How UX design makes me a better dad
Stuff they should have told me in the fatherly instructional manual but I learned at my day job
Not-so-humble brag: I reached the pinnacle of design with this single project.
Or so I thought.
It was an Earth Day postcard that biodegrades and leaves behind seeds to grow flowers.
I mean, this was an unstoppable idea. Right?
It was pretty early in my career, but at that point, I could have easily retired with some of the greats. My name would be in the company of guys like Dieter Rams, Milton Glaser, Frank Chimero…heck, even greater than da Vinci.
Social? Check. Environmental? Check. Helvetica? Check.
All the boxes were checked.
And yet, it was a colossal flop.
Worse than Flowbee.
Worse than Zune.
But slightly better than Google Glass. (Zing!)
Being so sure and confident is probably an early warning signal that you shouldn’t be either.
In this case above, I was so sure. So confident.
I was working as a young designer at a large university, and took on a project to promote some really clever environmental initiatives happening on campus. This was just at the dawn of widespread use of websites and social, which gives context to it being a postcard mailer. Print was everything back in these days. Zuckerberg was still in middle school.
The problem was that the college students at-large weren’t engaged in all of the efforts this stakeholder group had planned for Earth Day.
As a part of the design process, I rushed to the solution: a postcard mailer that had flower seeds embedded into the paper. The big call-to-action was something like: on Earth Day, come gather with fellow students and plant the postcard in gardens by the student center.
Slam dunk. The postcard was the Pied Piper (not that one).
Nothing would be wasted. It was the circle-of-life for a postcard.
This is what I was hoping to achieve:
- The cards would alert the students.
- The students would bring the cards.
- The cards would get planted.
- The sun would shine glory on that day. With any luck, a sprinkle of life-inducing rain.
- The flowers would bloom. Instantly.
- The students would look at each other with tear-filled eyes and say: “Thank you, nameless designer, for bringing us together.”
None of that would happen.
This is what did happen:
The day of the mailing, the post office garbage cans were filled with these cards. Landfill-bound.
Of the seeded postcards that did accompany students to the Earth Day celebration, all were dug up the day after by the facilities team. I had never done the due diligence to check on whether the seeds embedded in the paper were actually native plants, or invasive plants. But the facilities team did. The seeds were invasive.
Don’t even get me started on the biodegradable pens we handed out that were promoting Earth Day, but were manufactured from a corn-based-plastic in China, shipped to Italy to be printed, shipped to Canada for unknown reasons, then shipped to us in the USA. That’s a lot of carbon for a pen.
My hopes for moving into the hall of design greats? They never took root.
#dadjoke
That was almost 15 years ago now. I’ve had some successes along the way since then. Some lessons learned. Some hindsight that’s almost 20/20.
I was just a guy who never understood the problem, never knew how to achieve the solution, and had no way to really listen to what was going on.
In the past 3 years, I’ve been fortunate to be on a design team experiencing growth and even more fortunate to speak with loads of designers as we’re hiring for that growth. We’ve developed a bit of a structure and routine to look for strong design talent.
What I really like in a designer is this: they are a problem-lover.
Not a problem-solver.
Most designer candidates come in with the same bravado as the guy (me) outlined above…that they can solve problems.
The problem with a problem-solver is they move to a solution before they understand the problem.
Good ole Abe Lincoln said it best: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Problem-solvers chop before sharpening because it’s the shortest way to glory.
Problem-lovers mull over the problem because they know that the most apparent symptom is not the most likely cause.
They are design pathologists.
(I know, I know, we legit don’t need another title in our business. But, to be honest, we stole a couple of other industry titles like: architect, ninja, and rockstar.)
A design pathologist isn’t really that new. If you’re practicing good pathology in design, you’re probably doing this already:
- Fall in love with the problem: What user need are we addressing?
- Devise a solution that has a goal: What are we trying to achieve?
- Listen for a signal: How are we going to measure success?
As a parent, I’m working on being a kid pathologist.
So. To be clear. I understand what “causes kids.” I know the birds and the bees.
But I want to understand what makes my kids be the kids that they are. I want to understand what motivates them. I want to craft experiences so they are best equipped to achieve their goals in life. I want to listen to the verbal and nonverbal cues they give in order to best measure how we’re doing as parents.
When I take the rubric of a design pathologist, and apply that to being a kid pathologist — I’m basically admitting that what we do in our day job is about humans.
The more we can remind ourselves that we’re dealing with real human problems, the better we’ll be at crafting real human solutions.
Same is true with parenting.
The more that I remind myself to be a problem-lover when it relates to my kids, the more I root myself in looking deeper through their symptoms — a cry, a temper tantrum, a fight, a dirty look, a mouth full of sass. I’ll see root problems.
When you can really peel back to see a problem or a need, you discover that the needs almost never change but the ways to meet them can.
This is totally true in parenting. A parenting technique that works for a toddler is not likely to work for a pre-teen.
My son loved to be swaddled (tightly wrapped in a blanket as a baby). It helps babies fall asleep. He was addicted to being swaddled.
Now that he’s a pre-teen, do you think I should tightly wrap him in a blanket when he’s having trouble falling asleep?
However, the need doesn’t change. He just needs a solution that actually addresses the problem.
The skills I’ve learned in my day job as a designer have prompted me to take this formula — problem : goal : signal — in to how I can bring out the best in our kids.
The kids aren’t the problem. The users aren’t the problem.
Sometimes, they don’t even know they have problems. Often times, we don’t, either.
We — as designers, dads, and beyond — haven’t given our attention to the problems they’re facing because we’re too focused on making solutions.
They deserve a problem lover over a problem solver.
Catchup with Part 1 of the series.
Next week: “How Being a Dad Makes Me a Better Designer: Maturing into Maturity”
