Design The Way A Chef Cooks
Companies need to create an environment where the people who are designing products and experiences feel heard, seen, and empowered to do their best work. Even at scale, this type of work is highly personal and deeply affects the lives of the people we are creating these experiences for, so the energy that designers put into it is felt in the final product. My wife is a professional chef, and there is an analog here: If you create a meal with joy and love, the person eating it will taste that. It’s the same with product design, and it is my responsibility as a design leader to make sure that our kitchen is stocked with inspiration, kindness, joy, and love.–Sebastian Bauer, senior director of design, Android and Pixel
Good Design Isn’t About Designers
It’s about the people we design for. Often times, we think good design is a matter of aesthetics – that it’s about designing things that are beautiful, immersive, rich. All those things might be true. But at its most fundamental, good design is design that works for its users. Our role as designers is to put ourselves in other users’ shoes, and then create the best experiences possible. That means, we need to be radically human-centric. We need to know who we are designing for, and anticipate their wants and needs. I’ve always considered excellent user experience research a superpower, and I urge all product builders to treat user research as a non-negotiable part of the development process. To build truly great products, we need to first build understanding and empathy.–Catherine Courage, vice president of user experience, Google
Design Is A Time Machine
As designers, we use research and empathy to understand human motivation and behaviors, and map those to intended product outcomes. The design process inherently helps us imagine, then create, potential futures. While we cannot predict the future, if we squint, sometimes design can help us catch a glimpse of what potential futures might look like.–Michael DelGaudio, UX Manager and Design Lead, Android TV
Design Can’t Be Taught
Design is very simple – aside of talent it requires disciplined work and constant learning about our adjacent fields of knowledge such as human history, and sciences including ecology and economics. However, in his book The Tides of Mind, David Gelernter states correctly that about only one in eight people has creative talents, and that creativity in all fields cannot be explained or taught—only mentored. Working with my design students over 30 years, my rate is one out of about 100. In choosing eight to 15 out of hundreds of applicants (in China even over 1,000), at graduation just about three to five are at world-class level. Naturally, one has to learn about the design process, as we are connected to an industrial process model, but my main focus is to install courage to make mistakes and gain realistic confidence. Presentation is about 50% of our profession, because our audience lives and works by rational parameters. Therefore, our students also take acting and dancing courses. And as many friends and peers sunk into alcohol and drugs, I try to encourage my students to enjoy a sober creative life. The thrill is in the journey.—Harmut Esslinger, founder, Frog Design
Be Like Nas
‘It’s never what you do—but how it’s done,’ according to Nas. My secret to design is approaching it a lot like the best musicians and rappers and singers in the world enter the studio every time. With intention. To be an effective designer, your work and process has to be just as important as the end result, and I’ve learned that there needs to be an obsessive sort of quality, excellence, and consistency at every step of the design process, from concepting through to detailed design —and post-launch and iteration. Where you land is directly connected to what you’ve learned from your design process in the past and breaking tried-and-true paradigms with intention.—Derek Fridman, design partner, Work & Co.
There Is No Finish Line
Our design philosophy [at Nike] is rooted in athletes. We know in design, like in sports, better is only temporary. Athletes will never stop pushing, so neither can we. Sowe’re never done, never satisfied; the potential is infinite and the progression endless. We’re always in pursuit of better. In fact, one of our mottos is ‘There is No Finish Line.’ We bring a mindset of restless curiosity to everything we do: from identifying new frontiers of performance to designing more inclusively and innovating more sustainably. It’s also clear that sports will never stop evolving; the aperture will continue to widen, and with it, the problem sets we must solve for widen too. That’s why we can never be content to only address the problems of today; it’s critical we continue to imagine and anticipate new possibilities and future trajectories.—John Hoke, chief design officer, Nike
Put A Rookie On Your Team
I remember earlier in my career getting the opportunity to be involved in important meetings or large projects that were way above my ability. When I asked my mentor, Justin Dimick, why I was included, he gave me the book, Rookie Smarts. Rookies, it turns out, have unique advantages that make a team better. They come with fresh eyes, are naive to the assumed constraints, and lacking their own expertise, tend to proactively incorporate a broader range of expertise. There is no question that high-impact work requires deep and meaningful experts, but for every project, I always include a rookie because it pushes the conversations further and makes the ultimate output better.—Andrew Ibrahim, surgeon and chief medical officer, HOK Healthcare
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