The superpowers of great product designers
And the tale of the five magic skills.
Product designers, like super-heroes, are always faced with unprecedented villains. These maleficent beings come in all types, sizes, and shapes, sometimes with powers of their own, and for the most part, they all try to make someone’s life miserable. They come from all over, like a broken flow or a change in customer behavior, and every so often, they evolve into something completely different. The truth is, even if one goes away, there will always be a new villain emerging around the corner.
So how do we fight these villains?
That’s where product designers come in. Like super-heroes, all product designers have different skills and powers and use these to fight the malefic beasts that are constantly attacking their product users. Sometimes a quick solo fight will do the trick, but in other cases, it can take years for a team of product designers to finally destroy a beast. To understand how product designers fight against these frustrating monsters and how their powers evolve and grow, we need to dive deeper into their origin.
How do product designers find their powers?
Commonly, product designers start their magic life by getting their base abilities from education. They spend countless hours sitting in classrooms, reading books, and training their craft. Sometimes they even create fake villains to practice the use and strength of their powers. This process goes on until the product designer is equipped with a basic set of capabilities, such as empathy, interpretation, ideation, prototyping, and testing. This essential skill set will act as their armament when the genuine adventure begins in the actual world against real monsters.
Those necessary skills that school gave them worked great against smaller villains. But as soon as the path widens and the challenges grow, the product designer starts to discover that they need something more against the new significant beast. The kind of magic that they now need is not taught at school or in books- it has to be found, but it quickly becomes their primary source of power once they do.
Discovering these superpowers is not an easy task for designers. They didn’t get a map to follow, and new paths become constant failures. Yet, patience and persistence eventually lead them in the right direction. Once finally found, these superpowers will accompany the designer in all future adventures.
What are these product design superpowers?
In reality, every product designer has their superpowers, and they grow and evolve based on the challenges they face. We can see some common ones across great designers, and regardless of how they named them, they act in a similar matter. Without further ado, some of the top 5 superpowers the best product designers share are telepathy, metamorphosis, shapeshifting, panoramic vision, and hypercognition.
Telepathy
For product designers, telepathy is the power to receive and transmit information with their super-team continually. Influential designers understand that they are not facing these challenges on their own, and the best results emerge when they collaborate as a team with all the superheroes that fight side to side with them.
This first superpower starts with their alliance with another superhero, the product manager. Like Batman and Robin, or Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, the product manager is their partner in all fights. They create a strategy together and have each other’s back along the way. One is weak without the other, and their project’s success is a direct result of their constant communication, creativity, and trust.
Next up are the engineers- the army that makes the magic happen. Without them and their majestic powers (sometimes the product designer doesn’t understand it), the product designer and manager are lost. They ensure the final battle is won, and a constant conversation between them and the designer, along the entire process, produces the best magical outcomes.
Lastly, they have the invisible force that gives the product designer an unprecedented amount of strength; their peers. Even though each product designer may be fighting their own battles, great designers find ways to help each other and understand that if one wins, they all do.
Metamorphosis
The power of metamorphosis allows the designer to evolve their creations as their project progresses continually. After defining their battle and doing their necessary research, the product designer will work some magic and produce a solution to fight the villain. Yet, most of the time, the first solution doesn’t work as expected. Great product designers use this power to transform their designs and come up with many solutions regularly. This process goes on and on until the best solution is presented and used against the villain.
Legend says that some product designers can keep transforming their creations forever, but at a certain point, with their help of their team, they choose the best design for the battle.
Shapeshifting
It turns out that the creations transform, but the product designer needs to adapt as well. This skill is painful to learn, but when mastered, the product designer will grow at a pace not seen before. To better understand what shapeshifting means, we need to break it down into two stages.
The first phase includes mastering the ability to seek feedback. By this point, the product designer has learned that feedback is crucial for better outcomes, but it does not always come on its own. The product designer has to leave the comfort zone and seek constructive feedback from their team, colleagues, and even users. This new kind of adventure will initially feel extremely uncomfortable, but soon, it will become part of the creative routine.
The second phase involves removing the ego and recognizing that they, like any other superhero in the world, can make mistakes, and the best attempt at a given challenge is not always the best. The product designer learns to understand that others are trying to help them and that by listening and adapting to feedback, their magic becomes more powerful. This superpower is probably one of the most challenging to learn and can take the product designer years to master.
Panoramic Vision
On many occasions, organizations are fighting more than one villain at a time. This is true for small startups but becomes more relevant as companies grow, and more super-heroes join the adventure. When this happens, a natural thing to do is split up and have each product designer fight against a unique villain. While this may seem vital since it gives the designer a chance to focus on a single battle, the reality is that their organization is fighting a bigger war.
This is when the superpower of panoramic vision comes in. Like the Ten-Eyed Man, great product designers learn to focus on their areas while keeping an eye on the whole organization. They master the skill of fighting a single villain while creating outcomes aligned with the bigger goals and think systematically as new solutions emerge.
This superpower on its own is hard to use, but when combined with the ones listed above, the results can be magnificent.
Hypercognition
The hypercognition superpower gives the product designer a chance to perform complex mental operations while working on their magical solutions.
By this point, the product designer has learned that every villain is different, even if they look similar. Every battle is unique and can quickly evolve. This might make it harder to keep using the processes learned at magic school.
This superpower gives the product designer the ability to create their means and to evolve with it. It touches all of their soft and hard skills and allows them to make each more efficient. Hypercognition changes as new tools are presented while the process evolves and repeats indefinitely. Like villains, new tools and weapons are always around the corner, and the product designer has to adapt their methods for each new battle.
Together, the necessary skills and these superpowers will make any product designer more powerful and exceptional against even the most famous monsters. The best part is that every product designer already has a few of them under their magic belt. And if they don’t, they now know they can seek them.
I hope this guide helps you in your journey and gets you excited about the idea that there are always new skills to learn — best of luck with your future adventures.
