The true mark of an effective designer is the ability to answer “why”. Don’t waste your time solving the wrong problems. Your work should have purpose – addressing actual, urgent problems that people are facing. Make sure that you can clearly articulate the core of the issue before spending time on developing the design.
Make things simple and intuitive
Intuition happens outside of conscious reasoning, so by utilizing it you are actually reducing the tax on people’s minds
- Leave complexity to family dynamics, relationships, and puzzles. Create things that are easy to use, learn, and adapt to, and make things easy to find.
Acknowledge that the user is not like you
Our thought processes and understanding of the world around us are deeply affected by our genetics, upbringing, religion and geographical culture, and past experiences.
- Don’t assume you innately understand the needs of your customers.
Have empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s perspective and feelings
- Go out of your way to identify with their needs
- Get to understand what makes people tick and why they do what they do, you’ll have a much easier time going to bat to make their lives better
