My Design Philosophy

In a nutshell, as a designer, I vision myself to be someone who can build teams that are known for creating aesthetically pleasing, efficient, easy-to-operate products and simplifying the complexity of products without losing a single ounce of their useful functionality. To become what I vision, the tenets of this design philosophy will act as the foundation of me as a designer.

#1 Find the right problem, before crafting fancy solutions

Homosapiens have a strong impulse to solve problems, solving a problem gives a next-level dopamine shot to our brain. So, whenever we come across someone saying, "I don't know what to do about this", we directly jump into suggesting ideas on "how to get it right?". From the cab driver with brilliant ideas to resolve political issue common person with expert advice on fighting depression, everyone tends to think they can solve problems. What differentiates a good designer from a bunch of synthetic problem solvers is that they tend to dig deep, to solve a real problem not just give a fancy solution to the problem which is visible on the surface.

The slow elevator example in [1]HRB article "Are You Solving the Right Problems?" is a great example to understand why it is important to solve the right problem.

Case 2: Deciphering the depth of a problem

Adding to getting to the right question, [2]"The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems" is another aspect where the designers can fail if they don't research the right problem. As Courtney Martin writes in her article "The “reductive seduction” is not malicious, but it can be reckless. For two reasons. First, it’s dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve mistakenly diagnosed as easily solvable. There is real fallout when well-intentioned people attempt to solve problems without acknowledging the underlying complexity." Hence, along with finding the right question, the next and extremely important step is to understand the complexity and audience(user) of the problem.

#2 Remember who you are doing it for - the answer is "Users"

The user experience design starts with the "User", User is the heart and soul of a design. Understanding our users and their needs, helped us win AT&T 5G Sports Hackathon 2021. For this hackathon, we were given a prompt to "Increase fan engagement in sports". Instead of brainstorming about sports, we began our brainstorming with "Who watches sports?" From the larger set, we decided to enhance the sports experience for the people who don't comprehend sports. As Bill Moggridge talks about thinking the people part first in his book "Designing Interaction", we knew WHO our users were. Getting answers to [3]"WHAT do they want from the experience?" and [3]"WHAT will give them satisfaction and enjoyment?" was much easier to figure out.

#3 Be Flexible - Don't get too attached to your solution

Everything starts with a BIG idea, we come across an idea and we think it is so brilliant that the narrative of the world will change after the idea comes in existence(okay, I'm speculating here a little) It's good to get ideas and think to move in the direction to make it happen. Now, if you get blinded by the grace of an idea, it is possible you may skip other things in the pursuit to implement your lovely idea and that is the biggest red alert for a designer.

In the first class of INFO-H541, Prof. Dombrowski asked us to create three sketches every week to solve a few sets of problems. For our first project, we brainstormed 100 solutions for our framed problem statement, we were asked to work in quantity instead of quality. These exercises helped me become flexible with the solutions. She told me once, "Don't spend too much time thinking about one great when you can spend equal time in jotting down 10 good ideas. In the latter case, you will have 10 different ideas to choose from"

The survey is evidence that designing in bulk provides so much better results than spending your time in crafting one perfect solution:

[4]"Prototyping dynamics: sharing multiple designs improves exploration, group rapport, and results" by Steven Dow, Julie Fortuna, Dan Schwartz, Beth Altringer, Daniel Schwartz, and Scott Klemme

#4 Take and give the big C(Critique) constructively

One of the most crucial and essential elements of the design process is feedback and critique, with a proper review can save the soul of a dying idea, whereas an unconstructive review can break a good system.

This illustration from [5]Design Criticism and the Creative Process is the perfect example of how feedback can get the distracted goal on track.

Design Critique Illustration — Image source: https://alistapart.com/article/design-criticism-creative-process/

Feedback and critique help us grow stronger and keep us aligned with the goal. Giving and taking feedback are important skills for a designer and teams growth. It is important for us as designers to focus on feedback and not criticism; because it is the primary source of constant learning and evaluations - learn by improving.

As much as it is important to take the feedback positively, It is equally crucial to present the feedback/critique in an empathetic and thoughtful manner. The purpose of this exercise is not to insult anyone or make them or their work feel below. For the overall growth of a team, providing feedback in an efficient and productive manner is a fundamental skill that a designer needs to acquire.

#5 There is no such thing as the "perfect design", it's a constant iterative process

The only thing constant in design is, it keeps on changing. Right feedback, critique and a flexible approach are the primary ingredients for a design solution. Evaluating your design and idea from time to time fuels the iterative process of design.

For our final academic project, we conducted evaluations with UX experts and our target users. With these evaluations, we learned where our product is lagging and which are the bare minimum we need to include before we can say our product is ready to be shipped. The emphasis is on the bare minimum. A key takeaway from my last job and re-confirmed by Prof. Dombrowski's class is to develop the habit of shipping. We can wait for ages, trying to perfect our design and it will never reach the people. The suitable method is to publish, evaluate, fix, and repeat.

#6 Observe; Understand; Solve

[6]Tony Fadell's talk on "The first secret of great design" has significantly influenced my design vision. He advises designers to stay alert and be observant of the surroundings, to peek for the pains people tend to overlook because of habituation.

When I was a UX designer at GreyB Research, I observed a similar dark pattern when I was shadowing a user. The user was frequently switching controllers from mouse to keyboard which made me realise, the user prefers mouse over keyboard or touch-pad to operate a web tool. But the navigation button was not fixed on the screen, which got disappeared when she was in the middle of the page, due to which she had to use the keyboard to jump to the next page. Here is the whole story.

To become the problem solver of right problems the final tenet for my design philosophy is to "Observe - my users and their surrounding, Understand why they do the things they are doing and what it means for them, and then begin to craft solutions"

#7 Test before invest

Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO said “They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to prototype our ideas, we avoid costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a weak idea for too long.” From my personal experience, this step(prototyping) is often missed and other times it is not done right. The real motive behind prototyping is to get user feedback and run a usability test before investing too many resources.

As Tim says it may slow down, but the overall impact of prototyping is very efficient. With an achievable goal set the engineer does not have to stop in-between and think about "What if?" because all the "What if's", "Why's" and "How's" will be clarified in the prototyping stage. It does not matter if you are building a low fidelity prototype or a high fidelity prototype. As far as you are able to achieve your goal - replicating the desired interactions is achieved.

The idea of creating multiple prototypes to get both positive and negative comments could help us get a wider perspective and feedback. Prototyping is used to find the contrast between the designer's hypothesis and how the user is going to use the system. Unlike prototypes, people are not simple.