Daring to design with vulnerability
Invite the rest of your team to see past the tip of the iceberg
For most product teams, sharing early-stage designs isn’t ground-breaking at all. But at my department within the Government of Canada—where some of us are quietly working to show decision-makers the transformative value of Design—it can take near resilience to propose and then lead a design crit.
For all the empathy we require designers to show, I wonder:
Do we care about what designers go through to produce great work?
Designers are prone to feelings of shame
I’ll admit it. I probably spend several hundred hours of a year designing outside of work hours. I can’t stop reading about the accessibility of inline validation on web forms. I can’t stop working on Figma files late at night into the early mornings and on weekends. I have the hardest time “disconnecting” from work. I can’t help but care so much.
Most people tend to attach some self-worth to their work; but those who create, perhaps even more so.
Designers can invest so much of themselves into what they make.
Naturally, we tend to experience shame when our work is poorly received or heavily criticized.
Self-worth ⧣ work
It’s really, really hard not to take critique personally.
And, as Chris Kiess admits, those feelings of insecurity and doubt don’t always go away with time:
“More than a decade as a designer has not cured me of this fear… This is still the one key aspect of UX design that can raise my anxiety levels. I’ve presented designs thousands of times in my career. But it doesn’t matter. There is still that moment, the unveiling of the design and the subsequent feedback, where I am always confronted with my own fears and insecurities.” (emphasis: mine)
Lindsay Kurbursky has written a wonderful piece connecting Brene Brown’s research on vulnerability, to the field of design.
Paraphrasing Brown, the cycle goes something like: “This is crap, my work is crap, I’m crap.”
As designers, what we need to — but struggle to — grasp is: “What I produce is a part of me & a reflection of me, but it is not me.”
Practicing vulnerability takes courage
A definition:
vul·ner·a·bil·i·ty
noun
1. the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.
Risk accompanies every design, every idea, every presentation we show to the world.
The fear we feel feeds our insatiable “lizard brain”. Ultimately, if we give heed to it, we close up. We stick with safety, with not trying, with not moving out of our comfort zone. It stifles our creativity. This is an on-going mental battle that designers fight all the time.
The counterpoise to losing creativity is to embrace vulnerability—even if it’s hard.
‘Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability.’
—Brene Brown
Putting yourself or your work out there takes a lot of vulnerability. It’s an act of bravery.
Yet, as Kurbursky writes, embracing vulnerability is vital to growth, on both a professional and personal level.
Building trust through design critiques and feedback sessions
Holding design critiques and feedback sessions regularly is an important part of practicing vulnerability.
But Brown’s work shows that we need to feel there’s enough trust there to reach out for help or feedback.
When I first introduced my team to design crits in June, the important part for me wasn’t actually the design itself.
It was about creating a new environment where people felt “safe” enough to share their work and to provide feedback.
In our first design crit, I intentionally assigned myself as a facilitator to help shield my co-op student from potentially feeling ‘attacked’.
She focused on presenting her design. I took care of clearing the air.
At a recent design crit, I didn’t have the luxury of having a facilitator.
A well-intentioned colleague had an immediate negative reaction to a design element, and couldn’t refrain from talking about this in a most passionate way.
Not only did the interaction feel aggressive and uncomfortable, it also seemed to openly discount all the hours of research that went into this design decision. I had lists of reasons for the design, but longed to be given the opportunity to explain why.
If designers don’t feel like they can trust their teammates, they’ll dread every crit.
I’m convinced that managers everywhere would do well to learn how to better support the designers on their team. Designers face a constant stream of criticism of their work, more so than any role.
The paradox: designers are always told “show your work early and often”, “don’t design in a vacuum”, etc. But when we muster up the courage to do it, we still feel the need for disclaimers to limit how many shots are fired out of the gate at visual details, placeholder text, and other elements used as ammunition.
How can we make these situations better?
Before saying “Never!”, ask the designer “Why?”
For non-designer folks, here are three tips to keep in mind the next time you’re invited to a design critique:
- Open-ended questions allow designers to explain their thinking. Before saying “never!”, ask the designer “why?”. There’s probably a reason they decided on that particular interaction, navigation path, state. If there’s an issue, work with them, not against them.
- Providing constructive feedback also allows designers to reflect more deeply about the problem space — instead of asking them to spend additional sweat clearing the emotionally charged airwaves.
- Try to address Information Architecture / Interaction Design concerns too. The kinds of questions and feedback non-designer stakeholders provide on a prototype is telling. Not liking a color, not liking an image, not liking the shape of a button—those are things that often demonstrate a lack of sophistication and only a very superficial understanding of end-to-end UX considerations. It’s worth noting too, as DF points out, that visual design elements such as color palette and imagery are often governed by well-defined brand standards that the designer is maintaining alignment with.
Good design is just the tip of the iceberg
Non-design stakeholders are easily opinionated about what they see.
What they don’t always see: the extensive research, countless iterations, cross-collaboration and deep reflection that went into a single, well-designed wireframe.
Understanding what designers go through ‘beneath the surface’ will hopefully equip more people to finally build the relationships, the “safe spaces”, and the feedback loops that encourage vulnerability and foster creativity.
If you work with designers in any capacity, I hope you’ll remember:
Designers are human beings who affront waves of criticism and practice vulnerability regularly while trying to make better products and services for others.
And this — all of it — takes a lot more courage than we might realize.
References:
- Vulnerability in Design by Lindsay Kurbursky
- Stop Making it Perfect by Chris Kiess
- You Can’t Be Creative Without Vulnerability by Michelle Monet
- Why Your Lizard Brain Terrifies You — Business Insider
