Thinking like a designer isn’t always good

Sholom Sandalow, Friday, September 7, 2007 @ 1:10 pm

When designing, I frequently find myself thinking like a designer.  I ask questions that a designer asks.  I attempt to find clever design solutions to issues I have uncovered while wearing my designer’s hat.  I rely on design principles to guide me through the process. 
Yet no matter how much experience I have designing, no matter how great a design I think I might have achieved, there will always be something missing if I don’t at some point stop thinking like a designer and start thinking like a user.
This is because if one is not thinking like a user, then no matter how well he or she thinks he has solved a problem, all design solutions are still just conjecture.  The designer has to step out of his designer shoes, where he has been using principals, and what he thinks is good judgment to solve problems, and simply be a user.  He must ask himself not weather the design works in some abstract sense, but weather he can easily do what he needs to do.  If he can answer that question in the affirmative then by definition the design works.  Of course it helps if one has a user base to test the design with, but that isn’t always an option.  And even when it is, it’s still best to incorporate user feedback as soon and as often as possible in the design process.  When the designer doubles as a user he accomplishes this quickly, frequently and relatively inexpensively.
Sometimes it’s hard to switch modes, so to speak—to go from designer to user on the fly.  For me the key principal is this:  to move into user mode, instead of asking myself questions that begin with ‘Would the user’, I begin questions to myself with ‘Can I’.  It’s also important to move quickly through interactions, and trust your first instinct as a user.  Your first moves (where you move your mouse, where you click) are generally what more typical of what a user would do, since you haven’t had time to consciously decide what to do (therefore using the knowledge you have as the designer). 

Related posts:

1. Design Thinking
2. IDE Watch – Zero Kode, Visual Designer for ZK
3. Being inspired by the user
4. Thinking About Displaying Data in a Pie Chart? Think Again.
5. On the Benefits and Pitfalls of Competitive Research

Comments (1)

User Experience Design

Comments: 1 so far

• Leave a comment
• Comment feed for this post
• TrackBack URL

1. 

   Good point well made: the paramount paradox is that while users are not designers, we need their input early and often. And while designers are not users, we need to put ourselves in their shoes continually to do good (as in “do no evil”) work.

   The problem I keep running in to is, getting others who pay my bills to think this way?

   
   http://uxdesign.com

   Comment by uxdesign.com, Saturday, September 8, 2007 @ 8:50 pm

Leave a comment