What designers can learn from plumbers

Our second post on reframing your way to design happiness

Reframing is one of many powers you possess that can make design easier instead of harder. In a previous post, we explained that designing and deciding are often different roles. But if designing isn’t deciding, what else is it?

Deciders are busy, so we have to take responsibility for providing answers. Too often we expect other people to do this work. We expect powerful people to figure out what value we provide, learn our fancy terms, and know the difference between a half-dozen design specializations. Instead, we agree with Norman Potter’s classic book, What Is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages, where he explained that “the words by which people describe themselves—architect, graphic designer, interior designer, etc.—become curiously more important than the work they actually do….” 

Consider this: when you hire a good plumber, carpenter or an interior decorator, they show up and demonstrate their value. They aren’t insulted if you don’t know their terms or methods because they assume you know nothing. They treat your time, as the decider, as precious (at least before the contract is signed). They take responsibility for helping you understand the problem and how their expertise can solve it.

Whereas in our world, we are often upset if we have to explain anything what we feel are obvious things about our profession. We shift through different names (UX designer, interaction designer, user researcher, user interface designer, etc.), hoping that one day there will be a magic term or methodology that does all the explaining for us (which is a fantasy). Unless you’re sure a new name or term helps you, perhaps because it gets you more attention from executives or is familiar to the engineering team, it’s a waste of time. Why? Deciders don’t care about your terms —they care about how you can solve their biggest problems. That’s it. It’s not that complicated.

If you can go to a decider and authentically say, “From your list of important unsolved problems, I can solve #2, #3, and #4. Here’s what I need from you to do it,” you will have their full attention. You will probably get budget and resources too. Only then are you speaking their language instead of obsessing about your own.

In Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience, author Tom Greever explained that:

the difference between a good designer and a great designer is the ability to not only solve the problem, but also to articulate how the design solves it in a way that is compelling and fosters agreement…. There are three things that every design needs to be successful: it solves a problem, it’s easy for users, it’s supported by everyone.

To us, the good designer Greever describes is an ineffective one. Why? That designer will often leave his best work on the drawing board, because without agreement or support, no customer will ever see it. Chuck Harrison, one of the first black designers and executives in U.S. history, who designed hundreds of successful products for Sears, expressed a similar discovery he made midway through his career: “​​I learned [design] wasn't only expressing a concept, but how to successfully get it to the marketplace.” The good news is you already have many of the skills to do this. All that’s needed is to reframe them so they can be used in a more powerful way.

The secret, if there is one, is to see your creative problem solving abilities as universal. For any frustration, reframe it as a clear, actionable problem and get creative.

Which world do you want to make a difference in? The fantasy one where things are, to no surprise, much easier? Or the real one where, if you accept some tough truths and apply your creativity to them, a way is possible?