10 Tips on How to Think Like a Designer

From YouTheDesigner​.Com

It’s funny how it took a psy­chol­o­gist Her­bert Simon to give what I think is the best def­i­n­i­tion of what a designer is: ‘Every­one designs who devises courses of action aimed at chang­ing exist­ing sit­u­a­tions into pre­ferred ones.’

Chang­ing what exists into what is pre­ferred. Chang­ing what is, to some­thing beau­ti­ful. That is what a designer does. That is who he is.

This one I got from a really cool web­site called Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. How do you cre­ate some­thing beau­ti­ful? How do you change some­thing that exists into some­thing pre­ferred? Here are ten tips on how to do just that:

(1) Embrace con­straints. Con­straints and lim­i­ta­tions are won­der­ful allies and lead to enhanced cre­ativ­ity and inge­nious solu­tions that with­out con­strains never would have been dis­cov­ered or cre­ated. In the words of T.S. Eliot, “Given total free­dom the work is likely to sprawl.” There’s no point com­plain­ing about con­straints such as time, money, tools, etc. Your prob­lem is what it is. How can you solve it given the resources and time that you have?

(2) Prac­tice restraint. Any fool can be com­pli­cated and add more, it takes dis­ci­pline of mind and strength of will to make the hard choices about what to include and what to exclude. The genius is often in what you omit or leave on the edit­ing room floor.

(3) Adopt the beginner’s mind. As the old say­ing goes, in the expert’s mind there are few pos­si­bil­i­ties, but for one with the beginner’s mind, the world is wide open. Design­ers under­stand the need to take risks, espe­cially dur­ing early explo­rations of the prob­lem. They are not afraid to break with con­ven­tion. Good design­ers are open minded and com­fort­able with ambi­gu­ity early on in the process, this is how dis­cov­er­ies are made.

(4) Check your ego at the door. This is not about you, it’s about them (your audi­ence, cus­tomer, patient, stu­dent, etc.). Look at the prob­lem from their point of view — put your­self in their shoes. This is not easy, it takes great amounts of empa­thy. Get in touch with your empa­thetic side. Empa­thy — an under val­ued “soft skill,” can be a great dif­fer­en­tia­tor and is key for truly under­stand­ing a problem.

(5) Focus on the expe­ri­ence of the design. It’s not the thing, it’s the expe­ri­ence of the thing. This is related to #4 above: Put your­self in their shoes. How do peo­ple inter­act with your solu­tion? Remem­ber that much of design has an emo­tional com­po­nent, some­times this is even the largest com­po­nent (though users may be unaware of this). Do not neglect the emo­tional aspect of your solutions.

(6) Become a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. Often it’s not only the design — i.e., the solu­tion to a prob­lem — that is impor­tant, but the story of it. This is related to #5 above. What’s the­mean­ing of the solu­tion? Prac­tice illus­trat­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of solu­tions both ver­bally and visu­ally. Start with the gen­eral, zoom in to the detail, pull out again to remind us of the theme or key con­cept, then zoom back in to illu­mi­nate more of the detail.

(7) Think com­mu­ni­ca­tion not dec­o­ra­tion. Design — even graphic design — is not about beau­ti­fi­ca­tion. Design is not just about aes­thet­ics, though aes­thet­ics are impor­tant. More than any­thing, design is about solv­ing prob­lems or mak­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion a lit­tle bet­ter than before. Design is not art, though there is art in design.

(8) Obsess about ideas not tools. Tools are impor­tant and nec­es­sary, but they come and go as bet­ter tools come along. Obsess instead about ideas. Though most tools are ephemeral, some of your best tools are a sim­ple pen­cil and sketch pad. These are often the most use­ful — espe­cially in the early stages of think­ing — because they are the most direct. Good advice is to go ana­log in the begin­ning with the sim­plest tools possible.

(9) Clar­ify your inten­tion. Design is about choices and inten­tions, it is not acci­den­tal. Design is about process. The end user will usu­ally not notice “the design of it.” It may seem like it just works, assum­ing they think about it at all, but this ease-of-use (or ease-of-understanding) is not by acci­dent, it’s a result of your care­ful choices and decisions.

(10) Sharpen your vision & curios­ity and learn from the lessons around you. Good design­ers are skilled at notic­ing and observ­ing. They are able to see both the big pic­ture and the details of the world around them. Humans are nat­ural pat­tern seek­ers; be mind­ful of this skill in your­self and in oth­ers. Design is a “whole brain” process. You are cre­ative, prac­ti­cal, ratio­nal, ana­lytic, empa­thetic, and pas­sion­ate. Fos­ter these aptitudes.

(11) Learn all the “rules” and know when and why to break them. Over the cen­turies, those who came before us have estab­lished use­ful and nec­es­sary guide­lines — these are often called rules or laws and it’s impor­tant to know them. Yet, unlike other kinds of laws, it may be accept­able to break them at times so long as you know why. Basic graphic design prin­ci­ples and rules are impor­tant and use­ful to know, yet most pro­fes­sion­als today have a hole in their edu­ca­tion when it comes to the fun­da­men­tals of graphic design. I’ll try to do my lit­tle bit with the next book to raise the design mind­ful­ness and vocab­u­lary of pro­fes­sion­als who do not make a liv­ing in design per se, but who have a desire to get better.