The 5 habits of the best designers

A simple list I wish more designers embraced

Sometimes designers struggle with thinking too much about what to do. We have so many methods, principles and theories that it’s easy to stumble over them instead of paying attention to what’s really happening on the project and team around you.

One way to make this point is the very phrase “the best designers.” Many people will assume this means the designer with the most design talent, but I do not. The best designers are effective at getting good ideas out into the world. Having talent and skill is table stakes: it’s necessary but not sufficient. It’s the ability to effectively use talent and skill that matters.

The best designers are effective. What good is talent if in the end it has zero effect on a project? The best designers are more self-aware, social and pragmatic, and as a result have more positive impact than others, even if those others have more talent. Creative talent on its own can be useless. What good is it to be a genius if no one ever listens to you? I say no good. I also question if you’re really a creative genius if you can’t find creative ways to convince people of ideas that they will profit greatly from embracing.

With this attitude in mind here are 5 things the best designers do or have:

1. Have open minds. There is popular design dogma about “how things should be.” The trap of dogma is it leads to waiting for everything to be perfect which is a kind of closed mindedness. Whereas an open mind does not wait and is curious: What am I missing? What can I learn? What are my blindspots? Who has perspective that can help me? What allies can I find that will help me? Who has solved this somewhere else? What am I missing? How do I need to grow?

2. Are rooted in the real world. Many designers linger in the fantasy world of hoping to work for Apple, or “a place that gets design” failing to realize that part of why you are paid is because your organization is not a place like that. Your salary is a compensation for some of the frustrations you are experiencing (also: Apple itself is a tough place to work from everyone I’ve ever met who has been employed there). “Real world” means your eyes are open to your true assets and liabilities with your current surroundings. Expecting the world to magically change, and being surprised and angry if it doesn’t, is not real world thinking. To work at the equivalent of a Burger King but have the attitude and expectations of a Michelin star chef is not real world thinking, either.

3. Have pragmatic idealism. Idealism comes in many forms, but the most useful is pragmatic idealism. This means you instinctively try to find ways to be useful.
   You can still imagine the perfect, idealistic world, but you do not stop there. Instead you choose to divide that idealistic vision into smaller pieces that you can make actionable. Pieces shaped in ways that allies are willing to help you build. Being pragmatic includes admitting design is a social process, so relationships are paramount. This is another way to explain the idea of gravity problems, and that the best designers avoid getting stuck on them.

4. Reframe hard problems. One definition of insight is simply the ability to look at something from a different angle that is more useful than the way other people are looking at it. Designers excel at this. It’s one of our best skills. We just tend to assume it’s only a useful skill for UX or aesthetic problems. However the best designers study the problems and goals leaders have, including business or organizational ones, and use their reframing skills to help redefine problems to make them easier to solve.

5. Have patience with ignorance. Designers are rare. Our expertise is rare. We have chosen a highly specialized field and that is part of why we have jobs. To be angry when 95+% of the working world is ignorant of what we do and how we do it reflects a much greater ignorance on our part. How are they supposed to know what they do not know? The only way they can learn is by being educated by people like us. We don’t have to love it, but we must at least accept it as a natural part of human nature and the career choice we have made. If we really did not want to explain our craft, we could choose to be lawyers, carpenters or plumbers, who because of their sheer popularity do not face the same ignorance that we do. We get to work with ideas all day and being a creative unavoidably comes with ignorance from the majority of people in less creative professions.

Here’s a short video explaining some of these ideas. It’s from an interview with the lovely folks at the AIGA and it’s just over a minute long.

Also see the sequel post: the 5 habits of the worst designers.