We've been talking a lot about value and innovation. I believe value sits at the core of everything we do. One question that swirls around the design and tech community is what is the value of design and what value does a designer bring to the table?
For the last 8 years, part of my work has been teaching product design at the graduate level. One of the benefits of teaching is that you are surrounded by minds that are often new to the process of design and you get to watch how the thought process of a designer develops over time and with practice.
What I've observed is that many people approach design at a surface level, especially initially, with an expectation that the solution will be in plain sight.
This means that the solutions they pursue are typically the more obvious ones, and when research is conducted they take the findings at face value. Henry Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." A lot of designers are trying to create faster horses. This is true for many Junior designers, but Seniors are also not immune to it.
Real, impactful value emerges when a designer learns how to go a level (or two, or three) deeper and "peel the onion" of insights and possibilities and see what lies underneath.
That's our job. The value of design is to go beyond the surface level of what we hear and observe. When we talk to users, the goal is not for them to tell us what we should do. That’s an expectation that most people can’t meet. Just as a designer might design at the surface level, many of us engage with much of our lives at the surface level. And with good reason, we don’t have time to dig deep into all of our challenges and happenings to find the root causes.
When you take on a design project you are taking on the opportunity to facilitate this work for people. User-centered design is about listening to users (really listening), but then taking that extra step to peek below the surface of their experience and see what comes up. Peeling the onion gives you a chance to make connections that others may not be seeing and envision possibilities that they didn't realize existed.
This doesn't mean that every solution needs to be groundbreaking. Sometimes the obvious solution is best - in that case, we circle back. But if no one went the extra distance, asked that extra follow on question, or floated that extra idea, then everything would just be a faster horse.
Jesse