Design taste
#110 - Jun.2024
Looking back, one of the best decisions I took in my career was to dive deep into the fascinating world of design.
Learning the core concepts, through the lens of service design, gave me a new perspective of what good design means. It gave me new eyes.
As a product leader today, I think these are essential complementary skills. You can develop a good design taste even if your role is not being a designer. Design is the common language between product, UX, and engineering, and everyone in the team can contribute.
Defining what good ‘design taste’ means is hard.
I like to see it as a combination of having an awareness of the context you are working on, identifying patterns, and developing curating skills to choose the best alternatives. Is a mix of experience, exposure to quality work and curiosity.
Is about experimenting. Iterating through different options. It is about decision-making.
Learn the basics of design.
Start with UX principles and what makes good customer research. Learn how to interview customers. Understand how mental models from users affect the design process.
Learn about prototyping and the best options for the type of feedback you are looking for. Learn about the value a consistent experience through good design language and interactions across touch-points.
In Ralph Caplan’s words: “Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.”
