Got them both!

> “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein

Extremely simple and incredibly difficult

Great design is both extremely simple and incredibly difficult to achieve.

Simple, because it requires only a very few activities–observing people and expressing ideas–and those are not very complicated to perform. There are certainly tricks of the trade, and more or less efficient ways of doing these things, but the core actions are not complex.

Difficult, because the energy and dedication required to do these activities broadly, deeply, and thoroughly enough to find the right design solutions is hard to achieve. Most people don’t have the patience to get there; instead, they settle too early to avoid the discomfort of not “knowing”.

I still believe the most important thing I do as a designer is tolerate ambiguity. And it’s still the hardest part of my job.

What kind of designer do I need?

I wrote up the following questions to help a friend at work think about his design needs:

* Do you know the core user you’re designing for, and the top 2 or 3 ways your product will improve their lives? Do you think that combination will make a successful product? Could you [design the launch advertisement](http://www.designstaff.org/articles/opinionated-product-design-marketing-first-2012-03-16.html) today? Does everyone on the team agree on these things?
* If not, you need a *product* designer. Lots of explorations around a variety of opportunities & a process to decide on them. At the end you’ll have decisions on your target user, key benefits, and “unique selling points”.
* Do you know how those features will work: how they will be accessed and controlled, in what order, how they fit together, and how someone interacts with it?
* If not, you need an *interaction* designer, someone who can design a system that works elegantly and flexibly. You’ll get things like wireframes, interactive prototypes, flow diagrams, and page layouts.
* Do you know exactly how the product should look, all the way down to fonts, colors, and animations? Do you have pixel specifications for all these things?
* If not, you need a *visual* (or *industrial*) designer, possibly with motion graphics or video experience. You’ll get pixel-perfect specifications and design assets that are ready for production.
* And if you don’t have any of these things, you’ll need all of these people. They build on each other, but I’d start at the beginning with the product designer, who will understand the rest of the process. It’s very rare that one person will do all these things at a high level, however.

See also: [What I talk about when I talk about design](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=4367)

How fairy tales help us think

>”Once upon a time.” Four words. I don’t need to say anything more, and yet you know at once what it is you’re about to hear. You may not know the precise contents. You may not recognize the specific characters. You may have little notion of the exact action that is about to unfold. But you are ready all the same to take on all of these unknowns, the uncertainties, the ambiguities. You are ready to succumb to the world of the story…

> First, there is that semblance of distance. We are not in the now, but rather in some place in the removed past…

> Distance is a psychologically powerful tool. It can allow us to process things that we would otherwise be unable to deal with—and I mean this in both a literal and a more metaphorical, emotional sense—and it frees up our mind in a way that immediacy does not.

> Second, there is the vagueness, the deliberate lack of specificity…that which scares us in real life—the lack of definitions, rules, clearly defined borders and boundaries—is not only unscary but entirely welcomed in the fairytale…I can indulge in abstraction and play, engage my curiosity and foster my creativity, and remain the whole time protected by that vague veneer of “once”.

[An insightful article and nice tribute to Maurice Sendak](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/05/08/the-power-of-once-upon-a-time-a-story-to-tame-the-wild-things/).

Something worth saving

> Where do ideas come from?

> From looking at one thing and seeing another.

> From fooling around, and playing with possibilities.

> From speculating. And changing.

> Pushing, pulling.

> Transforming.

> And if you’re lucky, you come up with something worth saving, using, and building on.

> That’s where the game stops, and the work begins.

– [Saul Bass](http://meditativespectrum.com/2011/12/29/why-humans-create/)

Project Glass

I worked on early versions of [this](https://plus.sandbox.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts)…the team has taken it a LONG way since then! Glad to see it reach the light of day.

Flipboard: the book

The designer of Flipboard for iPhone [had a book printed of all the intermediate designs he created](http://craigmod.com/journal/digital_physical/), along with Git comments and photos from the launch party.

What a cool way to celebrate the design process! [Via Kevin Kelly](https://plus.google.com/116416314233992548280/posts/NgsVt17BFVz).

Use who you are

> As we get more technically driven, the importance of people becomes more than it’s ever been before. You have to utilize who you are in your work. Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience. – [David Carson](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_carson_on_design.html?source=google_plusone)

Consuming and transforming

“Consumer” is one of those words I’ve never been comfortable with. Along with “user”, it refers to real people as simply receptacles for whatever companies churn out for them. It’s a lazy, impersonal, demeaning, and ultimately unhelpful word.

[Alex Bogusky thinks that as consumption is inevitable, people just need to be *better* consumers](http://fearlessrevolution.com/blog/the-empowered-consumer.html). I agree that’s needed, but still believe our word choice matters and can be improved. [Lots of other people think so too](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+word+consumer%22).

The most obvious and simple change is to substitute “people” for these dirty words. That works almost universally, and I use it effectively in my design practice. But today I stumbled upon a use of another word that is more than benign–it’s empowering:

[Transformation](http://www.natlogic.com/resources/publications/new-bottom-line/vol4/12-more-things-change-production-transformation/).

The article itself takes the side of “producers”, acknowledging that nothing is truly produced; it is merely transformed from one (perhaps natural) state to another. Carrying that theme through to the people we design for emphasizes that they too will transform what they receive, putting their stamp on it, doing good or ill with it.

Transformation happens to products, commodities, experiences, and ideas. The word transformation recognizes that people have the opportunity to improve what they receive, but also the responsibility of managing it.

I’m going to try substituting the word “transformer” for “person” in my work–probably just to myself at first–to see if it changes my design decisions.

3 steps to great product design

*Step 1*: Find the best, most experienced, most professional product designer you can.

*Step 2*: Ask them what to do.

*Step 3*: Do what they say.

Profit! Ok, maybe a little more detail would help.

For *Step 1*, your goal is to find the person with the most experience designing products that will work with you. This may or may not be someone with the title “designer”; if you find a “product manager” or “engineer” who has successfully led a dozen projects to good results, that might be the best person to trust. You’re looking for quantity of past work (remember [the ceramics class](http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2007/02/quantity_equals.html)) and quality (defined by whatever metric is most important to you and the project–innovation, aesthetics, market success, reliability, etc). Whatever their title, you should make it clear to everyone on the project that *this* person is the lead designer.

Don’t know any great designers? Ask everyone you know who their favorite designer is, then ask that designer about the best person they know. Repeat until you run out of time and/or money.

*Step 2* is pretty straightforward but often forgotten. In the heat of the moment, most people revert to voicing their own answers rather than asking questions. Designers work best when their opinion is sought out, not when they have to shout to be heard. Their job is to make design decisions, so bring them everything you can. A good designer will be humble enough to say they don’t know when that’s the case.

The wrong way to interpret *Step 3* is to assume every lead designer should act like a dictator–shouting orders and demanding obedience. A great designer will first set up a design process that includes everyone on the team in the right way. They’ll probably ask more questions than give answers (see Step 2), and will want to understand all the various options and known constraints.

But at some point decisions have to be made (specified in that process) and at that point you have to follow the person you’ve entrusted with design authority. A project where only half a design is followed can turn out worse than one with no design. A great design is holistic and integrated, and if you choose to compromise it–through impatience, penny-pinching, or simply lack of appreciation for the design quality–your product will not be great. On the other hand, products that do fulfill their designed form and function are a breath of fresh air and a shock to a world accustomed to mediocrity and imitation.

Three steps. Easier said than done…but worth trying.