3 questions I learned to ask in the design process
Question not just your users and designs, but also your design process.
Last week, I officially graduated from the BFA Interaction Design program at California College of the Arts!
The program is 4 years long. The first year is a foundational year that everyone goes through, regardless of any major. So technically, the design program is 3 years long. After these 3 years of learning from professors, peers, and professionals in both classroom and work settings, I want to share some questions that helped me improve my design skills. These 3 questions are focused on improving the approach to the design process for someone early in the journey of learning UX.
1. Am I conducting research to validate my idea, or to deepen my understanding of the problem space?
Either answer is correct (and they can happen simultaneously!), but it depends on which part of the design process you are currently in. Validating occurs at every step of the design process, ranging from validating the problem you’ve chosen (e.g. doing interviews to ensure your users actually have this problem), to validating the usability of your prototypes (e.g. user-testing screen flows to ensure your users find the screens and functionality intuitive to use). This article does a wonderful job of breaking down the different steps of validation in the design process and explaining what you are validating at each step:
Researching to understand the problem space — also known as exploratory research — falls under validation as a whole. In the article above, I’d say it ties into steps 1 and 2. You are learning and answering questions or assumptions you have about your users and the problem; you are NOT approaching them with a solution in mind.
The mistake my peers and I made in our early days was researching to validate our ideas when we should’ve focused on understanding the problem better. This mistake often occurred in the earlier phases of a project, during exploratory research and/or early prototype testing. Looking back at my old projects, I’d often start with a problem and come up with an idea shortly after. The problem was that my idea became a solution I was falling in love with. I would “do research” because it was part of the design thinking process I learned. Sure, the research and testing helped me make surface-level adjustments to my idea (tweaking UI, updating the flows, etc), but the core concept remained the same.
Do you have an inkling of a solution already? An app with specific features, a website with certain pages, a platform with certain functionalities…? Ask yourself how you came up with these ideas — what are your assumptions? Be careful when you are first starting a project, especially before you have done enough research with your users and stakeholders. Assumptions aren’t a bad thing as long as you recognize that they are assumptions. Turn them into hypotheses for testing — in other words, turn your early ideas into prototypes that will help you answer a question, not solve the problem. This article effectively outlines how to do hypothesis-driven design:
Use the answers you get from hypothesis validation to further understand the problem space, which will allow you to move forward in the right direction.
2. Am I "innovating" just for the sake of it?
A learning environment like design school is a great place to experiment with novel ideas, technology, and processes. My program encouraged this heavily, often telling us to “move away from screens”. A lot of interesting work comes out of this approach, but something I’d caution from personal experience is to be careful about striving to create something shiny and completely unconventional for the sake of “innovating”. Why are you choosing this unconventional method/medium? I say this for 3 reasons. (Wow, 3 has unintentionally become the theme here!) Before that, I want to clarify that these reasons are not the case for every project; if your goal is to get super experimental, then go for it!
1. Art versus design
Some of the projects I’ve seen veer into the realm of art and self-expression. If you want to create a UX design project and you aren’t doing proper or adequate research and testing, chances are that you will not have a sufficient understanding of your users and the problem you are trying to solve, nor a well-defined problem space. It is possible that you can produce something flashy and unique in the end; however, the likelihood of designing something truly provocative, backed by research and demonstrating a strong depth of thinking, would be much lower.
The essay Design is not Art by Austin Knight does a wonderful job of explaining the difference between art and design, and I’ve pulled out a section on the difference between the roles of creativity in art and design that I find particularly illuminating:
Designers shouldn’t be proud of a design just because it is creative or different. They should be proud of it because, through creativity, they were able to build a design that better solves a problem or serves a purpose. Artists, however, are fully within their right to be proud of a piece of art simply because it is creative or different. This is because that is precisely the value that art provides. It exists within itself.
2. New technology
School is a great place to experiment with new technology — and do so, by all means! But I want to share a valuable insight that kim lenox, VP of Design at Zendesk, shared with me over a lunch chat during my internship:
“Don’t fall into the trap of designing around a new technology; design the vision using the technology”.
Technology should be used to turn a well-designed product into reality, instead of being placed on a pedestal (above user and business needs and constraints) to create something flashy. If your goal is to create a UX project, make sure you do your research and have a strong rationale behind why you are designing with this specific technology.
3. The value of your project for your future path
I believe this is important to think about, especially if you are early in your career and focused on creating work to hone your design skills and move you forward with your job search. When I was brainstorming for my senior project at the start of my final year, one idea was a large-scale interactive installation of projected illustrations. I love illustration and wanted to use my skills to create something very “different” for my final project. (By the way, this is a very good example of #1.)
After excitedly telling my close friend (a seasoned designer) about my idea, he asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Do you want to do exhibition design in the future?” While my excitement bubble may have been popped in the moment, I am so thankful for this provocation in hindsight. I have no interest working in exhibition or installation design after graduating. Eventually, I chose a meaningful topic for my senior project that allowed me to utilize and demonstrate all the design skills I have learned while incorporating my illustrations effectively. Use the work you create now as a stepping stone toward the type of work you want to do in the future. I suggest asking yourself, “If I were to show my project to my dream employer during an interview, what would they think?” Showing an exploratory project is a wonderful way to demonstrate how you explore and perceive design, but make sure that you frame it as such. If you are given a brief, or are showing a project to demonstrate the UX skills required by the position, you must answer to it — this still means being innovative, but within boundaries and constraints.
3. Why am I showing this diagram?
This was a mistake I frequently made in my earlier years when creating presentations. It was easy to want to show every single thing I did. But when I show a diagram of an entire journey map or a very detailed persona, chances are that I am communicating to my audience “look what I did”, instead of “my rationale behind my design is x, y, and z”. It’s very difficult to read a complex diagram and listen to a presenter at the same time and fully process both channels of information. If something doesn’t contribute to the story you are telling, don’t show it. I know it’s tempting to show all the hard work you’ve done, but too much information will likely leave your audience confused and unsure of what to focus on. Keep your slides as simple as possible. Going back to the journey map example — instead of putting an entire journey map, you can zoom in to specific moments or pull out points that help you explain your chosen problem area, your user’s struggles, your design decision, etc… You can always pull up more detailed artifacts later during Q&A, should people want further explanations. (I also touched on this topic when I was interviewed by Alexa Herasimchuk, check out this video!)
All three questions I’ve discussed point toward one common theme: asking yourself “why” along each step of the design process. We’re taught to ask “why” in the process of designing, but don’t forget to also ask “why” to the process itself. Learning the design process can often be a templated approach, which is good for learning all the foundational skills — when I first started my program, we were often required to have very specific deliverables throughout our projects (e.g. 2 personas and 1 journey map by next week). In reality, the design process is very rarely truly linear and strict. While there is a general process we are taught to follow, no two problems should be approached using an exactly identical approach; different skills will be required for each stage of tackling a specific problem. Plan and execute on your process with intention, and allow your learnings to adjust your process if necessary. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this research? Why am I using this new technology or method? Why should I show this during my presentation?”
