Kill your design darlings
Have you ever been especially fond of a design element that wasn’t entirely driven by user needs? If so, then you’ve probably had a “darling”. I still find them in my work, but thanks to generations of writers, I know how to handle them.
Writers “kill their darlings”. Designers stand to improve our work by doing the same. The idea of “killing your darlings”, usually attributed to William Faulkner or Stephen King, means to remove the things you’re most fond of from your work. For designers, this is anything that you find exciting that may not benefit the user. Killing these “darlings” simplifies your design, and simplicity begets usability.
Only a strong rationale can save a design element from elimination when you kill your darlings. Under this constraint, the only elements remaining will be the valuable ones. The negative space created by the removal of everything else highlights those valuable tasks, and when they’re the only ones available, they’re the ones your users will perform.
This strategy doesn’t eliminate the need for usability testing, of course. However, since thorough testing isn’t always possible under time and budget constraints, sometimes you need to perform a heuristic evaluation. Killing your darlings is a good strategy for doing this effectively. By definition, your “darlings” are the things you’re most proud of: you’ve developed a fondness for them and that hinders you from being objective about their utility. Deciding ahead of time to eliminate them saves you the mental and emotional stress of deciding at the moment, giving you a sharper focus on the evaluation and stronger design to evaluate.
In addition to constraining the design to its most valuable elements and eliminating some of the subjectivity in heuristic evaluation, killing your darlings centers the user. You understand your designs intuitively — especially the parts of them you’re most attached to. Your user doesn’t, and likely won’t because they don’t have the context that you do. Eliminating those darlings prioritizes the user’s understanding over your own, an important empathetic skill for a designer, and one I’m reminding myself of constantly.
Killing your design darlings, just as authors kill theirs, will make you a better designer. Your rationales will be stronger, your evaluations will be sharper, and your user will benefit. While it may feel disappointing in the moment, your users will appreciate it — and that appreciation far outweighs the initial grief over your darling’s death.
Have you ever found yourself attached to a “darling” that didn’t serve the user?
