Every design tool is meant for documenting design

The way agile is implemented in organizations has eroded the quality of products: 2-week sprints are often focused on outputs and not on understanding. The resulting outcomes are then less likely to deliver desired value to the customer. Products are shipped without understanding of users' mental model, their intention, their goals, their contexts of use, their journeys. It's easier to focus on outputs, we have many tools to support that. But that's not better.

Product design process should start with abstraction layer.

Elements of user experience Believe it or not, this chart from "Elements of user experience" is more than 25 years old. The original idea holds strong: you cannot design without understanding. First build conceptual knowledge. Only then you move forward with outputs.

Alas, most of "popular" design methods [1] are focused on processes, workflows, pipelines. There, output conquers understanding and becomes the primary building block for design.

Focusing on drawing tools for design is wrong. A designer conceive a solution before opening design software: on a meeting with a stakeholders, when reading research papers, in his head while thinking about solutions, during flow sketching. Design tool is meant for documenting design decisions. Design actually happens earlier in the pipeline.

It's design fundamentalism to lament that only one tool is worth working in, that anything else is bloat.

  1. In a derogatory way ↩︎

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