This is an intentionally provocative title. Anyone who produces designs for a living will consider themselves a real designer. So, what do I mean by hero designer versus a real designer?

During an episode of the True North design podcast Jeff Gothelf, of Lean UX fame, defined a hero designer as someone who blocks out all external input and creates something which they believe is ‘right’. Often what a hero design produces looks terrific, but when broken down is more akin to art and is solely rooted in the designer’s ego. A hero designer can often flourish within an agency environment but will face a lot of conflict within a user centered team designing for products.

So, what is a ‘real’ designer? Again, taking cues from Gothelf, a real designer is someone who is trying to solve problems in a manner which produces the best result for the intended audience. They have research based evidence of what may and may not work. They are interested in having their designs subjected to testing and are willing to receive the feedback from those tests and iterate or even completely scrap their work.

Some designers are not interested in testing their designs, especially with real users. Others are interested but don’t know where to start. The good news is testing a design is not something that only a HCI PhD can do. It’s simple. You can take designs to a coffee shop, you can invite users into your office, or you can have your design tested by hundreds of people using unmoderated user testing. All of these options are cheap, fast and produce actionable results.

If you are a designer and are interested in dipping your toe into the testing waters, then check out this free video course (Rapid user testing to increase engagement & conversions) which takes you through a user testing case study from prototype through to live product testing.

Remember, just because it looks good doesn’t mean it’s the optimal solution. Question, test, design and repeat.