My design philosophy

As a UX Design graduate student at Purdue University, I have taken numerous courses. In the Fall of 2021, I enrolled in Design Theory and Technology which gave me an opportunity to self-reflect as a designer. The readings, class discussions, and exercises helped equip me with an expansive intellectual grounding in various kinds of humanistic design inquiry. The course offered a space where I could be intellectually fearless allowing me to engage with material that challenged my points of view as a designer. At times, the class discussions countered my deeply held design beliefs, stimulating careful consideration of my personal values, morals, and design knowledge. Exploring issues, frameworks, and methods through different design lenses taught me to tackle complex design problems critically and cogently. More importantly, it strengthened my reasoning to identify which problems to solve and why — among the many issues that polarize the design world today.

What I present going forward are attributes of my design philosophy as I know it at this point in time and space. Given that design is generative, I consider my philosophy to illustrate the same. Through an iterative and reflective process, I am able to distill it as I engage and navigate through the world of design.

Design is not a standardized process

Every problem constitutes a set of distinctive characteristics, which necessitates novel combinations of design tools and methods to arrive at the best possible solution. For instance, contrary to my past understanding, design thinking is not a concrete and intransigent method. The component stages; empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, serve as a guide to the typical design process. However, these stages can be switched, run simultaneously, and repeated to amplify the problem-solution space. Moreover, the tools available to use at each stage are not universal. As a designer, exploring potential solutions comes with the responsibility and propensity to use the appropriate tools. Using specific tools and methods is equally important as understanding the context and consequences of deploying them. As Maslow says,

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Design excellence over design perfection

As a graphic designer who switched to user experience design, I have learned to work toward design excellence instead of design perfection. For a graphic designer, sharing an unfinished design would be considered incomplete, whereas for a user experience designer it is the opposite. The desire to improve an artifact iteratively through feedback and reflection is a step towards reframing the problem, learning, and delivering the best possible solution. Reaching for perfection; where no further improvements could be made in a design, reminds me of the sunk cost fallacy. For that, to manifest all possible computer-human interactions should never change. The real world is far from the truth as user needs constantly change. Pragmatic designers consistently deliver value (instead of perfection) through incessant cultivation of improvements to solve users’ needs.

Design for real life

With technology integrated into every aspect of our daily lives, designing for real life has become increasingly challenging. To quote Manzini,

“Convergence of design practice and research is driven by an increasingly complex environment of needs, requirements, and constraints”.

As a designer, addressing contemporary problems demands empathy, rather than sympathy for the users. Observing, engaging, and immersing myself in the real-life experiences of users has proved to be a critical skill. This not only reveals a more personal, deeper understanding of the user’s reality but also their motivations, such as the inability to take action, a common bias in Behavioral Economics. Grounding myself in the user’s reality allows me to find opportunities to bridge the intention-action gap by influencing user behavior positively.

Design is pretty

With a history of pushing pixels and creating appealing designs through the interplay of color and typography, aesthetics is as important to me. It not only influences how users feel and think about artifacts but also affects their long-term attitudes toward them. However, for me, the aesthetics of design transcend the digital interface. It blankets the process that leads me to it; meticulous and careful layout of the methods, tools, and frameworks that co-evolve the problem and solution.

My process

Being a designer in an interdisciplinary field means informing design decisions through research and industry standards. However, speaking for myself my design process is not set in stone. It is inspired by the works of Naoto Fukasawa, Robert Padbury, Bill Buxton, and the like. I do take the liberty to change and make those processes my own by instilling my personal values and beliefs. Borrowing from the work of design leaders has allowed me to create a repertoire of inspiration; a continuous loop of critiquing my work and rethinking my methods and tools. At times, the vast amount of inspiration can prove overwhelming. This concept of figural complexity (Schon), has helped further my ability to make better design judgments. In the words of Stolterman,

“The ability to gain subconscious insights that have been abstracted from experiences and reflections…judgment is, in effect, a process of taking in the whole, in order to formulate a new whole”

— provides a pathway for the distillation of my abstract design knowledge through a process combining the real, true, and ideal.

As a novice designer, I saw constraints in user experience design as a form of deprivation. Much like in Economics, considering the interaction of choices amongst scarce resources and imperfect information feels like I am made to exclude better alternatives for my designs. However, constant reframing of the problem helps us realize that there are considerable opportunities to explore. Utilizing different lenses has encouraged me to embark upon deeper investigations producing designs that create value and meaning.

References

Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman. 2012. The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. The MIT Press.

Howard, Vernon A. Varieties of Thinking: Essays from Harvard’s Philosophy of Education Research Center. Routledge, 1990.

Manzini, Ezio, and Rachel Coad. Design, When Everybody Designs an Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. The MIT Press, 2015.

Maslow, Abraham H. Towards a Psychology of Being. John Wiley and Sons, 1999.