The excellence and greatness of the designer

Most of the books you read about design, including my own, are largely telling you how to be a good, competent product designer. Maybe they tell you how to make a strong and reasonable design decision, or you can provide some knowledge about design methods and design tools. But they won't, nor can they teach you how to be a great product designer.

The only way to be a great designer is to design a great product. And everything else is a cloud. And I can be sure that the great designers have more than just talent and experience. They can also do something special to make their design a truly great product (often, of course, even the best creative people will have to stall). After observing the work of these cows, I summed up the following features:

adhere to the process

No matter what the process is, they will insist on doing it. In this regard, IDEO company has done a good job. If customers disagree with the process, they will ask the customer for a different design company. You hired me because I followed my process, and it was the only way to make things better.

Sufficient time

To do a good job, you need to spend enough time, including hidden thinking time. You need plenty of time to brainstorm, revise, design prototypes, test, and do the details. Some products even take years to do well, such as Apple's products.

Attention to detail

Sound design, transitions/animations, time sequence, diagrams, labels, curves, typography, materials, manufacturing processes ... Every detail is a sweat. These small changes, if done well, can also make a big difference to your product. At this point, Yves Behar and Jonathan Ive the two designers did well.

Unique discernment

Great designers need insights to know what is tasteful, what is not, what is useful, what is not, what is beautiful, what is not. These are based on subjective judgments, but great designers must have their own insights. If you don't know what a great product looks like and how it feels, how can you design it? Perhaps you don't like the aesthetics and the function of the famous French architect Frank Gehry, but you will know what his architecture is, And at one glance it was his work.

Build Prestige

This is the ability to make your voice more authoritative: "That's good." Do it like this. Don't change it. Everyone would say that, but it is important that someone listen, understand, and obey. Just like Steve Jobs did at Apple. This is why many great designers start their own company or become CEO partners.

Dare to take risks

Designing a great product is an adventure because it is not the same as any product available on the market. Take risks--and, more importantly, persuade your company to risk it is an essential step. Austrian designer Stefan Sagmeister is a person who dares to take risks, he used to carve the poster text on his body with a blade, and made himself a poster of the human body. (So, the next year he went to the seaside to bask in the sun, lettering of the redness and appearance, this poster of the human body and again using the function ah ...)

These characteristics may bring some problems, which is why most people can never be "great". You may lose a client, you may get a reputation for being difficult, eccentric, and uncompromising, you may have to face some pain, some public failure, and you may be fired.

However, when you are successful enough, some problems will disappear. By then, your apparent "debt" will be converted into your capital. The company will be willing to hire you, customers will come back to you, because your efforts for the details of the perfect, your time commitment makes every step in place, because you are defending the best solution and refusing to compromise because you have an insight into it because you follow the right workflow and design beautiful products. But until then, unless you deliberately, or instinctively, cultivate these qualities, and validate them in market practice, it is difficult to accomplish a leap from excellence to greatness.

Source: Kicker Studio

Compiling: Ruanruan lan@damndigital