The 5 most dangerous (and exciting) ideas for designers

We need to invest in ideas that scare, and excite, us the most

One of the best presentations of my career was when I gave the closing talk for the Design Management Institute’s (DMI) Make It Happen event. They were fun to work with and let me develop the talk during the event itself. To get the themes and topics I talked to attendees and listened to conversations. I worked on my laptop right until the moment I went on stage. I’m an experienced speaker and I like challenges, so this was fun and it worked out well. The talk was popular. I did versions of it at other events.

This post is an essay based on the best ideas from those talks with some light edits.

Many of the ideas from that talk made their way into the book Why Design Is Hard. Ego, power, specialists vs. generalists, pitching ideas, decision authority and persuasion are all here but framed differently than in the book. It’s a new (to you) spin on the ideas you’ve been reading for awhile on this substack.

1. Everyone is a Designer (and how this is good for us)

“Everyone is an artist” is what Joseph Beuys famously said. But he didn’t mean every random person’s efforts should be hung on the walls at the Louvre museum in Paris. Instead, he was calling attention to how creative acts, however small, are something ordinary people often do. Designers tend to hate the phrase “everyone is a designer” as they take it as a threat to their profession, but that’s not what I mean.

Consider that I make a living writing books. But I know many people in this world write more words in email than I’ll ever publish. Are they not writers? Of course they are. Most are not as good as the professionals, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t writing. Designers need to have the same attitude – all people design something, or at least believe they do – and we should be open to good ideas regardless of their source.

If we look for it, there are everyday examples of people without design training redesigning things professional designers made and making them better. Jane Fulton Siri’s amazing book Thoughtless Acts is filled with examples of this.

If you see your coworkers as designers, just untrained or less talented ones, you’re more likely to collaborate, teach and persuade, than if you see them as ignorant adversaries.

All designers should think of themselves as ambassadors of good ideas, recognizing that good ideas can come from anywhere, from people with and without design training, and we should be welcoming to them.

For the powerful people who frustrate us, they are only going to learn if we teach them. There is no one else who can do it. Think about the term ambassador (or trusted advisor): how often is this how people would describe you when you’re the only designer in the room? What good is all of your talent if no one listens to you?

2. You have no power (which is OK if you accept it)

It’s OK not to have power, provided you don’t act like you have it. What decisions, as a designer, are truly yours? There is probably a small set of decisions you can make without approval from someone else. And if you want more of your ideas to make it out the door, you either need more power, or to get better at borrowing the power of others to get things done.

One bad way to try and obtain power is jargon. It’s an attempt to change the playing field of language, which only people with less power tend to do.

I’m convinced the people who use the most jargon have the least confidence in their ideas.

Designers and UX experts rely so heavily on methods, taxonomies, and words like affordances and personas. If this is effective for you, that’s great, but if you’re trying to convince someone who has more power than you, you are going to be more effective if you use their vocabulary, their methods and their goals to make your arguments.

Power can be leverage. Once you convince a powerful person to do something, you get what you need and move on, but they do the work and have the responsibility. It can be a win not to have much power if you can influence it.

3. The generalists are in charge (but you can influence them)

Whoever you report to has a more general role than yours. You work for a generalist. If you want more power, you need to either:

• A) take on a more general, or cross-discipline, role or

• B) get better at influencing people with more power than you.  

Any designer can go get an MBA, or learn to take on general management tasks, if they are so inspired, as the skills aren’t that hard to acquire (And consider how many VPs there are who have none of those skills anyway).  But few designers do it, as they don’t want the annoyances, and the stress, that comes with power. Designers fear “not being a designer anymore”, but yet are constantly annoyed by how many important design decisions are made by “non-designers.” Forget the job title: whoever makes the decisions that define the design is a designer.

If we mostly just complain about those in power, who’s fault is it really that we’re unhappy? We have to either lead or follow. We have to admit there is no alternative – if you want more power, and to be fully in charge of design, you are probably required to be in charge of other things too.

4. You are in Sales (But so is almost everyone really)

Creative people look down on salespeople. We like to think what we do is more noble. But we forget we sell all the time. Every pitch and prototype is a kind of sales tool for your ideas. And sales is a failure prone activity. Talk to any screenwriter or actor about how many pitches and auditions they have to do to get a single gig. No one is immune.

If you are a designer, you are a salesperson. You should aspire to be an ambassador of good ideas, which includes knowing how persuade others to see their value. To get more of your ideas out the door demands getting better at sales more than any other single skill. And building the thicker skin, or improved skills of persuasion, necessary to push your ideas through.

5. Creativity is risk (but risk creates reward)

The bigger and better the idea, the harder it will be for people to follow. If you are a creative, taking risks comes with the territory. But when something stupid is being proposed in a meeting, who raises their hand? Who has the courage to speak up? How often do you put your reputation behind an idea? Or are willing not to take credit for something, if it helps the idea survive? What big pitch have you made recently?

If you’re not taking risks, and everything you do is reasonable and sensible, how creative do you really think you are? What dangerous idea should you get people in your world to not just discuss, but do something about?

---

You can watch a fun version of this talk here (Early in the talk, I did some entertaining user research about the venue this event took place in):