How I'm Improving My Design Sense

I recently wrote an article on my design capabilities. you can read it here. It’s a solid piece I believe — articulating the core function of what I think ‘design’ should ultimately do (solving the problem/objective of target user/business). But I felt it left out some of the other important, and increasingly differentiating, vectors of what ‘design’ is. I will write to those here and explain what I’m doing about it.

First, why should I care to improve my sense of design? As AI makes building software easier, “good enough” becomes mediocre. Design becomes not only a competitive advantage, but a key differentiator when the problem can theoretically be solved by many. In this world, the most excellent experiences will win.

You, as the hirer of products to do jobs for you, will choose the products that do the jobs in the way that makes you feel the best.

So you, as a product builder, most know how to create those experiences in your products so that customers choose yours. This ability to discern what “great looks like” is referred to as ‘taste’ in some circles (and in those circles its become somewhat overused). I think of it as very similar to your sense of design or your (product) intuition. And as I’ve learned, what good is intuition if you can’t communicate it?

So that is exactly what I’ll be doing. I’ll be:

experiencing something
consciously deciding if i like it: Y/N
explaining why

I’ve already been consistently doing (1) and (2), but not the last part - explaining it. This is where I believe I’ll close a lot of the gaps I have in understanding my own intuition and product sense as well as be able to articulate my thoughts better to others. I’m already constantly taken aback by things in life: the silky texture of the sour cream on my hashbrowns this morning or the newfound aura from wired headphones or the beautiful navbar on flighty.com (that inspired garpple.com).

And where will I be documenting this? in the easiest place possible: apple notes. I’ve got my phone and computer on me at most times and apple notes doesn’t encourage you to waste time making the note look pretty (no ‘work around the work’).

Second, so what pieces of design were missing from my first piece? The aesthetics. What exactly is aesthetics? idk man it’s a vibe. jk. I think of aesthetics as the “sensing” that occurs outside of the most functional interpretation of “how it works”. Meaning: how something looks to the eye, sounds to the ear, feels to the touch, and so forth.

There’s the accessibility part of the aesthetic - making sure it’s consumable - and the emotional part of it. Without the accessibility, there is no emotion to feel. So accessibility is hugely important and should not be considered an after thought. Once the product is accessible, the slider moves from a science to an art as the creator must consider the most important design question: how should this product make the user feel?

This question is incredibly hard to answer well. It comes down to the creator’s ability to diagnose the goal of the user and the emotions they feel as they work towards that goal, then create (from nothing!) something to make them feel a certain intended way along that journey. Really hard. Which is why I’m going to start being deliberate in explaining to myself why I feel the certain ways that I do - so that hopefully I can build new things that are designed deliberately to make people feel a certain way.