WHAT WE TALK ABOUT… WHEN WE TALK ABOUT DESIGN

by Carolyn Gawkowski

Design is one of the most fundamentally misunderstood competencies in any organization. And it is not surprising that it is, because there are at least two distinct understandings of design that are constantly conflated. Design as an outcome, and design as a process.

Let me explain.

Many people, including some designers themselves, think that design is the way that things look. The logo, the fonts selected, the colors used, the placement of text on a page. But those choices and the way they are presented are not design. That is a design outcome.

Others understand that design is a process. It is a classic framework, an oft-repeated, slightly varied approach that basically states that in order to build any product, service, tool or process, you can follow a consistent and proven methodology that will inevitably lead to team and product success.

As User Experience design has gained traction as a role and discipline in many companies, the conflation of these two ideas of design has caused a lot of pain and confusion. This pain is mostly felt by designers who are trained in the process but thrust into situations where they are asked to show a design outcome without performing the necessary steps to get there. 

In these companies, the decision about what is being built has already been made by product, and how it will be built is already determined by engineering. Heck, even leadership has determined the priorities. So designers are left to “decorate” these experiences and are forced into defending work they haven’t had time to really reason through. Without an understanding of the design process, many companies believe that designers have the expertise to produce a solid design outcome without it. And designers, trying to promote team harmony, don’t have the support or the confidence to dispute that. They also don’t have the authority or skills to shift an organization from a focus on outcomes to a focus on process.

This pain and confusion is also felt by leadership and team members who don’t understand why they are investing in design that’s not having an impact. This pain and confusion eats up a lot of time and can devastate morale. But I think it can be alleviated by creating space to include team members in the whole design process (research, analysis, synthesis) instead of just focusing them around the design outcomes (prototypes, wireframes, comps.)

There are a number of obstacles to creating space for the design process at companies. But companies that understand the value of design use the process intentionally. Shifting the conversation from what has been created to how and why it was created is a crucial step in creating a design-driven organization.