Source: www.projectcartoon.com

As someone who is not a formally trained designer, I always felt that I was behind my counterparts who had gone to school for this. That was probably the reason why I overcompensate when it comes to learning about design. Podcasts, books, articles, meetups, workshops, you name it. I wanted to immerse myself in this world. What I realised, is that almost everyone has their own personal definition of what good design is. And that’s great, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But one thing that was common to all these definitions, is that they should revolve around the user, the human being for which the design is for.

Over the weekend, I inadvertently found myself in a workshop for start-ups and entrepreneurs on how utilising minimum viable products, ergo embracing the concept of going lean, can bolster their chances of success in a highly competitive and cut-throat industry. My key takeaway from the workshop was, however, that this process of quickly putting out something, garnering user feedback and re-iterating on your original concept, design or product, is the key to great design.

I was in a room full of people I believe were way smarter than me. An initial exercise called for everyone to get into groups and design a better television. There were so many amazing, innovative ideas that came out of that. Televisions made of foldable materials, television screens that were actually contact lenses and so on. But when the facilitator asked a simple question, the room fell silent. He asked, “Who are you designing the television for and is it a better television for them?”

Human beings are inherently self-centred. I believe it is the product of our basic survival instincts. I also have a hypothesis that the cognitive ability of a species is directly related to how well they can recognise the benefit of collective effort. But I digress, the point is, human society has thrived because collectively, we create things that make life better for all of us. Many early designs and inventions solved basic but specific problems and were hence adopted by almost everyone. Think tool design, for axe heads, spears and such. The wheel. Sewing needles. They were all designed to fulfil a need and solve a specific problem.

Steven Bradley wrote a brilliant article on Smashing Magazine on Designing for a Hierarchy of Needs. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it covers what I feel is the heart of a great design. There is a hierarchy that needs to be fulfilled, which starts from functionality, to reliability, to usability, to proficiency, before finally creativity. Notice that once the two basic design needs of functionality and reliability are met, the next item is usability. How simple is it for users to complete their tasks with your product? Without obtaining user feedback, this need will never be met and hence the design will never reach the pinnacle. Bypassing the usability level and going straight for creativity is like building a skyscraper with no foundation. It won’t work, your skyscraper will topple over.

There’s wonderful piece by Ehsan Noursalehi called Everyone Deserves Great Design, which talks about the prevalence of useless design by social causes. The useless product is created by the self-serving designer, who designs based on his/her own projections of what a poverty-stricken society needs. There was no feedback obtained from the target users of this product, and the world ends up inundated by products that do not benefit its users at all. The intention was good, but the execution was poor. And that seems to be the common problem. I do not believe any designer sets out with bad intentions (well, most designers, I suppose). But if we don’t catch ourselves early, we’ll find that we’re often designing for our projections of what our target users want. How many times have you heard designers, or just creators of products in general, say things like “This is exactly what our users want,” without actually doing any user research?

If anyone throws me the argument that Apple doesn’t do user research, I’ll politely point them to this article by Frank Spillers. The most successful designs are built for the user, to be used most effectively in their native context, and is desired by those users. Designers need to overcome the inherent human trait of thinking from the perspective of self, to thinking from the perspective of your target users.

We also tend to fall into the trap of designing for a broad range of users. Target users are named as such for a reason. They are a specific group of users that will be using your design in a narrowly defined context. The best designed products often only cater for a very specific group of people. It is this focus that allows the designer to go all out and create a design that fits this specific group of people like a glove. Because it addresses the needs and issues of this specific group so well, the people using it will be thrilled and consider it great design. What people outside the target group think is irrelevant.

Self-centredness rears its ugly head when we focus inwards. WE want OUR design to appeal to everyone because WE know better. We think we know what the users want, but do we really? It’s not easy, but I think it’s important for designers to let go of our egos and accept when user research shows that our great design wasn’t actually that great after all. It won’t feel good, but I think a bruised ego is a tiny price to pay for feedback that leads to a great design.