode titled, “The business model is the new grid and, other mindbombs” by findingourway.design, Erika Hall said:
My primary issue with the field of design right now is that the discussion is so shallow. I don’t get the sense that the field is particularly coherent because there is research and inquiry being done and it’s completely disconnected from practice.
And the practice has been completely subsumed into, like, business and engineering. And then people talk about the wish for design to have a so-called place at the table, but they don’t mean that, so often. They don’t mean, “I want design to be engaging at this deep level.” What they mean is, “I want business and engineering to listen to my ideas and tell me I’m smart.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Rooted in tradition
All too often, I find myself in a compromising position wherein I couldn’t necessarily voice out opinions, thoughts on things that are, traditionally, outside of a designer’s realm such as business models, product strategies, ethics. What four years of design school has taught me was a multidisciplinary approach to making things as opposed to thinking about what we make, why we make them. To my understanding then, they are not as critical to succeeding as a designer as much as, you know, prime expertise in things like typography, graphic design, web design, animation etc.
It took years of unlearning to correct that backwards mentality. Design, contrary to what was taught to us, is not just about how a thing looks and feels like. It’s also about how it works, why it exists, what its consequences are to the company, society, humanity and self. It is about the WORLD. We have to learn as much about it if we want to design for it.
Of course, this isn’t what a lot of people who are drawn to design signed up for. This is an untested assumption, but it is safe to say, you are more likely to have a chat about why Helvetica is great rather than how to create sustainable business models to any designer. For this same reason.
I think if we have to evolve in our ‘craft’, our brains have to as well, not just our hands. I think beyond grids, screen resolutions and all these things we were trained to work on, we have to look at the bigger picture of things, the systems. This is not to say that the former isn’t as important. Not at all.
It’s that if we want to be taken really seriously as a discipline, we have to take the consequences of what we do into account.
World without psychological safety
Ownership goes beyond having the master account of a Sketch file, or leading a usability testing, or spearheading a prototype creation. It also should mean allowing designers to challenge assumptions, ask meaningful questions, write product strategies alongside other stakeholders, most of which have already been doing this without the fear of getting reprimanded. It is a privilege I have yet to see as a designer, and I’m not the only one who thinks so as well.
In this article, Jeff Gothelf wrote:
What the team lacked was the psychological safety to go and do product discovery. The mere act of talking to customers implied that the direction the team was given by upper management may not be correct. There was little tolerance for that. Besides, shouldn’t they be shipping features? Not interviewing customers.
What’s worse is that if they did do discovery work and their findings contradicted the direction they were given there was no safe forum in which to share those insights. This made the whole discovery process moot. When there’s no discovery, there’s no learning. And without learning, there’s no agility. It doesn’t matter how many best practices you layer on top of each other. If the goal is to “look good” in the eyes of management and looking good means following orders, well, that’s not agile.
Most especially in product discovery, there has to be a tolerance for necessary risks. There has to be some room for experimentation, research and testing. More importantly, a designer shouldn’t have to prove why these things are all worth doing.
Because the idea of being excluded from those critical product and business conversations is almost an insult to what we can do. It is both a blocker and a blind spot to, not just our growth, but ultimately the product’s.
Designers are thinking beings, sometimes a little too much even. A great product is not just defined by the output, but rather also by the philosophy behind it. Apple is a fine example of that. Some other examples are the Tesla Model X, AirBnB, Robinhood, Figma. World-class companies and products with a clear respect for product design and intellectual bravery.
Harvard Business Review defines ‘Intellectual Bravery’ as “a willingness to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo in a setting of social risk in which you could be embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.”
Raise your hands if you’ve ever been in a place without one. (I’ll start 🙋🏽♀️)
To designers
While this will not be an easy challenge to get through, it is well-worth our time and efforts. Think about what you can achieve, what you can influence if you succeed. A successful marriage of both the user goals as well as the business goals is the dream.
It is the stuff phenomenal portfolios are made of.
Let this be a recurring work for us by being proactive on the situation.
You are intelligent.
You are a clear thinker.
You have a future in innovation.
Leave the shallow conversations back in the 20th century.
The 21st century will demand more from us and we have got to be a part of that change, otherwise we face extinction and irrelevance.
Thank you for reading.
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