What are designers afraid of?
If a hero is someone who does brave things, what makes a designer brave?
In this book we’re exploring the idea of designers as heroes: what are the myths and truths about what a real design hero is?
The most famous designers are people we know because they were successful with their design ideas. Legends like Paula Scher, Paul Rand or Lonnie Johnson. We consider them heroes because we admire their results, but we know little about what they overcame to create those works. It has let designers assume a design hero must be someone who is so talented everyone just does what they say. We don’t often talk about the fears and challenges successful designers face and this makes it hard for other designers to understand what good designers really do.
Design culture creates a trap in that we are taught to assume our ideas will speak for themselves. And when our ideas alone fail to convince our teams, we blame the team for their ignorance (“they just don’t get it.”) Designers often look at the world mystified that so many systems and products are designed so poorly.
We’re often not courageous enough to ask: what is the real problem? what would a true design hero do? They’d probably see the scary, but right, path and find the courage to take it anyway.
If a hero is someone who does brave things, what makes a designer brave?
Question: In your design career, what have you feared and why? Or what have you seen other designers fear?
Or tell us about a brave thing you’ve seen a designer do.
I haven't yet come across fears that seem more likely to occur in designers. We're subject to all the same insecurities as other humans: being wrong, looking bad or stupid, our work being inadequate/disregarded/doubted/criticized, etc. Perhaps we're more sensitive to situations involving our creativity or craft than others, but that seems to parallel the sensitivity that anyone might have when their specialized expertise is viewed negatively. Some of us might be a little more fearful than most about creating design that is underinformed or underexamined. But I don't think that applies to most designers.
Confrontation. A bad review. Being passed over for promotion. Getting managed out or fired.
Today's news seems to point to a need inside some parts of Amazon for design heroes.
"the FTC accuses Amazon of “knowingly” deceiving millions of customers into subscribing to Amazon Prime through the use of “dark patterns.” Specifically, the FTC describes how Amazon’s checkout process would allegedly present customers several options to subscribe to Prime, making it difficult to locate the option to simply finish a purchase. The commission also alleges that Amazon required customers to go through multiple unnecessary steps before successfully unsubscribing from the program."
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/21/23768372/ftc-amazon-lawsuit-prime-dark-patterns-subscriptions