A lot of designers get frustrated when seemingly obvious changes don't get prioritized or happen fast enough. The reality is, change takes time. Great design especially takes a long time to gain the traction it needs.\
\
And there's nothing you can do to change that.\
\
But what I can tell you is designers are best positioned to advocate and enact this kind of change. To help shape business slowly around the benefits of great design. \
\
Product and engineering are often too busy and focused on their commitments to the business. Commitments they must make cycle after cycle because the business scrutinizes those investments.\
\
Design is traditionally not beholden to the same stakes or degree of scrutiny.\
\
I've achieved this in multiple orgs. One startup took 24 months. Another took 28 months. Yet another only took 10 months. A big corp? 20+ months. And so on.\
\
But here's the kicker.\
\
Great design can only happen if the business doesn't require great design to provide real value people are willing to pay for or for those fortunate enough, be part of a business that shapes itself around longer runways to produce great design from the get go. \
\
The one thing both have in common is the time investment necessary for great design to happen. So know which kind of business you are a part of, adapt accordingly, and play the long game.\
\
You'll enjoy the ride more.

Great design takes time

A common theme in the questions aspiring designers often ask is how to best go about learning in order to become strong contributors.\
\
What I’ve witnessed over the last few years are a lot of aspiring designers practicing without understanding theory. Practice without theory is undirected.\
\
It’s like following a recipe instead of learning how to cook. Recipes are great ways to practice by following along but if a person understands why certain flavours work well together as well as the best methods to extract them, they can get creative with making their own instead of relying on the recipes of others.\
\
We need a balance between both.\
\
Learn the theory and fundamentals behind what is considered to be good design. It helps to:\
\
\- Build a solid foundation in the principles that contribute to good design \
\- Learn why things work the way they do\
\- Learn how others have approached and successfully solved problems \
\- Learn the language of how designers communicate and translate concepts\
\
Put that theory into practice, ideally with others. Theory is great in a vacuum but the real world is seldom ideal. Practicing helps to:\
\
\- Develop a working understanding of what it's like to collaborate \
\- Give you rules or constraints (self-imposed or otherwise) to work within \
\- Train you to physically use tools, repeating the same motions again and again \
\- Provide a means to leverage your experience with others to create something meaningful and unique to the circumstances you're working in\
\
Learn however you do best. Practice what you learned. Rinse and repeat.\
\
Gain the skills and confidence to create your own recipes.

The importance of balancing theory and practice

The definition of quality has changed a lot in the last 40 years with the advent of software products and a hard swing to iterative development.\
\
You know, cheap learning via experimentation. If things break, well that’s just the cost of doing business.\
\
Aside from a few exceptions high craft isn't a priority in software when you're intentionally operating or striving to operate at the kind of scale the likes of Amazon, LinkedIn, eBay, and Microsoft do. \
\
The definition of quality in big tech is measured in deliverability, where individual parts can always be changed for the sake of profitability and optimization. This runs counter to what high craft requires, that is having a certain degree of permanence and cohesion that usually gets lost through this process. \
\
High craft requires sacrificing aspects of optimization and profitability in exchange for shared purpose or meaning. And with that usually means a smaller audience, but an audience that resonates deeply and joyfully with what was made.\
\
That can also be a way of doing business too and dare I say, good business.

The definition of quality

Customer and user pain points. UX and produc[t](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=product&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6740267248868503552) folks often use this way of framing their solutions, as if they relieve their purported pain.\
\
I don't think that's the best way to make compelling products.\
\
In my many years designing net-new products and speaking to potential users, I can confidently say most people aren't experiencing much pain at all, they describe things as being "just okay," that they're content to get by on because that's how they've always done it.\
\
You know what I'm talking about. Things like: jumping between tools to get a job done or fumbling through a clunky ordering process to get those special pair of shoes - by any means necessary.\
\
Long-term outcomes that we strive for like stickiness, loyalty, and retention - none of that lasts if we speak only in the language of pain and relief because they aren't actually experiencing pain.\
\
We need to demonstrate to our users how their lives will change through the stakes we create or identify.\
\
Time, growth, happiness, survival, etc - these things are as important to fold into the narrative of your solutions, as the solutions themselves.

Users aren't experiencing as much pain as we think

Most designers I know speak about their work in this frame. I’ve been thinking about this recently and I don’t believe it’s true.\
\
To frame the design process as problem-solving suggests there’s a large degree of predictability in the path forward but if you ask any seasoned designer the exact opposite is true – that the process is largely unknown due to the number of personalities involved in a specific domain for a company with very unique constraints and a specific timeline to do it in. That’s a lot of unique variables in the mix and I’m just scratching the surface.\
\
So why then do designers describe their work as solving a problem? The reason that immediately springs to mind is to make design more palatable, and indeed, feel less risky for all others involved. Proposing a framework like the double diamond makes design feel like a recipe for success when it is in fact merely an aspiration or goal in disguise. \
\
And so in comes the professionals then, people for hire that are capable of helping businesses solve all their problems like a team of freelance design power rangers.\
\
It’s all horseshit.\
\
Design when framed as problem-solving is a tool for consultants, agencies, schools, and bootcamps to market design like an attractive commodity: an easy to follow sequence of steps that can change corporate destinies. In this context, design gets reduced to a process of validation and feedback seeking for a fixed, unchanging plan in the form of a problem to be solved. And for who? For what agenda?\
\
Too many designers blindly follow the steps without deliberating about the possibilities currently in front of them to inform the thing they do. What should be rejected right here and now? What should be pursued further?\
\
So if we think of design more as way to triage or create new possibilities, then it becomes more about understanding the systems we operate in and the relationships we have with them, then using design to adjust the frame in which we create meaning – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot – to influence and regulate those systems as our societies, technologies, and environments change. By seeking new possibilities, designers retain their agency.\
\
Put this way, it’s much less neat and tidy isn’t it? That’s design in practice. Rendering decisions to maintain or change systems to meet our intentions. Let's try to make sure they're good ones.

Is design problem solving?

Adding value. It’s a phrase that you read and hear about from senior+ folks all the time. But what does that actually mean? And where does design fit in value creation?\
\
Let’s define the two kinds of value a business can create first: real value and perceived value. \
\
Real value comes from the utility of a product or service that customers pay for to solve a problem.\
\
Perceived value comes from those moments when the utility of the product or service has helped customers feel like they’ve become a better version of themselves; that their lives have been improved.\
\
Businesses need a mix of both to be effective. How much of which depends on industry, business model, and market. \
\
While design contributes to both, design alone does not create real value. \
\
I’m not saying design isn’t important - it is and often critically so - just not in the way many folks speak about it in bootcamps or on social platforms.\
\
For me, design is a function that specializes in taking stock of all that real value goodness and multiplying it exponentially, reshaping it into a ton of perceived value.\
\
That's where change happens.\
\
In my 20+ years working in this field, I have not found a better path to success than to take on the mindset of a multiplier for the business AND its audience. Talking only about customer problems - real value problems - is a painful, uphill climb that often gets disregarded. Sound familiar?\
\
Design alone does not create real value. \
\
But if we speak in the language of perceived value things go a bit differently, it’s a powerful way to build narratives and alignment with the business.\
\
Wield it without inhibition. Make change by demonstrating to the business how good design can multiply real value.

The business value of design

I often talk about how case study format and how it's not necessarily good for [entry-level](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=entrylevel&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6895396016221245440) folks looking for their first [j](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=jobs&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6895396016221245440)obs in product design. I received a few questions asking, "so what does an entry-level product designer typically do?"\
\
I'll start with a short list of things that you won't typically be doing:\
\- Defining outcomes and what success looks like for projects\
\- Defining any standards for content or systems\
\- Doing any great deal of primary research during discovery phases\
\- Influencing product or design strategy\
\
That's because your primary function as a new designer is to learn.\
\
Learn and understand:\
\- Your organization's vision, strategy, and goals\
\- Your organization's processes and how they apply to your work\
\- Your product's vision and how it fits into the above\
\- How different teams work together with yours\
\
And while you're learning all of that, you'll be:\
\- Exploring different ways to solve a problem and presenting them for feedback\
\- Following existing standards for content and learning how to use your org's design system\
\- Seeking feedback constantly and working with your peers to get unstuck\
\- Shipping design within that system, preparing assets for different sizes, formats, and resolutions; including redlining\
\- Starting to build relationships across teams and understanding how your work fits into the context of broader workflows\
\
And out of this experience working within real boundaries with others is where those stories for case studies will stem from.

What do entry-level designers really do?

At least not in the way many of my peers think about that term. Here's a high level synopsis of how I work:\
\
I start by determining whether problems are actually problems in need of practical solutions or if they are in fact unaddressed opportunities.\
\
What's the difference?\
\
Problems hinder or outright prevent users from completing the jobs they want to get done, requiring pragmatic solutions to address, the result of which typically tends to be something of real value–a practical need.\
\
Unaddressed opportunities are often conflated as problems when they are actually signals for wants. They're clues to the kind of future selves users want to become or put another way perceived value, evoking the feeling of becoming a better version of themselves–no matter how tiny or fleeting.\
\
I spend more time on the unaddressed opportunities than the immediate problems. The former often solves for the latter. My job then is to envision a future where the opportunities are addressed while working backward to determine how solving the problems of today can also pave the way for that future state, working with folks from other functions to get their takes and learn about what's on their roadmaps or in their pipelines.\
\
I'm using that data to inform how I go about designing, using my training and experience to shape the depth of that work. \
\
If it's a problem, the solution can be delivered sooner within the confines of the system today. \
\
If it's an unaddressed opportunity, I go deeper in figuring out the kinds of intrinsic motivations that drive extrinsic behaviours and craft solutions that reorient the lens by which users view the brand and experience–even if the real value is the same.\
\
All this culminates to a fine mix of systems thinking, iteration, and creation. So much creation. Interactive prototypes and physical objects at high fidelity–all things that can be experienced and conversed about. \
\
No whiteboards. No stickies. No brainstorming. \
\
Just creating things and shaping narratives through them. That's the quintessential part of being an effective design professional.