Quality > Quantity

This common saying proved the value of harnessing an overly simple rallying cry.

When tasked to lead the redesign of a 20 year old product, with large teams across 6 countries, getting people to buy into unified vision felt impossible — a common problem for products with large teams. Distilling my core message into a memorable and understandable mantra greatly improved how well a point stuck. Instead of constantly explaining why perception of our product, Wall Street English, suffered when we add more features instead of iterating on the core experience, I started using this mantra “quality over quantity” in every meeting. As I was trying to build buy-in around a dramatic redesign, this proved to be the tipping point. The message sank in allowing us to redesign and refocus the entire UI. Adopting this rallying cry pushed our product to unify and focus on quality and helped achieve the $300M sale.

People dwell on the negatives - stand out by focusing on what your product does best.

Listening > Defending

Even if someone is wrong, their perception exists for a reason. Defending decisions can only change one person’s perspective. If you err on the side of listening to understand why their perception exists you just might change it for everyone.

Keep an open mind to all feedback.

Teach > Tell

“Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” This is true of design as well. If you take the extra effort so that product management, engineers, and other designers truly understand the rationale of your design decisions, you head-off the unhelpful questions and invite the helpful ones.

Helping others understand your design logic enhances future collaboration.

Why > What

Designers all want their work to mean something. How do we ensure our vision matters though? The first step is always understanding why your design should exist. Don’t take for granted that you intuitively know—question your assumptions and focus on tackling what really matters. Bonus: if you communicate the why more than the what, others will buy into your vision.

When making and describing your choices, starting with why is the strongest foundation.

Short > Long

When explaining anything, in UI or in person, make it as easy to understand as possible. Aside from our dwindling attention span, short explanations are usually easier to comprehend. 

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough” - Albert Einstein. 

Thanks Albert! In addition to understanding your subject and audience well, figuring out how to shorten your message will distill it to the most relevant parts.

When conveying anything, people are more receptive if you are clear and concise.

People > Users

Users are page views

People are emotional

Users equal data points

People are complex

Users have flows

People have lives

Considering “people” instead of “users” strengthens empathy.

Context > Dogma

In economics, there's an insightful (and lame) joke that a single answer works for all questions:

‘that depends’

Meaning, when trying to understand anything, context is king. This holds up just as well in design! Everything is unique in someway and often full of nuance. Rules of thumb are a great place to start, but blindly following trends or dogma can blind you to a better solution.

Great design bucks dogma to serve contextual needs.

Truth > Greed

Confirmation bias has enriched companies, like Facebook, who profit off tweaking your “feed” to capture your attention. Attention equals Money, and confirmation bias is one successful behavioral trick to do it. 

This is how it works. Most people, probably you and me, are more interested in stories that might confirm what our gut is telling us. This feels natural: we have a hunch and we want to know if we're right, not if we’re wrong. Let’s say you have a hunch your team is going to win - wanna click on that listicle explaining why your team is awesome? Probably. Facebook’s algorithm preys on this so we stay engaged as long as possible. Even if this behavioral trick causes us to build bubbles around ourselves - which is does. 

What we create matters. Real world consequences result from even the smallest detail. Default selection of a subscription checkbox seems innocent enough but that’s just the tip of “dark patterns”. Don’t hide the truth. Don’t be a jerk. If we’re lucky people, people will catch on.

Helping people have honest experiences may be necessary for long term credibility.

Outcomes > Justice

Cause and effect rule reality - but can this idea be applied to more than just the physical world?

In every specific moment of our lives, we make decisions. We make specific decisions with varying levels of thought. However, these are, at the very least, influenced by everything that has happened up until that point in time. Influences like a great-grandparent's gene to how sunny it is at the specific moment a decision is being made. Nature and nurture both shape every single one of our responses. 

If we accept that our decisions are at least influenced by forces outside our control, how can we be 100% personally responsible for anything? We can't. So, where do we draw the line? It almost doesn’t matter. If we can overcome the desire for blame and justice, there is a more productive answer: focus on outcomes.

Move past blame and work to improve the future.

Goals > Problems

When exposed to the inevitable conflicts that arise when teams create anything, reframe problems by identifying your common goals. Conflict can often be a blessing in disguise. They indicate either a misunderstanding of team members or a deeper issue that needs addressing. The trouble with our natural tendency to frame a conflict as a problem to be addressed is that it implies a source. This can alienate team members and hobble your team's ability to focus on the real issues.

Reframe conflict as a set of shared goals to diffuse blame and enhance positive participation.

Design Partner > Design Gatekeeper

A good designer has rationale behind their decisions. Evidence, heuristics, competitive analysis, best practices, principles, etc. Keeping this super power to yourself alienates your role and reduces the pool of perspectives to draw upon.

A great designer knows sharing this ability is a critical part of their role. Some things are easier to toss-out than others, but seriously considering design input from everyone will gain you respect and improve your usefulness.

Take your teams design ideas seriously by vetting them and you’ll snowball effective collaboration.