My beef with “everyone is a designer”
Don’t get me wrong, the underlying message is a good one and you really can’t say that this phrase is not true. However, the intended message behind the mantra, doesn’t seem to be getting heard.
The Message Being Received
Designers are a primary target audience for this message, because they need to be aware that everyone is part of the design team, not just the individuals with the word “Designer” in their title. This is where things start to get fuzzy.
As a designer myself, I’ve attended a dozen events where the “Everyone is a Designer” mantra is the focus. Luckily, I let things marinade in my mind for a while before running back to the office, announcing to everyone that they’re designers, inviting them to take part in everything I do at work and teaching them my step-by-step process. This is not the case for everyone…
Example #1
When a former colleague first heard the mantra, he took it very literally. Shortly after, he told everyone on his project team that they are also designers, “everyone is a designer!” Apparently, that was a mistake. A few developers on his project now feel empowered to overrule any design decision, breaking heuristics left and right with no regard for how it might impact the user experience. In some cases, they completely disregard evidence of how a poor design decision has impacted the user experience.
While everyone on his team is capable of making design decisions, it isn’t necessarily true that they will make good design decisions. Telling every team member that they’re a designer has had a negative impact on their product.
Example #2
I recently attended a talk by my favorite UX’pert, Jared Spool. The talk was titled “Design is a Team Sport.” If you haven’t seen it, you should! Obviously, “Everyone is a Designer” plays a big role in this topic. Jared goes into detail the way everyone who promotes this mantra should, but still, the message can be taken a little too literally.
A follow-up question to his talk came from a UX Designer who had clearly heard the “Everyone is a Designer” mantra before. Her question was “When including your colleagues in design, how do you handle the situation where they say ‘I don’t ask you to do my job, why are you asking me to do yours?’”
At that moment, we all got to hear a more literal version of the intended message behind the mantra. This, however, is after a one-hour talk on the subject. How do we listen for an entire hour and miss the intended message? How do we hear this message at dozens of events and read it in a million articles, then only at this moment… finally hear what we were supposed to be hearing the whole time?
To me, this is a problem.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who hear the intended message without the more literal follow-up explanation. But situations like the examples above are evidence that not everyone is hearing what the speaker, or in some cases writer, has intended for their audience to hear.
The Intended Message
My paraphrased version of Jared Spool’s response to the UX Designer’s question: Your colleagues don’t need to know that they’re designers. They only need to know that they have an impact on the design. They also need to know how they impact the design.
At other events, I’ve heard the explanation “Everyone is a designer. That doesn’t mean everyone is a good designer.”
During his talk, Jared explained how we, as designers, need to help the people we work with become better designers and move them through the stages of understanding. He offered an explanation of how we might do that with some suggested approaches at each stage. This is what the “Everyone is a Designer” message is all about.
When teaching your colleagues to become better designers, they don’t need to know that that’s what you’re doing. They don’t have to be involved in every phase of design or know all of the same tools and frameworks we use. We all have jobs we need to do. We can’t all do the same thing at the same time throughout the entire product life cycle. However, there are a variety of things a designer should involve their non-design colleagues in and several other things a designer can do to help their team learn.
As your colleagues learn more about what differentiates bad design from good design, how their decisions impact the design, how those design decisions impact the user, etc... they’ll become better designers and begin making decisions that lead to a higher quality product and a better user experience. At that point, design professionals can focus more on strategy and less on intricate design decisions.
To get to that point, a designer needs to do more than just inform their team that they’re designers. They need to do a bit more than simply invite them to participate in design activities (but that’s not a bad place to start). They need to facilitate the learning process, sometimes in strategic ways. They need to shift mentalities from systems and features to experiences and problems.
This is no easy task. It will not happen over night. You will probably have to get creative. But you’re good at that, right?
There are several things you can do to start this process. Where you start depends on your team and how much they currently understand about design. Identify the first thing your team should learn and design ways for them to learn it. Don’t just explain it. Create experiential learning opportunities by designing workshops and getting them exposed to users.
Taking It a Step Further
To add to the confusion, there is a new trend for making this mantra even more specific. Lately, it’s “Everyone is a UX Designer.” Go on… google it! There are a bunch of articles with this title. Some better than others.
While the underlying message in a few of these articles is spot on, the new iteration of the mantra just muddies the water of what UX is. The reason there’s a difference between UX and UI is because an experience happens on the other side of a screen (assuming your product is a digital one). Part of being a legitimate UX designer is knowing what’s on that other side.
While it is true that every team member of a given product contributes to the experience that the product provides, can it be said that you are designing that experience just because your product outputs one? Are you designing an experience if you don’t actually know what that experience is? Are you designing an experience if you aren’t researching it and adjusting your product so you can manipulate that experience in some way? Is it experience design if you aren’t intentionally designing the experience?
Final Thoughts
Everyone is capable of making a design decision. They do so every day, whether they know it or not. Just because someone can make a decision, doesn’t mean it’s a decision you should move forward with.
Every team member on a product team has an impact on the final experience that product outputs, whether they know it or not. Just because they output an experience, doesn’t mean that experience has been designed.
The best designs and experiences are the result of collaboration between multiple perspectives. Those who have design skills can help their teams create higher quality products and experiences by teaching design thinking strategies, shifting the focus to a user-centric mentality, increasing exposure to users, and creating a collaborative environment.
Instead of giving free reign on design decisions simply because someone can make them… give them the tools to make better ones.
