Seniority in design is about personal responsibility.
A disclaimer to start with. While everyone can take personal responsibility, not everyone has the same circumstances, privilege or types of choices to make when doing so.
But, whatever your situation, everyone can can take personal responsibility for their work as a designer. Continue reading…
May 15th, 2019. Posted in design, Seniority in design
“Complexity in the work. Simplicity in how we approach the work.”
Following on from my previous blog post, I’m a big advocate of designing simple models, or frameworks (including working from first principles).
When we’re working to solve problems, it’s the simplicity and clarity of frameworks that can help us to work with subject matters that are inherently complex. Continue reading…
May 8th, 2019. Posted in design
The importance of frameworks is that you focus on a smaller set of things because you can’t focus on everything.
I spend a lot of my time designing, or constructing frameworks as a way of helping others access a way of working that’s anchored to a design process. Continue reading…
April 26th, 2019. Posted in design
Design leadership requires different types of empathy.
We often talk about about the importance of having empathy with end users. These are the people we’re designing for, and the immediate goal for teams working in this way is to understand how people are feeling, as well as what they might be thinking or doing in a given situation. Continue reading…
March 30th, 2019. Posted in Seniority in design
Back in 2015 I wrote ‘Everything is hypothesis-driven design’. It remains one of my most (and still frequently) read blog posts.
Something I’ve been thinking about more recently is how this translates to user research and ‘discovery’.
A discovery should be focussed on research and learning. Continue reading…
March 10th, 2019. Posted in research
In a design process there are two immediate things that matter*: Continue reading…
March 3rd, 2019. Posted in design
As you become a more senior designer with responsibility for other designers, one of the challenges you will face is your personal closeness to ‘hands on’ design work.
As well as how close you are to the work, you will have to think about the proximity you have to those doing the hands on work when that isn’t you. Continue reading…
March 1st, 2019. Posted in design, Seniority in design
There’s still an ongoing debate about whether designers should learn to code. I think it’s more important that designers learn to prototype.
Prototyping doesn’t mean that you have to write code or build software.
A prototype should be the quickest, cheapest way you can find to learn about something, or to test an idea or hypothesis. Continue reading…
February 26th, 2019. Posted in design
I’m overdue a book list.
This is what I’ve been reading over the past few months (stretching back to the end of 2018). The rest of this list is books I’m planning to read over the next few months. Continue reading…
February 22nd, 2019. Posted in books
What it means to move to a design mindset
A mindset is how we respond to the world around us. It acts as a center of gravity. It goes with you. It shapes who you are and what you do, wherever you are.
Billy Joel wrote the song ‘New York State of Mind’ after returning to New York City from LA. Continue reading…
February 22nd, 2019. Posted in design