Good designer, bad designer

Are you a good designer? How can you tell? We all want to progress, master our craft, and win the respect of our peers. We also want the autonomy, financial rewards, and plethora of fascinating work that comes from mastery.

But design is a subtle profession. We can’t just shrug and point at how many deals we closed last quarter to demonstrate how great we are.

The more we progress, the more subtle and elusive advancement becomes. I’m writing this blog to help us gain traction on the subtle aspects of our profession that separate greatness from mediocrity.

To that end, the first thing we have to do is identify what a good designer actually is. Design taste, high craft, and a tolerable demeanor are table stakes. Non-trivial to acquire for some of us, extremely valuable, but table stakes nevertheless.

Truly great designers are defined by three things beyond the fundamentals.

The first is the ability to influence others.

Influence

Good designers influence others, incorporate ideas from teammates, subordinate their ego, and rally the team around a shared vision.

Bad designers are isolated, tortured geniuses who believe their ideas are uniformly brilliant, if only others would listen.

As designers we face problems of influence every day:

• Getting our designs implemented correctly
• Staving off micromanagement
• Keeping alignment to avoid last minute blowups

These are a small handful of the endless scenarios that we have to gracefully handle as designers.

How do you actually influence others in the real world? If you recall the last political debate you had with your your family, you'll know it's not so easy. In fact, it's extremely difficult. But influence is ultimately tractable with some basic knowledge and a little effort.

Check out my deep dive on influence.

Holism

Good designers consider how individual features interact with their product as a whole, abstract reusable patterns, and consider workflows rather than just UIs.

Bad designers myopically work on small scale design projects out of sync with the rest of the product, make unsystematic choices that breed inconsistency, and don't see or capitalize upon opportunities for patterning.

Go deeper on designing more systematically.

Impact

Good designers start by deeply understanding customer problems and business value. They seek measurable impact in their work and actively try to support the success of the company as a whole. They evangelize their work effectively to help others understand the value and impact of design.

Bad designers believe their job is to create UIs rather than customer value, don't educate stakeholders on the impact of their design work, and don't actively seek to understand how design fits into the bigger picture of the business. In many cases, they resent business success and see it as a necessary evil rather than the ultimate aim of their work. They frequently say "that's not my job" when they encounter obstacles to producing their best work that can't be solved by slinging pixels.

If that's you, this blog is probably not for you. If you want to build great products that help people under chaotic real world conditions and reap the rewards, you're one of the good ones.

There are several ways for designers to increase their business acumen and therefore their value in the world:

• Understand user acquisition, activation, and retention
• Learn to read competitors' financial statements
• Grasp the basics of product management
• Gain a working knowledge of product strategy

I'll by writing about these topics in detail within the next few months.

Beyond the craft

Mastering the craft of design is a deep and non-trivial pursuit. Unfortunately, it's not enough. We have to go beyond the pixels and learn to influence, think systematically, and drive business impact with our work.

Each of those topics is incredibly vast and we'll be diving deep into them together on this blog.

Join me. Let's build great products and reap the rewards together.