The (Anti)Patterns of Effective Designers
Lessons from an excellent real world book
I just finished the excellent book Communicating the UX Vision: 13 Anti-Patterns That Block Good Ideas by Martina Hodges-Schell & James O’brien. It’s fantastic in how it concisely explains key reasons UX designers fail to be effective and offers tactics that work to overcome them.
The word effective is one of my favorite words because it focuses attention on what matters rather than preferences. There is a lot of idealism among designers, but focusing on ideals rarely gets anything done on its own. What’s the real goal then? To guard an ideal, or to build and ship something good that helps people?
Of the 13 anti-patterns from the book, these resonated with me the most:
Not embracing everyone’s goals. The more work an engineer or business leader has to do to translate a design idea into their goals, the more likely it is to be rejected. Managers and engineers naturally focus on their own goals, we have to go to them, they’re not going to come to us.
Throwing deliverables over the fence. Design is often taught as artifact worship, where prototypes and Figma projects are treated as the ends, rather than a means to impact the actual product. Artifacts are easiest to ignore when the person receiving them feels it’s generating work to do rather than making their job easier.
Speaking different languages / Different KPIs. Design is specialized knowledge and someone has to translate. If the designer isn’t doing this or making sure it happens design will naturally be mistranslated into engineering and business decisions.
Responding to tone, not content. Feedback on design work from non-designers needs to be calibrated and guided. It’s easy to get defensive about the tone of feedback even when the substance of it is reasonable.
Presenting without contextualizing. It’s a mistake to presume people care deeply about design in the way designers do. Any presentation should start by giving context to affirm basics like a) why this decision matters to them and their goals, and b) how what’s being discussed fits into where they are in the project, and their process for getting work done.
Why should I have to? (The meta pattern)
Designers often respond to lists like this by saying, why should I have to?
The word should is fascinating, as it suggests there is a better standard but that someone else is responsible for doing the work to get there. This is the meta anti-pattern of effective designers: I see a roadblock that I can help remove but I don’t want to do it because… I want someone else to do it. But what if no one else sees the roadblock? Or no one else is capable of doing it? Then what happens? Usually nothing.
Design leadership is the obvious place for “the shoulds” to land. They define the design role for their organization and have the most power and influence. But if design leaders center on ideals and shoulds, rather than being effective, it’s hard for anyone else to step up and do it.
Stories wanted: Waking Up to The Real World
Over on Linkedin I posted the survey results on the hardest parts of design and asked folks for their stories and almost 30 folks shared their insights.
If you have a story to add, now is the time. You can comment here or over on Linkedin. Here’s one gem from UX consultant Tamara Adlin:
Thanks for reading
We’re currently working hard on the second draft of this book and your comments and private messages have been great. Appreciate you being here.