The best description of the “design process” I’ve ever seen…
Could I tell my clients this and still get design work? I’m not sure I’ve got the confidence to try it yet, but I really feel like this is the most honest description of the design process I’ve ever read. Exactly the way I think about design.
“When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know…trust me?” – Michael Bierut
So much of what designers do is intuitive, tricky, and not rational. I think that’s probably why we do what we do. But can you tell that to someone who isn’t a designer, who is uneasy with that kind of ambiguity?
At IDEO, they say that to work there you must thrive in ambiguity. I think that’s a quality of good designers… being comfortable with the ambiguity of the process.
